Sylvia McNair

Sylvia McNair (born June 23, 1956) is an American opera singer and classical recitalist who has also achieved notable success in the Broadway and cabaret genres. McNair, a soprano, has made several critically acclaimed recordings and has won two Grammy Awards.

Sylvia McNair was born in Mansfield, Ohio, the daughter of George and Marilou McNair. As a youth, she studied violin. She originally enrolled in the undergraduate music program at Wheaton (Ill.) College as a violin major but was encouraged by a violin instructor there to study voice as well. She commenced vocal studies at Wheaton with Margarita Evans, and finding herself more suited to singing, discontinued violin as her major. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1978 from Wheaton and subsequently a Master of Music with Distinction in 1983 from Indiana University (whose music school is now the Jacobs School of Music), where she studied voice with Virginia MacWatters, John Wustman, and Virginia Zeani.

Sylvia McNair made her professional concert debut in 1980 with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Her operatic debut, in 1982, was as Sandrina in Haydn's L'infedeltà delusa with the Mostly Mozart Festival. She appeared regularly at the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, the Santa Fe Opera, the San Francisco Opera and at the Metropolitan Opera, and has soloed with many major European and American orchestras.

Since the late 1990s, McNair has changed the focus of her singing career to Broadway and jazz styles. In these genres she has achieved considerable critical acclaim and commercial success.

In 2006, McNair joined the voice faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, her alma mater. She teaches English diction (IPA), opera workshop, and private lessons.

From 2012 to 2015, McNair has served as a judge and mentor for the Songbook Academy, a summer intensive for high school students operated by the Great American Songbook Foundation and founded by Michael Feinstein.

"Her phrasing is exemplary. Her modulations are inspired. Her time is enviable. . . . I could get used to this kind of ecstasy." —Rex Reed, 2005

McNair married conductor Hal France in 1986. The couple are now divorced.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006. Her treatments have included mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Sylvia McNair has made over 70 recordings, including many complete operas (including Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo, re di Creta, Poppea in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, both under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Soloists for the ARCHIV label, and Samuel Barber's Knoxville Summer of 1915. She has also recorded a number of recitals, ranging from "Mozart arias" with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields to CDs with André Previn of music by Jerome Kern and Harold Arlen (Sure Thing and Come Rain or Come Shine).

McNair's awards and honors include the following:

• National Metropolitan Opera Auditions, first place, 1982
• Marian Anderson Award, 1990
• Grammy Awards, 1993 and 1996
• Honorary Doctor of Music degrees from Westminster Choir College, 1997, and Indiana University, 1998
• Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Entertainment from Ohio Governor Bob Taft, 1999
• Command recital performances for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Hillary Clinton, Pope John Paul II