By Daily Press staff
The Emmy Award winning Santa Monica College Opera Theatre and the SMC Associates will present “An Operatic Tribute to Martial Singher” at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 17, in the SMC Concert Hall, 1900 Pico Blvd.
The featured performers are soprano Suzie Hanks, tenor and SMC alumnus Gabriel Silva, and collaborative artist Natalie Limonick. On the program will be solos from Schumann’s Song Cycles, as well as duets from three French operas, Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, Bizet’s Carmen and Berlioz’s Le Troyen.
A distinguished French opera star whose career started in the 1930s and who later moved to the United States, Singher, a baritone, was selected for the tribute because he was an influential mentor for Sue Ann Pinner, artistic director of the SMC Opera Theatre. In addition, he was a mentor to Limonick.
S i n g h e r ’ s career as a performer and teacher spanned five decades and included leading role performances throughout France and with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Later, he taught at the Mannes College of Music in New York, Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West, where Pinner studied with him for two years. He died in 1990 at the age of 85.
Hanks, a Wisconsin native, began singing professionally in summer stock and musical theater when she was a teenager. An accountant for the SMC Foundation, she returned to her singing seven years ago and has embarked on a recital career specializing in classic German and French songs. Her debut performing Schumann’s art songs at SMC received rave reviews, and she returns by popular demand performing with the renowned Limonick, her mentor and teacher.
Silva, who received his master’s in music from USC in June, has performed principal roles in Die Zauberflöte, La Traviata, Werther, Rigoletto, The Dialogues of the Carmelites, A Hand of Bridge, Madama Butterfly, The Merry Widow and Cosi fan tutte. He made his European debut in the summer 2003 “From Vienna to Broadway” concerts in Croatia and returned in 2004. Recent concert repertoire includes The Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem with the Westchester Lutheran Cathedral, where he is tenor soloist. He also is the tenor soloist at Beth Shir Scholom Temple in Santa Monica.
Limonick is a distinguished vocal coach, conductor, lecturer, pianist and accompanist. Among her many mentors, aside from Singher, are such musical giants as Lotte Lehman, Jan Popper, Walter Ducloux, Hugo Strelitzer, Wolfgang Martin, Maurice Abravanel and Fritz Zweig. A former professor of music and general director of opera at USC, she is one of the first women and first Americans to coach at Bayreuth in Germany and has been associated for several decades with the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara.
Tickets for the special performance, a fundraiser for the SMC Opera Theatre, are $16. Call (310) 434-3000.
The SMC Associates is a private organization that funds lectures and special programs at the college.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 9, 2005. Read the original PDF.