Opera Singer. A small contralto with a large voice, she shall be remembered as perhaps her generation's premiere exponent of the limited repertoire of her range. Raised in Chicago by a family which had escaped the Armenian genocide of 1915, she learned to sing in the Armenian Church, made her professional debut on the 1940s radio show "Hymns of All Churches", and gradually built a local following. While spending 20 years studying with Philip Manuel she became herself a noted voice teacher and was on the faculty of Northwestern University when she got her big break in 1955 by singing Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony with Bruno Walter and the Chicago Symphony. In 1956, however, she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and given six months to live; a radical mastectomy cured her but recovery was slow and she was unable to make her operatic bow until 1959 when she appeared with the Arkansas State Opera as Adalgisa in Vincenzo Bellini's "Norma". Following a period of coaching under the legendary Rosa Ponselle in Baltimore Lili made her 1961 New York recital debut in Serge Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky" with the New York Philharmonic under Thomas Schippers and that same year saw her European bow at Gian Carlo Menotti's Festival of Two Worlds as Herodius in Richard Strauss' "Salome" but also saw a malignant lump discovered in her other breast necessitating a second Halsted radical. She bowed at the Metropolitan Opera on March 9, 1962, as La Cieca from Ponchielli's "La Gioconda", was first heard at the New York City Opera in 1963 as Madame Flora in Menotti's "The Medium", and in 1964 sang the Metropolitan world premiere of Menotti's "The Last Savage". Performing on both sides of the Atlantic, some of Lili's other significant bows were at Wagner's Bayreuth Festival in 1965 as the nurse Mary in "The Flying Dutchman", at San Francisco in 1970 as Dame Quickly from Verdi's "Falstaff", and at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1973 as Erda from Wagner's "Siegfried". Over the quarter century encompassing her main career she was praised for her work in Mahler's "Das Lied von Erde", Verdi's "Requiem", and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as well as for such operatic roles as Azucena in Verdi's "Il Trovatore", Marthe of Gounod's "Faust", the Grandmother from Leos Janacek's "Jenufa", the fortune teller Ulrica of Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera", Aunt Zita in Puccini's comic masterpiece "Gianni Schicchi", two additional "Ring" characters, Erda from "Das Rheingold" and the First Norn in "Gotterdammerung", Amneris in Verdi's "Aida", Madelon from Giordano's "Andrea Chenier", and both the Mother and the Witch of Engelbert Humperdinck's "Hansel und Gretel". Lili's voice was undiminished in her 60s though she did suffer a heart attack onstage while singing Laocadia Begbick in a 1984 performance of Kurt Weill's "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" which she still managed to finish. Her 290th. and last Metropolitan appearance came on May 17, 1986, as Gertrude from Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette" after which she accepted a professorship at Yale University. Honored with Yale's Sanford Medal in 2002 she retired to emerita status in 2009. At her death from the effects of advanced age much of her recorded legacy remained in print.