Opera Singer. A mezzo-soprano, she was primarily known for her numerous appearances at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Born Flora Jean Bornstein, she was raised in Kansas City and studied at the Kansas City Conservatory of Music. Her early career was in California where she sang with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera during the 1940s. Moving to New York, she gave the first of her 173 Metropolitan performances in 1953 as a peasant girl in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro". In 1954 she met dramatic tenor James McCracken during a Norfolk, Virginia, performance of Camille Saint-Saens "Samson et Dalilah" and soon after married him and returned to the Metropolitan where she used a variation of her first husband's name, Warfel, professionally. Due to McCracken's frustration at being stuck as a comprimario the couple left America in 1957 to sing in Europe, mostly in Zurich. Returning in 1963, she continued to assume such roles as the prostitute Maddalena in Giuseppe Verdi's "Rigoletto", Marcellina of "Figaro", Berta in Rossini's "Barber of Seville", the fortune-teller Ulrica from Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera and Erda of Wagner's "Siegfried". Sandra bade farewell to opera opposite her husband in a January 1972 performance of "Samson et Dalilah" then was to have a long career as a New York cabaret singer in such night spots as Don't Tell Mama. She and McCracken published a joint autobiography entitled "A Star in the Family" in 1971 and divided their time between New York and Zurich until McCracken's 1988 demise; at her death from complications from a stroke her voice was preserved on a number of recordings. Of her second calling she said: "Cabaret is a great art, with different satisfaction. You're speaking English to people, and they understand what you're saying. You can express not only the sadness, gladness, and hate in opera, but the smallest of emotions".