As close to 80's hair band as opera gets...

          I often find myself telling people that no, I did not come from a musical family. And in the strict sense of the definition, this is true. My mother played some piano and a dusty 45 year old trumpet sits in the basement because she could never get it to sound like anything other than “a dying cow” according to her parents. She also was asked, rather cruelly, to lip-synch during her eighth graduation because she was “throwing the whole choir flat”. My father can basically carry a tune. My brother had a passion for music and the recording process, but after his voice dropped, a range of about three notes. There were tales of how several of my great-grandparents were good singers, one of whom was a cantor in the Ukrainian church, which was and is always sung a cappella. It wasn’t until recently that my Dad came across a second cousin at a funeral who had had a professional singing career in Raleigh for many years, that we discovered a pocket of his cousins were musicians. The aptitude was certainly not evident in my immediate family.

          I definitely did not hear much opera as a child, if any, until my great-aunt Josephine exposed me to it as a pre-teen. And yet, all that seems to have mattered was that I grew up in a household that cared about many different kinds of music. I can remember all of us sitting in the car until the end of Don McLean’s “America Pie” was finished on the radio. My father has an eclectic record collection, mostly made up of jazz, blues, and folk recordings, but also Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven and a good amount of Stravinsky. We watched a lot of movie musicals with my mom, but my mother turns up her nose at most popular music in the same way she prefers Masterpiece Theater (a.k.a. British soap-operas) to American sit-coms. (“I am not interested in the struggles of middle-America”). The only exception for a good song in her mind is that it be good for dancing. “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seegar is one that will get them both on their feet every time.

          So it is this penchant for PBS that brought us several musical excerpts that might have inspired a pursuit of opera. I was exposed to one oratorio. My Mom’s favorite recording; The Morman Tabernacle Choir’s Handel’s Messiah, once got caught in the car’s tape player for six months after Christmas. The Nutcracker also has had a profound effect on me, or was it Mikhail Baryshnikov? Only recently was his 1977 version for PBS made available again on Amazon. (Before this, there was the running joke that if my house were on fire, I always knew the exact location of my beloved VHS copy and it would be Micsha and me running out the door.) Just as important to my music memories was something that I no longer know if we still own. Because my mom is not one to listen to an album in its entirety, preferring only her favorite tracks on repeat ad nauseam, (see also: Feliz Navidad all December long), with the invention of the VCR in the 80’s, she had a video of her favorite song clips from TV. These will not be your typical 80’s hairband selections. Both of my parents stopped paying attention to any pop music basically past 1969. They couldn’t name a single Led Zeppelin song, and when I once asked my mother to name 3 artists from the 80’s, after 10 minutes she could only come up with Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen. Rather, it was this video that I watched repeatedly as a toddler and that infiltrated my formative years. It featured a clip of Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy singing “Indian Love Call”, a smattering of Cajun music from the film “The Big Easy”, and a recording of Joe Williams singing “All of Me” in the film of the same name featuring Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin dancing to the closing credits. It also featured this, which, now having found on YouTube can surely be explanation unto itself of just why I became an opera singer.

Samuel Ramey: Ol' Man River with chorus

          This is not technically opera repertoire, but surely there can be no one else quite like Samuel Ramey. Even now, having just re-discovered this, I am sitting here with my hair blowing back in shock and amazement at that damned instrument of his. HOW DOES HE DO IT? Known to his college roommates and beyond as “The Voice” Ramey is famous for possessing a huge bass for the very lyrical repertoire, but also an agile enough instrument to handle a great deal of moving coloratura. And, as the boyfriend points out, he is unlike any other bass in that there is a “tenor ring” to the voice. No, seriously, how does he do it???

          I also really like that they use the complete version with chorus from the original show. I still find Showboat to be unbelievably progressive in its racial commentary for 1927. Admittedly, the use of the word “darkies” here does cause a bit of a knee-jerk reaction in these times, but it was still, in my opinion, the first move into contemporary musical theatre drama. Before this, they were writing plots for the songs on Broadway and after this it was the story first. They talk a lot about Oklahoma and its breakthrough ballet, but I say that that is a lot of phooey next to the inter-racial couple featured for the first time in Show Boat, not to mention the introduction of wonderful black singing actors like Paul Robeson to national stages.

          This is concert singing at its very best. It’s no wonder I was inspired to pursue live, unplugged singing with orchestra at such a tender age. Thanks Mom.