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Robert Joseph Williams
( September 18, 1926 - February 15, 2023 )
Robert J. Williams died peacefully at home on February 15th.  He was born in 1926 in Kansas City, MO to Daniel and Mary Williams.  He was drafted into the Navy right out of high school.  He served on a destroyer escort for a year and a half toward the end of the war.  Robert had always wanted to sing and had already begun as a boy soprano in the cathedral choir.  Of course, at that age he did not like having to sit with the women. 

After the Navy, he briefly attended the University of Kansas. Realizing he needed to concentrate on his singing, he chose the Kansas City Conservatory of Music. He began to perform in local operas and to study privately.  He even had his own Fan Club. He sang in the Regional Finals of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions which encouraged him to move to New York City where he quickly earned a contract as a leading tenor for 5 years with the New York City Opera.  He was always singing somewhere.   He sang in church choirs - notably with the First United Methodist Church in Lincolnton - until he was 92 - with touring groups, and most anywhere that would ask him.  He just loved to sing!  Through the connection to the Metropolitan Opera Auditions he won a contract to sing the leading tenor role in “La Boheme” on a grand tour of New Zealand.  In the U.S. he continued performing with the Toledo Opera, the Boston Arts Festival, the St. Louis Festival Opera, the Kansas City Lyric Theater, the New York Grand Opera, and the New Jersey Opera. 

During his distinguished European career, he sang leading roles for 5 years at the Städische Bühne in Essen and the Deutsche Oper Am Rhine in Düsseldorf, Germany. In this country , Mr. Williams also performed musicals from the Desert Song to Li’l Abner with the Starlight Theater, St. Louis Muny Opera, and with numerous stock theaters around the country.  Robert performed in such diverse media s television commercials, movies, operetta, and concert and taught voice privately in New York City.  He loved to travel and his years of singing all over the world – especially to such faraway places as New Zealand – were very important to him.   In his retirement, he and his wife, Carolyn Heafner, in 2001 founded and continued to direct the Heafner/Williams Vocal Competition in Lincolnton, where they draw talent from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, After living back and forth from New York City to Lincolnton for years, in 2015 the coupled moved to Lincolnton full time.  

Recordings include The Happy Prince by George Fisher with the Metropolitan Opera Studio and the role of the Duke in Verdi’s Rigoletto.  He was the recipient of two Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation Fund for Music grants, and a number of Metropolitan Opera Studio Stipendiums and Scholarships.  He won the Best Actor of the Year Award in Kansas City for his interpretation of the Moor in Verdi’s “Othello”. 

Robert was kind, loving, generous, and could keep you laughing at any time.  He never met anyone he could not talk to. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn Heafner Williams.

A Celebration of Life service will be held at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 5, 2023, at First United Methodist Church in Lincolnton. A reception will be held following the service in the church fellowship building. 
Posted on 16 Feb 2023


 

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