In celebration of its 50^th Anniversary in 2020, OPERA America set out to record the recollections of 75 key figures who have shaped the American opera field over the past 50 years.

An excerpt from the Oral History Project interview with soprano Carol Vaness:

It was kind of a wild time while I was in San Francisco, because I actually did a lot of roles, but I got really sick. I caught laryngitis and would get strep throat once every two months. There came a time when I had been asked to come to a brown bag rehearsal of Traviata. ... I, of course, was singing Fiordiligi. But I was sick as a dog, and I said, “I can’t come.” And they said, “You have to come.” Being a young singer and not wanting to lose my job, I went down sick. 

We were doing the first act aria scene with the tenor, and I started singing. I got up on the second high C, and I felt “bang!” in my voice: I had hemorrhaged my right vocal chord. ... The first thing I was going to do when I came back from this injury, which was in two months, was Julius Caesar in the Spring Opera Theater. I was scared, of course. I went down to Southern California, to my teacher, David Scott, and my doctor, who was Hans von Leden, considered now the grandfather of otolaryngology. He said, “You must work slowly, slowly, slowly.” Within the next month, my voice came back inch by inch, but secure. 

When I was done, I sang Julius Caesar to some of the greatest reviews. I see these things and I’m going, “Yeah, but what they don’t know behind this review is what was going on. In reality, in my head, was ‘Sing healthy, sing healthy, sing healthy.’”

Explore the full Oral History Project collection.

This article was published in the Fall/Winter 2022 issue of Across the Board, a publication of OPERA America for opera company trustees.