Silvia Mann, widow of civic leader Fredric Mann, dies

Silvia Rosenberg Mann, widow of Philadelphia civic leader Fredric R. Mann and a flamboyant presence in her own right, died yesterday of aortic stenosis in Hallandale, Fla., where she had lived since 2006. She was 96.

Mrs. Mann was a mainstay of the city's fine arts community and for years after the 1987 death of her husband - who spearheaded the Mann Center for the Performing Arts - hosted salons in her Rittenhouse Square apartment, always with show-biz flair. "She was onstage when you got there," Curtis Institute dean Robert Fitzpatrick recalled yesterday.

Relatives described her as something of a real-life Auntie Mame, who took her family around the world in 30 days on the Concorde but also drove a rented bus near combat zones in Israel, handing out cigarettes and fresh socks to soldiers.

She and opera star Roberta Peters were in Israel in 1967 when the Six-Day War broke out and were determined to stay to offer the troops moral support and entertainment. When their spouses told them to prepare for the last evacuation plane for Americans, Mann's advice to Peters was "Pack slow." They missed the plane.

The Mann household contained five daughters and a constant stream of fine music, whether played by the great Artur Rubinstein (a family friend) or a young artist in the house to practice.

The Manns met in 1932, under less-exalted circumstances: Silvia, daughter of poet Paula Nelson Rosenberg, was a 19-year-old singer in the spectacular Earl Carroll's Vanities at the Forrest Theater. The Russian-born Mann, making his fortune in the paper business, was taken with the red-haired beauty, and the day after meeting her asked if she would quit show business to marry him. "Consider yourself engaged," she said.

The two were synergistic complements to each other. Before World War II, they aided Jewish refugees seeking asylum from Nazi-imperiled Europe. Mrs. Mann organizing fund-raising events with Rubinstein, violinist Bronslaw Hubermann, and Albert Einstein (with whom she enjoyed some good-natured sparring).

After her husband's term as ambassador to Barbados in the 1960s, she returned to Philadelphia with an injured dog, named Connelly, that she had rescued from the roadside. When her husband was proclaimed "outstanding cigar smoker" by the Cigar Smokers of America, she broke the association's gender barrier by picking up the award in his place, since she enjoyed cigars, too.

Inevitably, some of her stands were controversial. Though many operagoers forgave soprano Kirsten Flagstad for living in Nazi-occupied Norway, Mrs. Mann organized pickets at the singer's 1947 Academy of Music recital, and the concert itself, marred by hecklers and stink bombs, was one the diva later said was the worst of her life.

Though her husband championed the free-lawn ticket policy at Mann Center orchestra concerts, Mrs. Mann said people didn't value what they got for free. She later admitted she was wrong.

She and her husband knew several presidents (John F. Kennedy appointed her to the board of governors of the United Service Organizations) and once visited painter Marc Chagall in Nice bearing an American kosher salami. She moved to Newtown Square's Dunwoody Village in 2001 and to Florida in 2006.

Survivors include daughters Gail Denny, Nela Tutvin, Fredrica Breidenstein and stepdaughter Gilda Ellis. She was preceded in death by daughter Gay Ribenfeld. The extended family includes 15 grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren. Services are 11 a.m. Tuesday at Joe Levine Memorial Chapel in Trevose, with interment at Roosevelt Cemetery.