My Life as an Opera Singer

Late last night I happened to see the Metropolitan Opera production of “Carmen” on one of our PBS stations and stayed awake until it was over at 2:00 AM. Why was I so spellbound? When I was seventeen my father, who was a lover of classical music, gave me a LP album of “Carmen”. Since the album contained the libretto, I was able to follow and sing along trying to learn the role. I missed a lot of the action listening to the recording so it was rather excited to finally see it. The production was astounding, not because of the music, but by the acting of the two principals and the magnificent stage sets. The singer playing Carmen was absolutely beautiful and the role called for her to be sexy which, believe me she carried it to the max. The fact that words in English flashed on with a brief description of each piece of music was a huge plus. After working on that opera for a long while, it became boring and I moved on to other music. My brothers got so tired of hearing me sing, they started to hide my albums.

Years later when my husband and I with our three children moved to Chicago, I started looking for a place to sing and there was an article in the paper about a local couple who were forming an opera workshop and looking for interested singers. It wasn’t necessary to know French or Italian and we would learn the music phonetically. I joined and immediately met some men and women looking for the same outlet. We worked on the short opera “A Masked Ball” as well as “The Telephone” which was written in English. The group rented a local school auditorium, as well as French Revolution costumes complete with enormous white wigs. We sold tickets and my husband attended along with a good friend. Later, they told me they ran out of the theater after the performance because the program was so bad they couldn’t stop laughing and didn’t want to face the other singers.

Shortly thereafter, our small group gave up on opera and formed our own community chorus. There was a group in the same town presenting operettas, which none of us were interested in. Inside the operetta group there were several people wanting to do Broadway musicals and they more or less forced them to do “The Music Man”. It was a huge success but the group still wanted to do operettas. So a small group of four people borrowed money to organize the BOB Players (Best Off Broadway) which would do only Broadway Musicals. Our little chorus joined them and became an integral part of the group. The premise of the new company was to do musicals with the same standards as professional companies. Our choreographer had been an assistant to Josh Logan on “South Pacific”, we had actors and singers and dancers who had been Broadway professionals. The directors, choreographers and musicians were the only one’s being paid. The scenery for our first production “Annie Get Your Gun” was designed by former professional and she taught me all the techniques for painting and building scenery and our costumes were designed and custom made for us. My daughter, a talented artist even at the age of twelve, drew the enormous horse for the living curtain which Frank Butler sat on for the finale. She and I painted the scenery on weekends. Everyone who participated was expected to work on production committees. We were a smash hit and the producers got their front money back. They had borrowed $3,000 which had been a big risk for them. Thereafter the company was self-sustaining. Ticket and advertising sales revenues were used to pay for future productions.

We did two productions a year and rehearsed for three months. I was on stage only once a year, but worked backstage for the other show. The reviews we received were wonderful and we were called the finest semi-professional company in the Chicago area. And that’s how I started my stage career in the 1960’s. I’m sure you’ll hear more of my theater years in forthcoming Blogs.