PROVOCATIVE THOUGHTS: 
The late Patric Standford may have written these short pieces deliberately to provoke our feedback. If so, his success is reflected in the rich range of readers' comments appearing at the foot of most of the pages.
Lucine Amara
American soprano Lucine Amara was born Lucine Tockqui Armaganian to Armenian parents in Hartford, Connecticut on 1 March 1925 and she grew up in San Francisco, studying with Stella Eisner-Eyn at the San Francisco Community Music Center and singing in the San Francisco Opera Chorus. Later she studied with Richard Bonelli at the Music Academy of the West and at the University of Southern California.
She made her concert debut in 1946 at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, and won a contest to appear at the Hollywood Bowl in 1948. She appeared as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, and made her 1950 New York Metropolitan Opera debut in Verdi's Don Carlos. She continued to sing at the Met for forty-one seasons. She also performed in Asia, Europe and South America, and made a few recordings.
Later she taught masterclasses in Canada, Mexico and the USA, and was artistic director of the New Jersey Association of Verismo.
At the end of her life, suffering from dementia, she lived with her daughter, where she died in Queens, New York from a respiratory infection and heart failure on 6 September 2024, aged ninety-nine.