Regina Resnik

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Regina Resnik (born 30 August 1922 in New York City) is an opera singer and actress, first as a dramatic soprano and then a dramatic mezzo-soprano.

After graduating from Hunter College in 1942, Regina Resnik made her concert debut in Brooklyn. She followed that up by making her operatic debut in Manhattan during the same year. She debuted at both New York City Opera as well as the Metropolitan Opera in 1944 and subsequently began performing internationally. In 1971, she began to direct opera productions, and in 1983, she wrote and produced for television the award-winning documentary The Historic Ghetto of Venice.

Resnik's recordings include Die Walkure (conducted by Clemens Krauss, Bayreuth Ring 1953), Vanessa (conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos, 1958), Tristan und Isolde (conducted by Sir Georg Solti, 1960), Die Fledermaus (conducted by Herbert von Karajan, 1960), Carmen (1963), Falstaff (conducted by Leonard Bernstein, 1966), Elektra (with Birgit Nilsson, 1966-67), Salome (with Montserrat Caballé and Sherrill Milnes, 1968), The Medium (with Judith Blegen, 1968), Un ballo in maschera (with Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Tebaldi, 1970), and Pique-dame (with Galina Vishnevskaya, 1976). In 1999, VAI released a 1966 performance of Elektra from New Orleans, which also featured Inge Borkh and Audrey Schuh.

In 1988, she received a Tony nomination for the role of Frau Schneider in Cabaret. In 1990, she also received a Drama Desk Award for her role in the New York City Opera production of Sondheim's A Little Night Music.

Resnik was married to Lithuanian-born artist Arbit Blatas (1909 -1999) and had homes both in New York City and in Venice. As of 2006, she was living in her late husband's artist's studio near Carnegie Hall in Manhattan, and sponsoring a series of musical programs with Jewish themes.

Per the New York Times (May 5, 2007), Ms. Resnik is the artist in residence for Mannes College the New School for Music in New York City, where she spends over a month each year with young students.

At a lecture at the New York City Opera on November 14, 2007 (prior to a revival performance of Vanessa), Resnik revealed that she was selected to premiere the role of the Baroness in that work by the composer Samuel Barber and the librettist Gian-Carlo Menotti because of Resnik's stature as a character actor, not because of her voice. In fact the role has so little singing in it, that Barber and Menotti had to cajole her into accepting the part. Because the role has such a small vocal section, Resnik subsequently refused to participate in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Vanessa at the Salzburg Festival 1958. The Austrian production was not well received and, according to Resnik, Metropolitan Opera General Manager Rudolph Bing never forgave her for this decision. Three years later, however, in 1961 Resnik had a successful debut in Salzburg in the role of Lady Macbeth. Reminiscing about the 1990 New York City Opera revival of A Little Night Music, Resnik described how the role of Madame Armfelt had originally been scored for Hermione Gingold, a non-singer, and was therefore set artificially low to accommodate Gingold’s “baritonial” speak-song style. During rehearsals for the NYC Opera revival, however, Resnik requested that composer Stephen Sondheim transpose the song upward by only a quarter tone so that she would be able to sing it in her natural low mezzo-soprano range; Sondheim, however, refused to authorize the transposition and Resnik was forced to perform the piece in its original scoring.