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Some 15 years ago, Marilyn Horne, coming up on her 60th birthday, sat down for a rare moment of quiet reflection. It had been nearly four decades since her debut at age 20 with the Los Angeles Guild Opera Company of Los Angeles. Horne’s voice—“technically perfect, with which she can do anything she wants,” wrote one critic—had been ideally suited for the difficult coloratura mezzo-soprano roles of Rossini’s and Handel’s little-performed operas. She had snatched them from obscurity and made them her own—and the world’s.
Now some 1,000 opera performances and 1,300 recitals later, she was bidding adieu to the opera stage. What now? she wondered. I’ve had a fabulous career. Is there something I can give back?
As Horne talked with friends, a theme emerged: The vocal concerts that had been so much a part of her life growing up were becoming an endangered species. Maybe she could help save them.
In 1994, she started The Marilyn Horne Foundation, “to support, encourage, and preserve the art of singing through the presentation of vocal recitals and related educational activities.” Thus, the curtain rose on the second act of Horne’s life, with the opera diva now in the role of teacher and champion of young artists.
Each year, the Foundation celebrates classical song with a four-day festival at Carnegie Hall. Eighteen vocal students from conservatories and colleges across the United States are selected by audition to participate in masterclasses led by singing luminaries (past teachers include Joan Sutherland, Barbara Cook, and Dawn Upshaw, along with Horne). Four of the students present duo-recitals and one performs a new composition, commissioned for the event (10 new works have been added to the vocal arts repertoire since 2000). Alumni singers, many of whom now have international careers in full bloom, then join the newcomers for a final recital.
Choral singing taught her a deep appreciation of the importance of musical teamwork, which she carried with her to the opera stage, and gave her a lifelong love of the great choral works.
“It’s incredibly gratifying to hear young singers sing the repertory that I myself have loved, and to hear it done so well,” says Horne. In her teacher role, Horne is known as a stickler for technique. “I’m a sucker for a great instrument…but he or she must also have a solid musical foundation,” she says. “They need to learn the basics and know the different styles—singing Handel is way different from singing Puccini.”
An Early Bloomer
Horne’s own basic training as a singer began early. Little Marilyn gave her first public performance at age two at an FDR rally in her hometown of Bradford, Pennsylvania. Her father, realizing he had a major talent on his hands, took Marilyn to her first voice teacher at age five—a prim, ramrod-backed woman who sang out of the side of her month. “Even then, I knew that was a no-no,” Horne recalls.
Luckily Horne’s early teachers did not mess with her natural voice placement, and at age eight, she learned something without which her prodigious gifts would have never flowered: the basic technique of breath support. “It’s the very foundation of singing,” she says.
Much of Horne’s early musical experience came from singing in choruses—church choirs in Bradford and, after the family’s move to California, the junior and senior high school choirs.
When she was 12, Marilyn and her sister Gloria, also a talented singer, joined the Concert Youth Chorus conducted by Roger Wagner. The group—later renamed the Roger Wagner Chorale—sang everything from Dvorak to doo-wop, and often did soundtracks for movies and television programs.
“The vastness of my experience was absolutely not remunerable,” Horne says of those days. Choral singing, she says, taught her the importance of musical teamwork, which she carried with her to the opera stage, and gave her a lifelong love of the great choral works. “If I were on a desert island and could have only one piece of music,” she says in her autobiography, “I’d choose Bach’s St. Matthew Passion because that’s the greatest music of all time.”
Giving Back
Throughout her long career, Horne never saw herself as a teacher. Now in great demand across the country as a leader of masterclasses, she has come to realize, “I like giving back, and that’s really what teaching is.”
In 2009, the Marilyn Horne Foundation marked its 15th anniversary and Horne her 75th birthday with a big gala at Carnegie Hall. There was much to celebrate. Since 1994, some 564 college students have participated in the public masterclasses, 100 gifted young singers have given recitals, and nearly 57,000 people have attended. Many of these vocalists are giving back, performing mini-recitals in public schools around the country. Horne’s second act is turning out to be every bit as prolific as her first. That deserves a standing ovation.
This article is adapted from the Summer 2008 issue of The Voice.
