Helen Jepson; Opera Star of ‘30s and ‘40s

Helen Jepson, a lyric soprano for New York’s Metropolitan Opera who performed in venues from the Hollywood Bowl to radio and recordings, has died. She was 92.

Jepson, famous in the 1930s and ‘40s, died Tuesday in Bradenton, Fla., where she had lived for several years.

She was the first soprano to record George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” which she did opposite her frequent co-star Lawrence Tibbett. She was also known for her performances and recording of the part of Desdemona in Verdi’s “Otello.”

Wider audiences came to appreciate her from her singing on the radio show of bandleader Paul Whiteman.

Jepson made her West Coast debut Aug. 27, 1935, at the Hollywood Bowl, earning this appraisal from Times critic Isabel Morse Jones: “Helen Jepson is a Jean Harlow type, sings Mozart with exquisite tenderness, and strangely enough misses the breadth of less difficult Wagner arias entirely. . . . Miss Jepson appeared in a stunning robe de concert of green and fur appropriate for the night. . . . Her Mozart aria, ‘Come, Do Not Hesitate,’ was sung in excellent but deliberate style and revealed a beautiful voice of resonance and power.”

Sought by Hollywood for her beauty as well as her voice, Jepson discussed several pictures and made one, the 1938 “Goldwyn Follies.”

Jepson grew up in Akron, Ohio, but had little idea of a career despite encouragement from a high school music and drama teacher and leading roles in high school productions of “I Pagliacci” and “H.M.S. Pinafore.” She started working as a store clerk and drifted into the record department, where she became fascinated by the music and fantasized about singing the great classical arias.

Jepson moved to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis Institute, and during her five years there earned money in the summer by touring with a singing group. She made her debut with the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company in 1930.

After working in choruses and on radio in New York, she was hired by the Metropolitan Opera in 1935 and made her debut in “In the Pasha’s Garden.” She remained for a decade.

During her career, she sang with the San Francisco Opera and gave several concerts in Los Angeles in such venues as Philharmonic Auditorium, the Ebell Theater and Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

Jepson later became a speech therapy teacher at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, and during that career spoke frequently in Los Angeles about the importance of a well-modulated voice.

In Bradenton, she was on the boards of the Sarasota Opera Assn. and the Bradenton Opera Assn. Married twice, to flutist George Roscoe Possell and nautical engineer Walter Dellera, Jepson is survived by a daughter, a son, a sister, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.