Janis Orenstein is a name you may not have heard of before, but you probably HAVE heard her voice before.
She only had a few screen credits in the 1960s...the most famous of which being the voice of Clarice in 1964's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
You may remember that lovely song she sang "There's Always Tomorrow" (which isn't even a Christmas-related song, hence why I have no guilt whatsoever about posting this thread outside of the Christmas season). A fun bit of trivia, she was fifteen when she sang that song, and she did it in one take.
From the limited information I can find about Janis, after doing Rudolph she spent the rest of her career singing opera in places like Germany before sadly dying of breast cancer in 2010.
Given how lovely her singing voice for Clarice was, she must've had a great opera career. Unfortunately, there's no footage or audio anywhere on the internet of her singing opera! In fact, the only non-Rudolph footage I can find of her is an episode of The Forest Rangers she starred in. (There's also a few photos of her from the Toronto Public Library.)
I emailed Rankin-Bass historian Rick Goldschmidt (whose blog I got the above information from), and he said the only recording of her opera singing is on a CD he's selling on his Etsy, which costs twenty dollars. Oh, and there's only one in stock!
It'd be cool if there was someone who owned that CD and would be willing to rip it and upload that one track of Janis.
Making another post to say that I looked up Janis on Worldcat, and while most of the results were related to Rudolph, I found one listing that may be relevant to what I'm searching for.
Here's a CD titled "Teardrops from the ocean of love". The listing mentions Janis, and I'm pretty sure it's the same actress who played Clarice given that it's of Canadian origin, and it mentions Aydin Sencan, her husband according to sources such as IMDB and her own obituary. (Confusingly, Aydin's surname is spelled as both Sencan AND Cencan in the Worldcat source.) It also says that the CD is "not for commercial distribution", whatever that means. (Could that be why it can't be easily found anywhere?) The CD was released in 1999, so Janis would've been either 50 or 51 at the time.
It also mentions the name Ben Grossman as one of the performers. I looked that name up, and found a Wikipedia article for a person I'm 90 percent sure is the same one, since it's a Canadian musician who has worked on many CDs and has been active since the late nineties.
The Wikipedia sent me to his website, which is unfortunately very old-fashioned. But thankfully that site has a link to his Twitter, which in turn has a link to his Bandcamp page. There's a place where you can contact him, so maybe I can email him about Janis and see if he remembers ever working with her.
EDIT: I emailed Ben and he did recall working with Janis...unfortunately, he doesn't have any recordings or footage of her (he didn't even know she had done voice work for Rudolph), but I thanked him for the help anyway.
I emailed the Toronto Public Library last week, and they finally responded. They were unfortunately unable to find any recordings of Janis in their archives...but they WERE able to get me some interesting info about her anyway, specifically some shows she starred in, which may be helpful.
I put the stuff they gave me into a Google Drive, which you can view here.
They suggested some other sources to contact as well, like like the City of Toronto Archives, so I may do that sometime.
I've always loved Rudolph and the other Rankin-Bass productions (especially the music), so this search is quite interesting to me. I'm also someone who enjoys opera and would love to be able to hear Janis Orenstein's work in that genre.
I think the best bet of finding recordings would be to contact archives related to history and music, specifically in the Toronto area, as you have been doing. The University of Toronto Music Library, who hold the CD Teardrops from the Ocean of Love, may be able to give more information about it.
I know it's been a few months, but I have an update in my search.
I contacted the University of Toronto, Faculty of Music (which Janis graduated from), and one of the staff was able to find this pamphlet for a show called The Rake's Progress from 1971. (Janis's name is highlighted in blue under the chorus section.)
Like those pamphlets/flyers the Toronto Public Library dug up, it may seem insignificant, but I still consider it an important find in my search.
Updating this thread to talk about Maureen Forrester, the older woman in this photo with Janis.
Maureen was a fellow opera singer who mentored Janis, and despite not starring in anything as famous as Rudolph like Janis did, she does seem to be more known individually, given that she actually has a Wikipedia page unlike Janis, and if you look Maureen up on YouTube, you can find opera performances and interviews, while conversely, you can barely find anything about Janis.
This raises the question of why I can find so much on Janis's opera mentor, whereas Janis herself is a total ghost despite starring in such an iconic Christmas special.
Updating this thread to let everyone know I found a new lead in my search!
In this book I found on the web archive, The Illustrated Story of Opera, there's a photo of Janis Orenstein and Maureen Forrester starring in The Medium, with Janis as Monica and Maureen as Flora.
Now, unlike some of the other more obscure shows Janis starred in, like Charlie the Chicken, The Medium is actually a pretty well-known opera, and when I googled "The Medium opera Toronto", I found this 1977 recording with Maureen on a website dedicated to recorded opera performances!
Sadly, Janis is nowhere in the video, and I couldn't find anything when I searched her name on the site, but it's a sign that there IS recorded footage of some of the opera shows Janis starred in, even if Janis herself isn't there, so I think it's an important find.
Here is an excerpt from a book titled Friendship Across Religions. While it never mentions her role in Rudolph, all the info here matches up with what we already know about Janis, so I'm 100% sure this is the same Janis we're looking for and not just someone with the same name.
There is a buttload of new information here. If we do the math, it looks like she stopped performing opera in the eighties to study Tibetan Buddhism, then she got married to Ayden Sencan, who was Turkish, and mostly focused on personal music. (That explains Teardrops From the Ocean of Love, which appears to be based around Turkish music instead of the usual opera stuff, AND why it's not publicly available.)
This section of the book was written by Timothy J. Gianotti, who appears to be a professor of Islam studies if I google his name. If I can find a way to contact Gianotti, maybe I can find some more helpful info on Janis.
I've always loved Rudolph and the other Rankin-Bass productions (especially the music), so this search is quite interesting to me. I'm also someone who enjoys opera and would love to be able to hear Janis Orenstein's work in that genre.
I think the best bet of finding recordings would be to contact archives related to history and music, specifically in the Toronto area, as you have been doing. The University of Toronto Music Library, who hold the CD Teardrops from the Ocean of Love, may be able to give more information about it.
Same here, I'm not really a fan of Opera in general. But after hearing Orenstein's beautiful performance as Clarice during the song "There's Always Tomorrow" in the Rankin-Bass Rudolph special. It's a shame neither of Orenstein's opera performances has ever gained official recordings (both in audio and visual format) to the public.
Decided to share a new update I got not too long ago.
I talked to my gym trainer about my search, and she said that she had a brother who lives in Canada and studies music, so she would talk to him. She messaged her brother and sent him my Google Doc, and much to my surprise, she later told me that her brother had ALSO been searching for Janis's non-Rudolph work! Apparently the few recordings available like Teardrops from the Ocean of Love are extremely expensive.
Been debating for a while whether to share this or not, since I'm not sure how helpful this is, but I guess ANY update is better than radio silence.