American opera singer best known in her youth for her command of the Mozart and Handel repertory, and noted for the width of her vocal range and commanding onstage presence. Her career bypassed many of the mistakes that can prove fatal to operatic careers, due to her single-minded determination, professional instincts and knowing how to profit from the good advice of her colleagues. She confesses to pre-performance pressures and unwinds by watching soap operas and reading vampire novels.
Carol Theresa Vaness was one of three daughters of a security guard and his wife. Her music-loving father insisted that she take weekly piano lessons when she became a teenager, though by her own admission, she neither liked nor showed talent for the piano. She grew up in southern California and attended a Roman Catholic girls’ school for 12 years. The school’s rigorous academic demands were far ahead of public schools, so that when she got to college she, in her own words, “didn’t have to study for two years.” A quick study only when something engaged her interest, she learned early that she had to be challenged or provoked into excellence.
She was nearly 20 years old before she took her first voice lessons. A student at California State Polytechnic College in Pomona, she was majoring in piano and English and working split shifts at a department store to pay for her rent and tuition. A teacher in a required voice class offered her lessons, and soon she was being paid for singing engagements in temples and churches.
Vaness entered graduate school at California State University and developed into what she thought was a mezzo. She began to study with David Scott, head of the voice and opera department, and attributes to him the credit for discovering her real identity as a lyric soprano. He also provided the encouragement she needed to undertake auditions. In 1976, one of the auditions provided entry into the Merola Opera Program of the San Francisco Opera. The program meant scholarship-funded training and 48-weeks-a-year employment for three years. She was one of six singers chosen to take part in the inaugural year of the program. After the audition, she completed her Master of Arts degree, and graduated in the spring of 1976, then moved to San Francisco for her apprenticeship.
In 1977 she began to attract the attention and admiration of New York critics for various performances. The same year she was heard by Beverly Sills, who swiftly arranged an audition with conductor Julius Rudel, who immediately hired her to sing with the New York City Opera in the fall of 1979. In March 1979, she gave the last of more than a hundred performances under the apprenticeship as an affiliate artist, then moved to New York City. She made her New York City Opera debut in the role of Vitellia in “La Clemenza di Tito.” She was quickly booked for more roles, but was not well-received by the critics.
Things improved by the spring of 1981. By 1982, she made her debut in Great Britain at the Glyndebourne Festival, and made her Covent Garden debut that summer. Returning to New York in the autumn of 1982, she sang in the City Opera production of “La Traviata” but became too ill to finish in the first act, so she stopped, apologized to the surprised audience and left the stage. Though she recovered from the bronchial flu, she lost her self-confidence for returning to the stage. The season of 1983 was her last with the New York City Opera.
In February 1984, without rehearsal, she made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera. In July 1984 she impressed Glyndebourne audiences, and in the spring of 1985 she sang with the Philadelphia Orchestra. That summer she also sang with the Australian Opera and with the Metropolitan during the 1985-1986 season. She has also recorded and appeared on television.
Link to Wikipedia biography