Beverly Wolff

Beverly Wolff (November 6, 1928 – August 14, 2005) was an American mezzo-soprano who had an active career in concerts and operas from the early 1950s to the early 1980s.

She performed a broad repertoire which encompassed operatic and concert works in many languages and from a variety of musical periods.

She was a champion of new works, notably premiering compositions by Leonard Bernstein, Gian Carlo Menotti, Douglas Moore, and Ned Rorem among other American composers.

She also performed in a number of rarely heard baroque operas by George Frideric Handel with the New York City Opera (NYCO), the Handel Society of New York, and at the Kennedy Center Handel Festivals.

Wolff made only a few appearances on the international stage during her career, choosing instead to work with important opera companies and orchestras in the United States.

She actively performed with the ASO as both a soloist and a member of the first trumpet section while a student at the University of Georgia, where she earned a degree in English literature in the Spring of 1950.

It was while playing with the ASO that Wolff's singing voice was discovered by conductor Henry Sopkin.

Wolff abandoned the trumpet section and sang the alto solos in the Verdi "Requiem" replacing an ailing mezzo-soprano at age 20.

Sopkin encouraged her to pursue vocal training and she subsequently was selected to study at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia in the fall of 1950, where she was a pupil of Sidney Dietch and Vera Mclntyre.

While a student at AVA, she was discouraged from taking outside auditions, but won an audition to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

She sang "Che farò senza Euridice" at the Philadelphia Academy of Music and became a favorite of Eugene Ormandy and other conductors.

She did, however, perform occasionally in concerts during the mid-1950s, making appearances with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among others.

In 1952, at the age of 23, Wolff received a personal phone call from Leonard Bernstein, where she was invited to do the world premiere of a new opera of his at Tanglewood.

After these performances, she made her professional opera debut portraying Dinah in a nationally televised broadcast of Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti for the NBC Opera Theatre (NBCOT).

She performed two roles with Boris Goldovsky's New England Opera Theater in 1953: Idamante in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Idomeneo and Mistress Quickly in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff.

She then put her opera career on hold in order to start a family.

She was particularly active with the NYCO with whom she performed frequently from 1958 to 1971.

Opera News stated, "Wolff was one of a golden generation of American singers who dominated the NYCO roster during the general directorship of Julius Rudel. Her combination of stylish, intelligent singing and "big brass sound," as she termed it, was a key element in some of the company's most celebrated productions."

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Wolff studied the trumpet in her native city and began her career as a trumpeter with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) while still a teenager.

In 1958 Wolff joined the roster of artists at the New York City Opera, where she made her debut reprising the role of Dinah in Trouble in Tahiti which was presented in a double bill with Mark Bucci's Tale for a Deaf Ear.

She went on to portray several more roles with the NYCO over the next thirteen years.

In December 1961 she performed to an audience of more than 10,000 people at Carnegie Hall as a soloist in Handel's Messiah with the Festival Orchestra of New York under conductor Thomas Dunn.

She sang several more times with the Festival Orchestra, including in performances of Henry Purcell's The Fairy-Queen and Igor Stravinsky's Pulcinella.

She performed only one more time with the NBCOT during her career: the role of The executive director in the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's Labyrinth in March 1963.

Other works she sang with the NYP included Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 (1965), Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah (1966), Handel's Messiah (1966), Hector Berlioz's La damnation de Faust (1967, Marguerite), Berlioz's La mort de Cléopâtre (1968), and Anton Bruckner's Te Deum (1978) among others.

She took part in two of Tito Capobianco's landmark productions at the NYCO: Handel's Giulio Cesare (1966) in which she sang Sesto opposite Norman Treigle, Beverly Sills and Maureen Forrester; and Donizetti's Roberto Devereux (1970), in which she sang Sara opposite Beverly Sills, Plácido Domingo, Louis Quilico.

Both operas were conducted by Julius Rudel.

Other roles she sang at the NYCO included Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Desideria in The Saint of Bleecker Street, Siebel in Faust, and the title roles in Carmen, and Douglas Moore's Carry Nation.

She notably created the latter part in the opera's world premiere in Lawrence, Kansas in 1966.

Even after returning to opera in 1968, Wolff maintained a measured pace for her professional and personal life; in general, for every two weeks of work, she would spend three weeks at home.

For the company she created the role of Leona in the world premiere of Menotti's The Most Important Man in 1971.

In a 1972 Opera News interview, Wolff stated, "You can't leave a list of performances to posterity. The only future is your children, and rearing them is not a part-time job."

Wolff became a teacher in her home in Lakeland, Florida, after which she was invited to teach at the Academy of Vocal Arts.

She went on to teach at Florida Southern College, where she served as provost of the university for a term.

In March 1972 Wolff sang the title role in the United States premiere of Handel's Rinaldo in a concert version with the Handel Society of New York (HSNY) at Carnegie Hall, a role which she also recorded.

In November 1972 she performed the role of Clarice in Rossini's La pietra del paragone in a concert version at Alice Tully Hall.

On November 25, 1973, she created the title role in the world premiere of Ned Rorem's one-act opera Bertha at Alice Tully Hall.

Wolff was also active as a concert soloist and recitalist in New York City.

She later performed the role of Daniel in Handel's Belshazzar with the HSNY in 1973, and sang the role of Ruggiero with the HSNY the New York premiere of Handel's Alcina on March 25, 1974, with Cristina Deutekom in the title role and Karan Armstrong as Morgana.

She made a total of 25 appearances with the New York Philharmonic (NYP) from 1965 to 1978, making her debut with the orchestra on January 14, 1975, as a soloist in Gioachino Rossini's Stabat Mater.