August 30: Regina Resnik

Mezzo-soprano Regina Resnik was born in the Bronx on this date in 1922. Drawn to opera at an young age, she attended a special junior high school where she could study German and Italian, but then turned down a scholarship to Juilliard, opting instead for Hunter College, where she could prepare to be a music teacher as her “fall-back” career. By 1942, however, she had debuted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and by 1944 she was on the Metropolitan Opera stage. In the mid-1940s and ’50s she was a leading soprano at the Met, until her voice lowered and she had to retrain as a mezzo-soprano. She then had a highly successful career on Europe’s great opera stages before returning to the Met in the late 1960s. “Throughout her career,” writes Jennifer Stinson at the Jewish Women’s Archive, “critics praised Resnik for her superb acting. She strove to add new dimensions to every role and to create dramatic force and subtlety.” Resnik also distinguished herself as a stage director, film actress, master class teacher, and in musical theater. Her television documentary, “The Historic Ghetto of Venice,” was an award-winner in 1983. More recently, she produced “Colors of the Diaspora,” a kaleidoscope of Jewish classical song and operatic excerpts, with her son, Michael Philip Davis. Watch a video of herr singing an aria as Carmen below; to see her as Klytamnestra, click here.
“I am a product of the New York City public school system . . . a beneficiary of the time when the city’s school system — and the New York State school system — were among the highest-regarded in the world.” —Regina Resnik
Watch Regina Resnik as Carmen: