Breakout Session
What Do You Do for an Encore After the Opera is Over? – Reinventing the Female Classical Voice after Menopause
Sunday, July 10 • 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Presenters: Jennifer Trost, Mary Saunders-Barton
Introduced by: Norman Spivey
Location: Marriott Ballroom - 4th Floor
Mary Saunders Barton and I will discuss changes to the female classical voice after menopause and the challenges when one is a professional speaker all day (teaching). Discuss the possibility of reinventing yourself and considering making a Fach change by exploring character roles in opera and learning musical theatre mixed belt to expand repertoire choices and to promote healthy singing. Conclusion: be open to all possibilities and try things out and see what works for you. You can continue to sing, if you're willing to allow your identity as a singer to evolve.
About Jennifer Trost
Jennifer Trost joined the Penn State School of Music voice faculty in 2005. She earned a BA in Music Education at Albion College in Michigan, a MM in Applied Voice at Michigan State University, and took advanced courses at the doctoral level at the University of Southern California. Prior to Penn State, she taught studio voice at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich, Germany. Trost is a young-dramatic soprano with a fifteen-year career as an opera singer. She spent two years with Los Angeles Opera as a resident artist; four years with the Wuppertal Opera in Wuppertal, Germany; and nine years with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Germany. She was privileged to work regularly with well-known conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Wolfgang Sawallisch, James Levine and, especially, Zubin Mehta, the General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera.
About Mary Saunders-Barton
Mary Saunders-Barton is a Cum Laude Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Mount Holyoke College with a Master's degree from Middlebury College and the Sorbonne, Paris. While in Paris, she studied with Pierre Bernac and received a diploma from the Ecole Normale de Musique. She serves as head of voice for the Bachelor of Fine Arts program in Musical Theatre and as program head for the Master of Fine Arts in Voice Pedagogy for Musical Theatre at Penn State University. In addition to her university teaching, Mary maintains a studio in Manhattan for professional performers. In recent Broadway seasons, her students could be seen on Broadway in Wicked, Mamma Mia, The Lion King, Kinky Boots, Book of Mormon, Chicago, Newsies and Beautiful, among others. In 2013, Mary was the keynote musical theatre speaker at the International Congress of Voice Teachers in Brisbane, Australia. In 2014, she was a master teacher for the The National Association of Teachers of Singing Intern Program. She is a frequent master class presenter at universities and professional organizations in the US and Europe. Mary has produced two DVDs on Musical Theatre Singing, Bel Canto Can Belto: Teaching Women to Sing Musical Theatre and a companion DVD, What About the Boys?
