Born on February 13, 1920, in Willimantic, Connecticut, Eileen Farrell was the daughter of former vaudevillians who later became music teachers. With her family she moved to Storrs, Connecticut, and then to Woonsocket, Rhode Island. After graduating from high school in 1939 she traveled to New York City to study singing, and in 1940, following a failure to win a place on ╥Major Bowes╒ Original Amateur Hour,╙ she auditioned successfully for membership in studio choral and ensemble groups on the CBS radio network. The next year she began her own program, ╥Eileen Farrell Sings,╙ on which for six years she performed vocal works ranging from operatic arias to popular songs. In 1947 she began making regular concert tours, extending her field to South America two years later, and received wide acclaim for her consistently brilliant performances.
An extended engagement with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1950╨1951, during which she sang in the American premiere performance of Milhaud╒s Les Choæphores, was the beginning of a long association with that organization, and in 1953 she became a regular performer with the Bach Aria Group as well. A popular guest on television variety programs, she continued to mix classical and popular music in her repertoire and in 1957 began her formal operatic career in Il Trovatore with the San Francisco Opera Company. Her mastery of a wide variety of soprano roles steadily raised the critical estimation of her singing, and after an appearance in Gian-Carlo Menotti╒s 1959 Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, where hers was considered by many the outstanding performance (in Verdi╒s Requiem and some song recitals), she at last made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York in December 1960 in Gluck╒s Alcestis.
Firmly established thereafter as one of the best American dramatic sopranos, Farrell continued to win success and the highest critical and popular acclaim for her concert appearances and recordings. She is one of the few opera singers to have been successful with popular songs; she recorded I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues, her first crossover album, in 1960. In the mid-1970s she taught both classical and popular voice at Indiana University. Although she no longer performs publicly, she has continued to record songs of composers such as Harold Arlen, Rogers and Hart, Alec Wilder and Johnny Mercer.
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