About

 About the Singer

Chesne (short for French Duchesne and pronounced Cheyne) Ryman was born in Sydney, Australia, of a Norwegian family with three generations of opera singers (1, 2). At the age of ten she had won national song competitions and was referred to as "the Jenny Lind of Australia" (2). After studies at the Sydney Conservatory of Music (3) she was engaged by the Elizabethan Trust Opera Company, later renamed the Australian Opera (4). She sang at different venues and in the 1963 Australian TV adaptation of Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck with Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by the Australian conductor Charles Mackerras. The broadcast was later repeated in 1966 and 1967 (5).
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​ In 1965 she was invited to join the Sutherland - Williamson Opera Company led by Sutherland's husband, conductor Richard Bonynge. Ryman toured the Australian continent with Joan Sutherland and a young Italian tenor, Luciano Pavarotti (1, 6).

​At the advice of Richard Bonynge, she continued her opera career in Europe. She brought her 5-year-old daughter Sharne and settled in London, where they lived for five years in the house of her new teacher Gustav Sacher and his wife Mila.    

 Sacher, the legendary Austro-Hungarian singer and voice pedagogue, had fled to England just before WWII.  His pupils included opera stars such as Sylvia Fisher, Amy Shuard and Adele Leigh (7). Another student was Denny Dayviss, the producer of concert versions of operas at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Festival Hall, where she launched the international careers of Jose' Carreras, Montserrat Caballe' and many others (8).

Ryman continued making concert tours and performed as a guest artist on European opera stages. In 1971 she was invited to perform in Salzburg during the Festival, where she sang the role of Constanze in Bernhard Baumgartner's Kammer opera production of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio. This was just prior to the death of Paumgartner, the legendary conductor, musicologist and Co-founder /President of the Salzburg Festival (9), who had been a composition teacher and mentor of Herbert von Karajan (10). 

While in London Ryman auditioned for ​Maestro Charles Mackerass, who selected her for the Queen of the Night role in Magic Flute, which he had been ivited to conduct at the Royal inauguration of   the Sydney Opera House in 1973 (11).​
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Ryman subsequently appeared as a guest artist in opera houses, concert halls, and music festivals   all over Europe, as well as in Israel, Australia and USA. 

After her first visit to Sweden in 1971, she returned annually for concert tours in churches and cathedrals with a repertoire of gospel and sacred music. She often sang in front of large audiences, (on one occasion 15,000) and was featured on the front-covers of magazines like Musik Revy and Svenska Journalen.

​ She also performed with orchestras and choirs in oratorios and church operas in Sweden (Immanuel Church, Stockholm) and Switzerland (Beethoven's Misa Solemnis  in the Victoria Hall, Geneva).

Chesne Ryman was featured on Radio and TV and made a number of recordings with leading artists.

Meeting the Press at the Royal Opera House Stockholm in 1983: Dame Joan Sutherland, Maestro Richard Bonynge and Chesne Ryman. 

Photo: Friends of the Opera, Stockholm. 


​About the Pedagogue

Sweden

In 1977 Chesne Ryman joined the faculty of the Nordic Music Conservatory outside Stockholm, invited by the founders nger Wikstrom, a leading Swedish Concert pianist, and her husband David Bartov, a Russian-born Israeli concert violinist (12).  Ryman accepted to become part of the founding faculty as voice pedagogue with the prospect of helping build an opera division. Soon the faculty was supplemented with Masterclasses by other leading international artists such as Birgit Nilsson, Kerstin Meyer. and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

In 1980 the conservatory was renamed Nordic Chamber Opera, which performed several operas at the 18th century Ulriksdal's Castle Theater ("Konfidensen"), North of Stockholm. These performances, which were part of the annual summer festival of the theater, included Handel's Alcina and Bellini's La Sonnambula with Ryman and her students singning the leading roles to the great acclaim by audiences and music critics alike. Because of the success with bel canto operas, in 1982 they performed Bellini's Norma at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theater in downtown Stockholm (with Chesne Ryman as Norma, Kerstin Meyer as Adalgisa and Sonny Wallentin in the leading tenor role)(13). International celebrities like Birgit Nilsson ("La Nilsson of Metrepolitan Opera) and Ingemar Bergman, the previous Director of the theater, were in the audience.

Not unexpectedly, the NordicChamber Opera opened the path for the students to careers in the world of music. The school also toured in Israel and in Italy, where they were introduced by the Swedish Minister of Culture and Education and performed at the Academia Filarmonica Romana in Rome and in Villa San Michele, Capri. Many of the students were given unique opportunities, like Sonny Wallentin, who was referred to by the critics as "the new Jussi Bjorlin,"was offered opportunities to perform in Germany and London. In1984 he was contracted by the Swedish Royal Opera, where he performed for many years (13).

USA  
 
In 1988 Ryman relocated to Miami, invited by John de Lancie, the Founding Dean of Music at Miami's New World School of the Arts and became voice pedagogue in the Opera and later in the Music Theater Departments. As a faculty member she also directed and conducted a number of productions and invited international artists such as Gustav Sacher, Denny Dayviss, Brian Stanborough and Inger Wikstrom to give Masterclasses (8). 

While teaching Chesne continued giving recitals, accompanied by Inger Wikkstrom, Paul Posnak or Frank Cooper. She also performed with the Florida Festival Philharmonic, conducted by the Swedish Maestro and composer Ulf Bjorlin (2, 14). At the time of his death in 1993 Bjorlin was working on completing an oratorio based on Dante's Divine Comedy, commissioned by Dr. Karl Mettinger for the Palm Beach Festival with Ryman in the lead role (Beatrice (the divine woman in heaven, who would help navigating Virgil and Dante from Inferno to Paradise). After reaching retirement age, Ryman continued as a voice coach for the college students at the New World School of the Arts. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic she remained a loyal teacher on-line until a few weeks before she succumbed to cancer in September 2020.

​Many of the students at the school have had very successful careers and some have won Oscar, EMMY and Grammy Awards. 

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