Lorena Dureau, Gained Fame In Three Careers
Submitted By N.O.V.A. July 2005
Times Picayune 	11-26-1997


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Lorraine Dureau Lehleitner, a singer, writer and teacher known professionally as
Lorena Dureau, died Friday of cancer at Metropolitan Hospice. She was 73.

Ms. Dureau was born in New Orleans and lived in Mexico City for many years before
returning to New Orleans in 1978. She later moved to Covington.

A 1955 summa cum laude graduate of Loyola University, where she studied voice,
piano and violin, Ms. Dureau taught voice and music, wrote historical novels and
sang in opera and operetta for many years.

"I liked three careers because it gave me more independence," she said in a 1995
interview. "I did not have to take anybody's guff. . . . My three-ring circus - I
loved it."

Upon winning the Metropolitan Opera's area auditions after leaving college, Ms.
Dureau hoped to debut as an opera singer in New York. Instead, she spent months
recovering from an accident that kept her in New Orleans through the opera season.

What seemed a disaster was the beginning of a wonderful adventure, Ms. Dureau said
in later years.

Miguel Bernal, dean of the College of Music at Loyola, urged Ms. Dureau to go to
Mexico City, where the opera season lasted almost all year. Her singing career
flourished there, and she began a lucrative writing career during her 15-year stay
in Mexico beginning in the late 1950s.

She also gained a new first name.

"In Mexico, everybody called me Lorena!" Dureau said in 1995. "And I like it."

Ms. Dureau's singing career began in the 1940s when she teamed up with future
international opera star Norman Treigle, whom she met at Loyola.

With the help of booking agent Bess Grundmann, the pair adopted the style of movie
singing stars Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy while performing songs such as
"Sweethearts," "Will You Remember?" and "Indian Love Call."

In recent years, Ms. Dureau published several historical novels and was working on
three new ones, including a mystery set in New Orleans with a voodoo background
and "a mainstream novel based a lot on my own personal experiences as a singer."

Her newspaper and magazine articles were published in the United States, Latin
America, Europe and Australia.

Survivors include a brother, Lionel D. Dureau.

A funeral will be held today at noon at All Faiths Funeral Home, 5200 Canal Blvd.
Visitation will begin at 10 a.m. Burial will be in Pinecrest Memorial Gardens in
Covington.

Author: Lynne Jensen Staff Writer