In 2013 the UT Board of Trustees approved awarding an honorary Doctor of Human and Musical Letters degree to native Knoxvillian and internationally acclaimed opera
soprano Mary Costa. She was ill and unable to attend the commencement, and Chancellor Jimmy Cheek presented the honorary degree to her at a dinner on November 10, 2014.
Costa sang Sunday school solos in Knoxville at age six. When she was in her early teens, her family relocated to Los Angeles, where she completed high school and won a Music Sorority Award as the outstanding voice among Southern California high school seniors. Following high school, she entered the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music to study with famed maestro Gaston Usigli. Between 1948 and 1951, she appeared with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on the Bergen radio show. She also sang with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in concerts at UCLA and made numerous commercials for Lux Radio Theatre.
When she auditioned for the part of Princess Aurora in Walt Disney’s 1958 film Sleeping Beauty, Disney himself called her within hours of the audition to tell her that the part was hers. Shortly after the release of the film, Costa was called upon to substitute for Elisabeth Schwarzkopf at a gala concert in the Hollywood Bowl. Because of her glowing reviews from that performance, she was invited to sing the lead in her first fully staged operatic production, the Bartered Bride, produced by the renowned German producer Carl Ebert for the Los Angeles Guild Opera. Ebert later requested that Costa appear at the Glyndebourne Festival, where she made a debut.
Costa went on to perform in 44 operatic roles on stages throughout the world, including Jules Massenet’s Manon at the Metropolitan Opera, Violetta in La Traviata at the Royal Opera House in London and the Bolshoi in Moscow, and Cunegonde in the 1959 London premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. In 1961, for RCA, she recorded Musetta in La bohème. Among numerous roles sung for the San Francisco Opera, she was Tytania in the American premiere of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1961), Ninette in the world premiere of Norman Dello Joio’s Blood Moon (1961), and Anne Truelove in the San Francisco premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Violetta in La Traviata on January 6, 1964, receiving one of the season’s greatest ovations and enthusiastic praise from critics.
Jacqueline Kennedy asked Costa to sing at a memorial service for John F. Kennedy from the Los Angeles Sports Arena in 1963. She sang for the inaugural concert of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1971. In 1972 she starred in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature The Great Waltz, which depicted the life of Austrian composer Johann Strauss II. Additional movie credits include The Big Caper (1957) and Marry Me Again (1953).
Costa dedicated her later years to inspiring children and teenagers and giving motivational talks at schools and colleges across the country. She is also a celebrity ambassador for Childhelp, a child abuse prevention and treatment nonprofit organization. She continued to do promotional appearances for Disney.
In 1989 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Lucia Albanese Puccini Foundation. In November 1999 she received the Disney Legends Award, and her handprints are now a permanent part of the Disney Legends Plaza at the entrance to Disney Studios. In 2000 she was selected as the Tennessee Woman of Distinction by the American Lung Association. In April 2001 she was honored by the Metropolitan Opera Guild for Distinguished Verdi Performances of the 20th Century. In 2003 she was appointed by President George W. Bush to the National Council on the Arts, upon which she served until 2007.