Tell us about your career path. How did you know you wanted to be an opera singer?
It was not something I wanted to do at all! In fact, I hated the sound of opera, all those wobbly vibratos and weird high notes. I attended Pomona Girls Catholic School in Pomona, California, and for all those years at 7:00 every morning, Monday through Friday, we would attend an abbreviated version of the "high" mass in which we did the most beautiful music ever. I was lucky I know, because at a time when the Church was beginning to do the "denim" bible and guitars and so on, my old church was still doing Latin masses and the ceremonies that I truly loved which introduced me to Hadyn, Mozart's big masses, Beethoven, Handel, Vaughan Williams, you name it--all the choral greats!

But still, I didn't want to be an opera singer, I wanted to be a graphic artist.  I loved painting and won a few small contests for design. But in the end, there was this choir that I wanted to be part of, the "big choir" at Cal Poly (California State Polytechnic University). I found that I had this burning desire I had to fill my heart and soul with music. I did join the choir and eventually changed my major from just English to English with a second degree in piano during my very first year in college. I thought perhaps it would help me feel the satisfaction I was looking for, but it did not. I got pretty good and even played some recitals (I shudder to think now of doing so but was not at all nervous then--just goes to show you). I learned from the head of the choral department that to get into the other choirs you had to perform; I had no pianist for that audition and asked if I could just bring my guitar and he rolled his eyes and said "well, OK, why not?" He was (he later told me) blown away by how easy it was for me to sing and what a long range I had. I passed my piano proficiency, then went on to change to a voice major because, if the truth be known, I loved beyond description the beauty I felt I was more capable of producing with my voice than with the percussiveness of the piano. So, there you go. My first voice teacher handed me a recording of the Mahler Kindertotenlieder and said, "OK, I think you sound like Christa Ludwig, go ahead and imitate this." So I did. And after two years I did no harm. Hetaught me more from good breathing rather than range. So I was really singing all sorts of wild combos: Ulrica (from Ballo), Cleopatra and Peter Grimes; Antony and Cleopatra, Tosca and Don Giovanni; The Marriage of Figaro, Un Ballo in Maschera and Handel's Alcina. My biography reads like the book of records!

In the last three years I have done everything from the "Doll" in Tales of Hoffmann with Sam (Ramey) and Luciano and Jimmy (Levine at the Met) to a Boccanegra with Capuccili, Carmelites with Zeani and Leontyne Price and Crespin...It sounds wild but I sang everything with my real voice. I did not try to scream and make an ugly Lady Macbeth nor make a tiny baby doll and sing "little"--I sang the appropriate style with the soft sounds and the bigger sounds with MY VOICE...just a different style.

What has been your favorite role to perform? Why?
Tosca, becasue she is real and reacts truly like a real woman in that terrible predicament would. I love Traviata because we have all made mistakes and it is good to have the catharsis of being able to try to purge ourselves of them while singing this role. Plus Donna Anna is a joy and fun fun fun to find, each and every time, a new musical way to create the character with the coloratura and to not just make her a pain in the a** always moaning. If the audience were able to see the performance done as one night (or the producers were able to do it truly through one 24-hour time frame, as both Mozart and Da Ponte required it be done), then all of Donna Anna's irritation with Ottavio is totally normal. Just imagine your father being brutally murdered and the man you are engaged to trying to drag you away from the body of your father, saying "oh, come on hon, lets get married and forget all this--let me be your daddy now!" We would, in today's time, immediately drop such a man and move on!

Do you have a favorite opera?
Macbeth, Tosca, Traviata, Trovatore, Don Giovanni, but most of all Cosi fan tutte! But I also love Barber's Antony and Cleopatra and Peter Grimes and well....jeesh, I love love love Traviata, it is the Verdi role I have done the most, (about 100 times) and every time I find someting new, something more simple that makes her love for Alfredo more tragic! Vespri is a great challenge and that I love just because it is so very very hard to maintain the tessitura. I love those sorts of challenges. The physicality of opera would surprise the average person who did not really know what terribly hard work it is, that for every 5 minutes one sees on the stage, there are hours and hours that go into working on not only the tone but the position on the set, the color of the voice, the projection of the voice and the necessary homework of learning the language, sometimes on your own, then taking it to a coach to be torn apart and fixed. Yes, it can be grueling--one has to really be "called" to be an opera singer: it is so hard personally;  aside from the difficulty of the work itself, the toll it can take on a home and family can be very hard as well.

How has your perception of the opera world changed as you’ve transitioned from performing to teaching?
It has not changed at all.  I still remain in the center of things as I am still in pretty close contact with my managers at Zemsky/Green who are waiting for my knee to return to normalcy (after surgery and recuperation) and want me to re-enter the scene in another fach. I am occasionally interested in that, it really has been pain that has kept me from doing most of my singing engagements this last year.

How is establishing a performing career different for young singers today than it was for you?
Ah, it is harder in some ways now. I imagine that Beverly Sills (my personal mentor) would have said the same. But it also seems as if the great young voices are "used up" more quickly, pushed too soon into repertory that they are not ready for, then tossed out if something happens and they get hurt. And there is just not the kind of care or respect or as much guidance for the singers that there used to be when I was "growing up."  Yes, there are terrific people in the world who fight against that trend and try to keep it moving and giving and protecting; but money talks nowadays and you know, the truth is that one of the words that young singers need to learn how to say is "no." It is hard to do when you are looking at all those bills: rent and coaching bills and all the rest.

And think of it, on top of all that worry and scurry, each singer must keep the voice in "always ready" shape--I do not envy the singers of today. Although, mind you, I did scrub floors and did dishes at a rest home and sold my car and cleaned houses for extra cash--it is hard now and it was hard then, but now with media showing performances from the Met, SFO, Houston and others, well, all singers need to look good, too--gyms, diets, not too much wine, then work and language study and singing and getting better and coaching--it is wild, but not impossible. Plus, if it is your calling in life you can't not do it. You have to do it, but you have to love it--or it will kill you!

What do you focus on when you teach masterclasses? How do you tailor them to the participants?
I have a way to ask questions and listen to what each person individually says to me, where I never think one size fits all, in singing or interpretation. So, I find it best to let the singer sing, then talk a bit, ask questions, ask about languages, then we take things apart--differently for each singer, as no one is the same.

What are you most excited about with your upcoming visit to DMMO?
Hearing new voices, seeing my dear friends Robert Larsen and Christiaan Crans--two really brilliant men!

Tell us what you’re listening to these days.
The NEW Luciano Ballo in Maschera and a few tapes of me (mine I do only to see if I remember correctly what I did to make a color or a dramatic effect that a great conductor asked me to do). Sometimes, just because I don't agree with them at the time, it does not mean that I do not think they are brilliant. It is the personalities--conductors and sopranos,we argue a lot--and one thing I discovered after all these years, sometimes they were really really right! Oh well, better late than never, eh?