Irene Jordan
Irene Jordan Caplan (born April 25, 1919 in Birmingham; died May 13, 2016 in Dalton, Massachusetts) was a featured soprano for the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1946 and 1947.
Irene was one of ten children born to bandleader Eugene Jordan and his wife, the former Sarah Ann Whitehurst. Her parents brought her to see Rosa Raisa sing the role of Aida with the Chicago Civic Opera in Birmingham on March 1, 1926. After graduating from Woodlawn High School in 1935 she enrolled at Judson College in Perry County to study voice and piano. She graduated in 1939 and remained at Judson for a year as a voice instructor before making her move to New York City.
In New York Jordan began taking voice lessons from Nico Charisse. She also took ballet classes and studied German, French and Italian. Early in 1946 she was given a weekly 15-minute NBC network radio program called "Songs By Irene." Later that same year, she auditioned as a mezzo-soprano for the Metropolitan Opera, hoping to get advice on her prospects. She was initially offered a position in the chorus, but that offer was immediately superseded by a contract to replace Martha Lipton as Mallika alongside Lily Pons in a production of Léo Delibes' Lakmé, which was just three weeks from opening. She made her debut on the Met stage on November 11 of that year, costumed as an Indian servant girl in brown body make-up. During her debut year, Jordan appeared 49 times and was described in LIFE magazine as "the Met's prettiest new star."
During rehearsals, Jordan caught the eye of Metropolitan orchestra violinist Arnold Caplan. The couple were married in Birmingham on June 10, 1947 and welcomed a son, Joel, on February 6, 1948. Irene continued to perform in the early months of her pregnancy, but stepped away from the stage before the end of the season. In 1955 she was given the inaugural "Outstanding Alumna Award" by the Judson College Alumni Association.
As a young mother, Jordan devoted the next few years to learning the art of the dramatic coloratura soprano. Her efforts won acclaim when she returned in the role of Eglantine in a 1953 performance of Carl Maria von Weber's Euryanthe, staged by Thomas Sherman and the Little Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. She went on to star as Queen of the Night in an English-language production of Mozart's The Magic Flute at London's Covent Garden, and to reprise that role on the Metropolitan stage on March 23, 1957.
During the summer of 1959 Jordan performed as a dramatic actor with the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival. That same year conductor Leonard Bernstein nominated Jordan for a Ford Foundation grant under which she was enabled to commission a piece for her to perform. Bernstein proposed that she work with composer Aaron Copland, but she chose to give the project to Vittorio Giannini. The result was a 40-minute "monodrama" based on Euripides' tragedy Medea. Her 1960 performance of The Medead was well-received by critics, but not by Bernstein.
Judson College presented Jordan with an honorary doctorate in 1969. In 1974 Jordan conducted an extensive tour to raise funds for the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in honor of her sister, Martha Gilliland, who spent four decades as a medical missionary in Nigeria. Meanwhile the Caplan family, then residing in New Rochelle, New York, had expanded with three more children. Irene balanced her home life with her career by selecting professional opportunities which alternated between performing and teaching. She and Arnold later moved to Plainfield, Massachusetts where she often performed with the choir at Plainfield Congregational Church.
Irene Jordan Caplan died in 2016 and was buried alongside her husband at Hill Top Cemetery in Plainview, Massachusetts.
References
- Moore, Edward C. (1930) Forty Years of Opera in Chicago, Horace Liveright p. 397