Adelaide Bishop

Adelaide Bishop (23 June 1928 – 20 June 2008) was an American operatic soprano, musical theatre actress, opera director, stage director, and voice teacher. She began her career appearing in Broadway musicals as a teenager during the early 1940s. She became a principal soprano with the New York City Opera (NYCO) in 1948, where she performed through 1960 in a broad repertoire encompassing German, French, Italian, and English operas from a variety of musical periods. In the late 1950s, she started working actively as a stage director and as a voice teacher, working with many opera companies throughout the United States and serving on the music faculties of several different American universities. She also served as the artistic director of the Wolf Trap Opera for many years.

Born in New York City, Bishop started studying singing as a young teenager with various instructors, including Paul Breisach, Louis Polanski, Rose Landver, and at Luigi Rossini's Rossini Opera Workshop. She made her Broadway debut at the age of 15 as Fritzi in the 1943 revival of Blossom Time, which ran for a total of 43 performances. She returned to Broadway in 1945 to portray Betty Ellis in the short-lived musical The Girl From Nantucket with Jane Kean as Dodey Ellis and Helen Raymond as Keziah Getchel.

On October 24, 1946, Bishop made her professional opera debut as Blonde in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail with the American Opera Company at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. The following December, she returned to Broadway as Gretchen in the revival of Victor Herbert's The Red Mill when the production moved to the Shubert Theatre from the 46th Street Theatre. In January 1948, Bishop returned to Philadelphia to portray Letitia in Gian Carlo Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief. The composer attended one of the performances and was so impressed with Bishop that he contacted Laszlo Halasz, director of the NYCO, and told him he had to hire her. This led to her being offered a contract with the NYCO and her debut with the company as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto on April 18, 1948.

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