Also on Capitol she appears in Vaughan Williams’ “Five Tudor Portraits” (P8218.) A number of notable live recordings have become available on CD. Among them is a 1951 recording of Rankin's Amneris in Aida that was conducted by Herbert von Karajan for radio broadcast in Vienna, a recording of Verdi's Requiem at La Scala from that same year, and the 1960 La Scala production of Berlioz's Les Troyens. A famous "pirated" recording of hers is a 1958 performance of Aïda in Mexico City, with Rankin as Amneris and fellow singers Anita Cerquetti, Flaviano Labò, Cornell MacNeil, Fernando Corena and Norman Treigle. Rankin was among the singers honored at the Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala in 1983. Personal life In 1952 Rankin married Dr. Hugh Clark Davidson, a physician. They were married for fifty-three years until her death of polycythemia vera, a bone marrow disease in 2005, aged 81. She died at Cabrini Medical Center in New York City. The Davidsons had no children; this was a source of sorrow to them, and they became ¨aunt¨ and ¨uncle¨ to some of the children of Miss Rankin´s friends. Miss Rankin loved exotic animals and at one time owned a myna bird named Pharaoh and a jaguar named King Tut with which she was photographed as Amneris. Her myna birds loved music too, and sometimes learned her arias as she practiced them at the piano. She would then accompany them, singing a third lower for harmony. References External links Obituary from The New York Times Biography at the Alabama Academy of Honor 1924 births 2005 deaths Academy of Vocal Arts faculty Operatic mezzo-sopranos Musicians from Montgomery, Alabama 20th-century American women opera singers American women academics 21st-century American women