Teacher

Dr. Lydia Bechtel is excited to have recently joined the music faculty at Friends University as an Assistant Professor of Voice. She previously served as an Assistant Professor of Music at Pittsburg State University, with focuses in voice and music history, where her voice students earned awards at the West Central Regional NATS and Kansas City NATS competitions.

A native of nearby Eureka, KS, Bechtel has performed a number of operatic roles with companies in the U.S. and abroad. Her performances include appearances with the Southeast Kansas Symphony, PSU Wind Ensemble, UMKC Opera, AIMS in Graz, Varna International Opera, Wichita Grand Opera, Boulder Opera, and Opera on Tap Colorado. Her roles include Fanny-La Cambiale di Matrimonio, Gretel-Hänsel und Gretel, Lisette-La Rondine, Serpetta-La Finta Giardiniera, Le feu-L’enfant et les sortilèges, Ilia-Idomeneo, and Mabel-Pirates of Penzance. As a soloist Bechtel returned to her alma mater, Oklahoma State University, in 2020 to perform Beethoven’s Mass in C at the newly opened McKnight Center for the Performing Arts. She has also been the soprano soloist for Bach’s Coffee Cantata, BWV 159 Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem, and Handel’s Messiah.

Equally committed to scholarly endeavors, Bechtel has presented her research at the International Congress of Voice Teachers, the College Music Society National Conference, the Music by Women Festival and the ATMI National Conference. Her research on Pauline Viardot has been published in The Journal of Singing and The Opera Journal. In 2019 she earned the prestigious P.E.O. Scholar Award, which allowed her to complete research on Viardot at the Harvard Houghton Library, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and Mediathèque Hector Berlioz. Her musicology thesis research on Viardot earned her the Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award for UMKC and the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools in the Humanities Division. Her research was also recognized by the National Opera Association as the winner of their Scholarly Paper Competition in 2020.

Dr. Bechtel earned her DMA in Vocal Performance and MM in Musicology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, while serving as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Voice. While in Kansas City she also worked as an Adjunct Professor of Applied Voice at Northwest Missouri State University and Rockhurst University. She received her MM in Vocal Performance from Colorado State University where she served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, teaching both Applied Voice and Music Theory Fundamentals; and, earned her BM in Vocal Performance summa cum laude from Oklahoma State University.