Born in Dayton, Ohio, Coburn grew up in Cincinnati where her mother was a piano teacher and a choral conductor.
At the Vienna State Opera, she appeared as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte, as the Countess in his Le nozze di Figaro, and as Ellen in Britten's Peter Grimes,[5] a role which she also performed at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and in Munich.
[1] She sang Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Opéra de Marseille (France) in 1988 and also appeared as the Countess at the Salzburg Festival in 1991 and at the Metropolitan Opera.
[1] Her roles have included Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare, Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Elettra in his Idomeneo, and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss.
[1] Coburn recorded Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt in a production of the Zürich Opera.