Former VPA professor, celebrated soprano soloist dies at age 94
Helen Boatwright, a former faculty member who taught in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, died Dec. 1 in Syracuse at 94 years old, according to a Syracuse University news release.
She taught at SU and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester from 1972 to 1979. Boatwright also served as a guest professor at the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University and Connecticut College. She continued to teach until three weeks before her death.
She was born in 1916 as the youngest of six children in a large family from Wisconsin. Boatwright went to Oberlin College and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. SU presented Boatwright with an honorary doctor of music degree in 2003.
During her long career as a soprano soloist, Boatwright performed with Mario Lanza in his operatic stage debut and with Leonard Bernstein in the early 1940s and sang for President John F. Kennedy in the White House’s East Room in 1963.
She was decorated for singing the music of American composers, such as Charles Ives and her husband, Howard Boatwright, who became the dean of SU’s School of Music in 1964. The couple established an SU-sponsored summer program, L’Ecole Hindemith in Vevey, Switzerland. They taught and performed there every summer until 1988. Howard died in 1999.
Helen, who lived in Fayetteville, is survived by two sons and a daughter. Calling hours will be on Tuesday from 5-8 p.m. at the Eaton-Tubbs-Schepp Funeral Home on 7191 E. Genesee St. in Fayetteville. Her funeral will be held Wednesday at 3 p.m. at St. David’s Episcopal Church, 14 Jamar Drive.
— Compiled by Jon Harris, asst. copy editor, jdharr04@syr.edu
Published on December 4, 2010 at 12:00 pm
