Remembering Betty Allen
City Opera Remembers Betty Allen
The entire New York City Opera family mourns the passing of Betty Allen, distinguished American mezzo-soprano and, from 1992 until her death, a member of City Opera’s Board and its Education Committee. She joined our family in 1954, with her debut as Queenie in Show Boat (our company’s very first musical) and later returned to us as Begonia in the New York stage premiere of Henze’s The Young Lord (1973) and as Katisha in The Mikado (1974-5). Betty Allen’s deep, rich, expressive mezzo voice made her a favorite of American composers including David Diamond, Virgil Thomson, and Ned Rorem, as well as conductor Leonard Bernstein. Her long and varied singing career included engagements, in wide-ranging repertoire from Mozart, to Verdi and Wagner, to Stravinsky, on the world’s leading opera stages, most notably the Metropolitan, Canadian, Washington, and San Francisco operas, the opera companies of Houston, Boston, and Santa Fe, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. She also soloed with numerous orchestras and with the Tanglewood, Ravinia, Marlboro, Casals, Caramoor, Santa Fe Chamber Music, and Cincinnati May festivals, as well as on frequent radio and TV broadcasts and recordings. If that’s not enough, she also made a Broadway debut, starring as Monisha in Joplin’s Treemonisha in 1975. Betty Allen’s humble roots and youthful struggles fueled her lifelong drive to bring the finest of the arts and education to all Americans. In a 1999 New York Times interview, she recalled her own introduction to opera through the Met broadcasts wafting from the radios of her Sicilian and Greek neighbors in her native Campbell, Ohio: “No one told them that opera and the arts were not for them, not for poor people, just for rich snobs." She put those principles into dynamic practice, especially at the Harlem School of the Arts, where she served as executive director from 1979 to 1992, as well as a longtime faculty member and later President Emeritus. She also taught at the Manhattan School of Music, Curtis Institute of Music, and the North Carolina School of the Arts. Miss Allen’s full, rich life also included advocacy for countless cultural, civil rights, and professional organizations, as well as seats on the boards of Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Theater Development Fund, Manhattan School of Music, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Most of our current company members best remember Betty Allen as a warm, ebullient, and down-to-earth presence at our performances, galas, and other special events. Certainly, in her versatility, her vivid vocal and theatrical artistry, her can-do spirit, and her fierce devotion to education, equality, diversity, and American artists, Betty Allen was the very embodiment of City Opera’s core ideals. We will miss her greatly, and we offer our deepest sympathies to her husband, Edward Ritten Lee II, her children, Juliana Catherine Lee and Anthony Edward Lee, her three grandchildren, and her countless friends worldwide.
—Cori Ellison, NYCO Dramaturg