A much beloved voice teacher, Dr. Lorine Buffington served for more than 20 years on the voice faculty at the University of Miami Frost School of Music where for 15 years she was founder and director of the prestigious University of Miami Frost School of Music at Salzburg, a summer training program for singers and pianists in Salzburg, Austria. Additionally, she taught applied voice, art song literature, vocal diction and Opera Theater, and served as interim chair of the Department of Vocal Performance. Many of her students enjoy highly successful professional singing careers and have appeared at such venues as the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Chicago Lyric, The Vienna State Opera and other major companies as well as many Broadway productions.
In her own career as a soprano, she performed more than 30 operatic roles with major opera companies in the US, Switzerland, and Austria, and appeared with the Salzburg Festival, The Metropolitan Opera, The Turnau Opera, The Opera Orchestra of New York, Das Raimund Theater in Vienna, Austria, Stadttheater Bern in Switzerland, and Florida Grand Opera. A recipient of two Rockefeller grants and a J. Ralph Corbett Foundation Grant, she held MM and DMA degrees from the University of Michigan, and degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, and the Academie Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
She was currently serving as adjunct professor of music at Florida Gulf Coast University and had previously taught at Miami Dade Community College, Barry University, The Westminster Choir College, and The Doylestown School of Music and the Arts in Pennsylvania.
Her former students remember a beloved teacher and mentor with “passion, intelligence, knowledge, and zest for life! If she believed in you, she fought for you, and to believe in you, you just had to work hard and show that you cared,” remembers renowned soprano Susana Diaz, B.M. ’94. 2013 Frost Distinguished Alumna and internationally acclaimed soprano Elizabeth Caballero, B.M. ’99, stated “it is with a heavy heart that I share the news of the passing of Dr. Lorine Buffington. She always believed in me and never minced words when giving me advice or preparing me for the life that I live now. It was her tough love that pushed me forward, but I was touched when I saw her a few years ago after one of my performances when she came to my dressing room with tears in her eyes.”
A breast cancer survivor for over two decades, she was a resident of Naples, FL since 2002. She is survived by her husband, Franklin Summers, who was also a voice teacher on the Frost faculty for 25 years, chair of the department and director of Frost Opera Theater. Lorine Buffington also leaves a daughter, Leah Summers-Dimaras; two grandchildren, Panos and Alex Dimaras; her son-in-law, Charis Dimaras; and a niece, Alexandra Smith.
The classical voice community mourns the loss of a magnanimous and brilliant voice teacher. Her amazing vocal technique continues to be both cherished and taught by her prestigious students, and her legacy will live on for many years to come.
