Background
DMus, Northwestern University
Praised for both her breathtaking voice and her acting, Elena Jeanne Batman’s career encompasses opera, musical theater, and the concert stage. She completed an eight month return engagement as Carlotta Giudicelli in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom, the Las Vegas Spectacular, after helping open the multi-million-dollar production in 2006. She reprised the role she played on Broadway in the Tony award winning production (The Phantom of the Opera) and later with the Second and Third National tours. Miss Batman has the distinction of having completed over 3,000 performances as Carlotta.
Stage performances as The Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte include New York City Opera, The Connecticut Opera and Alaska's Anchorage Opera. Creating the role of Marie, Miss Batman appeared in the world premiere of Seymour Barab's opera A Piece of String. Other favorite roles include Violetta in La Traviata, Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Anna Leonowens in The King and I.
As a featured soloist Miss Batman has appeared in New York at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space and Merkin Concert Hall. Regional highlights include the Ravinia Festival productions of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd with George Hearn and Patti LuPone and the workshop version of Doll with Michael Cerveris, Judy Kuhn, and David Hyde Pierce, both directed by Lonny Price. She has performed locally with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Ravinia, the Handel Week Festival of Oak Park, Chicago Symphony Chorus and Grant Park Music Festival. Internationally, she was a special envoy and invited guest soloist and teacher in the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Balancing teaching with a performing career is something that Miss Batman has learned to manage quite well. Elena has taught voice and other aspects of music throughout her professional career. She has been invited to participate in panel discussions and teach master classes at several Universities, and has been very active in the "Meet the Artist" series at Lincoln Center. Sought after as a vocal pedagogue, her voice students have been seen in regional opera companies and on Broadway, as well as Las Vegas and the west coast.
A previous winner of the National Association of Teachers of Singing vocal competition and a MacAllister Award recipient, she was named "Outstanding Mozart Singer" at the regional finals of the Metropolitan Opera auditions. Miss Batman is a graduate of Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado, and earned her Doctor of Music in Voice and Opera Performance at Northwestern University in 2009. In her life before opera, she was a competitive equestrian and horse show judge. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and raised in Greeley, Colorado, she now makes her home in Chicago with her husband Lee and their daughter Alyssa.