My name is Amy Cheifetz Billings and I am a recovering opera singer. My recovery involves finding my way back home to my first love of American Musical Theater while also making friends with all that glorious “high-brow” classical stuff again, but with an altered perspective. Too often singers are taught that they can only serve one master, that only one genre deserves attention and respect. This is wrong and misguided! Why can’t the two genres coexist peacefully and joyfully even? First of all, please remember that without opera there would be no musical theater. And really, aren’t Despina and Eliza Doolittle cousins of sorts? I think Herr Mozart, Mr. Sondheim, Signor Puccini, Messrs.’ Rodgers and Hart and all the other esteemed creators of both genres would have enjoyed each other’s work tremendously. I have an equal passion for the two (wrongly disparate) worlds of opera and Musical Theater and am on a mission to let them happily co-mingle and share the love!

written 9/2011