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Patricia Schuman: Sing, Sing a Song

Patricia Schuman sings in operas, in musical theater, in recitals—but she never sings in the one place where many people give range to their vocal chords: in the shower.

Local residents will have an opportunity to hear Patricia sing on Sunday, March 6 at the Essex Winter Series. Unlike most of the concerts in the series, this one will take place at John Winthrop Middle School, not Valley Regional high school.

Patricia describes the recital as “romantic, relaxing, music that I love.” The program includes songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Benjamin Britten, and a selection of vocal music by the well-known Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. Patricia explains that the Spanish songs are special for her because her mother, born in Nicaragua, loves de Falla’s music.

“Singing in Spanish is a tribute to my mother,” she explains.

The program will also include two popular operatic duets, “Belle Nuit” from Tales of Hoffman and “Viens, Mallika” from Lakmé that will feature not only Patricia, but also another singer whose name she will not reveal, saying only that she is a performer with an international reputation.

“A mystery guest,” she explains.

Opera demands that a singer perform roles in many languages, sometimes English, more often Italian, French or German. Patricia studied French in school, took a Berlitz course to learn some Italian, and studied German on her own from books and tapes.

“I know enough to get around, to order a meal,” she says, “but not enough to discuss philosophy.”

Patricia didn’t start out to sing opera. In fact, she didn’t start out to sing at all. In high school, she recalls, she was never chosen to sing the lead in the school musical.

“I did not have an exceptional voice; it was not big; it was not pretty,” she says. “I was just an average high school singer.”

At college at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Patricia did sing with in choral groups and a conductor told her he would like to give her a solo, but couldn’t because her voice was untrained. The conductor suggested she take voice lessons. Patricia did, from a former opera singer who told her she had the potential to sing opera. By her junior year, Patricia had something she had never achieved in high school: the lead, this time a college opera production.

Patricia’s voice teacher told her that several students were auditioning for the chorus of the San Francisco Opera and suggested she join them. She thought if she were lucky maybe she could get a job as a substitute when one of the regular chorus members was absent. Instead, she was chosen for the chorus herself. She arranged to finish her senior year with a schedule that would permit her to perform and she began her professional career.

At the outset, Patricia described herself as a mezzo-soprano, a singer at the lower end of the soprano range. The great diva Marilyn Horne, with whom Patricia performed early in her career, became a mentor and advised Patricia that her voice was suitable for the higher soprano repertoire. That expanded not only her vocal range, but also the roles for which she could be cast.

Early in her career, Patricia specialized in Mozart, singing on the world’s great musical stages, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and the Vienna State Opera. Today, she is as well known for performing a far more modern repertoire, appearing in the world premieres of A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck, an opera with a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tony Kushner and music by Jeanine Tesori about the stormy marriage of playwright Eugene O’Neill and his wife Carlotta. The opera was family for Patricia as well as the O’Neills. She sang Carlotta and her husband, bass David Pittsinger, sang the role of Eugene. Recently she earned enthusiastic reviews with the Opera Philadelphia for The Duchess, an opera written in 1995 by English composer Thomas Adès about the sexual exploits of the notorious Duchess of Argyll. She is scheduled to perform with the Philadelphia company again in another new opera, Breaking the Waves.

In addition to her operatic career, Patricia has also begun to appear in musical theater and concert performances, often with her husband. They performed together last spring in the Ivoryton Playhouse’s production of South Pacific, he as the lead, Emile de Becque, and she as the show-stopping Bloody Mary.

Patricia and David met in California as young singers. Patricia’s agents, Columbia Artists Management, had told her they were now handling a wonderful young male singer named David Pittsinger.

“We met, we hit it off,” she says.

Originally, they were a bi-coastal couple. Patricia is a native of California, and David is a New Englander, who had grown up in Clinton. Now, they live in Essex, though their schedules often keep them apart. At the moment, David is performing in Kiss Me, Kate in Paris. Electronic communication makes it far easier to keep in touch today then when they first married.

“With things like FaceTime, it is fantastic,” she says.

The couple has two 17-year-old twins, Richard and Maria, who are juniors at Valley Regional High School. Richard, a tenor, is already launched on a musical career. When the twins were born, Patricia thought she could keep on touring, taking the children and a nanny along with her.

“I had this fantasy I could keep working, but it got harder and harder. After about five years I knew it wouldn’t work,” she says.

Patricia took time off from her career to raise her family, thinking she might never go back to professional singing. The opportunity to do modern works brought her back to the stage and now she enjoys her performance mix of opera, musical theater, cabaret and concert work.

For personal enjoyment, Patricia has become a violin student, playing with the Chamber Music Ensemble at the Community Music School in Essex. Her relaxing time includes hiking, gardening and tending her flock of some 10 chickens.

“They are the best pets—low maintenance and you get eggs,” she says.

Performing for local audiences, Patricia says, is unlike singing before a large but anonymous crowd in a concert hall. She and David have both appeared before at the Essex Winter Series and she will be a part of the series 40th anniversary concert next year.

There’s always the danger of overexposure, but David and I thought ‘What the heck,’” she says. “We live here; we love this community, and we love this audience. It’s a very special feeling.”

Patricia Schuman at the Essex Winter Series

Sunday, March 6 at 3 p.m. at John Winthrop Middle School, Deep River. For tickets and information, visit essexwinterseries.com.