Growing Older – My Musical Journey (Part 1)

The book that I’m writing is about musical theater roles/repertoire for women of a certain age. Women who are growing older.

And as much as that pains me, I count myself among that demographic.

But I spent most of my adult life studying classical repertoire – how did I get here?

When I was starting out as a singer, I really wanted to sing musical theater. My early influences were Hayley Mills in the Sherman Brothers Summer Magic, Julie Andrews in both Mary Poppins and Sound of Music, and my a-ha moment came in a darkened theater in the spring of 1970, when I sat alone watching Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl. When she was on the boat singing, “Don’t rain on my parade,” I very nearly stood up in the theater to yell, “That’s it! That’s what I want to do!” (But I restrained myself.)

The musicals that I grew up with were mostly the golden age musicals filmed in the 1950s and shown on Monday Night at the Movies (and Tuesday Night, Thursday Night, etc. – there weren’t a lot of programming options back then). Oklahoma, Music Man, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls – these were the shows of my childhood. And sometimes I got to see movies in the theater – Hello Dolly! made a huge impression on me, as did Finian’s Rainbow and Thoroughly Modern Millie (Lost Horizon, less so).

When I got to high school and started doing theater, the repertoire was pretty much the same. I was in the ensemble for Music Man, a French lady in the shadows in South Pacific, and General Matilda B. Cartwright in Guys and Dolls. (Since I was an alto and not much of a dancer, the lead roles were out of my reach, both vocally and literally). I was hooked – so I went to school with the intention of majoring in music and performing on stage, somehow, somewhere.

But music majors, at least in 1976, didn’t do musicals.

They learned classical music – art songs and opera. There were no musical theater BFA programs, at least not that I knew of, and definitely not in Milwaukee. So I majored in music, specifically in music education because that was what my advisor suggested and, honestly, she knew absolutely nothing about the career options for either a performer or voice teacher – and neither did I.

I wound up being a pretty decent young classical singer, and got into a professional opera chorus with the Florentine Opera Company right out of college. My music education career did not last very long – K-8 classroom teaching was not really what I wanted to do. So I worked a day job, sang in the chorus at night, and took voice lessons on the side. 

My first teacher post-college, Judith Erickson, suggested that I audition for the then-Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee. At that time, they were a cutting edge regional house that did opera, both traditional and contemporary, operetta, musicals and musical revues. I auditioned and I was hired. My first show was chorus in HMS Pinafore, and in the spring I was in the chorus of The Student Prince.

I saw my first Sondheim musical that first year – Judy was a Liebeslieder Singer in A Little Night Music at Skylight. I had heard Judy Collins sing “Send in the clowns,” so I was familiar with that, but I knew nothing else from the show. I also saw other shows at the Skylight, including Sweeney Todd, which was the most incredible thing I had ever seen.

I still wasn’t really singing any musical theater – by this point, musicals had shifted to my mezzo-soprano/alto range, but the style wasn’t what I was trained in, and they were all rather dance-heavy. (And I still couldn’t dance any better than when I was in high school.) But I wound up doing a lot of operetta, singing Princess Margaret in Student Prince at Music Under the Stars in Milwaukee, The Third Spirit in Magic Flute with Milwaukee Opera Company, and Pitti-Sing in The Mikado. 

Moving to the Washington, DC area in 1987, I began studying with Marianna Busching, and it wasn’t long before I was hired to sing with the Washington Opera chorus. I was also singing as part of the paid core with choral groups such as the Washington Singers, Paul Hill Chorale, and Washington Bach Consort – but I preferred the stage work and gradually phased that out. 

I went to graduate school at Peabody in 1992 and did some more stage work, including Florence in Albert Herring and Grace in Roman Fever. I did small roles with big companies (Countess Ceprano in Rigoletto, The Woman in Red in Dream of Valentino with Washington Opera) and bigger roles with small companies (Nancy in Albert Herring and Annina in La Traviata with Opera North in New England, Marquise de Cathé in King for A Day with Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia). I also sang with Gilbert & Sullivan companies, playing Lady Saphir in Patience with Victorian Lyric Opera Company in the DC suburbs, and Queen of the Fairies in Iolanthe, Lady Angela (again in Patience, which I had also done with Skylight as a chorister), and Katisha in The Mikado (again) with The Young Victorian Theatre in Baltimore.

I knew what the fach I was as a classical singer. I was a lyric mezzo with a pretty facile coloratura.I didn’t think there was any room for me in musical theater, and that was fine. I was doing fine.

But then I moved back to Milwaukee – and that’s where the journey really began!

And I’ll tell you more about that in Part 2….