In my last blogpost about Growing Older, I described my journey from a wannabe musical theater performer to reluctant classroom music teacher to journeyman classical/opera singer in the Baltimore/Washington metropolitan area.

The journey continues.

To my surprise, I moved back to my native Milwaukee in 1996, for what was supposed to be 3 years while my husband did his residency. I also thought it would be a great opportunity to get closer to my parents, with whom I had always had a prickly relationship. And I figured that since I was pretty well-respected in a large metropolitan area as a performer, I’d do even better in my home town.

Narrator’s voice: But she did not become closer to her parents, her performing career largely stalled, and she didn’t leave Milwaukee for 17 years.

During that time, I did a few things with Skylight Opera and some other companies in the Milwaukee-Chicago area. I also did two seasons of supplemental chorus with Lyric Opera of Chicago, and some other concert work. (I was not hired by Florentine Opera, for whatever reason.) I had a church job in the Chicago suburbs because there wasn’t that much church work in Milwaukee, and I sang as a section leader with a couple of local choral groups. But I was not getting the same amount of solo work that I had in a much larger market, much to my chagrin.

Plus the drive to Chicago was really long and I couldn’t guarantee how long it would take me to get there on any given day. Like the time I left Milwaukee on a Friday afternoon at 3:15pm for a 7:30pm gig in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Chicago – I allowed myself 2 hours to get there, park and eat. I arrived at 7:25pm and ran 3 blocks from my parking place to get to the theater, slip into my costume, and take my position on stage in the Akhnaten ensemble seconds before the artistic director finished his curtain speech. (According to GPS, the trip should only take 90 minutes – maybe on a Sunday at 6am, but at no other time.)

A Pivot to Teaching

I was supporting myself as a legal secretary, and while it was stable and, well, fine, I just wanted to sing – so I decided to try teaching.  I figured that I could do it between gigs. Much to my surprise after my K-8 teaching experience, I was really good at it! And I loved doing it. Certainly much more than typing and filing. And sitting the car for hours driving to Chicago.

But most of my students wanted to sing musical theater, and my knowledge of the newer pieces was sketchy. So I started going to the Wauwatosa Public Library and getting CDs to listen to the newer shows. (And the students were also bringing me things.) 

Pretty soon, this was all I really wanted to listen to. And perform some of them myself. 

But what could I do? I was now in my 40s, and, while many of the songs were in my range, I was no longer an ingenue. I wasn’t going to be cast as Jo in Little Women or Elphaba in Wicked, even though I could sing the roles. Because that would be like… 

But I wasn’t really old yet, so the old lady roles seemed wrong for me. Plus I was still singing like a classical singer, and there’s nothing weirder than someone singing musical theater (or pop) with an operatic sound.

Case in point:

I had to learn more about musical theater style and technique, as well as the songs. I became certified in the Somatic Voicework: The LoVetri Method™ and I kept listening to singers. I had a full studio of students who were getting the leads I never got in their high school musicals (it helped that they were better dancers than me), winning and placing in competitions, and being accepted to respected classical and musical theater BFA programs.

And I fell in love with cabaret, and started to explore that as well for myself and for my students.

Pivot Back to Baltimore

In 2013, my husband and I moved back to Baltimore, in part because I wanted to sing as well as teach and that wasn’t happening in Milwaukee. My shelf-life as a singer was shorter than it had been (and growing shorter by the minute) and I wanted to sing while I still could. I needed some balance between singing and teaching.

I got a church job right away, a temple job, and I started teaching at a community college. And to get back on stage, where I hadn’t been since 2004, I auditioned for community theater. Just for awhile, till I got back into opera.

I was cast as Mother Abbess in Sound of Music, Mrs. Paroo in The Music Man, the Housekeeper in Man of La Mancha, and created the role of Mary Pickersgill in a musical celebrating the bicentennial of the Battle of Baltimore. And then I made my directing debut in a production of Little Women, in which I also played Marmee. (Yes, I cast myself. The window for playing that role was about to slam shut and I really wanted to sing that role!)

All of these garnered me good reviews, a nomination for a prestigious award from a DC arts organization, more stage experience, a teaching job at a second community college, a return to Washington National Opera chorus, and a few more private students, including more avocational adults. And the majority of them still wanted to sing musical theater. 

But these weren’t the dabblers I had in Milwaukee. These are avocational adults who want to sing on stage, on film, in choirs, and do competitions. So I need to serve those singers – and myself – in the best way possible.

What parts would they/I be cast in, realistically? What repertoire would show them off vocally but wouldn’t be seen as “mutton pretending to be lamb?” My high school kids were playing their own age, but usually older, and in high school, that’s expected. But for a more mature singer, the ingenue roles were in the past. 

Pivoting from Ingenue to ?

My teacher, Marianna Busching, once told me that mezzo-soprano roles in opera could be broken down into “biddies, boys, and bitches.” (The term “witches, bitches, and britches” is more commonly used, but I like hers better – I always meant to create a recital program based on that idea.)

As I looked at musical theater repertoire for women of a certain age, regardless of voice type, I saw that while boys were not represented, what you might call biddies definitely were. And a few bitches as well. I want to explore this repertoire, those archetypes, and find out what’s out there for those of us for a certain age. There’s a lot more than you’d think!

This book will be for the singers (and the teachers of those singers) who have left the ingenue category and are heading toward grande dame. There are roles in-between, and I want to share that with you.  So stay tuned!

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