Joanna Simon, Opera Singer from Famously Musical Family, Dies at 85

A renowned mezzo-soprano, she grew up alongside her younger sisters, Carly and Lucy, both of whom became singer-songwriters.

Joanna Simon performing at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in 1999. She was one of the best-known American opera 

singers to emerge in the 1960s. Credit...Photo: Steve J. Sherman

by Clay Risen

Joanna Simon, a smoky-voiced mezzo-soprano who grew up in a family loaded with musical talent, including her younger sisters Carly and Lucy, before forging an acclaimed career as an opera and concert singer, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 85.

Mary Ascheim, a first cousin of Ms. Simon’s, said the cause was thyroid cancer. Ms. Simon died in a hospital a day before Lucy Simon’s death at 82 at her home in Piermont, N.Y.

Ms. Simon was one of the best-known American opera singers to emerge in the 1960s, a time when arts funding was flush, audiences were full and gleaming new music palaces were opening, chief among them the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York.

Her easy grace and glamorous good looks made her a popular guest on television talk shows. She sang and sat for interviews on “The Tonight Show” and “The Dick Cavett Show,” and she was a featured performer on the last original telecast of “The Ed Sullivan Show” before it went off the air in 1971.

Joanna Simon as the cover girl for Stereo Review, October 1971.
Simon was featured in an article by journalist William Livingstone.

In her embrace of popular culture, Ms. Simon was not too far removed from her singer-songwriter sisters. Carly Simon achieved lasting fame in the early 1970s with pop hits like “Anticipation” and “You’re So Vain.” Lucy Simon sang with Carly early on — they were billed as the Simon Sisters — and later found success as a composer. She received a Tony nomination in 1991 for best original score, for the musical “The Secret Garden.”

She continued her opera training in Vienna, then returned to New York to start her career.

The sisters occasionally crossed paths. Joanna sang backup on Carly’s album “No Secrets” (1972) and Lucy’s album “Lucy Simon” (1975), and Carly played guitar offstage during Joanna’s performance on “The Mike Douglas Show” in 1971. Carly wrote her own opera, “Romulus Hunt,” released as an album in 1993; it featured a character named Joanna, a mezzo-soprano.

The sisters grew up singing and playing music together and remained close as adults, avoiding the petty jealousies that often ensnare siblings engaged in similar careers.

“When Lucy was 16, I envied her hourglass figure,” Joanna Simon told The Toronto Star in 1985. “When Carly first became successful, I envied her first $200,000 check. But those feelings lasted for 20 minutes, and I didn’t dwell on them. I knew it was a given in the operatic world that very few achieved that kind of success. I never expected it, so I wasn’t disappointed.”

Ms. Simon in “Bomarzo” with New York City Opera in 1967, the year the opera, by the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, had its debut. She was the first to sing the role of Pantasilea, a courtesan in 16th-century Italy, in that opera. Credit...New York City Opera

Joanna Elizabeth Simon was born on Oct. 20, 1936, in Manhattan, the oldest child of Richard L. Simon, a publisher and founder of Simon & Schuster, and Andrea (Heinemann) Simon, a singer and homemaker. The family lived in Manhattan and, later, the Fieldston neighborhood of the Bronx.

The Simon children took to music early; Joanna could play piano at 6 years old. In high school she thought she would become an actress, though by college, at Sarah Lawrence (which Carly also later attended), she had switched to musical comedy. Then a voice coach encouraged her to consider opera.

Upon graduating in 1958 with a degree in literature, she continued her opera training in Vienna, then returned to New York to start her career.

Ms. Simon, who lived in Manhattan, married Gerald Walker, a novelist and editor at The New York Times Magazine, in 1976. He died in 2004. She dated Walter Cronkite until his death in 2009.

In addition to her sister Carly, she is survived by her stepson, David Walker, and a step-grandson. Her brother, Peter, a photojournalist, died in 2018.

Ms. Simon continued to sing professionally through the early 1980s, then gradually pulled back before retiring in 1986 to join “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” on PBS as a cultural correspondent. She won an Emmy Award in 1991 for a documentary on creativity and manic depression.

Funding for arts programming at “MacNeil/Lehrer” eventually dried up, and her position was cut. Casting about for a new career, she became a real-estate broker. Within six months, she told The Times in 1997, she had sold $6 million in property. She later became a vice president of her company, Fox Residential Group.

Joanna Simon arrives for the Vanity Fair 2007 Tribeca Film Festival party at the State Supreme Courthouse on April 24, 2007 in New York City. Evan Agostini/Getty Images For Tribeca Film Festival

While her musical background wasn’t the key to her newfound success, she said it sometimes came in handy.

“When I take customers into potential apartments, I go into the next apartment and vocalize,” she said. “If they can hear me, it’s no deal.”

Clay Risen is an obituaries reporter for The Times. Previously, he was a senior editor on the Politics desk and a deputy op-ed editor on the Opinion desk. He is the author, most recently, of “Bourbon: The Story of Kentucky Whiskey.”

First published at The New York Times, October 21, 2022