Tatiana Troyanos; Versatile Mezzo-Soprano

Tatiana Troyanos, versatile American mezzo-soprano whose velvety voice graced concert and opera stages throughout the United States and Europe, has died. She was 54.

Miss Troyanos died of cancer Saturday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

Determined since childhood to become an opera singer, the New York native prided herself on her widely diverse repertory, which ranged from the roles of Carmen to Kundry in “Parsifal” to Queen Isabella in Philip Glass’ “Voyage” last year.

When she sang in Los Angeles with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1980, Times music critic Albert Goldberg praised Miss Troyanos for her “steady stream of lush tone, emotional comprehension, a dream-like pathos . . . moving.”

Trained at the Juillard School, Miss Troyanos began her career singing in summer stock musicals and as a singing nun in the original Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music.”

She made her opera debut in 1963 as Hippolyta in the New York City Opera’s premiere of Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” That season she also sang Jocasta in Igor Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex.”

Two years later, Miss Troyanos joined the Hamburg State Opera in Germany, where she remained for a decade, rapidly expanding her repertory.

Miss Troyanos sang the role of Handel’s Ariodante, which she performed around the world, at the inauguration of the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1971.

“God bless Handel,” she once told an interviewer. “He wrote for the voice.”

Miss Troyanos returned to the United States in 1976 and made her debut at the Metropolitan as Octavian in Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier.” She became one of the Met’s most frequently heard mezzos.

Survivors include her mother, Hildegard Fournier of Florida, and a brother, John, of New York.