Helen Boatwright (November 17, 1916 – December 1, 2010) was an American soprano who specialized in the performance of American song, recorded the first full-length album of songs by composer Charles Ives and had a career that spanned more than five decades.
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Born as Helena Johanna Strassburger in 1916, she was the youngest of six children in a large German family from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. After high school, she studied with Anna Shram Irvin[1] and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music from Oberlin College. Her operatic debut was as Anna in a production of Otto Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von 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. She also studied with composer Normand Lockwood. Another particular favorite composer of hers was 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.
She met her future husband, violinist Howard Boatwright (died 1999) in Los Angeles in 1941 when they were to perform in a National Federation of Music Clubs competition. They married two years later, on June 25, 1943 (see below). They performed together throughout their married life in North America, Europe, and India. 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.[2]
In 1964, her husband Howard became the dean of the Syracuse University School of Music and she joined him teaching there. In 1969 the Boatwrights established a university-sponsored summer program, L'Ecole 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 1972-79, 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, University of North Carolina and Washington University.[3]
In 2003, Syracuse University presented Boatwright with an honorary doctor of music degree. Boatwright continued to study music and teach, and in 2006, on her 90th birthday, she celebrated with a standing-room only concert at St. David's Episcopal Church in DeWitt, New York (Inside SU, Thursday, December 2, 2010). In 1959, Boatwright performed the Bach B Minor Mass at the Crane School Of Music in Potsdam, New York, with the Crane Chorus and Orchestra under the direction of conductor Robert Shaw.
Helen will always be remembered fondly by former students and their accompanists for the interest that she took in teaching the young, upcoming musicians and bringing them up under her wing.
Married on June 25, 1943, Howard and Helen Boatwright had three children: Howard Leake Boatwright, Alice Karth Boatwright, and David Alexander Boatwright.
Helen Boatwright died on December 1, 2010, aged 94, in Jamesville, New York. Her achievements were honored during the 2011 Grammy Awards.[4]