After a successful appearance as a semi-finalist in the
Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1969, von Stade was invited to join the Metropolitan Opera Studio. A summons from the rehearsal room to a private audition with Sir
Rudolf Bing resulted in her signing a three-year contract as a comprimario. She made her Met debut as the Third Boy in
Die Zauberflöte on 10 January 1970, and went on to play eighteen other apprentice roles as "everybody's page or their maid—I was an operatic domestic". In 1971, the Met allowed her to moonlight in
San Francisco and in
Santa Fe as
Sesto and
Cherubino respectively, but in 1972, hungry for more challenging roles, she decided to embark on a career as a freelance. She debuted as Cherubino in
Houston and as
Rosina in
Washington DC in 1973. That was also the year when she first sang in Europe: she was highly acclaimed as Cherubino—her signature role—in high-profile productions by
Giorgio Strehler in
Paris and by
Peter Hall at
Glyndebourne. Soon she was singing in all of opera's most prestigious houses, appearing as Cherubino in Salzburg in 1974, as Rosina at
Covent Garden in 1975, as Rosina at
La Scala in 1976 and as Cherubino in
Vienna in 1977. Her recording of
Joseph Haydn's
Harmoniemesse (taped under
Leonard Bernstein in 1973) was the first item in what grew to be a large and eclectic discography, and a telecast of
Le nozze di Figaro from Glyndebourne in 1973 launched her on a television career that eventually made her a familiar face on screens in America and across the world. The highlights of her performing life included singing in Washington DC for Presidents
Nixon,
Carter,
Reagan and
George H. W. Bush, starring in a gala staged in honour of the
1992 Winter Olympics and participating in a televised concert led by
Leonard Slatkin to mourn those murdered in the terrorist attacks of
9/11. With a lyric mezzo-soprano voice that extended into
soprano territory, she was a celebrated exponent of
travesti roles like
Hänsel,
Idamante, and
Octavian, and she was also much admired playing leading ladies like
Angelina,
Charlotte,
Dorabella,
Lucette,
Mélisande,
Penelope and
Zerlina. In the autumn of her career, she transitioned into character parts, among them
Despina,
Geschwitz,
Tina,
the Marquise de Merteuil,
Mrs De Rocher,
Madeline Mitchell,
Winnie Flato and
Myrtle Bledsoe. Her repertoire ranged from the Baroque era through the Classical and Romantic periods all the way to modern music (including jazz and pop). Her many firsts included the US premiere of
Monteverdi's ''
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria'', the Met's first performance of
Mozart's
Idomeneo, the first recording of
Massenet's
Cendrillon and the world premieres of operas by
Dominick Argento, Lembit Beecher,
Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie,
Thomas Pasatieri,
Conrad Susa and
Heitor Villa-Lobos. Her appearances in musicals by Leonard Bernstein and
Stephen Sondheim reflected a love of musical theatre that had been kindled when she was a little girl listening to her mother's records of songs by
George Gershwin and
Jerome Kern. Although she was primarily a singing actress, she was also a concert artist, particularly in the 1990s and 2000s. The composers whose orchestral pieces she programmed most often were Mozart,
Mahler,
Berlioz,
Debussy,
Ravel and
Canteloube. These also featured in her recital repertoire, alongside
Britten,
Fauré,
Handel,
Offenbach,
Poulenc,
Schoenberg,
Schubert,
Schumann,
Richard Strauss and the American composers for whom she was an evangelist and, in several cases, a
muse. French
mélodies were particularly dear to her—a Francophile, she became a fluent French speaker while still a teenager and made her home in Paris for several years during her early thirties. The pianist with whom she performed most often was
Martin Katz. (Other colleagues who were especially important in her career were the composers Dominick Argento and Jake Heggie, the conductors
Claudio Abbado,
James Levine and
Michael Tilson Thomas and the singers
Kiri Te Kanawa,
Marilyn Horne,
Thomas Allen,
Thomas Hampson,
Richard Stilwell and
Samuel Ramey.) Von Stade ceased performing full time in 2010, but she continued to make occasional appearances near her
East Bay home and elsewhere throughout the following decade and into the 2020s. Her activities in recent years have included taking part in benefit concerts, judging singing competitions and teaching interpretation in master classes. ==Personal life==