Daniel Ferro, opera singer and vocal coach, Died at 94

  Actor

Daniel Ferro was born on April 10, 1921, and died on November 18, 2015.

He was an American bass-baritone and voice teacher.

Daniel was known primarily as a teacher whose students have included many prominent opera singers, but he also had a career as a singer himself both on the concert stage and in opera and musical theatre.

Daniel was born in New York as Daniel Eisen, the son of Joseph Eisen (born in the province of Galicia, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and Pauline Greenberg Eisen (born in Holyoke, Massachusetts to immigrant parents from southern Ukraine).

He graduated from the Juilliard School of Music (in 1948) and from Columbia University.

A Fulbright scholarship enabled him to pursue further vocal studies in Austria at the Salzburg Mozarteum and in Italy at the Accademia Chigiana and the Accademia Santa Cecilia.

Early in his career, Daniel changed his surname from Eisen, the German word for iron, to Ferro, the Italian word for iron.

During the early 1950s, Daniel was a member of the Graz Opera Company in Austria where his appearances included Mathis der Maler (Truchsess von Waldburg) and Parsifal (Titurel).

Daniel also appeared on European concert stages and toured with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

When Ferro returned to the United States in 1956, Daniel took up an appointment as Associate Professor in the voice department at Butler University in Indiana.

The 1960s found him in back in New York City, teaching at Hunter College and later at the Manhattan School of Music where he became chairman of the voice department.

During that time, Daniel also performed in both musical theatre and opera, including leading roles in musicals with St. John Terrell’s Company and other summer stock theatres, a revival of The Saint of Bleecker Street in New York City, and concert performances of Werther in Carnegie Hall and William Tell at Lincoln Center.

Daniel passed away at age 94 in November 2015.