District Governor
Susan Bender
Soprano Susan Bender was a Metropolitan Opera National Council Winner in 1986 and has been on the voice faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, since her appointment in 2003. Her repertoire is varied in scope: she has performed works by Hildegard von Bingen with the Folger Consort, Bach’s Wedding Cantata with J. Reilly Lewis of the Washington Bach Consort, Handel’s Gloria for the International Handel Festival, and Haydn’s Creation with the Fairbanks Symphony. She is a proud US Navy veteran, having served in the US Navy Sea Chanters from 1985-1989 and was a featured soloist on three national tours with the US Navy Concert Band.
Ms. Bender has been twice nominated for Helen Hayes Awards for her work in musical theatre by the Washington Theatre Guild and has received favorable reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Third Coast Digest and in Opera News. The Washington Post called her performance of Olivier Messiaen's Poèmes pour Mì "nothing short of breathtaking," The New York Times proclaimed her as possessing "charming, lyric coloratura" and Tom Strini raved of her Milwaukee concert of Georges Aperghis and John Cage as being a “tour-de-force,” and able to “apply commanding technique, canny phrasing and sly wit” in her presentation of these “avant-garde manifestoes.”
Ms. Bender's students have won many Maryland, Wisconsin and Mid-Atlantic NATS awards and have gone on to study and work at Indiana University, Northwestern (Chicago), University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, University of North Carolina- Greensboro, The Catholic University, the Washington Opera Chorus, The Kennedy Center, The Metropolitan Opera and on Broadway. Susan is recorded on the Norton, Foundry and Albany labels; her most recent recording was of Gluck's Orphée on Naxos with L'Opéra Lafayette, and Opera News reviewed her as "a persuasive Diana" in that company's production of Jean-Phillippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie.
Ms. Bender has been twice nominated for Helen Hayes Awards for her work in musical theatre by the Washington Theatre Guild and has received favorable reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Third Coast Digest and in Opera News. The Washington Post called her performance of Olivier Messiaen's Poèmes pour Mì "nothing short of breathtaking," The New York Times proclaimed her as possessing "charming, lyric coloratura" and Tom Strini raved of her Milwaukee concert of Georges Aperghis and John Cage as being a “tour-de-force,” and able to “apply commanding technique, canny phrasing and sly wit” in her presentation of these “avant-garde manifestoes.”
Ms. Bender's students have won many Maryland, Wisconsin and Mid-Atlantic NATS awards and have gone on to study and work at Indiana University, Northwestern (Chicago), University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, University of North Carolina- Greensboro, The Catholic University, the Washington Opera Chorus, The Kennedy Center, The Metropolitan Opera and on Broadway. Susan is recorded on the Norton, Foundry and Albany labels; her most recent recording was of Gluck's Orphée on Naxos with L'Opéra Lafayette, and Opera News reviewed her as "a persuasive Diana" in that company's production of Jean-Phillippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie.
