Brenda Miller Cooper

Brenda Miller Cooper (28 February 1916 in Cleveland, Ohio – 3 April 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland) was an American operatic soprano.

[1] She made her professional opera debut with the Philadelphia Opera Company (billed as Brenda Miller) on November 29, 1943 as Micaëla in Georges Bizet's Carmen with Alice Howland in the title role, Joseph Laderoute as Don José, Giovanni de Surra as Escamillo, and Sylvan Levin conducting.

Later that season she returned to that house to portray the title role in Giacomo Puccini's Tosca and Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus.

She became a regular performer at the New York City Opera during the late 1940s into the 1950s, making her debut with the company as Tatiana in the company's first production of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin with director Theodore Komisarjevsky in 1947. Cooper is perhaps best remembered for portraying the role of Beret in the world premiere of Douglas Moore's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, Giants in the Earth in 1951.

[1] Cooper retired from the stage in the early 1960s after developing a spinal-cord tumor which left her paralyzed for a couple of years.