Janis Orenstein's opera performance

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'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.

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.

Found another lead, this time from Google Books.

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.