Opera conductor Randall Behr—who led 24 productions for the Los Angeles Opera from 1988-1995, was an opera conductor and coach for Music Academy of the West, and served on the Juilliard faculty from 1996-2000—died of a heart attack in his sleep on September 8 in his hotel room in Bloomington, Ind. He was preparing Mozart's Così fan tutte for an Indiana University production scheduled to open September 28.

Randall Behr

Behr (who had changed his name from the original spelling of Bare because Europeans mispronounced it as "bar-ray") was a graduate of University of the Pacific. He began an extended association with the San Francisco Opera and its Merola Opera Program and Western Opera Theater in 1975 (subsequently returning to conduct their production of Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso that was released on CD). He went on to conduct opera productions across the U.S. and in Canada and Europe, as well as the American Ballet Theater Orchestra (1981-82 season) and Peter Brook's Tony Award-winning La tragédie de Carmen on Broadway. In the late 1980s he was tapped as music director by the Long Beach Opera, where he led the first American professional stage production of Strauss's 1912 version of Ariadne auf Naxos, among other notable productions.

Deeply interested in the training of young singers, Behr served as resident conductor of Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, where Marilyn Horne directs the voice program. He first conducted at the Juilliard Opera Center in November 1994, with the production of Rutland Boughton's The Immortal Hour. He returned in 1995 for Sergei Prokofiev's L'Amour des trois oranges, directed by Frank Corsaro and featuring scenic and costume design by Maurice Sendak.

In 1996 Behr accepted the post of music director for the Department of Vocal Arts at Juilliard and became a full member of Juilliard's faculty. From 1996-2000 he conducted seven J.O.C. operas on the stage of the Juilliard Theater (recently renamed the Peter Jay Sharp Theater), including the landmark 1997 production of Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel (with new sets and costumes by Sendak) that was the first full-length conservatory opera production broadcast on Live From Lincoln Center on PBS. Other Juilliard productions he led included Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers (1996), a double bill of Offenbach's Monsieur Choufleuri and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (1997), Rota's I capello di paglia di Firenze (1998), Gluck's Armide (1999), and the U.S. premiere of Weill's Der Kuhhandel (2000), as well as a special J.O.C. presentation in Studio 305 of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, with Eve Shapiro directing.

"Randy was an exceptional conductor and coach and tremendous champion of young singers," said Brian Zeger, artistic director of vocal arts. "He led the department in many artistic initiatives and advances; many of the educational and performance activities we present today—including mainstage concert performances of operatic repertoire with orchestra by singers in the master's degree program—are due to his creativity and commitment to vocal study at Juilliard. Randy's presence and influence on the world of singing and opera will be greatly missed."

Randall Behr is survived by his parents, Grant and Colleen Bare, of Modesto, Calif., and a brother, Warren Behr, of Cambridge, Mass.