My story as a singer begins at the age of two, when an aunt discovered me singing show tunes on the back porch of my grandparents’ summer home. In my teens I began formal study, and a local teacher quickly discovered I had an operatic voice. I made my professional debut at sixteen as a church cantor for the historic Old North Dutch Reform Church in Dumont, NJ — founded in 1724 — and a year later won a choral scholarship from the First Presbyterian Church of Ridgewood, NJ, founded in 1823.

In college I discovered the joy of singing alongside operatic greats — Elly Ameling, Maria Callas, Lily Pons, Joan Sutherland — and my professor at Washington University in St. Louis, tenor John Stewart, encouraged me toward opera and classical art song. As a sophomore, I studied and performed early music and Italian opera with Orvieto Musica in Umbria and Tuscany, and later spent two summers coaching art song at the University of Irvine under collaborative pianist Martin Katz and conductor Graham Johnson OBE.

After graduation, I studied with baritone Joshua Hecht, a protégé of the great Rosa Ponselle. In New York, I sang Nannetta from Verdi’s Falstaff as a young artist with DiCapo Opera Theatre, and performed opera roles with regional companies across the metro area. I also turned to songwriting, weaving original work with Broadway and operatic pieces into a one-woman Off-Broadway cabaret show, supported by a grant from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

After relocating to the greater Philadelphia area, I founded Gilded Angel Opera, showcasing local artists in unexpected venues. I’m a published songwriter and poet — in 2024, my son Augie and I published his first book, The Renewed Adventures of Super Potato, through Angelini Publishing, the company we founded with support from a Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator Grant. I currently study for my Master of Music under mezzo-soprano Dr. Emily Bullock at West Chester University’s Wells School of Music.