When Miranda Speranza Masocco Levy died May 29 at 96, Santa Fe lost a great many things.

It lost a person whose close friendship with Igor Stravinsky was instrumental in the success of the fledgling Santa Fe Opera.

It lost a character whose adventurous life read like the stuff of romantic fiction, but was true.

It lost a charming raconteuse who knew the world's rich and famous, but who had just as many friends down the street and around the corner.

Most of all, it lost a woman whose mind brimmed intelligence and humor, and whose heart was as welcoming as her smile. With Mirandi, as everyone knew her, what you saw was, for once, what you really got — and it was unforgettable.

"She was 96 and would have been 97 very soon," said a family member. "She was mentally together almost till the end, and always enjoyed seeing her friends. We were so fortunate that way."

Mirandi long had made it plain she would live and die at home, not in a nursing facility or hospital. Supported by Ambercare Hospice, she was able to end her life surrounded by friends and family, mementos and memories. There were plenty of both in her nine decades, too.

Mirandi was 2 1/2 when she and her three sisters ended up in Santa Fe. Shortly after the end of World War I, they left their home in Venice, Italy, to go to San Francisco, where her mother's brother lived. The girls' father had gone ahead of them to make further travel arrangements. Then, their 31-year-old mother died on the train between Lamy and Albuquerque.

"Our papers were all lost — we never got to San Francisco," Mirandi recalled in a 2006 interview. "Mother was buried in Albuquerque. We were brought to the downtown hospital here from Albuquerque. The Loretto nuns ran the hospital." Presumably the children's father tried to find them but was unsuccessful.

Growing up in Santa Fe without a father and mother must have been painful at first. But over time, the sisters became established and beloved residents.

"I was very lucky because my sister married Frank Patania," Mirandi confided in 2006. "Frank Patania was a patient at the hospital and at the TB sanitarium. He was Italian and a jeweler. He was sent out here from New York by Nat Stern of Stern and Co. My sister met him and married him.

"He had a shop downtown and he was a jeweler and he used to fix all sorts of things for (poet) Witter Bynner. Because Witter Bynner was quite a collector of everything. I'd be sitting there, coming back from school at Loretto Academy. And Witter Bynner always patted me on the head and said, 'Aren't you a cute little thing?'

"I didn't speak English very well. He decided, every day he would teach to me an English word, and he taught me a great deal. I didn't think they taught that well at school," she added, with a sly look.

Bynner and his partner, Robert Hunt, became very fond of Mirandi. She recalled that Hunt taught her some French, and she learned Spanish from their cook. Hunt also introduced her to opera, while Bynner exposed her to the fascination of geography. "I've been at a dinner party when I was a kid, with (writers) Aldous Huxley, and Maria and Christopher Isherwood, and J.B. Priestly. I mean, that's how I grew up, because of Witter Bynner."

Vera and Igor Stravinsky met Mirandi in 1949, when the composer was conducting at the Aspen Music Festival. A lover of D.H. Lawrence's writings, he asked duo-pianists and Tesuque residents Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin if they could arrange an introduction to Frieda Lawrence in Taos. They could — through Miss Masocco.

"They called and asked if we'd meet them at the Sagebrush Inn in Taos," Mirandi recalled in 2006. "Bob Davidson and I went up. We met them, Stravinsky and Vera, and (conductor) Robert Craft. We just loved each other without any question, as though we'd known each other forever.

"I took them to breakfast at Frieda's. We were there for hours." After that, she mentioned that a major dance was taking place at Santo Domingo (now Kewa) Pueblo, and the travelers insisted on going. Then Bynner and Hunt put on a dinner for them, "and we didn't leave until 4 in the morning. I've never seen people with so much energy. I mean, I was dead, and I was the youngest." The friendship grew quickly and became ever stronger when the Stravinskys would visit Santa Fe, or Mirandi would go to Los Angeles to be with them.

In 1955, Mirandi agreed to help the young John Crosby found an opera company in Santa Fe. She had known him since he was a student at the Los Alamos Ranch School, she recalled, because she was one of the "nice girls" who had passes to go to dances at the all-boy academy. Still, the prospect startled her.

"I nearly fainted," she recalled. "We were a city of 35,000. I would say 80 percent were Hispanic and Native American, and 20 percent were intellectuals from the East or very rich ladies. ... I did (know) especially the older people who were very important for a thing like this. I knew Miss Brownell and Miss Holland, Peggy Driscoll, the Marshall McCunes. In other words, I was the queen of the tin cup."

At one point, Crosby said to Mirandi, "God, wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a name?" for the SFO opening. She promptly called Stravinsky and explained the situation; he told her to bring the information out to Los Angeles, and he would review it and decide whether or not to participate.

"I hung up. John said, 'Who was that?' I said, 'Stravinsky.' I thought he was going to faint. He said, 'How dare you call him pussycat? How dare you not call him Maestro?' "

The opera's successful opening night was not only the stuff of legend, it was the start of more than a half-century of music, thanks in large part to Mirandi. She didn't stop with the opening, either, but remained involved in opera matters — and many other Santa Fe affairs — in the decades to come. As she said, she knew everybody; and just about everybody knew her. And to know her was to love her, and laugh with her.

Mirandi was married to television pioneer Ralph Levy for 43 years and was a constant supporter of his work. An early CBS assistant director, he went on to direct The Ed Wynne Show, The George Burns — Gracie Allen Show, The Jack Benny Show and the original pilot for I Love Lucy. Later, the two-time Emmy Award winner directed the pilots for The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres, worked for the BBC in England, and taught film and production at the College of Santa Fe. He died at 81 in 2001.

"I used to love to listen to her stories of the old days," said Nancy Zeckendorf, co-founder of the Lensic Performing Arts Center and past president of the opera. "She knew everybody: here, in Europe, all over. I'm sorry she never wrote a book. She never lost her wit and sense of humor, and she hung in there a long time. It's the end of an era."

In keeping with Mirandi's instructions, there will be no services.

Contact Craig Smith at critic53@cybermesa.com.