Mignon Dunn
American mezzo-soprano and voice teacher (1928–2026)
Mignon Armistead Dunn (June 17, 1928 – June 28, 2026) was an American dramatic mezzo-soprano and voice teacher. In her professional debut in New Orleans in 1955, she starred in the title role of Bizet's Carmen, which became one of her signature roles. She performed at leading opera houses of the world, especially at the Metropolitan Opera from 1958 to 1994. After 15 years of performing mostly supporting roles there, she had her breakthrough as Azucena in Verdi's Il trovatore, and then performed lead roles in Italian, French, German and Czech repertoire, including Mère Marie in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites, Kundry in Wagner's Parsifal, Herodias in Strauss's Salome, and the Kostelnicka in Janáček's Jenůfa.
Dunn taught voice at several music academies of the United States, last doing so as a member of the voice faculty of the Manhattan School of Music from 1985 to 2023.
Early life
Mignon Armistead Dunn was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on June 17, 1928. Her parents were Christine Lundee and Dudley Dunn, who ran a plantation cotton farm in Arkansas. She grew up with two elder sisters in Tyronza, Arkansas, where she heard African Americans singing during baptisms held in the Tyronza River. Her father, the son of Mississippi River boat captain father Grey Dunn and a veteran of World War I, died when she was age seven. After her parents' cotton farm burned down in the 1940s, Dunn moved back to Memphis with her family.
“Mignon Dunn” enters the record as american mezzo-soprano and voice teacher (1928–2026). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mignon, Dunn and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mignon Dunn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.