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.
She commenced vocal studies at Wheaton with Margarita Evans, and finding herself more suited to singing, discontinued violin as her major.
From 2006 to 2017, McNair was part of the voice faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, her alma mater.
She also had a small studio and taught a few female singers (including soprano Paloma Friedhoff Bello) and one male student (Rafa Campos Salles).
[2] 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).