Background
Boatwright, Helen Strassburger was born on November 17, 1916 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, United States. Daughter of Gustav A. Strassburger and Amalie Barbara Karth.
music educator singer opera singer
Boatwright, Helen Strassburger was born on November 17, 1916 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, United States. Daughter of Gustav A. Strassburger and Amalie Barbara Karth.
After high school, she studied with Anna Shram Irvin and earned bachelor"s and master"s degrees in music from Oberlin College. She also studied with composer Normand Lockwood.
Born as Helena Johanna Strassburger in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, she was the youngest of six children in a large German American family. Her operatic debut was as Anna in a production of Otto Nicolai"s The Merry Wives of Windsor at Tanglewood. During her career, she worked with many important figures in the world of music, including conductors Leopold Stokowski, Erich Leinsdorf, Seiji Ozawa and Zubin Mehta.
She also performed with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood in the 1940s, sang opposite tenor Mario Lanza in his operatic stage debut, and performed for President John F. Kennedy in the East Room of the White House in 1963.
In 1954, she became the first person to record a full-length album of Ives" songs, 24 Songs, with pianist John Kirkpatrick. Another particular favorite composer of hers was Hugo Wolf.
She knew his songs intimately, and in her later years she nearly always included a set or even an entire half of a recital of his work. Many of her husband"s compositions for voice were written for her.
Other notable orchestral and choral groups she sang with were Paul Hindemith"s Collegium Musicum, Alfred Mann"s Cantata Singers, and Johannes Somary"s Amor Artis Chorale.
In 1969 the Boatwrights established a university-sponsored summer program, L"École Hindemith in Vevey, Switzerland. They taught and performed there every summer until 1988. She was a professor of voice at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester from 1972 to 1979, and was a guest professor at Cornell University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University.
She also gave master-classes at Glimmerglass Opera, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of North Carolina and Washington University.
In 2003, Syracuse University presented Boatwright with an honorary doctor of music degree. Boatwright died on December 1, 2010, aged 94, in Jamesville, New New York
Supporter Friends Chamber Music, Society for New Music, Syracuse University.
Married Howard Leake Boatwright, Junior, June 26, 1943 (deceased 1999). Children: Howard Leake III, Alice Karth, David Alexander.