Janice Dixon, the New York-born soprano, has died at 70, according to OperaWire. She spent twenty years as a soloist at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, the German city that became her home for more than three decades.
Dixon made her career largely in Germany, working across a wide repertory. Her Wagner roles included Senta in Der fliegende Holländer, Elsa in Lohengrin, Sieglinde in Die Walküre and Eva in Die Meistersinger. She also sang the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos, Tosca and Desdemona in Otello.
Beyond Mannheim, she appeared at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Staatsoper Hannover, Saarländisches Staatstheater and Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, as well as the Israeli Opera and Opera Grand Rapids.
These are the theatres in which much of operatic life goes on: the regular seasons, the returning audiences, the singers who build a career through the repertory rather than a handful of international engagements. Dixon spent much of her working life in that world.
There was another side to her musical life, too. In Feudenheim, she gave a recital of Motown and soul classics with pianist Michael Sorg. A Brooklyn-born soprano known for Wagner, Strauss and Verdi, turning to music from a rather different tradition: it is an appealing reminder that a singer's interests need not stop at the edge of the operatic stage.
