Her Norwegian great-grandfather, Martin Brækkan, had been an oboist with a military band in his native Trondheim.
She was appointed a member of the National Endowment for the Arts and also served as chairman of Opera America in the mid-1990s.
[5] Under Krainik's leadership, the Lyric Opera was able to put its fiscal house in order after many years of running in the red.
In 1991 she made headlines when she fired Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti for yet another cancellation due to his being "indisposed."
Krainik endeared herself to Chicago's opera patrons, who had been disappointed by one too many of Pavarotti's last-minute cancellations.