After studies at the Gilbert School, Winsted and at the Hartford School of Music with Ivan Velikanoff, Stich-Randall’s first stage appearance was at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, Hartford in 1943, the year in which she entered the Columbia School of Music in New York City. Here she made her formal operatic debut (singing as Teresa Stich—she later told a friend that her hyphenated name did not denote marital status: Randall was a reference to a favourite uncle) creating the role of Henrietta M. in the first performance of Virgil Thomson’s opera The Mother Of Us All in 1947, after which in 1948 she sang the title role in Evangeline by Otto Luening (who had been the conductor of the Thomson opera).

Having been heard by T...