Born on a dining room table in Toronto’s working-class Cabbagetown district, Stratas’ first performances came when she meandered from table to table in the restaurant owned by her parents, singing Greek folk songs for pennies. Stratas began formal voice training at 12, the same year she made her professional debut singing Greek favourites for audiences on CBC Radio’s Songs of My People. Her exquisite lyric soprano earned her a three-year scholarship to Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music.
Stratas made her professional debut at 20 in a Toronto Opera Festival production of La Bohème. The following year, Stratas was co-winner of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions and made her debut with the company as Pousette in Manon. Quickly established as one of the Met’s most popular and skillful performers, Stratas sang major roles season after season. While with the Met, Stratas also performed with the Bolshoi Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Canadian Opera Company.
In 1995, Stratas made Met history by performing both lead soprano roles in an opening-night double bill, singing Nedda in Pagliacci opposite Luciano Pavarotti and then Magda in Il Tabarro opposite Placido Domingo.
In February 1979, Stratas sang the title role in the first full-length performance of Alban Berg’s Lulu at the Paris Opera, an event The New York Times called “perhaps the most important and glamourous operatic premiere since the Second World War.”
Stratas was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1972, and in 2000 was presented with the Governor General’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Performing Arts.
