Lucile V Evans

Lucile grew up as one of eight siblings in an extended, artistic family on a prosperous dairy farm on the shores of Lac St Jean. Lucile studied voice in Quebec and Montreal, and from there travelled to New York City along with her sister, pianist Huberta Villeneuve Sliptzin. Lucile studied voice with Paul Althaus, Rose Bampton, and Jennie Tourel, among others. Her confidence in the kitchen landed her positions as a chef in private homes from New York and Mahwah to Newport. She became known for an unerring sense of style and flair.

Lucile met her husband, Robert K. (Bob) Evans, in New York City and they married in 1955. A pianist, linguist, composer and conductor, Bob had just returned from Europe, where with the help of the GI Bill for his service in WW2 as a radio telegrapher, he had studied composition, art song, and languages, and performed with many composers and their collaborators. From that point forward, Lucile and Bob shared an amazing marriage and teaching career across the next fifty years.

Lucile V. Evans, mezzo soprano, was professor of voice with a specialty as a recitalist performer, especially in the French repertoire. Lucile innovatively combined vocal technique, stage deportment, and song interpretation in a dynamic approach to v. singing. Lucile and Bob served together on the opera faculty at Indiana University, University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, McGill University Schulich School of Music, the AIMS program in Graz, Austria, the University of Miami Summer Program in Salzburg, Austria, and workshops in Innsbruck, Austria, and Urbania, Italy. Lucile and Bob would become renowned for their joint master classes. Lucile’s laser sharp and engaging insights into interpretation and vocal technique combined onstage with Bob’s encyclopedic knowledge of repertoire and language, and his powerful piano accompaniments.

Lucile’s students, Barbara Daniels, Helene Schneiderman, and Jessica Muirhead, to name a few, have had careers with opera companies including, among others, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Paris’ la Bastille, London’s Convent Garden, Milan’s la Scala, Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper, Opera Berlin, and Vienna’s Staatsoper, Bayreuth, and the Salzburger Musikfestival. Her students also found careers on Broadway, film and in television. Many are now wonderful voice coaches adapting the “Madame Evans” techniques for yet another generation of musicians.

So many students became friends for life and members of Bob and Lucile’s ever-growing musical family. Over the decades wherever they taught, the Evans’s hosted parties for their students after concerts, with all the treats prepared of course by Lucile.

In 2009, after Robert passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, Lucile moved one last time to Croton-on-Hudson, New York to live with her daughter, enjoying time with family, while continuing to coach privately, and give master classes for young singers. In 2021, in her 98th year, Lucile discovered one more pastime that she absolutely loved, boating! Whether by motor or sail, the girl from Lac St Jean would grin and laugh while gliding over the waves and under the sky.

Lucile was preceded in death by her husband, all seven of her siblings and their spouses, and is survived by her daughter, Julie Evans, grandson Adrian Wiegman (Natalie Ceresnak) and son-in-law, Leo Wiegman, as well as her son, George Evans (Michael Jones) of Regina, Saskatchewan, and many adoring nieces and nephews.

A celebration of life will be held in the late spring. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Caring Kind, The Heart of Alzheimer's Caregiving, 360 Lexington Avenue, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10017, and in Canada to the Alzheimer Society of Canada, 20 Eglinton Avenue West, 16th Floor, Toronto, ON M4R 1K8. Arrangements were handled by Edward Carter Funeral Home, Croton on Hudson, New York.