Ellen Shade is an American operatic
soprano
A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...
from New York.
Biography
Her repertoire includes the Kaiserin in ''Die Frau ohne Schatten'', the Marschallin ''Der Rosenkavalier'', Chrysothemis ''Elektra'', Ariadne ''Ariadne auf Naxos'', Arabella, Katya Kabanova, Aida, Desdemona ''Otello'', Amelia ''Un ballo in Maschera'', Amelia ''Simon Boccanegra'', Sieglinde ''Die Walkure'',
Elsa ''Lohengrin'', Elisabeth ''Tannhauser'', Eva ''Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg''. In Europe she has appeared at La Scala Milan, the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist si ...
, the Bastille and the Chatelet in Paris and in Vienna, Salzburg Festival, Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt
rticle Reference Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Brussels, Geneva and Athens. In North America she has performed with virtually all the major opera companies, including the Metropolitan Opera New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Santa Fe, and the Canadian Opera in Toronto.
Conductors she has sung with include
Claudio Abbado,
Richard Armstrong (conductor)
Sir Richard Armstrong (born 7 January 1943, in Leicester, England) is an English conductor. He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar.
Overview
From 1973 until 19 ...
, Sylvian Cambreling,
Christoph von Dohnányi
Christoph von Dohnányi (; born 8 September 1929) is a German conducting, conductor.
Biography
Youth and World War II
Dohnányi was born in Berlin, Germany to Hans von Dohnanyi, a German jurist of Hungarian ancestry, and Christine von Dohnanyi ...
,
Mark Elder
Sir Mark Philip Elder (born 2 June 1947) is a British conductor. He is currently music director of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, England.
Life and career
Elder was born in Hexham, Northumberland, the son of a dentist. He played the ba ...
,
John Fiore
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second E ...
,
Michael Gielen,
Carlo Maria Giulini
Carlo Maria Giulini (; 9 May 1914 – 14 June 2005) was an Italian conductor.
From the age of five, when he began to play the violin, Giulini's musical education was expanded when he began to study at Italy's foremost conservatory, the Conserva ...
,
Erich Leinsdorf,
Raymond Leppard,
James Levine,
John Pritchard (conductor),
Mstislav Rostropovich
Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, (27 March 192727 April 2007) was a Russian cellist and conductor. He is considered by many to be the greatest cellist of the 20th century. In addition to his interpretations and technique, he was wel ...
,
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti ( , ; born György Stern; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor, known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-servin ...
,
Horst Stein
Horst Walter Stein (born 2 May 1928 in Elberfeld, Germany; died 27 July 2008 in Vandœuvres, Switzerland) was a German conductor.
Biography
Stein's father was a mechanic. At school in Frankfurt, he studied piano, oboe, and singing. Later, h ...
and
Christian Thielemann.
Her Saffi, in ''The Gypsy Baron'' film conducted by
Kurt Eichhorn
Kurt Peter Eichhorn (4 August 1908 – 29 June 1994), was a German conductor.
Eichhorn was born in Munich, the son of a painter. He studied music at the conservatory in Würzburg with Hermann Zilcher and progressed through provincial houses. His ...
, is available on DVD.
She began her career with the
American Savoyards and in other Off-off-Broadway companies in the 1960s. In 1978 she created the part of Eve in
Penderecki
Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best known works include ''Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima'', Symphony No. 3, his '' St Luke Passion'', ''Polish Requiem'', ''A ...
's ''Paradise Lost'', at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
[Lyric Opera of Chicago]
Ms. Shade has appeared in leading roles in eight video productions such as Kaiserin in
Die Frau ohne Schatten
' (''The Woman without a Shadow''), Op. 65, is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss with a libretto by his long-time collaborator, the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was written between 1911 and either 1915 or 1917. When it premiered at the ...
and Saffi in
The Gypsy Baron
''The Gypsy Baron'' () is an operetta in three acts by Johann Strauss II which premiered at the Theater an der Wien on 24 October 1885. Its German libretto by Ignaz Schnitzer is based on the unpublished 1883 story ''Saffi'' by Mór Jókai. Jokai ...
. She has been a frequent clue in crossword puzzles, appearing in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', the ''
International Herald Tribune
The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France for international English-speaking readers. It had the aim of becoming "the world's first global newspaper" and could fairly be said ...
'', the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'', ''
Delta
Delta commonly refers to:
* Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet
* River delta, at a river mouth
* D (NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta")
* Delta Air Lines, US
* Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19
Delta may also re ...
'' and ''
United Airlines
United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois. '' magazines.
As a concert singer, Shade has been a frequent soloist with the
New York Philharmonic, the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891. The ensemble makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. The music director is Riccardo Muti, who began his tenure ...
,
National Symphony Orchestra
The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1930, its principal performing venue is the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It also performs for the annual National Mem ...
in Washington D.C., and the orchestras of Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Minnesota, St. Louis, Pittsburg, and Philadelphia. In Europe, she has sung with the
Berlin Philharmonic,
Vienna Philharmonic
The Vienna Philharmonic (VPO; german: Wiener Philharmoniker, links=no) is an orchestra that was founded in 1842 and is considered to be one of the finest in the world.
The Vienna Philharmonic is based at the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria. It ...
, and the radio orchestras in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Helsinki, Rome, and Torino.
Shade is married to bass-trombonist Larry Benz and they make their home in
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label=Tiwa language, Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. ...
.
Notes and references
Sources
* Milwaukee Sentinel, March 24, 197
* Charles Jahantz/Elizabeth Forbes, in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', IV (1992), p. 338.
* Lyric Opera of Chicago
''Paradise Lost'', 1978 cast* Warrack, John and West, Ewan, "Shade, Ellen" in ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera'', Oxford University Press, 1996
External links
*
Remembering Claudio Abbado, part 1Discographyby Bruce Duffie, December 11, 1982
ublished in "The Opera Journal" in 1988
{{DEFAULTSORT:Slade, Ellen
American operatic sopranos
1944 births
Living people
Singers from New York (state)
20th-century American women opera singers
Classical musicians from New York (state)
21st-century American women