Soprano Elsa Charlston passed away on June 5, at her Chicago home, at the age of 91.

Charlston was born and raised in northern Minnesota, where she exhibited heightened musical abilities at an early age. She attended St. Olaf College and was a soloist with the St. Olaf Choir. She later studied and performed at the Franz Schubert Institute in Baden in Austria.

Early on in her career, she was considered a mezzo soprano. She later went on to sing soprano which eventually took her to an international career most renowned for her interpretations of 20th-century music. Charlston was an integral member of Ralph Shapey’s Contemporary Chamber Players at the University of Chicago, was a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the batons of Sir Georg Solti and Carlo Maria Giulini, the Milwaukee Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, in London with the BBC Symphony as well as with many of the nation’s leading new music ensembles. She toured England and Germany with the Boston Musica Viva, singing Lukas Foss’s “Time Cycle,” Oliver Knussen’s “Rosenkranz Lieder,” and Luciano Berio’s “O King.” In London, she gave the United Kingdom premiere of David del Tredici’s “Adventures Underground” with the BBC Symphony and was also featured at the Almeida Festival, at the Edinburgh Festival and in Amsterdam at the Holland Festival.

Charlston made her opera debut with the Santa Fe Opera in the American Premiere of Alban Berg’s “Lulu” and appeared with the Chicago Lyric Opera. She was a guest soloist with the Festival of Baroque Music in Saratoga, NY, the Baltimore Chamber Music Society, the First Monday Contemporary Chamber Ensemble in New Orleans, the Don Redlich Dance Company (Pierrot Lunaire), the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival and the Tanglewood Music Center. She made numerous television and radio appearances include performances on the BBC and Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Europe and NBC, WGN-TV and WFMT in Chicago. Her recordings are on CRI, Opus One, Delos, Northeastern, and The Musical Heritage Society.

Peter G. Davis, writing for The New York Times in 1974, noted of her New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall that, “the soprano devoted the larger part of her concert to 20th century songs, making it clear why composers are happy to entrust her with their music. Aside from the beguiling tonal purity of her voice, precision in pitching notes, rhythmic sense and clarity of diction, Miss Charlston projects the special emotional flavor of each song with thoughtful coloristic nuances rarely cultivated by the typical ‘instrumentally’ oriented contemporary music singer.”

Throughout her career, Elsa was recognized as a leading voice teacher both through her own private studio and later as a longtime faculty member at DePaul University, where she retired in 2011. Several students have gone on to have major international careers, including Metropolitan Opera soprano Janai Brugger, who remembers her by saying, “She was so much more than a teacher. She was a mentor, a brilliant musician, a recitalist, and a pioneer of new works and art songs. I owe so much of who I am today as an artist to her.”

Charlston is survived by her two children, their spouses, and her three grandchildren, as well as many nieces and nephews. She is also survived by her first husband, and pre-deceased by her second husband, composer Ralph Shapey.