Judith Blegen

Judith Eyer Blegen (April 27, 1941 – 2026) was an American soprano, particularly associated with light lyric roles of the French, Italian and German repertories.

The daughter of Dr. Halward Martin Blegen and Dorothy M. Blegen (nee Anderson), Judith Blegen was born in Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky, on April 27, 1941. She grew up in Missoula, Montana, with her sister, the pianist Barbara Blegen, and two brothers, Hal and Tim. Her parents were of Norwegian heritage. Her father was a surgeon and attending physician in Missoula who died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 48 in 1961. Her earliest music training was received from her mother who was a violin teacher by profession. Her mother later worked as a nurse in Minneapolis, moving the Blegen family there in 1961.

Blegen was a student in the Missoula County Public Schools system; attending Paxson School and Missoula County High School (MCHS). At MCHS she was a violinist in the school's orchestra, and by her junior year was concertmaster of that ensemble. She also sang in choirs at MCHS, and was a featured soloist at school concerts. She graduated from MCHS in 1959. She was also active as a choral singer and soloist at an Episcopal Church in Missoula that the Blegen family attended.

As a teenager, Blegen studied violin privately with Gordon Childs; a violin professor at Montana State University (MSU). She also studied singing with John L. Lester in her growing up years; beginning voice lessons at the age of 14. Lester served terms as head of the voice departments at both MSU and the University of Montana during his long career. She gave her first voice recital at MSU in January 1958 with her sister as her accompanist. In May 1958 she won first prize in the high school division of the violin concerto contest at the Greater Spokane Music Festival. That same year she was a district winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions held in Spokane.

By the winter of 1958 Blegen was a violinist in the Missoula Civic Symphony Orchestra (MCSO). In April 1959 she was a violin soloist at a music festival organized by the Montana Music Educators Association. She was the featured soprano soloist in a concert of folk songs with the MCSO in the Spring of 1959, and was featured singing Baroque opera arias in a concert with MSU's University Symphonette and Choir. She later returned to perform as a soloist with the MCSO in 1964.

Both Judith and her sister Barbara were awarded full scholarships to the Curtis Institute of Music (CIM) in Philadelphia where they began their studies in September 1959. Judith was awarded a voice scholarship, but was admitted with a note allowing her to continue studies in violin in conjunction with her voice studies. Her first primary teachers at CIM were Efrem Zimbalist (violin) and Eufemia Giannini-Gregory (voice). She later studied violin with Toshiya Eto and Oscar Shumsky at CIM with Giannini-Gregory remaining her only voice teacher. She graduated from CIM with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964.

While still a Curtis student, Blegen worked on the music staff of First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia as there resident soprano soloist. She was a member of the chorus in the summer light opera season at Starlight Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri in the summer of 1960. She gave a concert with her sister and harpsichordist Temple Painter at the Woodmere Art Museum in May 1961 sponsored by the Germantown Chestnut Hill Women's Committee as a fund raiser for the Philadelphia Orchestra (PO). She was an apprentice at the Santa Fe Opera (SFO) in the summer of 1961, and gave her first opera performances with the company that year as Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro and as the milliner in Der Rosenkavalier. She toured with the SFO to Europe for a two month period; performing with the company at a music festival in Berlin and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

In April 1962 Blegen won the PO's Senior Student Auditions which earned her a contract to perform with the orchestra as a soprano soloist. That same month she made her concert debut in Worcester, Massachusetts as the soprano soloist in the Fauré's Requiem and Handel's Laudate, pueri Dominum (a setting of Psalm 113) with the Cantata Singers conducted by Richard Westenburg. She sang in concert with the PO on October 22, 1962 at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia; performing the mad scene from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and the aria "Großmächtige Prinzessin" from Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos under the baton of William Smith.

In the summer of 1962 Blegen studied at the Music Academy of the West (MAW) where she starred in the title role of the school's production of Jules Massenet's Manon which was directed by Martial Singher and performed at the Lobero Theatre. Singher was one of Blegen's teachers at CIM where he was director of the opera workshop, and was her voice teacher while at MAW. He had previously coached Blegen in the role of Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro for a workshop of that opera at CIM. In December 1962 she was the soprano soloist in Handel's Messiah with the Kemble Choir conducted by George W. Decker at Kemble Memorial United Methodist Church in Woodbury, New Jersey.

In January 1963 Blegen performed another benefit concert for the PO with her sister and tenor Alex Perkins performing excerpts from Manon; this time at the Academy Ballroom in Philadelphia. The following March she performed Brahm's Liebeslieder Waltzes as part of a vocal quartet with pianists Eleanor and Vladimir Sokoloff at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and was soon after featured in a concert at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In May 1963 she was a soloist with the South Jersey Chamber Orchestra under conductor Anthony Mecoli at the Glassboro Theatre. She performed Stravinsky's Pastorale with the Philadelphia Wind Quintet (PWQ) in a concert given at the 1964 New York World's Fair; also singing with the PWQ on their 1964 album released by Columbia Records.

After successfully auditioning for Gian Carlo Menotti and Thomas Schippers, Blegen made what was billed as her international debut at the 1963 Festival dei Due Mondi (FDM) in Spoleto, Italy as Il Lago (the Spirit of the Lake) in Stanley Hollingsworth's opera La madre (English: The Mother). The production was directed by Sandro Sequi [it], conducted by Julius Rudel, and starred Mietta Sighele in the title role. She returned for further performances at the FDM in 1964 and 1965, and at the 1966 FDM portrayed Mélisande in Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande with John Reardon as Pelléas and the orchestra of the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi.

Blegen was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 1964 which enabled her to pursue further voice studies in Europe in 1964-1965. She used the scholarship to study voice with Luigi Ricci in Rome and Germany repertoire in Munich. In 1965 she became a principle artist at the Staatstheater Nürnberg (SN); making her debut there s Olympia in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann. Other roles she subsequently performed at the SN included Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro and the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor and Ariadne auf Naxos. She remained a resident singer at the SN until leaving in 1968 when she joined the Vienna State Opera (VSO).

In 1967 Blegen gave her first performance at the Salzburg Festival as Papagena in The Magic Flute. In April 1967 she returned to Philadelphia's Academy of Music (PAM) to perform as the part of Lesbia in the first performance in Philadelphia of Orff's Catulli Carmina with the PO and the choirs of Temple University led by Eugene Ormandy. This work was recorded and released on Columbia Records later that same year. She sang at PAM again in 1968 as a soloist with the Camden Symphony in a concert of opera arias. In December 1968 she portrayed Monica in Menotti's The Medium with the Washington Opera Society (now Washington National Opera).

She gave her first performance with the Vienna State Opera as Olympia in Les contes d'Hoffmann in January 1969, and later that year appeared at the Santa Fe Opera as Emily in the premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's Help, Help, the Globolinks!, a role requiring her both to sing and play the violin.

Her New York Metropolitan Opera debut took place on January 19, 1970, as Papagena in The Magic Flute. She sang over 200 performances of 19 roles at the Met including Marzelline, Zerlina, Susana, Nanetta, Sophie, Mélisande, Adina, Gilda, Oscar, Juliette, Blondchen, Gretel, and Adele. She made her debuts at the London Opera House in London, in 1975, and at the Palais Garnier in Paris, in 1977.

During the 1970s, Blegen was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

In 1981, she was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Soloist Performance for her performance in a recording of Berg's Lulu Suite, conducted by Pierre Boulez.

Blegen retired from the stage in 1991. She married Peter Singher, the son of her teacher Martial Singher, in 1967. Peter was an airline pilot for Cable Commuter Airlines. They divorced in 1975 and had one son, Thomas Christopher Singher, who was born in April 1970. In 1977 she married the violinist Raymond Gniewek. Gniewek was concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra from 1957 until his retirement in 2000. Blegen's marriage to Gniewek ended upon his death in 2021.

Blegen was a 1983 recipient of the Montana Governor's Arts Award.

In October 2026 the Metropolitan Opera reported that Blegen had died in 2026 at the age of 85. The company did not specify a day or month when she died or a cause of death.

Among Blegen's recordings are Alban Berg's "Lulu-Suite" (conducted by Pierre Boulez), Menotti's The Medium (with Regina Resnik), The Grammy Award winning RCA Red Seal recording of Puccini's La bohème (as Musetta, opposite Montserrat Caballé, Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes, Vicente Sardinero and Ruggero Raimondi, conducted by Sir Georg Solti), Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (as Susanna, with Heather Harper as the Contessa, conducted by Daniel Barenboim), Mozart's Zaide on the Orfeo label conducted by Leopold Hager, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (with Robert Shaw conducting) and Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation conducted by Leonard Bernstein on Deutsche Grammophon. She was also a featured soloist on James Levine's Deutsche Grammophon recording of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the soprano soloist on his RCA Red Seal recording of Mahler's Fourth Symphony and the Grammy award-winning Telarc recording of Gabriel Fauré's Requiem with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, under Robert Shaw. She was the soprano soloist on the album The Angelic Sounds of Christmas: Music for the Glass Armonica. She was also the soprano soloist on the first complete all-digital recording of Handel's Messiah, with the Musica Sacra Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Richard Westenburg released by RCA Red Seal. Her performance of Carl Ruggles's song "Toys" is the opening track of Michael Tilson Thomas's The Complete Music of Carl Ruggles.

Blegen recorded three solo recital discs in her prime years including an acclaimed collection of lieder by Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf issued by RCA Red Seal, arias by Mozart with Pinchas Zukerman conducting, and arias and cantatas by Handel and Alessandro Scarlatti conducted by Gerard Schwarz, both on Columbia Masterworks). She also made a joint recital recording of art songs and duets with Frederica von Stade, also for the Columbia label, which introduced both young singers to the record-buying public in 1975.

• La Bohème (Puccini) with Montserrat Caballé, Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes, the John Alldis Choir, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Georg Solti, RCA Red Seal, 1974
• Carmina Burana (Orff) - Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus and Boys Choir, Michael Tilson Thomas, Cond., with Judith Blegen, Soprano, Kenneth Riegel, Tenor and Peter Binder, Baritone (CBS Records 1975/CBS Records Masterworks 1990)
• Judith Blegen and Frederica von Stade: Songs, Arias and Duets, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Columbia, 1975
• Die Schöpfung & Harmoniemesse (Haydn), with Frederica von Stade, Kenneth Riegel, Simon Estes, the Westminster Choir and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, Columbia, 1975
• Songs of Strauss and Wolf with Martin Katz, piano, RCA Red Seal, 1976
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn), with Frederica von Stade, the Women's Voices of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy, RCA Red Seal, 1977

• Verdi: Un ballo in maschera (Katia Ricciarelli, Luciano Pavarotti, Louis Quilico; Giuseppe Patanè, Elijah Moshinsky, 1980) [live]
• Donizetti: L'elisir d'amore (Pavarotti, Ellis, Sesto Bruscantini; Nicola Rescigno, Nathaniel Merrill, 1981) [live]
• R.Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (Kiri Te Kanawa, Tatiana Troyanos, Kurt Moll; James Levine, Nathaniel Merrill/Donnell, 1982) [live]
• Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel (Frederica von Stade, Rosalind Elias, Jean Kraft, Michael Devlin; Fulton, Donnell, 1982) [live]
• The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (Frederica von Stade, Jeffrey Tate, 1983) [live]