Evelyn Lear
Encyclopedia
Evelyn Lear is an American soprano
and opera
singer.
During her career between 1959 and 1992, Evelyn Lear appeared in more than forty operatic roles, appeared with every major opera company in the US and won a Grammy Award
in 1966. Lear was well known for her musical versatility, having sung all three main female roles in Der Rosenkavalier
.
Lear was also known for her work on 20th century pieces by Robert Ward, Marvin David Levy, Rudolf Kelterborn
and Giselher Klebe
. She was married to the American bass-baritone Thomas Stewart until his death in 2006.
, New York University
and the Juilliard School of Music
studying voice, piano, French horn
and composition. She married Walter Lear, a physician and later political activist, divorcing in the mid-1950s. While at Juilliard she studied under Sergius Kagen
and met her future husband, baritone Thomas Stewart. Both Lear and Stewart won Fulbright scholarships
to study at Hochschule für Musik in Berlin
where she studied with Maria Ivogün
.
Lear started her opera career as a member of the Städtische Oper Berlin
in Richard Strauss
' Ariadne auf Naxos
playing the Composer, a lead role which she would later play at a number of leading opera houses. She played the title role in Alban Berg
’s Lulu
for the Austrian debut in concert form in 1960. She had only three weeks to learn the role, having been called in as a late replacement. Her performance was so strong that she played the role in the first staged version since World War II at the Theater an der Wien
at the Vienna Festival
of 1962 with Karl Böhm
conducting. The performance was repeated in 1964.
Lear also performed in Lulu while making her stage farewell from opera in the late 1980s, this time in the mezzo-soprano
role of Countess Geschwitz.
She appeared as Nina Cavallini in Robert Altman
's 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
. In 1989, Lear played the role of Queen Elizabeth I of England
in the musical Elizabeth and Essex, based on Maxwell Anderson
's 1930 play.
's Reuben, Reuben
– a role that would prompt Leonard Bernstein
to name his daughter Nina. In 1961, she created the title role of Giselher Klebe
's Alkmene
in Berlin. Two years later, she created another role as Jeanne in Werner Egk
's Die Verlobung in San Domingo in the reopening of the Munich Nationaltheater
.
Her debut with the Metropolitan Opera
came with the creation of the role of Lavinia Mannon in the world premiere of Marvin David Levy's Mourning Becomes Electra
in 1967. Unfortunately, she had vocal problems soon after, losing much of her upper range and clarity which she blamed on singing so much modern music.
This did not stop her performing modern roles, however. In 1974, she created the role of Irma Arkadina in Thomas Pasatieri
's The Seagull
at the Houston Grand Opera
. Lear created the role of Magna in Robert Ward's Minutes to Midnight in 1982, followed by creating the role of Ranyevskaya in Rudolf Kelterborn
's Kirschgarten in Zurich in 1984.
's works. She made her London debut in a performance of the Four Last Songs
. Her longest association, however, has been with Der Rosenkavalier having performed all three major female roles.
Lear sang the role of Sophie in regional German opera houses with the Berlin State Opera
, progressing to sing the role of Octavian in major opera houses in Vienna, Berlin and New York. Her greatest success in this opera was her role as the Marschallin which she debuted in 1971 and played in leading opera houses including La Scala
and her farewell performance at the Metropolitan in 1985.
gave Lear the title of Kammersänger
in for her contribution to the opera in that city while the Salzburg Festival
honored her with the Max Reinhardt
Award. She won a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
in the Grammy Awards of 1966 for her work with Karl Böhm
, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
, Fritz Wunderlich
and the German Opera and Chorus
for their performance of Berg's Wozzeck
.
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
and opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
singer.
During her career between 1959 and 1992, Evelyn Lear appeared in more than forty operatic roles, appeared with every major opera company in the US and won a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
in 1966. Lear was well known for her musical versatility, having sung all three main female roles in Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
.
Lear was also known for her work on 20th century pieces by Robert Ward, Marvin David Levy, Rudolf Kelterborn
Rudolf Kelterborn
Rudolf Kelterborn is a Swiss musician and composer.-Life:Kelterborn studied in Basel, Detmold, Salzburg, and Zürich, among other places, with the composers Walther Geiser, Willy Burkhard, Boris Blacher, Günter Bialas, and Wolfgang Fortner...
and Giselher Klebe
Giselher Klebe
Giselher Wolfgang Klebe was a German composer. He composed more than 140 works, among them 14 operas, 8 symphonies, 15 solo concerts, chamber music, piano works, and sacred music.-Biography:...
. She was married to the American bass-baritone Thomas Stewart until his death in 2006.
Career
Lear was born as Evelyn Shulman in Brooklyn, New York, and completed her musical education at Hunter CollegeHunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
, New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
and the Juilliard School of Music
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
studying voice, piano, French horn
Horn (instrument)
The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
and composition. She married Walter Lear, a physician and later political activist, divorcing in the mid-1950s. While at Juilliard she studied under Sergius Kagen
Sergius Kagen
Sergius Kagen was an American pianist and composer and voice teacher.-Life and musical career:...
and met her future husband, baritone Thomas Stewart. Both Lear and Stewart won Fulbright scholarships
Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright-Hays Program, is a program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946. Under the...
to study at Hochschule für Musik in Berlin
Berlin University of the Arts
The Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK is a public art school in Berlin, Germany, one of the four universities in the city...
where she studied with Maria Ivogün
Maria Ivogün
Maria Ivogün was a distinguished soprano singer of Hungarian origin. She was especially an outstanding interpreter of the works of Mozart: her recording of the aria of the Queen of the Night became legendary.- Biography and artistic career :Maria Ivogün was born Ilse Kempner...
.
Lear started her opera career as a member of the Städtische Oper Berlin
Deutsche Oper Berlin
The Deutsche Oper Berlin is an opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Germany. The resident building is also home to the Berlin State Ballet.-History:...
in Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
' Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consuming beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention.- First version :The opera was originally...
playing the Composer, a lead role which she would later play at a number of leading opera houses. She played the title role in Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
’s Lulu
Lulu (opera)
Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...
for the Austrian debut in concert form in 1960. She had only three weeks to learn the role, having been called in as a late replacement. Her performance was so strong that she played the role in the first staged version since World War II at the Theater an der Wien
Theater an der Wien
The Theater an der Wien is a historic theatre on the Left Wienzeile in the Mariahilf district of Vienna. Completed in 1801, it has seen the premieres of many celebrated works of theatre, opera, and symphonic music...
at the Vienna Festival
Vienna Festival
The Wiener Festwochen is a cultural festival in Vienna that takes place every year for five or six weeks in May and June.The Wiener Festwochen was established in 1951, when Vienna was still occupied by the four Allies...
of 1962 with Karl Böhm
Karl Böhm
Karl August Leopold Böhm was an Austrian conductor. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century.- Education :...
conducting. The performance was repeated in 1964.
Lear also performed in Lulu while making her stage farewell from opera in the late 1980s, this time in the mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
role of Countess Geschwitz.
She appeared as Nina Cavallini in Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
's 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson is a 1976 revisionist Western directed by Robert Altman and based on the play Indians by Arthur Kopit. It stars Paul Newman as William F...
. In 1989, Lear played the role of Queen Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
in the musical Elizabeth and Essex, based on Maxwell Anderson
Maxwell Anderson
James Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.-Early years:Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent...
's 1930 play.
Creation of roles
Lear created a number of roles during her career. In 1955, having just graduated from Juilliard, she created the role of the heroine Nina in Marc BlitzsteinMarc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...
's Reuben, Reuben
Reuben, Reuben (opera)
Reuben, Reuben is a 1955 "urban folk opera" by Marc Blitzstein. Set in New York's Little Italy and inspired by the Faust legend, it concerns Reuben, a suicidal veteran who has received a medical discharge because he cannot speak...
– a role that would prompt Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
to name his daughter Nina. In 1961, she created the title role of Giselher Klebe
Giselher Klebe
Giselher Wolfgang Klebe was a German composer. He composed more than 140 works, among them 14 operas, 8 symphonies, 15 solo concerts, chamber music, piano works, and sacred music.-Biography:...
's Alkmene
Alkmene (opera)
Alkmene, op. 36, is an opera in three acts, with music and libretto by Giselher Klebe. Klebe based the libretto on Amphitryon by Heinrich von Kleist, which in turn was based on Molière's play of the same name...
in Berlin. Two years later, she created another role as Jeanne in Werner Egk
Werner Egk
Werner Egk , born Werner Joseph Mayer, was a German composer.-Early career:He was born in the Swabian town of Auchsesheim, today part of Donauwörth, Germany. His family, of Catholic peasant stock, moved to Augsburg when Egk was six. He studied at a Benedictine Gymnasium and entered the municipal...
's Die Verlobung in San Domingo in the reopening of the Munich Nationaltheater
Bavarian State Opera
The Bavarian State Opera is an opera company based in Munich, Germany.Its orchestra is the Bavarian State Orchestra.- History:The opera company which was founded under Princess Henriette Adelaide of Savoy has been in existence since 1653...
.
Her debut with the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
came with the creation of the role of Lavinia Mannon in the world premiere of Marvin David Levy's Mourning Becomes Electra
Mourning Becomes Electra (opera)
Mourning Becomes Electra is an opera in 3 acts by composer Marvin David Levy. The work uses an English language libretto by Henry W Butler after the play of the same name by Eugene O'Neill. It premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on March 17, 1967 with Zubin Mehta conducting...
in 1967. Unfortunately, she had vocal problems soon after, losing much of her upper range and clarity which she blamed on singing so much modern music.
This did not stop her performing modern roles, however. In 1974, she created the role of Irma Arkadina in Thomas Pasatieri
Thomas Pasatieri
Thomas Pasatieri is an American opera composer.He began composing at age 10 and, as a teenager, studied with Nadia Boulanger...
's The Seagull
The Seagull (opera)
The Seagull is an opera in 3 acts by Thomas Pasatieri to an English libretto by Kenward Elmslie. The plot is based on Anton Chekhov's 1896 play, The Seagull.-Performance History:...
at the Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera was founded in 1955 through the joint efforts of Maestro Walter Herbert and cultural leaders Mrs. Louis G. Lobit, Edward Bing and Charles Cockrell...
. Lear created the role of Magna in Robert Ward's Minutes to Midnight in 1982, followed by creating the role of Ranyevskaya in Rudolf Kelterborn
Rudolf Kelterborn
Rudolf Kelterborn is a Swiss musician and composer.-Life:Kelterborn studied in Basel, Detmold, Salzburg, and Zürich, among other places, with the composers Walther Geiser, Willy Burkhard, Boris Blacher, Günter Bialas, and Wolfgang Fortner...
's Kirschgarten in Zurich in 1984.
Association with Richard Strauss
During her lengthy career in the opera, Lear enjoyed success performing Richard StraussRichard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
's works. She made her London debut in a performance of the Four Last Songs
Four Last Songs
The Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra were the final completed works of Richard Strauss, composed in 1948 when the composer was 84. Strauss did not live to hear the premiere, given at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 22 May 1950 by the soprano Kirsten Flagstad accompanied by the...
. Her longest association, however, has been with Der Rosenkavalier having performed all three major female roles.
Lear sang the role of Sophie in regional German opera houses with the Berlin State Opera
Berlin State Opera
The Staatsoper Unter den Linden is a German opera company. Its permanent home is the opera house on the Unter den Linden boulevard in the Mitte district of Berlin, which also hosts the Staatskapelle Berlin orchestra.-Early years:...
, progressing to sing the role of Octavian in major opera houses in Vienna, Berlin and New York. Her greatest success in this opera was her role as the Marschallin which she debuted in 1971 and played in leading opera houses including La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
and her farewell performance at the Metropolitan in 1985.
Honors and awards
The Senate of BerlinSenate of Berlin
The Senate of Berlin is the executive body governing the city of Berlin, which at the same time is a state of Germany. According to the Constitution of Berlin the Senate consists of the Governing Mayor of Berlin and up to eight Senators appointed by the Governing Mayor, two of whom are appointed ...
gave Lear the title of Kammersänger
Kammersänger
Kammersänger , abbreviation: "Ks.", literally means "Chamber singer." It is a German honorific title for distinguished singers...
in for her contribution to the opera in that city while the Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
honored her with the Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
Award. She won a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
The Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording has been awarded since 1961. The award was originally titled Best Classical Opera Production. The current title has been used since 1962....
in the Grammy Awards of 1966 for her work with Karl Böhm
Karl Böhm
Karl August Leopold Böhm was an Austrian conductor. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century.- Education :...
, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is a retired German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music, one of the most famous lieder performers of the post-war period and "one of the supreme vocal artists of the 20th century"...
, Fritz Wunderlich
Fritz Wunderlich
Friedrich "Fritz" Karl Otto Wunderlich was a German lyric tenor, famed for his singing of the Mozart repertory and Italian and German opera and lieder. He died in an accident when he was only 35...
and the German Opera and Chorus
Deutsche Oper Berlin
The Deutsche Oper Berlin is an opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Germany. The resident building is also home to the Berlin State Ballet.-History:...
for their performance of Berg's Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
.
Family
Lear and Thomas Stewart married in 1955 and were together until his death on 24 September 2006, aged 78. She had two children by her previous marriage.External links
- [ Allmusic's Evelyn Lear article]
- Opera Music Theatre International article on Evelyn Lear
- Evelyn Lear web site