A memorial for Margaret Juntwait will be held on September 16 at 5 pm in
Juilliard’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater, and a limited number of tickets will be
available to the general public. If you are interested in attending, please
provide your name and email address below by Wednesday, September 9, at
midnight EST. We will be in touch on September 14 to let you know whether or
not tickets are available. We regret that we can only offer one ticket per
person due to space limitations.
The
Metropolitan Opera mourns the death of our radio host Margaret Juntwait, who
passed away June 3, 2015 after a long battle with ovarian cancer. For millions
of listeners around the world, Margaret was the voice of the Met for the past
decade.
She
was appointed to the post in October 2004, and her first Saturday matinee
broadcast was a December 11, 2004 performance of Verdi’s I Vespri
Siciliani. She went on to host a total of 229 live Saturday
broadcasts, as well as 898 live broadcasts on the Met’s Sirius XM channel. Her
final Sirius broadcast was the new production premiere of Lehár’s The Merry
Widow on December
31, 2014.
“Margaret
Juntwait was the soul of the Met’s radio broadcasts,” said Met General Manager
Peter Gelb. “She will be sorely missed by her loving colleagues here at the
Met, as well as the countless opera stars who she so deftly interviewed over
the years, and by the millions of devoted fans who listened to her mellifluous
hosting of our broadcasts three or four times a week, season after season.”
Margaret was
diagnosed with ovarian cancer more than ten years ago, but before January 2015,
she missed only one Saturday matinee broadcast due to her illness. Even after
she was unable to host live performances, Margaret retained her tremendous
passion for the Met, and was in the building just a few weeks ago to pre-record
content for future Sirius XM broadcasts.
Margaret, a
trained singer and a former WNYC classical music radio host, loved opera and
the Met. In her role as interviewer, she displayed a remarkable grace for putting
artists at ease. Before and after the curtain went up for performances, her
passion for the art form allowed her to convey to the audience the excitement
of what would happen on the Met stage.
She was
justifiably proud of her role as one of only three regular hosts of the Met’s
Saturday broadcast series over the course of its 84-year history. She replaced
Peter Allen as host in 2004 and joined the Met staff full-time in 2006, when
the company’s Sirius XM channel launched.
We extend
our sincerest condolences to Margaret’s family and friends, including her
husband Jamie Katz; mother Florence Grace; and children Gregory, Bart, and
Steven Andreacchi, and Joanna Katz; on behalf of all those who loved her,
in the Met company and in the radio audience around the world.
http://www.metopera.org/News-Flash1/News-Flash/Remembering-Margaret-Juntwait1/
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