Ina Souez, Opera Star Who Joined Spike Jones, Dies

Ina Souez, who went from prima donna assoluta at Britain’s fabled Glyndebourne operatic festival to prima donna absurda with Spike Jones and his merry band of music dismantlers, died Monday night in a Santa Monica nursing home where she had lived for eight years.

Miss Souez, the premier Mozartian soprano of her day, was 89. Before suffering a stroke, she had taught singing in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

During the 1930s she was considered the essential Donna Anna in “Don Giovanni” and an exemplary Fiordiligi in “Cosi fan Tutte.” Her recordings of those roles remain definitive and continue to be sought by collectors.

She and the exalted tenor Jussi Bjoerling were the toast of Europe in the mid-1930s, singing a series of performances of Verdi’s Requiem across the continent under the baton of Fritz Busch.

Her recordings of “Casta Diva” from “Norma” and “Ernani! Involami!” from “Ernani” continue to be treasured, when they can be found.

But they were made before World War II when a mother’s fears and a diminishing voice made her a different kind of diva.

“I returned to my home in London (after a European tour) to find that my apartment . . . had been destroyed in a bombing raid,” she told The Times in 1971, two years after she moved to Los Angeles.

At the urging of the American ambassador in London and her mother in Windsor, Colo., where she was born and raised, Miss Souez returned to America.

She joined the Women’s Army Corps after the United States entered the war in 1941 and made one final appearance with Busch when he came to the United States shortly after.

But, she recalled later, after her final Fiordiligi, the conductor had told her: “Honey, your voice isn’t as good as it was.”

She reluctantly agreed and was trying to decide how to support herself when Spike Jones asked her to join his City Slickers.

“I grabbed it,” she said. “No matter what I thought about my career, Spike was offering me some real money.”

Miss Souez said she not only didn’t object to becoming a dizzy diva, she actually enjoyed it when--as she was singing--one of Jones’ zany musicians would reach into her huge hat and remove a couple of pigeons.

And besides, she said, “imagine 36 people (the Jones troupe) living in a Pullman car for a year without any dissension.”

She did do an occasional lighter role elsewhere, singing “The Great Waltz” in San Diego, but spent most of the 1950s with Jones.

When his musical satire waned in popularity she moved to San Francisco to teach, and then Los Angeles. In her later years she also helped judge regional auditions for the Metropolitan Opera.

Miss Souez was born Ina Rains to a family of Cherokee descent. She adapted her professional name from her American Indian great-great-grandmother, whose surname was Suey, and came to singing when her parents realized her voice was far more advanced than her years. She studied with Canadian contralto Florence Lamont Hinman, who once said of her pupil, “I never have heard such a loud noise in my life.”

Hinman arranged a benefit concert for Miss Souez that generated enough money to support her in Europe for three years. She quickly became an American success story there, first performing in Milan, Italy, when she was only 18. She later attributed her operatic successes to her ongoing studies in Italy, “getting the kind of training an American singer can never get in his own country.”

Early on she established a reputation as a quick study, once learning the role of Liu in “Turandot” in 36 hours. On another occasion, she took the role of Marguerite, which she had learned in French, and relearned it in Italian in five hours for a production of “Faust.”

Times music critic Martin Bernheimer on Tuesday reflected on her varied career:

“Ina Souez never achieved the fame she deserved in America. She was much revered in Europe, however, especially in England where she was a key player during the formative years of the Glyndebourne Festival.

“Her recordings of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘Cosi fan Tutte’--the first complete commercial recordings of these operas--document a spinto soprano capable of remarkable coloratura flexibility and limpid purity. She could muster considerable dramatic heft, however, when it was needed, for example in the Verdi Requiem.

“Because she was a noble stylist blessed with an extraordinary technique, it was doubly ironic that her own country knew her best as a stooge for Spike Jones and his City Slickers. Luckily, her sense of humor did not preclude self-mockery.”

Miss Souez married once but was divorced before the war. “It lasted three years,” she recalled in 1971. “I can’t stay with anybody for too long. I’ve got to sing.”

There are no immediate survivors. A memorial service has been scheduled for Dec. 20 at 2 p.m. at the Hollywood First Methodist Church at Franklin and Highland avenues.