Jayne West (born April 24, 1955) is an American operatic soprano.
Jayne West was born in White Plains, New York on April 24, 1955. She was raised in Framingham, Massachusetts. After graduating with a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance and Masters in Music Teaching from Oberlin College, she moved to Boston, where she received her Masters in Music (Opera Performance), magna cum laude from the Boston Conservatory.
West has appeared with the Austin Lyric Opera (Pamina in Die Zauberflöte ), Berkshire Opera Company (Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni , and Anne Trulove in The Rake's Progress ), Boston Baroque ( Acis and Galatea ), Boston Landmarks Orchestra (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony), [1] Houston Grand Opera, Nashville Opera, Opera Festival of New Jersey, Opera/Omaha (world premiere of Weisgall's The Gardens of Adonis), Opera Quotannis, and Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. She was also in the 1985 world-premiere of the Glass/Moran The Juniper Tree .
West also premiered the Mark Morris Dance Group's productions of L'allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato, Dido and Æneas , and Four Saints in Three Acts . The soprano has been heard with the orchestras of Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Detroit, Pensacola, Philadelphia, Seattle, Utah and Washington DC; and has sung at the festivals of Bethlehem Bach, Saito Kinen, San Antonio and Tanglewood.
She portrayed Contessa Almaviva in Peter Sellars' production of Le nozze di Figaro , which was seen in Barcelona, Boston, New York, Paris and Vienna. It was made into a film (1989), as well. West also sings in Robert Craft's important recording of The Rake's Progress (with Jon Garrison, 1993). She can be heard in two excerpts from Handel's Hercules (1999), on the recording entitled "Lorraine at Emmanuel," in duet with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, which was published in 2008, and as a soloist in Craig Smith's recording of Bach's "St John Passion" (with Frank Kelley as the Evangelist, 1999). In 2009, a "live" recording of the premiere of The Juniper Tree was released on Compact Disc.
The soprano also sang cameo roles in two historic recordings, the original version of Cherubini's Médée (as A Lady of Dircé, 1987) and Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (as the Second Priestess and the goddess Diane, 1999).
In 2009, West appeared with the Boston Secession in the world-premiere performance of Ruth Lomon's Testimony of Witnesses, a concert-length oratorio based on the poetry and writings of survivors and victims of the Holocaust, under the direction of Jane Ring Frank. Earlier, she had recorded the same composer's "Songs of Remembrance," for CRI.
As of 2023, the soprano lives in Bristol, Rhode Island, and is on the voice faculty at the Longy School of Music and New England Conservatory Prep and Continuing Education Departments.
Adele Addison is an American lyric soprano who was a figure in the classical music world during the 1950s and 1960s. Although she did appear in several operas, Addison spent most of her career performing in recital and concert. Her performances spanned a wide array of literature from the Baroque period to contemporary compositions. She is best remembered today as the singing voice for Bess in the 1959 movie, Porgy and Bess. Known for her polished and fluent tone, Addison made a desirable Baroque vocal artist. She can be heard on numerous recordings, of which her Baroque performances are perhaps her best work. Many of her recordings were made with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was an American mezzo-soprano. She was noted for her performances of both Baroque era and contemporary works. Her career path to becoming a singer was unconventional – formerly a professional violist, Lieberson did not shift her full-time focus to singing until she was in her thirties.
Jane Eaglen is an English dramatic soprano particularly known for her interpretations of the works of Richard Wagner and the title roles in Bellini's Norma and Puccini's Turandot. Her career at the Metropolitan Opera started with her Brunhilde in the Ring Cycle. Eaglen has performed at all major houses globally such as La Scalla, the Metropolitan Opera House and many others. She currently resides in Boston, MA as a voice teacher at the famous New England Conservatory where she is training the next generation of world class singers. She is the President and founder of the Boston Wagner Society. Eaglen spends her summers instructing at the prestigious Merola opera training program for emerging artists. She is very active in her community. Every year she judges several voice competitions including the Laffont-Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.
Edda Moser is a German operatic soprano. She was particularly well known for her interpretations of music by Mozart. Her 1973 recital LP Virtuose Arien von W.A. Mozart received the Grand Prix du Disque.
Eleanor Steber was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States.
Amanda Forsythe is an American light lyric soprano who is particularly admired for her interpretations of baroque music and the works of Rossini. Forsythe has received continued critical acclaim from many publications including Opera News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe.
Mary Jarred was an English opera singer of the mid-twentieth century. She is sometimes classed as a mezzo-soprano and sometimes as a contralto.
D'Anna Fortunato is an American mezzo-soprano. She has long been an admired favorite on the American orchestral-concert scene, while establishing herself as a respected operatic artist as well. Of her New York City Opera debut in Handel's Alcina, the New Yorker called her "a Handelian of crisp accomplishment".
Katherine Ciesinski is an American mezzo-soprano, stage director, and voice professor.
The Juniper Tree is an opera co-composed by Philip Glass and Robert Moran in 1985 to a libretto by Arthur Yorinks based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale.
Boston Baroque is the oldest period instrument orchestra in North America. It was founded in 1973 by the American harpsichordist and conductor, Martin Pearlman, to present concerts of the Baroque and Classical repertoire on period instruments, drawing on the insights of the historical performance movement.
David Patterson is an American guitarist. He was the founding member of the New World Guitar Trio and is recognized as a solo performer and arranger.
Milagro Vargas is an American mezzo-soprano known for her distinctive voice and stage presence. She has appeared as an international soloist in operatic, orchestral, chamber music and recital settings.
Stella Zambalis is an American spinto soprano born in Cleveland, Ohio. She has been called one of the best sopranos in the world today.
Betty Allen was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who had an active international singing career during the 1950s through the 1970s. In the latter part of her career her voice acquired a contralto-like darkening, which can be heard on her recording of Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky with conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. She was known for her collaborations with American composers, such as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Ned Rorem, and Virgil Thomson among others.
Eunice Alberts (1927–2012) was an American contralto who had an active career as a concert soloist and opera singer during the 1950s through the 1980s.
Martha Lipton was an American operatic mezzo-soprano and music educator who is best known for her career performing at the Metropolitan Opera from 1944-1961. A native of New York City, she began her training as a vocalist with her mother who had a brief career as a concert soprano under the name Estelle Laiken. She later studied both privately and at the School of Musicianship for Singers, Inc and the Juilliard School. She made her professional concert debut while still a student in 1933 at Carnegie Hall, performing in a concert of light opera excerpts with the New York Light Opera Guild. In 1936 she began working as a church vocalist at both Riverside Church and Temple Emanu-El of New York.
Ilana Davidson is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international career in opera and concert. She has sung on several recordings, including as a soloist on a recording of William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and of Experience with Leonard Slatkin and the University of Michigan chorus and orchestra which won four Grammy Awards including Best Classical Album in 2006. She is the co-artistic director of the Chamber music series ClassicalCafe.
Wilke te Brummelstroete is a Dutch mezzo-soprano. She has recorded Bach cantatas with John Eliot Gardiner and appeared as the valkyrie Siegrune in Wagner's Die Walküre at the Bayreuth Festival.
Heidi Stober is an American operatic soprano who has performed leading roles in major opera houses internationally, including the Dutch National Opera, the Garsington Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the Municipal Theatre of Santiago, the Semperoper, and the Vienna State Opera. She has been particularly active with the Houston Grand Opera where she has performed in more than a dozen operas since 2004, including the world premieres of Daniel Catán's Salsipuedes: a Tale of Love, War and Anchovies (2004), Mark Adamo's Lysistrata (2005), and Ricky Ian Gordon's The House without a Christmas Tree (2017). She has also performed in more than ten operas with the San Francisco Opera since 2010. Since 2008 she has been a resident artist at the Deutsche Oper Berlin where she has primarily performed roles from the lyric soprano repertoire. Also active as a concert soprano on the international stage, she has performed with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest among other orchestras. She is particularly admired for her interpretations of the works of George Frideric Handel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.