Judith Blegen, soprano who worked with Pavarotti and Menotti and won comparisons with Janet Baker
Judith Blegen, soprano who worked with Pavarotti and Menotti and won comparisons with Janet Baker
Telegraph ObituariesMon, November 2, 2026 at 6:00 AM UTC
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Judith Blegen rehearsing at home in New York in 1980, with her husband Raymond Gniewek on violin - Getty Images/Jack Mitchell
Judith Blegen, the American soprano who has died aged 85, made a powerful impression as Despina in Mozart’s Così fan tutte in 1975 in what was her only appearance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Stanley Sadie described her as “deliciously vivacious, beautifully rounded in tone and outrageously pretty”, while Peter Stadlen in The Daily Telegraph found her “pert, resourceful [and] honey-voiced”.
Like Janet Baker, to whose voice Judith Blegen’s was often compared, she was a devout Handelian, making an early recording of Judas Maccabeus. Unlike Bach, she told Gramophone magazine, Handel “always lets you breathe”, adding: “He knew where the most beautiful overtones would come out in a phrase.”
Judith Blegen in the 1970s - Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
She was also no stranger to the contemporary repertoire, and a proficient violinist. Gian Carlo Menotti wrote the part of the 14-year-old violinist Emily for her in his space-age opera Help! Help! The Globolinks, which was seen at Santa Fe Opera in 1969. Only 5ft tall with hazel eyes and long brown hair, she chased away the Globolink invaders while wandering amid the smoke, playing her violin and singing: “Go away! Go away! Oh, I wish those Globolinks would leave me alone.”
Much of Judith Blegen’s career was at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, where she made her debut as Papagena in Mozart’s The Magic Flute in January 1970 while five months pregnant. While singing her first notes she turned away from the audience to vomit into her apron. Over the next 21 years she returned to the Met on 284 occasions in 20 roles, most frequently as a silvery-voiced Sophie in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, often with Kiri Te Kanawa.
She was also heard in Salzburg, Vienna and Nuremberg, including as a dazzling Rosina in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and a flirtatious Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, a role she sang with Luciano Pavarotti at the Met. In 1982 she walked out of The Magic Flute at the Aix-en-Provence Festival when the director Lucian Pintilie wanted her to immerse her head in a bucket of water in one scene, creating an opportunity for her understudy, the then little-known British soprano Joan Rodgers.
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Judith Eyer Blegen was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on April 27 1941, one of four children of Halward Blegen, a surgeon of Norwegian descent, and his deeply religious wife Dorothy, née Anderson; her sister Barbara became a noted pianist.
Raised in Missoula, Montana, Judith Blegen began playing the violin at 10. She took singing lessons from 14, sang in the Episcopal church choir and was a cheerleader. Undeterred by a hapless audition for the Met at 17, she enrolled in vocal classes at the University of Montana while still at Missoula High School, later continuing her studies at the Curtis Institute, Philadelphia.
A Fulbright scholarship took her to Italy, where in 1966 she was a youthful Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, for Menotti. He once abandoned a rehearsal after taking a dislike to her dress, telling her: “You look like a shower curtain.”
Singing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1979 - NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Paul Drinkwater
In 1974 Judith Blegen was diagnosed with a slow-developing form of multiple sclerosis, though her abrupt retirement, in 1991, was precipitated by a deranged and persistent stalker who left her terrified. Her final Met appearances were as a sweet and pure Gretel to Frederica von Stade’s Hänsel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel and as a tender Marzelline in Beethoven’s Fidelio.
In 1967 she married Peter Singher, an airline pilot and the son of her Curtis teacher, the French baritone Martial Singher. That ended acrimoniously and in 1977 she married the violinist Raymond Gniewek, long-serving leader of the Met orchestra. He died in 2021 and she is survived by Tom, the son of her first marriage, who shared her birthday.
Judith Blegen, born April 27 1941, died October 22 2026
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
