HELENE WILLIAMS, soprano, co-founded The Bronx Opera,
the Elie Siegmeister Society, and Court Street Music in Valley Stream, and has performed in all genres across the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Australia, including almost 600 concerts with Leonard Lehrman, with whom she has been working since January 1987. (They were married in 2002.) Their performances have featured everything from a Mozart Bicentennial recital in Berlin to Schubert, Dvorak and Dargomyzhsky in France; centennial and bicentennial recitals honoring Mozart, Brahms, Pushkin and Heine; benefit concerts at Merkin and Carnegie Recital (Weill) Hall; and a Norman Rosten tribute at BargeMusic.
Roles she has created include the title role in Lehrman's E.G.:
A Musical Portrait of Emma Goldman (35 productions to date) and Queen Isabella in his opera New World, along with various heroines and villainesses in the works of Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein, as well as premieres and first recordings of works by a dozen Long Island composers.
A Bronx Council on the Arts award winner, she has also appeared with numerous opera companies and at universities and civic centers in 18 states, as well as in Canada, Australia, the Bahamas, Guatemala, Peru, Paris, Florence, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Bayreuth, both Berlins, and at the Dresden State Opera and the Dresden Center for Contemporary Music. Her recordings with Leonard include one each on Albany and Opus One, two on Premier, four each on Original Cast and Capstone, and several private recordings as well. The duo have over 1,000 videos on YouTube.
The New Music Connoisseur described Helene's voice as "extremely flexible" with "a distinctive allure." Melbourne's leading music critic, Clive O'Connell, described her "splendid talent of articulating with almost conversational clarity."
Founder of Accent Reduction In English Speech, she teaches at Baruch College of CUNY.
