Ninfa Gianfala, Former Metropolitan Opera Young Arist, Releases CD

Ninfa Gianfala, far right, after winning first place in the 1962 
Gulf Coast regional auditions of the Metropolitan Opera.

"The ghostlike image of the little girl from Magazine Street hovers in the background, but she’s not an apparition. 'That’s me,' Ninfa Gianfala says, pointing to the image. 'I was the little girl from Magazine Street.' Inside, she’s still that little girl, the one who loved to perform, the one who was teaching neighborhood kids to sing at age 9, the youngest person ever to become a member of the New Orleans Opera Chorus. The one who has put together a retrospective CD chronicling her career in opera and concerts, titled — what else?— The Little Girl from Magazine Street. The CD comes in a two-disc set and is available on iTunes and at Amazon CDBaby.com. The cover features a photograph of Gianfala from her performance days in the foreground, the ghostlike photo of her as a child in the background. Now she sits at the dining room table in the Baton Rouge home she shares with husband, Daniel Caruso, to tell her story. It was Caruso, along with the couple’s daughter, Lori, who encouraged Gianfala to compile the CD of the music that had taken her from the New Orleans Opera to New York for the Juilliard School for the Performing

Click here to purchase the album

Arts, then to LSU for her master’s degree. Eventually, she opened the Mexican restaurant El Palacio with her husband. Critic Rex Reed used to frequent the restaurant when visiting his ailing father. Gianfala never met him, but he knew about her musical background. And he remembered her upon receiving a copy of the CD, opening his review with, 'Nina Gianfala may not be a household name, but that is just an accident of fate. She deserves to be widely known because her talents are varied and many.' Reed points out that Gianfala is equally at home singing opera and Broadway show tunes. What he doesn’t discuss — and perhaps didn’t know when writing the review — is that she also is a composer, having written a Christmas opera titled 'Malachi.' Gianfala teaches voice lessons, her students ranging from age 5 to 70-something. It’s a job she’s loved since her childhood at 3915 Magazine Street." [Source]

Priti Gandhi Makes Transition From Center Stage To Behind Scenes

"For soprano Priti Gandhi, the past two months have had all the melodramatic highs and lows of grand opera. But fortunately, her story is ending more happily than those of the tragic divas she’ll play Saturday in a North County opera recital. Gandhi is one of five singers who will join the Center Chorale and Festival Orchestra for 'Opera's Greatest Moments' at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. The longtime Del Mar resident gave up her full-time singing career last fall for a desk job with the San Diego Opera. Then in March, she and her co-workers were stunned when the opera’s ex-leadership announced it would shut down the struggling 49-year-old company this spring. Since then, a groundswell of support from repentant board members, employees and the opera-going public have rescued the company — and Gandhi’s job — from extinction. 'I’m so grateful, so humbled and so overjoyed,' said Gandhi, 41. 'I feel renewed by the faith that San Diego has shown us.' Over the past 19 years, San Diego Opera fans have watched Gandhi grow up on the Civic Theatre stage. Fresh out of UCSD in 1995, she joined the company’s chorus, then spent two years each with the touring vocal ensemble and as a resident artist. In 2000, she made her solo debut in the company’s A Streetcar Named Desire. The Mumbai-born singer spent the next 13 years performing internationally with opera companies in France, England, the Czech Republic, Mexico and throughout the U.S. But the peripatetic life of a starving artist grew stale and she was grateful when an opportunity came along last September to apprentice with Marianne Flettner, the company’s 30-year artistic administrator. When Flettner retires next month, Gandhi will assume her position." [Source] Watch several videos after the jump of Ms. Ghandi discussing the San Diego Opera and her career as a singer.

Verdi's "Un Giorno di Regno" Brought to Life at Seattle Opera

Resident Artists of Opera San Jose Strike a Glamorous Pose

 
Click the image to see a larger version. Read more about the young singers here.

Seattle Opera YAP to Present Donizetti's "Don Pasquale"

 
Read more about the production by clicking here.