Nathan Treske Bahny, who worked for more than 34 years at Quinn Library and performed throughout New York City as an opera singer, died at home on Feb. 5 from atrial fibrillation. He was 72.
Bahny began working in Quinn Library full time in 1992 as a circulation/reserve support staffer, helping faculty members reserve the reading materials needed for their courses and assisting students with book and research queries.
“The faculty that he dealt with were very fond of him. The students were crazy about him. And he was popular with the entire staff,” said Linda LoSchiavo, director of University Libraries. “He had a tremendous number of interests. But music was his passion, and when the day was over, he grabbed a score and off he went to a rehearsal.”
Though opera singing was his first love, he also had a deep knowledge of cinema. He used this expertise to establish Quinn Library’s media collection of more than 6,000 DVD films, well before the streaming era.
“I remember talking to faculty members who were affiliated with NYU,” said former colleague Bob Allen, assistant director of University Libraries, “and they would comment on our DVD collection saying, ‘My gosh, NYU’s got a film school. But your collection here far exceeds what we have available in our library.’”
Allen also described Bahny as a voracious reader. The Quinn Library staff, he said, plans to create a reading nook dedicated to Bahny with the dozens of books he had checked out, from Michelangelo: The Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel to Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical.
Bahny was born in Eureka, California, to Anne Lucille Treske and Herman Leon Bahny, both opera singers; the family moved to the East Coast after his birth. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science from SUNY Brockport but followed in his parents’ footsteps and pursued singing opportunities in New York City. He performed in over 100 operatic roles and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Extra Chorus for a number of years.
LoSchiavo said she saw Bahny in a Metropolitan Opera production of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which featured guilds of numerous craftsmen wearing symbols of their craft. Bahny, a member of the baking guild, had loaves of bread strung around his neck. When LoShiavo texted her congratulations after the show, he quickly shot back: “‘It was the roll of a lifetime.’”
“That was him,” said LoSchiavo. “He was very funny.”
He first met his wife, Elizabeth Hastings, a conductor, opera coach, and adjunct professor at NYU, at the Amato Opera Theater in Manhattan in 1979. After 25 years together, the couple married in 2007, with many of their friends in the music and opera world in attendance.
In the obituary for her husband, Hastings wrote that Bahny was “blessed with wonderful friends and colleagues” at Fordham, and grateful that his stress-free role afforded him the ability to pursue his passion.
“I was privileged to love and be loved by this sweet, funny man,” she said in the closing of her eulogy.
Bahny is survived by his wife. Services were held on Feb. 9. A video of the memorial is available to view here.
