Soprano

One of the world's most exciting young lyric sopranos, Ruth Ann Swenson, will sing the role of Juliette in the Baltimore Opera Company production of "Romeo et Juliette" tomorrow at 8:15 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. in the Lyric Opera House. Swenson, a huge favorite at the Metropolitan and San Francisco operas and a spectacular success at her Carnegie Hall debut last weekend, is a last-minute substitution for the indisposed Leotina Vaduva. A performance of "Romeo" Saturday at 8:15 p.m. will feature the Korean soprano Sujung Kim, who made a fine impression as Juliette last Saturday on opening night.

Carolyn Marie Hauck, a retired Enoch Pratt Free Library staff member who encouraged patrons to explore films and the arts, died of dementia complications at the Pickersgill Retirement Community. The longtime Mount Vernon resident was 89. Born in Anderson, Ohio, she was the daughter of Carroll E. and Marie Hauck. She earned a bachelor's degree in art from Miami University in Miami, Ohio, and had a master's degree in library science from Western Reserve University. She moved to Baltimore in 1954 and joined the central Pratt Library.

The Mount Vernon United Methodist Church heard a debut doubleheader last night, the world premiere of "Dear Youth", an eight-song chamber piece composed by 29-year-old American composer Daron Aric Hagen, and the first public outing of a new trio, Sonus.But it was a Peabody Institute soprano, Robin Bourguignon, who gave an indelible edge to both debuts. She sang the Civil War-based song cycle, and seven other songs with purity of tone, sophisticated phrasing and proper crescendos and diminuendos.

Lynn Taylor Hebden, a Baltimore-born lyric soprano who headed the Peabody Preparatory Department for more than two decades and was also a member of the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory, died Sunday from complications of breast cancer at her Roland Park home. She was 84. "I always sought her advice and historical perspective. She always was very interested and wanted to know how people on the faculty she had known were doing," said Carolee Stewart, the preparatory school's dean.

Judith Telep-Ehrlich, the versatile American soprano appearing in the Baltimore Opera Company's Richard Wagner concert opening Friday, feels like someone gave her "a wonderful birthday present" in the three masterpieces she's singing here."

Remember Winterling's in Highlandtown? Specializing in German cuisine and Maryland seafood, the restaurant at 3200 Foster Ave. was another one of those disappearing Baltimore landmarks. It closed last February with considerably less notice than Haussner's and some of the others received. Now it's been resurrected as Soprano's Cafe. Interestingly, co-owner Jeff Patti tells me the address is now considered Canton, which is - as we all know - one of the trendier places to open a new restaurant.

Here's what separates Barbara Daniels from her violinist daughter and her horn-playing husband."They can put their instruments in their cases," says the well-known soprano, who will sing the title role tonight in the Baltimore Opera Company's production of "Manon Lescaut.""But Mom wakes up and goes to sleep with the instrument in her throat. Other musicians can take the mouthpieces out of their instruments, close the lid of their pianos and put their fiddles in their cases. A singer is his or her instrument and subject to weather, pollen, depression and joy."

It is fitting that as Leslie B. Dunner's tenure at the helm of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra winds down, soprano Kishna Davis is coming to town for one more concert under the maestro's baton. ASO aficionados will recall that it was Davis who appeared as an 11th-hour replacement soloist at Dunner's ASO debut in February 1998. She brought last-minute repertoire with her as well. But if the conductor or the soprano, a Howard County native, felt undue pressure at having been brought together so late in the game for Dunner's audition concert, neither betrayed it in performance.

After last night, it's hard to remember The Yale Glee Club as the old Male Yale Glee Club. Sure, the Yale singers still sing elaborately without music scores. They still sing serious music and take time to kid Harvard, Princeton and, of course, themselves. They still uphold the high standards set for decades by Marshall Bartholomew, and since 1953, by Fenno Heath. They still hit the concert road when New Haven gets a bit dumpy.For most of its history, the 130-year-old club never knew the likes of senior soprano and Glee Club soloist Anna Meek, who sang a Scottish folk song "Ca the Yowes" with beautiful delicacy last night in a concert at Kraushaar Auditorium, Goucher College.

Someone at the Annapolis Symphony must be living right.Days after soprano Sarah Reese fell ill and canceled her ASO performances, the orchestra's executive director, Jane Schorsch, latched onto soprano Kishna Davis, who came to Maryland Hall on a few days' notice to sing Verdi and Puccini with guest conductor Leslie Dunner.Davis turned Saturday night's concert into a triumph by delivering her four arias with a dramatic flair that charmed and inspired her audience.The great soprano Leontyne Price described Davis' voice as "juicy and lyrical."

When Renee Fleming appears Sept. 15 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for the BSO's Gala Celebration, the appeal will be both sound and sight. The world-renowned soprano is famous not just for her voice, but for her gowns, designed for her by the likes of Gianfranco Ferre, John Galliano for Dior, Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Lacroix, Oscar de la Renta, Douglas Hannant and Angel Sanchez. We chatted with her about some of her favorites. Is it fun to play dress-up in a way most of us just dream about?

In a battle of the television behemoths, it came down to Baltimore versus New Jersey. Or was it street thugs versus the mafia? Maybe was just Omar against Tony. In any event, the website Vulture.com has had some fun recently, March Madness style, pitting favorite television shows against each other in a bracket. The goal was to crown the greatest drama of the last 25 years. Shows like "My So-Called Life," "NYPD Blue," "The X-Files," "The West Wing" and "Mad Men" didn't make the ultimate cut. When it came down to the championship, it was an HBO smackdown,"The Wire" battling "The Sopranos.

The history of a people, with all the grief, faith and determination that entails, can be heard in the simple strains of spirituals, one of the most enduring and endearing genres of American music. This week, stellar soprano Kathleen Battle will join the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Morgan State University Choir in the premiere of a spiritual-filled program she developed celebrating the Underground Railroad. No voice in recent times is more associated with this music than Battle's.

The last time Ren?e Fleming sang at Baltimore's Lyric Opera House, in December 2007, she heard something that superstar sopranos typically don't encounter - a wailing alarm bell, set off accidentally backstage. She was right in the middle of one of the most intensely moving scenes in the operatic repertoire, the "Willow Song" and "Ave Maria" from Verdi's "Otello." Fleming went silent, the orchestra went silent, and a packed house at this fundraising concert for the Baltimore Opera Company waited for the nuisance to cease.

The last time Renée Fleming sang at Baltimore's Lyric Opera House, in December 2007, she heard something that superstar sopranos typically don't encounter - a wailing alarm bell, set off accidentally backstage. She was right in the middle of one of the most intensely moving scenes in the operatic repertoire, the "Willow Song" and "Ave Maria" from Verdi's "Otello." Fleming went silent, the orchestra went silent, and a packed house at this fundraising concert for the Baltimore Opera Company waited for the nuisance to cease.

A few years ago, Sylvia McNair felt she had reached "the bottom of the bottom." Not long after discovering that her husband of two decades wanted out of their marriage, she learned that she had breast cancer and might have only six months to live. Today, the Ohio-born soprano could not look healthier or happier as she rehearses a new work fashioned out of Kurt Weill songs and created expressly for her by the American Opera Theater; it premieres this week at Baltimore's Theatre Project.

The Annapolis Opera folks know how to turn a fund-raiser into fun. Their annual Pasta, Puccini and Verdi Too dinner concerts grow larger and more entertaining each year. More than 400 people paid $50 to attend performances Friday and Sunday at the Sheraton Barcelo Hotel Annapolis. Ninety more attended a performance Saturday at the Old South Country Club in Lothian, the first time in the four-year history of the event that a show was staged in South County. The event is expected to raise about $10,000 for the nonprofit opera.

What a pleasant Sunday afternoon of singing.The weekend's third annual Annapolis Opera vocal competition proved to be the most delightful yet.Over the past two weeks, nearly 40 aspiring singers auditioned for the competition's five judges. Sunday, the eight finalists entertained a modest but enthusiastic crowd at the Pascal Center on the campus of Anne Arundel Community College.The panel of judges consisted of Ron Gretz, guest conductor of the Annapolis Opera; musicologist Eliot Zukerman of St. John's College; soprano Carolene Winter; Ava Shields, artistic director of the Annapolis Opera and conductor of the Arundel Vocal Arts Society; and Martha Wright, one of the company's founders and an honorary member of the Kennedy Center.

No. 11, Bills: Dr. Jennifer Melfi. It would be nice after failing to rehabilitate Tony Soprano if Dr. Melfi could get another shot at the impossible with Terrell Owens. (For more, go to baltimoresun.com/toydept)

Chazz Palminteri and his bus-driver dad, Lorenzo, became expert at keeping secrets. They could be gregarious, even expansive, but they knew when to shut their traps. For instance, Lorenzo Palminteri withheld crucial information about a murder that his then-9-year-old son witnessed from the family's Bronx front stoop in 1961. "At the time, I thought those men were fighting over the parking space in front of my building," says Palminteri, an Academy Award-nominated actor who specializes in playing thugs.