Voiceless Linda Ronstadt Recalls Early Opera Memories Of Childhood

In December 2012, Ronstadt was diagnosed with Parkinson's 
disease, which left her unable to sing. It was announced publicly
 in August 2013.

"Her deepest roots are musical. Ronstadt's paternal grandfather was a brass-band leader. Her father, a baritone, played her 78-rpm records of Grieg's Peer Gynt and the flamenco singer Pastora Pavón and took her to one of the few movies she saw as a child, Verdi's opera Aida. Her brother Peter was a boy soprano. Family singing, in a house with no TV until Ronstadt was in fifth grade, was the most readily available source of entertainment. It may also be the wellspring of her celebrated gift for harmonizing, exquisitely realized decades later in her three-part singing with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton and duets with the Cajun singer Ann Savoy. The strict Catholic school she attended turned Ronstadt off formal education. A natural autodidact, she became a voluminous reader, with interests that range from Victorian novels to architecture to politics. Even as she enrolled at the University of Arizona, Ronstadt knew it wasn't for long. She dropped out after a semester and headed for Los Angeles at 18 to seek her musical fortune."[Source]