Regina Resnik - Telegraph When she was 16 her parents insisted that she turn down a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music, choosing instead for her to study at Hunter College, where a degree in Music Education would provide an alternative income if her singing career faltered. Miller, who always declined to charge her students for lessons, introduced Regina Resnik to the conductor Fritz Busch, and in 1942 he invited her to sing Lady Macbeth with the New York Opera Company. Two years later, after working with Erich Kleiber in Mexico, she triumphed at an audition with the Met. She soon made her debut with the company by stepping in at a day's notice to sing Leonora in place of Zinka Milanov in Il Travatore. Before long she was touring America, appearing with choral societies and giving recitals. It wasn't until 1953 that she appeared in Europe, singing Sieglinde in Die Walküre at Bayreuth under Clemens Krauss, who first suggested that she might be more suited to the mezzo roles. Within two years she was seeking guidance from the Italian-born baritone Giuseppe Danise, an old friend, about making the vocal change, an exercise that resulted in a year away from the stage. Although the transition was traumatic, she was thrilled with the eventual results, as were audiences, though she would later jokingly refer to herself as a "freak." By the early 1960s Regina Resnik had appeared in all the world's major opera houses - Berlin, Salzburg, Vienna, San Francisco and Buenos Aires included - while her repertoire expanded to include the Marquise in Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment (with Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti), Klytemnestra in Strauss's Elektra (under Georg Solti) and the Countess in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades (under Rostropovich). When learning the part of Marina in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (with which she marked her return to the Met as a mezzo under Dmitri Mitropoulos in 1957), she was able to practise the role with her parents, who advised her on the Russian pronunciation. Meanwhile, demand for her to sing Carmen rarely faltered, and among her many performances were two seasons in Vienna for Herbert von Karajan in 1957 and in 1958, the same year in which she appeared in Verdi's Requiem at the Proms in London under Malcolm Sargent. Back in New York, Regina Resnik felt that Rudolf Bing, the Met's director, was offering her only minor roles, and when the title role in Carmen was awarded to another singer in 1967 she resigned from the company in protest. They were reconciled not long afterwards and she continued singing there until 1981, giving classes at the house - and elsewhere - for many years. Regina Resnik was as highly cultured offstage as she was on it. She purchased her own subscription to the opera and was an habitué of the New York theatre. Among her other interests were philately and Greek archaeology; she visited museums and galleries in every city in which she was performing. She was very conscious of being an American abroad, and enjoyed the opportunities that were offered to American singers during the post-war reconstruction of Europe. She liked to recall how, on one occasion, she was at Bayreuth when Wieland Wagner walked into the rehearsals for his brother Wolfgang's Ring and proclaimed: "Well, well, well, it still looks like the war. All the gods are Americans and the Nibelungs are Germans. On another occasion, while singing Carmen in Marseille in 1962, it seemed that the largely nationalist audience had come mostly to boo her and her Don José, who also happened to be American. After the audience expressed their displeasure with Don José at the end of the Flower Song, Regina Resnik stepped to the front of the stage. "Taisez-vous!" she demanded, ordering the public to desist from the protests and instead enjoy the marvellous show. In 1983 she appeared in a television documentary, filmed in the Venetian ghetto, exploring her Jewish heritage. In 1991 the Mayor of New York City proclaimed "Regina Resnik Day," which coincided with the award of an honorary doctorate from Hunter, her former college. Regina Resnik married first, in 1947, Harry Davis, a New York lawyer, but that ended in divorce. Her second husband, whom she married in 1975, was Arbit Blatas, the Lithuanian-born painter and sculptor. They met when she was directing Carmen and together worked on several more operas - including Falstaff, The Queen of Spades and Salome - and kept a home in Venice. He died in 1999, and she is survived by a son of her first marriage. Regina Resnik, born August 30 1922, died August 8 2013