Melanie Henley Heyn

Roaring onto the operatic stage in recent seasons, Melanie Henley Heyn made her Straussian and Wagnerian debuts as Salome & Brünnhilde, followed closely by a harrowing portrayal of Magda Sorel in Gian Carlo Menotti’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, The Consul.

Singing a vast repertoire of music spanning the opera, concert, and folk worlds, her 33 divas recording project combining classic Wagner, Verdi, and Puccini roles with modern American opera heroines remains the No. 1 Most Funded Kickstarter for a Solo Classical Artist. A career-long focus on orchestral lieder has led to performances of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Rückert-Lieder, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Gurre-Lieder, Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi and Harawi, Berg’s 7 Frühe Lieder, and, most recently, Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder. She is excited to have recently added Strauss’ Four Last Songs to the list. 

Heyn has premiered the works of living composers and collaborated with a who’s who of fantastic chamber musicians, including composer/clarinetist Jörg Widmann, violist Roger Tapping, and pianists Seth Knopp, Gilbert Kalish and Peter Frankl. After early training in New York at the Manhattan School of Music, Heyn graduated from the University of Southern California and pursued triple Master’s degrees at the Konservatorium in Vienna, Austria. Her Vienna to Hollywood recital program featuring Jewish composers who fled Vienna for Los Angeles on the eve of WWII has been heard in libraries, in synagogues, and on college campuses in the United States and Europe. 

During the pandemic, Heyn recommitted to her writer/poet roots, delving into Shakespeare, American hymn traditions, and the poetry of the 60s folk scene while working with avant-garde political troupe Bread & Puppet Theater on a new adaptation of Aeschylus’ The Persians. Her current projects include a libretto based on the life of Lou Andreas-Salomé (confidante of Freud, Nietzsche, and Rilke) and a choral opera with LA composer Matthew Brown. She can also be heard on the soundtrack of the cult television series Battlestar Galactica.