Eileen Farrell, one of the leading dramatic sopranos of her time and a longtime Maine summer resident, died during the weekend.

Farrell was 82. She died Saturday at a New Jersey nursing home. The cause of death was not disclosed.

She described herself as an “ordinary person, a married lady with children,” even as she was counted among the leading dramatic sopranos of her time. Her career involved a series of successful recordings and performances, including five seasons at the Metropolitan Opera.

A frequent visitor to Maine, Farrell owned a summer home on Moosehead Lake for 25 years and lived in Castine for six years, then Yarmouth, before moving to New York to be closer to her family.

“I fell in love with Maine,” she told the Bangor Daily News in 1994. “I loved it there, but it wasn’t practical for an old lady.”

Her career at opera’s top level was relatively brief, but she excelled in both opera and pop and she continued to record into her 70s.

Look magazine described her voice as “perhaps as close to a flawless soprano instrument as exists in the world today.”

And after one 1967 performance, the New York Post said that after Farrell “sounded that first glowing trumpet tone, it was like a fiery angel Gabriel proclaiming the millennium.”

Farrell was an unusual diva not only because of her talents in opera, jazz and pop, but also because of her easygoing style.

“She was very down-to-earth,” said friend Mary Gould, music director of the Bagaduce Music Lending Library in Castine. That organization got a big boost from Farrell in the mid-1980s when she helped develop and organize the library’s opera section.

The library has an estimated 200,000 music titles – many hard-to-find or out-of-print items – which it lends to people and schools around the world.

In 1994 when the Castine Historical Society was looking for a home and wanted to take over the old high school on the town common, Farrell flew up from New York to give a lecture that raised money for the society to buy and renovate the building.

“We in Castine fortunately had her in our midst,” said James Day, president of the historical society.Despite her fame, Farrell was “very much of the people,” teaching and volunteering in an effort to spread the appreciation of music.

She was married to a New York City policeman, Robert Reagan, and didn’t hesitate to turn down work if it took her away from their children.

“Maybe I could have done more singing if I’d taken off time from my family,” she said in a 1992 interview with The Associated Press. “But I wouldn’t have enjoyed my family.”

“I was just an ordinary person, a married lady with children, and I sang,” she said.

Already well-known through radio and television appearances, she debuted at the San Francisco Opera in 1956 and opened the company’s season in 1958 in the title role of Cherubini’s “Medea.”

Rudolf Bing, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, did not like singers to be acclaimed elsewhere first, but finally hired Farrell in 1960 to sing “Alceste,” when she was 40.

In 1962 she opened the Met season as Maddalena in Giordano’s “Andrea Chenier,” with Robert Merrill.

Farrell sang at the Met in six roles during five seasons for a total of 45 performances, and made her finale as Maddalena in March 1966.

Her national breakthrough in pop music came in 1959 when she appeared at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.

Farrell gave a classical recital and sang in Verdi’s “Requiem,” then filled in for an ailing Louis Armstrong, singing ballads and blues accompanied by Armstrong’s musicians.

Back in New York, a Columbia Records executive who heard her sing ballads at a party enlisted her to record. Among her pop albums were “I’ve Got a Right To Sing the Blues” and “Here I Go Again.”

Throughout the 1970s, Farrell taught at Indiana University and continued giving concerts until a knee injury slowed her down. She and her husband moved to Maine in 1980; he died in 1986.

Farrell was born in Willimantic, Conn., in 1920 to a pair of vaudeville singers. Her musical talent became evident early, and by the age of 20 she already was singing regularly on radio.

Her career also included a brief stint in Hollywood. Her voice was dubbed for actress Eleanor Parker in the 1955 story of opera star Marjorie Lawrence, “Interrupted Melody.”

Farrell is survived by a brother and her two children.