Helena Bliss

Helena Bliss (December 31, 1917 – April 19, 2014) was an American actress and soprano born Helena Louise Lipp in St. Louis, Missouri, to Albert Lipp and Augusta Clemens. She studied at Washington University in St. Louis before embarking on a career that spanned musicals, operettas, and operas across stage, radio, and television from the 1930s through the 1950s. In 1947 she married actor and singer John Tyers, who appeared opposite her in several productions and performed with companies including the Metropolitan Opera. The couple had two sons, John and Michael Tyers, and remained married for 60 years until Tyers's death in 2007.

Bliss launched her career in the late 1930s singing opera on radio and television. Her stage debut came in November 1939, when she played Helen in the musical Very Warm for May at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway. During the early 1940s she performed in entertainments organized by the United Service Organizations for American troops. In July 1943 she took the title role in Rudolf Friml's Rose-Marie at the St. Louis Municipal Opera, and during the 1943–1944 season she sang with Sylvan Levin's Philadelphia Opera Company, where her roles included Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, Micaela in Bizet's Carmen, Mimi in Puccini's La bohème, and Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus.

Following the dissolution of Levin's company, Bliss joined the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera (LACLO), making her debut with that organization in May 1944 as Marianne Beaunoir in Sigmund Romberg's The New Moon opposite Walter Cassel. The following month she originated the role of Nina Hagerup in the world premiere of Robert Wright and George Forrest's Song of Norway, a musical whose score was adapted from the works of Edvard Grieg. The production subsequently played the San Francisco Light Opera Company before the LACLO transferred it to New York, where Bliss reprised the role at the Imperial Theatre in August 1944. The show ran for more than 800 performances, and its cast recording appeared among Billboard's most popular releases in March 1945. Bliss remained with the production until April 1946 and is best known for this portrayal. She later returned to Song of Norway in a 1952 LACLO revival, this time in the role of Countess Louisa Giovanni.

After departing the New York run of Song of Norway, Bliss starred in another Wright and Forrest production commissioned by the LACLO, Gypsy Lady, which drew its music from works by Victor Herbert. The show, which also featured her future husband John Tyers, played successfully in Los Angeles and San Francisco before the LACLO brought it to Broadway in September 1946, where it ran for approximately ten weeks following a poor critical reception. Bliss and much of the Broadway cast then took the production to London's West End, where it was revised and retitled Romany Love. Although the production received mixed notices overall, the London press praised Bliss's individual performance as a major triumph.

In 1949 Bliss made her debut at the New York City Opera (NYCO) as Claire, the Mulatto Empress, in the world premiere of William Grant Still's Troubled Island, and she subsequently returned to the company as Nedda in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. In 1951 she toured the United States as Sarah Millick in Noël Coward's Bitter Sweet and then returned to London's West End to take the title role in Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate during the 1951–1952 season. Her final Broadway appearance came in 1954, when she played Julie in the NYCO's revival of Show Boat, a role she continued to perform on a national tour in 1956–1957. In 1959 she starred in Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. Additional performing engagements took her to Forest Park in St. Louis, Grant Park in Chicago, the Jones Beach Theater in New York, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Opera. Her principal screen credit was the role of Valencienne in a 1955 television production of Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow.