Betty Van Allen
Acting
Biography
Betty Van Allen (March 17, 1927 – June 22, 2009) was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who had an active international singing career during the 1950s through the 1970s. In the latter part of her career her voice acquired a contralto-like darkening, which can be heard on her recording of Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky with conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. She was known for her collaborations with American composers, such as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Ned Rorem, and Virgil Thomson among others. Allen was part of the first generation of black opera singers to achieve wide success and is viewed as part of an instrumental group of performers who helped break down the barriers of racial prejudice in the opera world. She was greatly admired by Bernstein and the conductor notably chose her to be the featured soloist for his final performances as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1973. After her singing career ended, she became a lauded voice teacher and arts administrator.
Known For
In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his paranoid screen partner struggle to make the difficult transition to talking pictures.
Singin' in the Rain
The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.
The Phantom of the Opera
Discovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.
Ziegfeld Girl
Michael Morda, a young sculptor living in San Francisco, is madly in love with Elinor Hunter, and they plan to be married. When Elinor becomes jealous of Julie Stressman, an old friend of Michael's and one of his models, Michael reluctantly asks Julie not to visit him at his studio. They agree to meet only at the construction site where he is working on a sculpture for which Julie is modeling. When Elinor also shows up at the site, Julie leaves so as to avoid a confrontation, but she is killed by some falling materials. Julie's dying request is that Michael adopt her daughter Mitzi, whose father died years earlier. In order to prevent Mitzi from being taken to an orphanage, Michael lies and says he is her father. Elinor hears this, and without asking questions, leaves him and marries another man the same night.