Opera singer Mignon Dunn hit Salt Lake City with a bounce last Thursday.
"It's my first time here, I have sung very little in the West, and I'm thrilled to be appearing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir," said the effervescent singer. "I want to see everything, to learn all about Salt Lake City!"The world-famed mezzo soprano will solo with the choir on its broadcast today at 9:30 a.m. on Channel 5. She has taught at the International Vocal School, now in session at the Promised Valley Playhouse.
Dunn's Utah debut is long overdue, for she has sung with practically every leading opera company, orchestra and festival in the United States, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera, and the New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles Symphonies.
She's also well known at London's Royal Opera, La Scala, the Vienna Staatsoper, Paris Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Canadian Opera and Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. And the singing career still flourishes, for she's regularly engaged at the Met and elsewhere.
Add to this her ongoing involvement with teaching. "I have always meddled in teaching and coaching," she said. She regularly plies her craft at the Manhattan School of Music and at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where her husband, Kurt Klippstatter, heads the opera department. She's also taught hundreds of workshops over the years.
A daunting agenda for even a superwoman; but when you meet Dunn in all her charm, vitality and zest for life, you feel sure it's all perfectly natural and perfectly possible.
Many people must decide what they will be when they grow up, but Dunn has known since she was a toddler. "When I heard my first song, I knew I would sing, and I never wanted anything else," she said. "But I thought it would be pops, with a band, maybe.
"Then my mother took me to see `Carmen,' which I have since sung hundreds of times, in four languages, and I knew I would be an opera singer."
Dunn counts Memphis as her home town, though she lived as a child in Tyronza, Arkansas, where her father had a plantation, complete with white pillars. The aura of Southern belle still hangs heavy about this stately, gracious singer, whose grandfather was a riverboat captain.
The plantation manor burned when she was 10, and thereafter she spent much time in Memphis. After one year of college, she went to New York to begin studies with Met mezzo Karen Branzell - "With my mother of course; no well brought up southern girl of 19 would go alone to New York!" she laughed.
The outcome has been a career heavy on Verdi, R. Strauss and Wagner, in America and all over Europe. Among other things, she's sung three different cycles of the Ring at the Met. But "no more five-hour operas," she laughed.
Next season at the Met she'll sing Ulrica in Verdi's "The Masked Ball," Clytemnestra in "Electra" by Strauss, and in Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." Last season she sang in "Boris Goudonov" and "Kat'a Kabanova." Upcoming elsewhere are Dame Quickly in "Falstaff," and Menotti's "The Medium" in Chicago. "I will do lots of "Trovatores,' but no more `Carmens," she said. "After 32 years at the Met, I leave that to the young singers."
Her career is now about 50/50 singing and teaching, which she loves, and she does a lot of stage directing of opera, but only with students. Someday she hopes to do some straight acting - which should come naturally, since she's always been noted as a singing actress.
Dunn just finished a Tampa workshop, where she directed 12 hours a day, including whole acts of several operas, and 17 scenes. "I have this fantastic energy," she said, "if I can get nine hours' sleep I am restored."
She finds workshops not only good but necessary, because of their contacts for career-ready singers. "We say such a young singer is `perched,' and needs only to develop a more professional approach, and get a leg up in going ahead," she said.
"It greatly benefits students to have a chance to work with people who are totally active in their careers, who can show them where they stand comparatively, what's expected. They learn what's going on right now, how the profession works. They learn what repertory is best suited to their voices.
"Or they may come to see that they don't want to do an operatic career, make the necessary effort and sacrifice. There are many careers in singing besides opera - choral positions, chamber music, supportive services."
Her style in workshop is to work on languages and give a few tips on techniques of singing, but not suggest changes big enough to confuse the student or undermine his primary teacher.
Dunn met her husband when she was at the Graz Vocal Institute, and they have been married 20 years. (Klippstatter will be coaching at the vocal school Monday-Thursday, July 15-18 from 2 to 5 p.m.)
"He conducts frequently in New York, Mexico and Europe, and he's a great coach, he gives you a road map for an aria or a role. He has made a difference in my voice," she said. "He may look sober and solemn at first, but then he begins to crack you up. I married him because he is hysterically funny!
"We both travel a lot, and sometimes our paths crisscross," she said. "One time we met for lunch in Chicago, before flying off again in different directions!"
Following her Utah engagement, Dunn looks forward to a week at home in Illinois, lying by her pool, playing with her two Afghan hounds, and cooking. Then she's off to the Israel Vocal Arts Institute for a month.
With a voice so settled and steady, and such a major career, one might expect Dunn to have reached the stage of self-satisfaction. Not so, she said.
"I always study, with my teacher Armin Boyajian, who teaches such artists as Paul Plishka and Samuel Ramey. I take every new role to him. You always need extra ears, and if you don't work on your voice, it goes.
"You never get through learning," she said. "Singing is not an exact science, it's a matter of habit - and it's easy to get screwed up and form a bad habit. You need someone to keep tabs on you."