I bet you a cherry cobbler that Verdi would have loved Texas.
- clmsoprano7
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
ROOTS- nope they weren’t opera!
When people learn that I’m an opera singer, it goes one of two ways. They either imagine that I sing on Broadway (I have to stop reacting to this one) OR they picture the grand opera theaters of the world with velvet curtains,
elegant parties with endless chocolate fountains, glamorous travel perks and more. Some of those assumptions are correct. The assumption is often that I have been trained in opera or classical music from the early years of my life.
When those who just met me learned I actually did ride Western as a kid, I get a curious side eye sometimes or that fun surprised look!
The idea that I was raised with a silver spoon likely because Opera’s beginnings in history were supported and driven by nobility to show their shine at Court. That and it IS an expensive artform to maintain as a career. Nope! Not me, I was a kid raised in a blue-collar world (the BEST kind) where you could fall asleep on Dad's truck out front while the folks were doing yard work or flying model airplanes.
But I digress...Heck, at some point opera really was for everyone! And that included me! Nothing would please me more than to see an Opera being produced inside Billy Bobs, Fort Worth!
Way before I ever became a Verdi Heroine or placed my foot on an opera stage, my roots were Southern Gospel! Music wasn’t something only happening in concert halls or opera houses, it was our daily soundtrack for life. But we were sinners and listened to regular radio too! I remember on road trips to Wewoka, OK to see Great Grandma, I'd hear Fleetwood Mac, Doobie Brothers, Willie Nelson, The Cars, The Eagles and so on!
Having been raised in a Pentecostal denomination, we sang from the pews, the choir loft,
and sometimes sang on the way out of church! We sang at my Papa and Granny’s house every Christmas as Papa would walk the Hammond B-3 organ with his feet and make it talk with his fingers!
We heard stories and learned lessons through gospel music at every family function. I learned how to clap on the 2 and 4 in my church growing up! One thing so powerful to me about this style of music is that it always told a story of either great suffering and redemption or undeniable joy that no one could take from you. Did I learn to communicate by learning to sing Opera? NAH! I learned how to tell a story and experience one at the same time growing up in Texas around my family and church culture. Those experiences shaped me as an artist beyond what any higher education could for sure. I learned to communicate in front of a rather large congregation at a young age, 8, when I sang my first solo. I will never forget the feeling and the reactions.
My Papa Jerry McKinney Children's Choir at Church
My Aunt Rebecca also played the piano and organ and is a brilliant worship leader! I gleaned real communication to the congregation/audience from her and a direct line to the
Lord! Between her and my Momma, I know where my chops come from. My voice is definitely modeled after my Mommas. She never pursued it beyond church choir but if she did, she would definitely have been a spinto or dramatic soprano.
I loved some bluegrass and country too thanks to my Daddy! He loved bluegrass and pickin! He played it often and I'm so glad!!! Daddy could sing too.... still can!
Ricky Skaggs and his Kentucky Thunder Band was one of my favorite acts!
ROLLLLLIN WITH THE DITTIES!
I grew up at the Holiday Roller Rink in Haltom City where music was always pumping whether it was practice with the traveling speed team for many years or my favorite time after practice when the general skate session started! ROLL BOUNCE BABY! This is where my Funk and Rock education started!
My uncle Brent would play the BEST music! Journey, Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, The Gap Band, Parliament, Kool and the Gang, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind and Fire, Prince and truckloads more. On Christian skate night he would play Gaither Vocal Band, Russ Taff, Petra, Whiteheart, Mylon LeFevre and Broken Heart, Stryper, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Steve Green and the list trucks on down the road for miles. Uncle Brent was a championship speed and artistic skater, so the music was IN him, and I got to listen and learn as I rolled that floor hard!
There was something about the music soaring out through the speakers, and cruising and uncontrollably bouncing the Texas Two Step on skates or shoot the duck without missing a beat that was SOUL FILLING. That was a long sentence, but I had to get it all in.
And Brent knew how to DJ.... his combinations of slow, fast, country, rock were legendary.
I felt FREE on that floor.... kind of like do when I'm busting out "Vieni t'affretta" in Verdi's Macbeth. MUSIC IS MUSIC. It is probably why it still affects me that way today!!!
I understand now more than ever how my roots have affected the very outcome of life thus far. I liked feeling FREE, FAST and EXHILERATED. Not much has changed.
I get that same rush with crisp beat from a conductor's baton and the intensity of the energy we feel between us as we throw it all out there.
All during these developmental years I was always singing. Mostly gospel or worship music with the occasional Amy Grant belting of "Love Will Find a Way".
Then something happened. God showed me a different plan for my voice. Suddenly what lit me up inside was LEGATO. I was 12 when I first heard the operatic sound. It was iconic. The Phantom of the Opera original Broadway cast recording came out and I was COOKED.
I stuck a fork in myself because I knew at that age that I was done for anything else. I would mimic the sound in my room and there it was discovered.... My voice just rocked another way! It was meant for this!!! Something about those LONG lines of continuous breath and resonance riding on a phrase. The virtuosic nature of it was spellbinding!
The way a singer could color their voice for igniting passion and pathos was... well... I was ruined lol!! I was HAPPY to be ruined too!
Now granted that is a MUSICAL. However, it was the first real time I heard this type of singing. When Opera hit my bones, I knew where I belonged in music.
Did I fight it? Sure. When those questions came up from church folk like “Are you singing for Jesus?”, or “You still singing that opera stuff?” Let that sink in… Opera stuff. Yes, it plagued me for many years. Every time I was asked that question. Now I just giggle inside and graciously answer “What else would I be doing?”
I could really sing the phone book, but when I fully opened my heart with an aria, something changed in the room. Something changed in those around me. I knew that God was using me in a way I could never have imagined. And still does....
Even when I traveled with a very well-known evangelist, he would use my voice to change the atmosphere for a different direction. I knew what God had placed in me was different than the sounds of my upbringing. All of that history was IN me and supercharged with a direction. And it DID become harder to find a place to share my gift in my home church. And it was painful at times. It was just not understood.
But a house of 2500 of South Americans understood. If God were ever pointing me in a direction I began to see it.
What do you listen to Christina?
Do I go to the opera? Sure! We should all support our own art form and that of others! But guess what, I LOVE when my man takes me to rock concerts! I can easily say that Greg has expanded my music library. We are going to see RUSH at the end of this month on their final tour. Who did I see in concert this past year? HMM…Breaking Benjamin, Alice Cooper, Daughtry, Stone Temple Pilots, Shinedown. And you know what is funny is that so many of them started out training classically. But even the ones who didn't all had something in common.... a great sense of storytelling and passion. And we are teaching our kid the same thing!
In the summers of the past especially, I would NOT turn the dial on country music! I love how country music always sits so well in the summertime as they sing about fishing, or hitting the swimming hole, laying in the grass or by the riverbanks.
I remember before meeting Greg when I was back from NYC for a bit staying with my folks and Dad let me drive his Chevy truck. It had A/C for sure, but did I use it? Heck no! I rolled those windows down and blasted Luke Bryan and George Strait as I cruised down 377 which used to be 2 lanes and nothing but grass on either side when I was a kid. I might have stopped for a real cherry coke and a dilly bar from Dairy Queen a time or two.
In the years in and around high school I couldn't get enough of movie soundtracks! Robinhood (Kevin Costner), The Man in the Iron Mask, Braveheart, Legends of the Fall… the stretching and pulling of the phrasing and the intense emotion evoking scoring left me a puddle. Band was also a huge influence! I marched the Mellophone and played the French in Highschool until singing grabbed all of me and would not let go.
I can thank my choir, band and theater directors at Haltom Highschool for lighting the fire under my tush for musical theater, symphonic and marching band music, and the great choral works of Palestrina or John Rutter.
Jenny Lind in Barnum Haltom Highschool 1993
Speaking of John Rutter, several of those pieces took me to Carnegie Hall 4 or 5 times as a featured soloist. Did I imagine this when I was singing the choral parts in my teens? Actually, I did!
Greg proudly sporting the program.
And thankfully, this Goddess of a woman, Metropolitan Opera Rostered Mezzo 1959-1962 Joan Wall who was teaching at Texas Woman's University and highly sought after as a teacher taught my body and voice true Bel canto singing, always emphasizing those fully breath supported long lines. She nurtured my instrument the way it needed. To this day she is my friend and confident.
I always loved the drive up I-35 as I blared whatever music I was in the mood for that day while I enjoyed the bluebonnets or dodged a Tornado!
MEDICINE
It’s funny how painful times in my life were also closely escorted with certain types of music or even specific songs that helped me through those dark nights. Music helped me define pain and illustrate joy at the same time. God spoke to me and still does through all different types of music, and the key is that I remain open to it.
Was I born into OPERA? Nope! Was I trained from childhood with hearing “classical” music? Nope! Did I know right away once I sang my first aria that this was where God put me? YES. Did that mean I shut off other kinds of music? Hades no!!!!
At this stage in my life I am singing better than I ever have and I OWE that to the grace of God, and the resilience of which I was raised right here in the great State of Texas. I feel the grit, grace and glitter of the ancestors of my family and I know besides God where I got my strength for sticking it out. I come from STRONG STOCK. There are some Annie Oakley type chicks in my bloodline.
My art has taken me worldwide and continues to take me to amazing places. I could never look back and say it started as an adult, but rather as a kid. At the end of the day, I will always be little Christi, the sum of the many things I have tried and succeeded or tried and failed with. Opera is no different. I bring my Texan Roots with me wherever I go.
That gets really hard when I am in NYC and can’t find TEX- MEX or LEGIT BBQ. Around here in Cowtown you can't swing a cat around without hitting a bbq joint, a tex mex joint, a church or a football stadium.
And guess what? 9 times out of 10 they come with a LIVE BAND of some sort!
Now the live bands I sing with are 30 plus piece orchestras!
I have worked hard and refined my gift with detail and precision for many years and still going strong like those live bucking bulls on Friday and Saturday nights at Billy Bobs in the stockyards or the stock show and Rodeo at Will Rogers -
WHERE WE ACTUALLY SKATED REGIONALS AND NATIONALS for USARS! (USA Roller Sports)
I haven't forgotten who I am where I'm from or how the MUSIC was breathed and ignited into me....and if you listen close, you might hear a little bit of Texas in each note I sing, but after a glass of Texas Table wine, you’d definitely hear that charming drawl march right of out of my pie hole!
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