Maralin Niska

Maralin Niska, a lyric soprano whose mesmerizing stage presence and command of dozens of roles made her a mainstay of New York City Opera in the 1960s and ’70s, died on Saturday at her home in Santa Fe, N.M. She was 89.

Her husband, William Mullen, confirmed her death.

Ms. Niska, who joined the company in 1967, had a dark, supple, powerful voice, heard to advantage in her performances as Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata” and the title role in Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos.” But it was her dramatic gifts and movie-star looks — The Daily News of New York once said she resembled “Ava Gardner of the love goddess years” — that earned her a special place in the hearts of opera fans.

Ms. Niska appeared in 29 lead roles with New York City Opera, more than any other singer. None of the roles made a bigger impact than her breakout performance in 1970 in Janacek’s “The Makropulos Affair” as Emilia Marty, an opera singer who has lived for 342 years in a series of guises after drinking a magic potion.

“Miss Niska was sensational,” the critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times. “It was clear that her mother was a vampire, her father a lycanthrope. She looked like a Gibson girl with the best features of both her parents. Implacable, beautiful, cold, selfish, hard, amoral, she lowered the temperature of the stage to near absolute zero.”

Frank Corsaro, a theater director who worked with Ms. Niska on many of her most memorable performances, envisioned the character as a witchy, dissolute, sexual creature, and Ms. Niska delivered. At one point in the opera, she stripped to the waist, her back turned to the audience.

She was known for impassioned performances — she once stamped out a cigarette with her bare foot in “Pagliacci” — but in this instance she surprised even herself. “I personally do not feel sexy,” she told The Times in 1971. “What Frank Corsaro pulled out of me I didn’t know was there.”

Ms. Niska was born Maralin Fae Dice on Nov. 16, 1926, in San Pedro, Calif. Her mother, the former Vera Stott, was a nurse. Her father, William, was a contractor with a good baritone voice.

“When I was a child he taught me songs and we sang duets,” she told The Daily News in 1970. “But he also taught me how to use a pneumatic drill.”

She took piano and violin lessons as a child. When she was in high school, an interested teacher coached her in the basics of vocal technique. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and, after graduating with a degree in English literature, taught second graders in a public school in Torrance, Calif., for four years.

While teaching, she often sang in churches, at funerals and at rallies to raise money for Israel bonds. Taking a year off from teaching, she studied with the vocal coach Ernest St. John Metz and the soprano Lotte Lehmann, who instructed her in lieder singing. She also studied tap and jazz dance, disciplines that contributed to the athleticism of her performances.

In 1954, she sang the role of Marguerite in Charles Gounod’s “Faust” in a workshop production presented by Palo Verde College in California. After appearing with numerous local and regional companies, she took the role of Violetta in “La Traviata” for the inaugural season of the Los Angeles Grand Opera Company in 1960.

Despite the advice of teachers and friends, she refused to go to Europe to study and build a career. “The more I heard that, the more I rebelled,” she told The Times in 1971. “I’ve never even been to Europe, and I don’t have any desire to go.” She added, “I’m still one of the few holdouts who are truly American in training, experience, everything.”

After she sang the part of Mimi in “La Bohème” for the opening of the San Diego Opera in 1965, Rudolf Bing, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, hired her for a new venture, a national company of the Met. She made her debut in Indianapolis in the title role of “Susannah,” by the American composer Carlisle Floyd.

The Metropolitan National Company lasted only two seasons, but Ms. Niska was soon hired by the New York City Opera and made her company debut as Countess Almaviva in “The Marriage of Figaro.” Her many performances with the company included a rare doubleheader in 1976, in which she sang the lead parts in “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” on the same evening.

She appeared often at the Met after stepping in as Violetta in “La Traviata” for a matinee performance in 1970. On March 15, 1977, for the first “Live From the Metropolitan Opera” telecast, she sang the role of Musetta in “La Bohème,” with Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Scotto. She appeared for the last time with New York City Opera as Queen Elizabeth in Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda” in 1981.

Ms. Niska, whose first marriage ended in divorce, leaves no survivors other than her husband, whom she met when she was performing with the Santa Fe Opera in 1968 and he was playing violin in the orchestra.

Throughout her career, Ms. Niska squirmed when writers described her as a star. “It almost means not being a human being, because you feel you have to be perfect every time,” she told The Times in 1971. “I want to experiment, or be allowed to fail or be told I’m bad when I’m bad. I want to know what people are saying behind my back.”