When husband and wife Stephen Powell and Barbara Shirvis are asked if it was ever an issue to raise a family while pursuing their careers, the question elicits an immediate reaction bordering on a chuckle. They respond—almost simultaneously—that it is an ongoing issue. Their life together consists of two passions that equal two full-time jobs: the joy of being parents to two boys, Benjamin and Zachary, combined with a devotion to singing.
Baritone Powell and soprano Shirvis, who met in the fall of 1995 at New York City Opera, knew that they needed and wanted both. To balance their family and careers, they have to be selective about which singing jobs to accept, based on family demands, and they always consult each other before accepting. “It’s a constant juggling act of logistics and sacrifices. There are a lot of sacrifices involved,” Powell says.
Their planning does not always work out exactly as they wish, but they do their best to avoid pitfalls, such as the situation that Shirvis described when they spoke with Classical Singer in late September. “Steve is about to leave home [in Pennsylvania] to sing De Guiche in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac with San Francisco Opera, and he’s going to be gone for almost seven weeks. A long time ago, even before we had kids, we made an arbitrary rule that, to maintain our emotional connection, we wouldn’t be apart for more than three weeks at a time. In this case, since the job was booked a long time ago and circumstances with our sons’ schooling had changed, I flew out for opening night, which was about half-way through the seven weeks,” she says.
Another sacrifice concerned a potential contract for a major role with a very good company. Shirvis would have said yes, but these performances were taking place in the fall when their sons’ school was about to start, so she had to reject the offer. “It was tough to turn down, but it was the right thing to do,” she says. Further complicating the situation, Powell was out of town working at the same time, forcing them to make the decision by phone.
School for Benjamin and Zachary is now the Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School (PALCS), an online public school, but they previously were home-schooled to accommodate traveling. “We wanted our family to be together as much as possible, and we, the parents, wanted to remain the boys’ principal influence as long as possible. This seemed more important than slavishly putting the kids in public school or any school and being beholden to the school’s schedule. Steve and I believe strongly in education and taught the kids rather traditionally—the ‘3 Rs,’ if you will,” Shirvis says.
Originally, for three years, both boys had attended preschool at their local church for several days each week, a situation conducive to leaving and returning as needed, but not a possibility in a typical school. “We started schooling the boys at age five, after preschool, and really had to home-school once they were eight years old, the age at which the state of Pennsylvania requires that students be officially registered. Most parents teach their kids constantly, so it was a natural segue from preschool to at-home school,” Shirvis says.
At 10 and 12, the boys were prepared for PALCS, which offers instruction in subjects, such as science, that Shirvis and Powell do not have the time to offer adequate teaching of. By enrolling in PALCS, the children can still travel but will not fall behind in academics. The icing on the cake is that this cyber school offers three adjunct programs, one of which is an arts school, so Benjamin and Zachary do cyber work three days each week and attend the Center for Performing and Fine Arts in West Chester two days each week.
Since Powell and Shirvis perform together an average of once or twice per year, they need to determine individual out-of-town travel schedules on a job-by-job basis. “When we accept a job, we do our best to take into consideration everything that could possibly happen in the future but, inevitably, there are things you can’t plan for. When our kids were home-schooled, if Barbara was working and I wasn’t, I would accompany her to that job so we could be together—home-schooling made our traveling flexible. Now, it’s more difficult to be together since the kids and Barbara are staying home more. So, for example, I’m trying to do more concerts and fewer operas so that I’m not away as much,” Powell says.
Shirvis, for her part, is grateful for her husband’s emphasis on concerts because being out of town for six or seven days is easier to manage than being out of town for six or seven weeks—but, on the other hand, she is keenly aware of the instinct to sing as much as possible. “You still want to do what you love. Opera is food for the soul—it’s not just a job. You have to strike a balance between feeding the artistic part of you and feeding the part of you that needs to have your family around,” she says. In an ideal world, they say they would alternate jobs with time at home in between, but that seldom happens.
Recently, however, they were fortunate to work together in back-to-back engagements. This past July, they sang in “Opera in the Park 2010” with Madison Opera and in a semi-staged performance of Tosca as part of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest. In fact, the latter event featured not only Shirvis and Powell singing Tosca and Scarpia (his first), but also their son Benjamin as the Shepherd Boy (his brother Zachary was the understudy)—the first time that the three of them appeared together.
“Benjamin hadn’t sung before with a major orchestra. We weren’t really worried about it, but it was an added stress to our own performances. It was fun doing Tosca and Scarpia together, and we’d like to do it again in a normal setting, but having our son involved was fabulous. It was a highlight of our lives to take a bow with him,” Powell says. According to his mother, Benjamin acted like a true professional, which impressed and delighted his parents.
Even though Benjamin and Zachary’s interests do not specifically point to opera, they both sing, love to play music—instruments include guitar, piano, violin, and drums—and love being involved with theater. In October 2009, when Shirvis sang Alice Ford in Falstaff with Toledo Opera, both boys were invited by General Director Renay Conlin and stage director James Marvel to attend all rehearsals and appear in the production as Ford’s and Falstaff’s pages. “They love theater. It doesn’t matter if it’s opera, musical theatre, or a play,” Powell says.
Ever since their lives crossed paths at New York City Opera, Powell’s and Shirvis’ international careers have included performances of leading roles with numerous opera companies, and many orchestras have welcomed them as guest soloists in Mahler symphonies, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Haydn’s The Creation, Verdi’s Requiem, Brahms’ Requiem, and Orff’s Carmina burana, to name only a few. Powell’s wide-ranging repertoire includes Germont in La traviata, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, and the title roles of Eugene Onegin and Don Giovanni. Among Shirvis’ leading ladies are Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Desdemona in Otello, Mimì in La bohème, Violetta in La traviata, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, and Juliette in Roméo et Juliette.
Considering that busy careers necessitate as much planning ahead as possible with two children at home, does preplanning make life easier? “We’ve learned the hard way that sometimes things work out on paper, but then we get to that point and say, ‘What were we thinking?’” Shirvis relates. While her husband travels more frequently to Europe now and uses Skype to talk to their sons (he took fewer jobs overseas when the children were younger), that kind of schedule would exhaust her and pose a health risk, so Shirvis is grateful to be able to focus her career in the United States. Nevertheless, they have to determine as best they can when the timing will be convenient for Powell to travel abroad.
What is the biggest challenge for Powell and Shirvis as they balance their children’s formative years with all of the other demands on their time? They both agree on the answer: finding the time to prepare music in the midst of busy days that include everything from paying bills and shopping for groceries to cooking dinners and attending school plays. In fact, they have found the most effective solution to be organization to the nth degree—making lists for everything, writing down schedules, and planning a week’s worth of dinners.
“Both partners have to be willing to do whatever it takes,” Powell says when offering advice to other singers who are considering raising a family, pointing out that it is easy for many people to talk about that level of commitment, but more difficult to actually live up to those expectations. “Tasks could be as mundane as one person washing the dishes while the other person cooks. To keep your life running smoothly, those little things become big. If one of the partners refuses to do laundry or pay the bills, something is going to get lost, and things will build up in a negative way.”
Shirvis urges staying connected to one another, reiterating her and Powell’s three-week rule, which they always try to honor. But, just as importantly, she urges staying in touch with one’s artistry because starting a family transforms the artist into an exhausted parent who cannot always think clearly and whose voice is often tired—but a person has been an artist longer than he or she will be a spouse or parent, which is why maintaining that link to the art form is so crucial. As an added struggle, Shirvis says, the opera world as a business tends to consider a baby “extra baggage” for a woman, and many people asked her if she was going to continue to sing after having children. Interestingly, nobody asked Powell that question, which he thinks highlights society’s different views about men and women having children.
Logistics also figure in their advice, such as living near family, if possible, because more people are available to help. Powell grew up in West Chester, not far from where he and Shirvis currently live, so his family is nearby, which has made a huge difference. “That often happens naturally, that you want to be near your family when you have kids because you need help. As a singer, you really need help,” he says. They also enjoy a quiet and comfortable lifestyle in a suburb—where it is easier to feel rejuvenated between jobs than if they were living in a big city—and are close to an international airport.
Even with all of the challenges, Powell and Shirvis are thrilled to have children and know that their lives are enriched by being parents. “Despite the challenges of parenting within this lifestyle, our sons are our greatest joy. We have no regrets and, in fact, having them was the best decision we ever made,” Shirvis says.
