Julia Migenes

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Julia Migenes (born March 13, 1949) is an American soprano opera singer. She was born on the Lower East Side of New York to a family of Greek and Irish-Puerto Rican descent.[1] She is sometimes credited as Julia Migenes-Johnson.

Her first experience with opera was as the child in Puccini's Madama Butterfly. While attending the New York School for Performing Arts, she was chosen by Leonard Bernstein as a soloist for the Young People's Concerts which was shown on television.

She began her Broadway career in the original cast of Fiddler on the Roof with Zero Mostel in 1964, and she then played Maria in West Side Story (1964). In the late 1960s she joined the Volksoper Wien where she sang Maria in Marcel Prawy's German version of West Side Story in 1968. At the time she had been singing in the chorus for a musical of the Theater an der Wien. Bernstein was enchanted with her performance as Maria in the new production at the Volksoper.

In the 1970s, she moved to Munich, Germany. She turned to opera and operetta, becoming famous and popular. She starred in many operetta films and TV programmes, receiving several TV awards.

Her Metropolitan Opera debut was in Alban Berg's Lulu (in John Dexter's production, 1980), as a substitute, for which she was cheered. She was then cast as Richard Strauss's Salome in Grand Théâtre de Genève. While in Geneva, film director Francesco Rosi saw her performance and cast her as Carmen opposite Plácido Domingo in his 1984 opera film Carmen (credited as Julia Migenes-Johnson).

She has recorded more than 20 albums and won a Grammy Award for the soundtrack to Carmen. And she was nominated for the César Awards as best actress.

Her fame has spread worldwide and in other performance media and genres. She guest starred on the TV series Twilight Zone episode "Grace Note". Director Peter Medak asked her to appear in his opera film La voix humaine (1990).

In 2004, she was in the opera version of Angels in America which premiered at Théâtre du Châtelet. A TV broadcast version is expected to be released on DVD in late 2006.