Helene Williams
Soprano
Helene Williams co-founded the Bronx Opera Company and has performed in 17 languages on five continents. Since 1987, she and her husband Leonard Lehrman have performed together 650 times. He has composed 180 works for her, including his newest cycle of 5 Romanian Songs, which they premiered Feb. 14, 2020, and the monodrama, A Loveletter from Rosa Luxemburg, which she sang four times in January, 2019, in performances described by New Music Connoisseur/SoundWordSight.com critic Mark Zuckerman as "heroic." Other roles by Lehrman she has performed multiple times include those of Emma Goldman, Ethel Rosenberg, Queen Isabella, and all the women in Superspy!: The S-e-c-r-e-t Musical. Helene has performed opera roles both standard (Susanna, Fiordiligi, Pamina) and less-standard (Dargomyzhsky's Rusalka, Gounod's Martine, Weber's Ännchen and Fatima). She has premiered and/or made first recordings (on Opus One, Premier, Capstone, Albany, Original Cast, Ravello and Toccata Classics) of numerous other works by Lehrman, Blitzstein, Siegmeister, David Diamond, and 30 Long Island composers. An expert in articulation, she founded Accent Reduction In English Speech in 1999.