Barbara Brandt

Barbara Brandt, also known as Barbara Aurora, was born in February 1936 in Battlecreek, Michigan. and attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts while a teenager.

While a student at Michigan State University (MSU), Brandt was employed as a resident soprano at The Peoples Church of East Lansing. She attended MSU on a scholarship, Other role she performed at MSU included Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro (1957), and Elena Ivanovna Popova in The Boor (1958). She graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1958.

Brandt married her first husband, Boyd Halstead, while they were both MSU music students on December 22, 1957. The couple moved to Eveleth, Minnesota where they had three children: They divorced on May 28, 1986 in Pinellas, Florida, and married a second time on January 1, 1998 in King County, Washington. Her second husband, known publicly as Wesley Balk, was the artistic director of Center Opera Company (later Minnesota Opera). She began a long association with the Minnesota Opera (MO, then Center Opera) in 1967 with whom she made her professional opera debut at the Guthrie Theater in Darius Milhaud's Les malheurs d'Orphée (sung in English as The Sorrows of Orpheus). The short opera was presented alongside several others in a program collectively titled To Hellas. Other early roles she performed with the company included Alice Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1968), Fiordiligi (renamed Eleanora for this English-language version) in Così fan tutte (1968), and the Peasant's Daughter (a.k.a The Wise Woman) in Carl Orff's Die Kluge (1969, given as The Wise Woman and the King).

Brandt was known for singing in the world premieres of several American operas with the MO. The first of these were two one-act operas by Yale Marshall presented in a double bill in December 1969: Oedipus, in which she portrayed Jocasta, and The Sphinx, in which she performed the title role. This was followed by roles in the premieres of Paul and Martha Boesing's The Wanderer (1970, as the Bird Woman) Dominick Argento's Postcard from Morocco (1971, as Lady With a Hat Box), John Gessner's Faust Counter Faust (1971, as Margherita), Conrad Susa's Transformations (1973, as Witch/Anne Sexton), William Huckaby and Philip Brunelle's The Newest Opera In the World (1974, as Lois), Susa's Black River, a Wisconsin Idyll (1975, as Pauline l'Allemand), Argento's The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe (1976, as Mrs. Poe), Robert Ward's Claudia Legare (1978, as Claudia), Eric Stokes's The Jealous Cellist and Other Acts of Misconduct (1979), and William Mayer's A Death in the Family (1983, as Mary). In 1978 she filmed Transformations for television broadcast, a sang Claudia Legare for radio broadcast on NPR.

Other opera roles Brandt performed with the MO included the title role in Werner Egk's Circe (1970), Pretty Polly / Witch in the United States premiere of Harrison Birtwistle's Punch and Judy (1970), Mistress Page in Ralph Vaughan Williams's Sir John in Love (1970), the title role in Claudio Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea (1971), Constance Fletcher in Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All (1971), Countess Almaviva in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (1972 & 1978), Jenny in Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (1973), Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni (1974), Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute (1975), a staged version of Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion (1977), Jenny Smith in Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1977), Magda in Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul (1979), Sonia (a.k.a. Hanna Glawari) in The Merry Widow (1980), Candace Whitcomb in Stephen Paulus's The Village Singer (1982),

Outside of Minnesota, Brandt reprised the role of the Bird Woman in The Wanderer at the Houston Grand Opera (HGO) in the summer of 1970, and performed the part of Gretchen in Faust Counter Faust at both the Curran Theatre in San Francisco and the Chicago Auditorium in 1971. In 1972 she reprised her role in Postcard from Morocco at the HGO and the Lake George Opera; also recording the role of Lady With a Hat Box for Desto Records. She performed this role again at the Curran Theatre in 1973.

Brandt was a soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra on several occasions. These included performances as a soloist in Handel's Messiah (1968), Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges (1969), Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 3 (1969), and John McCabe's orchestral song cycle Notturni ed Alba (1975). In 1973 she was a soloist in the world premiere of Sydney Hodkinson and Lee Devin's Vox Populous with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO). Other works she performed with the SPCO included Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire (1974), In 1974 she performed at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City as Mozart's Pamina to Henry Price Tamino, and reprised her role in Susa's Transformations. In 1976 she was a soloist in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4 with the Kansas City Philharmonic. In 1978 she was soloist in Benjamin Britten's War Requiem with St. Olaf Choir.

Later life In her later life Barbara Brandt went by the name Barbara Aurora. She became a practitioner of reiki using The Radiance Technique. She was also active as a voice teacher.

Barbara Aurora Brandt died in Minneapolis on January 30, 2022.