Tatiana Troyanos was an American mezzo-soprano remembered as "one of the defining singers of her generation". Her voice, "a paradoxical voice - larger than life yet intensely human, brilliant yet warm, lyric yet dramatic" - "was the kind you recognize after one bar, and never forget", wrote Cori Ellison in Opera News.
Troyanos' performances "covered the full range of operatic history" in an international career of three decades that also produced a variety of operatic recordings, among them Carmen, cited almost four decades later as "the finest of all Carmens." After ten years based at the Hamburg State Opera, Troyanos became widely known for her work with the Metropolitan Opera beginning in 1976, with over 270 performances spanning twenty-two major roles.