So many of today’s leading opera singers credit their success to their musical childhood. It begs the question: what did that look like? Mommy and me music classes from birth? Dancing lessons for the toddler maestro? Militant stage moms layering makeup onto their little divas? To find the truth, I decided to talk to the world’s most renowned experts on music education for children: the moms and dads of today’s opera singers. How did they nurture their child’s talent? The families I spoke with lived in different parts of the country, and each budding performer had different experiences. But two common themes ran through their childhoods: exposure and joy. These kids not only got lots of music early on, but they couldn’t get enough of it. At the risk of provoking a collective groan of embarrassment from their children, here are what the proud parents have to say.
“We had to literally ask Erin to stop practicing,” says David Palmer, the father of Erin Morley, the coloratura soprano who recently sang Queen of the Night with Santa Fe Opera. “Some kids do lessons cause they’re supposed to, and some because they’ll be punished if they don’t. Then there was Erin, who just loved to do it.” He describes Erin’s childhood as “immersed in music,” with two trained musicians for parents and plenty of chances to sing and play music as a family and in their community. Mr. Palmer, who had studied jazz trombone before entering medical school, would come home after work and sing with Erin and her older sister. When both girls were older, they would “literally sing around the piano,” anything from Broadway and American songbook tunes to Brazilian songs from the Palmers’ time as missionaries in Brazil. Erin’s mother Elizabeth is a professional violinist who taught violin and piano to her daughters when they were young, and often taught and rehearsed at home. “I guess the kids had no recourse but to become musicians,” Mr. Palmer jokes.
Singing in church and school choirs was also a big part of growing up in Salt Lake City. When Erin was 19 months old, she sang a Christmas duet with her sister during a church service, perfectly in tune and with good diction. “It was my first awakening that Erin not only had a good voice but also enjoyed being in the spotlight,” Mr. Palmer says. Both girls sang with the Salt Lake Children’s Choir (“the kids loved it,” says their dad), but Erin’s affinities lay with the piano.
It was only in high school, after landing a role in The King and I, that Erin started voice lessons. It wasn’t too hard to find a voice teacher: Erin studied with the same teacher as her dad, who had started voice lessons to audition for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. A few months later she applied to several conservatories as a double major in piano and voice, eventually attending Eastman. Meanwhile, she soloed with the Tabernacle Choir at age 18, before either of her parents were involved with the group.
After Eastman, Erin went on to Juilliard, and from there spent three years with the Lindemanns Young Artist Program at the Met. This season she is heard as soprano soloist for the Brahms’ Requiem with the American Symphony Orchestra, as a cover for Zerbinetta with the Opéra national de Paris, and with the Met Chamber Ensemble on a program of songs by Weber and Satie.
Likewise, soprano Danielle de Niese was something of a prodigy during her early childhood in Australia, showing “prodigious talent at a very early age,” as her mother Beverly says. Among Danielle’s 22 cousins, who all studied piano and dance and enjoyed performing, “we had a good sense of who would be competitive,” Mrs. de Niese explains. Danielle could sing in tune and in harmony from age three—and at age six, she started lessons in dance, drama, music theory, and singing. Both parents sang with their children, and her father’s family was also singers. Danielle’s mom taught her singing and piano when she was very young, and at age eight she began private voice lessons, studying everything from Bach to pop. Danielle quickly began winning local and national competitions, including the Australian equivalent of Star Search, becoming the youngest winner in the competition’s history. “She wanted all of this,” notes Mrs. de Niese. “She knew from an early age that she wanted to be a singer.”
When the family moved to Los Angeles when Danielle was 11, she continued her studies at local music schools, affording her frequent performing opportunities and concentrated studies. The intensive experience “enabled her to hone in on what it’s like to be a classical singer,” her mother says. Other accomplishments soon followed: the youngest singer to attend the Tanglewood Vocal Institute, an invitation to perform at the White House, a debut with the Los Angeles Opera at age 15, even an Emmy Award at 16 for guest hosting a local television show. As a college student at Mannes, she attracted the attention of the Met, which invited her to sing Barbarina and join the Lindemanns Young Artist Program, making her at age 19 the youngest participant in the program’s history.
Her mother credits her success with her long experience performing and competing. “By the time she got to the Met, it was part and parcel of what she already did.” Danielle’s upcoming performances include Despina in the Met’s Così fan tutte, a concert tour of Scandinavia, and the title role in Handel’s Rodelinda at the Theater an der Wien.
By contrast, baritone Daniel Belcher came to singing relatively late. Growing up in Missouri, he started piano at age five, practicing on a paper keyboard until his parents invested in a baby grand piano. While his first teacher praised his abilities, Danny grew disinterested when a later teacher pushed him to study classical music. “I don’t want to practice if I have to play the long-haired music,” his father Jim recalls him saying. Danny continued to play piano even after he eventually stopped lessons and played piano with the New Generation Singers, a local nondenominational Christian youth choir where he also sang. Although he did not take private lessons before college, Danny performed in musicals at a local summer stock and landed leading roles in high school productions. “His high school music teacher and play director were instrumental in bringing out so much of Danny’s character,” Mr. Belcher says. Still, when he won a scholarship to attend William Jewell College, he intended to become a high school music teacher and not a performer.
As for music in the home, “we’re not musically inclined,” says his mother Dorothy. In fact, she was somewhat reserved when Danny’s college music teacher took him aside in his sophomore year and encouraged him to pursue performance. “I told him that I wanted him to make a good living and have a good life, and that I do not want his heart broken,” she recalls, noting that “I did not want to back him if he was going to fail.” She asked the teacher if he was sure that Danny had what it takes. The teacher reassured her that Danny “had the material to make it.”
After that, Danny’s parents supported him as he started his master’s at New England Conservatory and then followed his teacher to Juilliard. Danny then went on to perform as a Young Artist with Houston Grand Opera, where he created the role of John Brooke in Adamo’s Little Women. This season, the former Eagle Scout joins the Stadttheater Klagenfurt for the premiere of Luigi Cherubini’s Koukourgi, Florentine Opera as Taddeo in L’italiana in Algeri, Opera Colorado as Dandini in La Cenerentola, and Central City Opera in role debuts of Gianni Schicchi and the Husband in Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias.
Danny’s parents credit his “determination and wanting to do it, and a lot of good people who helped him along the way.” Danny also recently told his parents that his early experience with piano has been useful throughout his career. Mr. and Mrs. Belcher are moving Danny’s old baby grand to his home, where his young daughter can start to learn too.
Fellow Missouri native tenor Ryan MacPherson has led a similarly busy career. His upcoming performances including Tom in The Rake’s Progress with Toledo Opera, Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and a reprisal of Alfredo in La traviata with Opera Santa Barbara and Opera Tampa, a role he learned at Glimmerglass Opera. How did this “dashing presence,” as the New York Times called him, grow up? Ryan’s mother Diane says that while she and her husband Jerry always liked to sing with their son, it was “not something we made a big deal about—it was just something that came naturally.”
She noticed that Ryan would sing parts of songs to himself when he was two years old, and when he was three, she taught him to harmonize to “Home on the Range.” Because “there weren’t a lot of people who wanted to teach voice at the first grade level,” she says, Ryan wasn’t able to start voice lessons until high school, when he studied with the founder of a local community music school. There he learned how to “stand up correctly, wear a suit and tie, acknowledge the pianist” and other fundamentals of being a performer. Ryan took a dance class “because of all the pretty girls,” his mother surmises, and continued singing in church and student productions.
Mrs. MacPherson attributes some of Ryan’s interest in performing with his exposure to elements of performance in other ways. His aunt bought him a horse, for example, and he loved showing the horse in competitions and the costumes that went along with horse showing. After Ryan’s second year at the University of Missouri-Columbia, his teacher advised him to pursue only opera, not musical theatre or choral works. As a college student, he sang with the St. Louis Opera chorus—and after that, “it has been a whirlwind since Yale accepted him” for graduate studies, says Mrs. MacPherson.
“As a parent, you’re protective,” she says, noting that Ryan would have to perform one role while preparing for the next. “He’d be tired, and I’d think, ‘You’re working him to death!’ You see him exhausted, but you know that’s what’s needed” for a successful career. Mrs. MacPherson notes that even as his career has progressed, he still calls home every Sunday.
Most parents were quick to tell me that they did not push their children into a musical career or make demands on them. According to their moms and dads, these singers came to music from their own interests out of well rounded childhoods that included many extra-curricular activities. Mrs. De Niese emphasized that her daughter was “such a normal kid.” “People expect kids to be bratty when they’re so good, but Danielle is one of the nicest people you could hope to meet,” she says. “Singing wasn’t the focus in life,” says Mrs. MacPherson, “it just happened to be that singing was something we enjoyed” as a family.
“Speaking for myself, I had nothing to do with it,” says Mr. Palmer, Erin Morley’s father. “My job was just to afford for her to go to the best music schools in the world.” And then, like other parents, step back and admire what their children have done all by themselves.
