2004 – Page 9 – All Articles

Joy Davidson, professional opera singer and mother, shares a few thoughts on balancing career and family. A mother of five, Joy first had two children, and then 13 years later had three more, all the while traveling and singing professionally

Weeks before her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1990, Classical Singer (then called The New York Opera Newsletter) first interviewed Suzanna Guzmán. Fourteen years and one child later we catch up with her again.

A colleague of mine always reminds our potential Eastman students that as you prepare for the life of a singer, the one thing you can be sure of is that you can never be sure of where life will lead you. Hard choices have to be made along life’s way.

Below you will read edited versions of letters CS received regarding singer experiences with Central Florida Lyric Opera. What you read will surprise you. The letters at the beginning of this article have nothing good to say about CFLO. The letters at the end say nothing bad—so it is difficult to know which stories to believe. The opinions expressed are entirely those of the letter writers.
When CFLO heard we were going to run this story, we heard from their lawyer. We sent the lawyer the unedited text of both the positive and negative letters, and gave CFLO a chance to respond. Read what follows and make up your own mind.

Can motherhood and divahood co-exist? Balancing a career, especially a singing career, and a family presents enormous challenges. Mary Jane Johnson, mother of two and international opera star, talks candidly about the joys and struggles of being both a mom and a singer.

Did you know that you can study music and work part-time in France for as little as $500 a year? Here’s how one young singer made her dream of living in Paris come true.

Family and singing. It’s tough to make the two go together. I did it, but it required a lot of sacrifices—sacrifices on the part of my family, and sacrifices on

Dear Editor: Classical Singer magazine has been a wealth of information to me as a young artist. Your articles are very unique to the opera world and have broadened my

Rest in Peace, Eva Likova! University of Michigan professor emeritus, Eva Likova, died March 15 at her suburban Detroit home. She was 84 years old and had suffered from Alzheimer’s

Dear Editor: I would like to commend Sherri Weiler’s series of articles on books that singers should have in their library. I especially enjoyed “The Functional Unity of the Singing

Met Opera to Continue Broadcasting The Metropolitan Opera has received sufficient funding from the Annenberg and Stabile Foundations to allow it to broadcast the 2004-2005 season, according to a March

One wonders: How good are that black dress’s high notes? As a woman whose size also leaves me squarely
out of the Royal Opera’s black dress territory, I’ve pondered it myself. … How important is image in opera? As shown by this firing of one of the best available artists…the answer is very, very important—sadly important, in an art form that used to be about the voice and the music. Your response to this article will appear in a future issue.