Brenda Lewis

Brenda Lewis (March 2, 1921 – September 16, 2017) was an American operatic soprano, musical theatre actress, opera director, and voice teacher born Birdie Solomon into a Jewish family in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Though raised in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, where her father worked in the metal business, Lewis received music lessons throughout her childhood and attended Camp Louise, an arts camp in Maryland, during her teenage summers. She briefly enrolled in a pre-medicine program at Pennsylvania State University, where she also sang in the glee club, before winning a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music. There she studied under Emilio de Gogorza and Marion Freschl.

Lewis made her professional opera debut in December 1939, at age 18, as the Prima giovinetta in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro with Sylvan Levin's Philadelphia Opera Company. Over the following three years she took on additional roles with that company, among them Esmeralda in The Bartered Bride (1940), Giulietta in The Tales of Hoffmann (1941), the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier (1941), and Dorabella in Così fan tutte (1942).

Her Manhattan debut came in May 1944, when she appeared on Broadway with the New Opera Company as Hanna Glawari in Lehár's The Merry Widow opposite Jan Kiepura. Later that same year she was seen on Broadway in the title role of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's Il segreto di Susanna. In late 1944 and early 1945, Lewis performed the role of Saffi in The Gypsy Baron during the New York City Opera's United States tour, organized by impresario Sol Hurok. She returned to Broadway in 1948 to portray the Female Chorus in the United States premiere of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. The following year she created the role of Birdie Hubbard in the world premiere of Marc Blitzstein's Regina, which proved to be her most celebrated Broadway appearance. She later performed and recorded the title role of that opera with the New York City Opera in 1958, with the recording released on Sony. Her two remaining Broadway appearances were both in musicals: as Lotta Leslie alongside French ballet star Zizi Jeanmaire and soprano Marni Nixon in The Girl in Pink Tights (1954), and as Mme. Cole in Cafe Crown (1964). In total, Lewis appeared in eight Broadway productions between 1944 and 1964.

Lewis maintained a twenty-year association with the New York City Opera, performing a wide range of roles that included Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Marguerite in Faust, and the title roles in Carmen and Salome, among others. In 1959 she portrayed Zinida in the original production of Robert Ward's He Who Gets Slapped. Her final role with the NYCO was the title part in Jack Beeson's Lizzie Borden in 1965, a world premiere that was filmed by WGBH in Boston and broadcast nationally on PBS in 1967.

Lewis was also a regular presence at the Metropolitan Opera from 1952 to 1965. She made her Met debut on January 24, 1952, as Musetta in La bohème, with Bidu Sayão as Mimi, Eugene Conley as Rodolfo, and Alberto Erede conducting. In 1953 her Met performance of Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus was filmed and broadcast live on the television program Omnibus, and she appeared on that program again in 1958 singing selections from Carmen, Faust, and Salome under conductor Leonard Bernstein. Other roles she sang at the Met included Marina in Boris Godunov, Venus in Tannhäuser, and the title roles in Carmen, Salome, and Vanessa. Her final Met performance was as Marie in Wozzeck in February 1965.

Beyond New York, Lewis performed with opera companies across the United States and internationally. She gave her first international performance at the Opéra de Montréal in 1945 and made multiple appearances at the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro during the 1940s and 1950s. At the Vienna Volksoper she portrayed the title roles in the Austrian premieres of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (1956) and Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun (1957), subsequently performing both roles, along with Carmen and Salome, at the Zurich Opera. In 1956 she sang Salome for the inaugural opera performances of the Houston Grand Opera. She also appeared with the San Francisco Opera from 1950 to 1952, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Central City Opera, the Dallas Opera, the Cincinnati Opera, and several other American companies. In 1960 she created the role of Sara in the world premiere of Philip Bezanson's Golden Child, a Christmas opera commissioned for television by the NBC Opera Theatre.

After retiring from the opera stage in the late 1960s, Lewis directed and produced operas for the New Haven Opera Theater from 1963 to 1973. She then joined the voice faculty at the Hartt School of Music in 1973, where she taught voice and directed student opera productions. Lewis was married to conductor and violist Simon Asen from 1944 until their divorce in 1959; they had two sons, Leo and Michael Asen. She subsequently married engineer Benjamin Cooper, founder of the American Technion Society, and their daughter Edith Cooper was born in 1960. That marriage lasted until Cooper's death in 1991. Lewis died on September 16, 2017, at her home in Connecticut, at the age of 96.