We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Susan Wheeler a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Susan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I created an opera company called SALT Opera, concerts for change in 2013. We were able in our 10 year run to sing for the former President of South Korea, X, in Lorin Maazel’s concert series at the Castleton Festival “A Time to Break Silence” and sell our CD to raise money to help Darfur and refugees from North Koran, and most meaningfully, to raise money for several months of funding for a radio broadcast (similar to Voice of America in the 19 x’s) that was run by former North Korean refugees and played across the DMZ to share the truth about South Korea and the United States wanting their best, and countering state propaganda. The beauty of the SALT Opera model also was in our full immersion into the cultures we portrayed, as we engaged a thought leader to speak in the middle of each concert and raise awareness of our audiences past the superficial headlines of human rights abuses in the countries we spotlit, namely North Korea and Darfur, and hear what changes were taking place and how members of our audiences could help. We drew people into the issues via our singing of popular opera arias, duets and ensembles, as well as music from each of our spotlight cultures, sung by our SALT Opera ensemble of award-winning classical singers, Susan Wheeler, Soprano, Vita Koroneva, Mezzo-Soprano, Riccardo Shim, Tenor and Baritones Jose Sacin and Michael Menzel, accompanied by Centuar Records recording artist and pianist Joy Menzel. We also engaged performers from each of our spotlight cultures to offer music from their countries in the program, and many times dressed in local costume in addition to our more standard black tie and gowns. We offered cultural foods in our reception following our fundraising concerts.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My inspiration to be an opera singer and changemaker began when I was very young. I saw Bernadette Peters in “Sunday in the Park with George” and asked a God I didn’t yet believe in to let me do that. I remember I was so moved by her performance that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to be a part of storytelling with an orchestra onstage. I work mostly in singing operas in the US and in Germany and Italy that are cannonized, standard works of great composers, like Verdi, Mozart and Strauss. What I love particularly to sing however are new works by living composers that offer me the freedom to create from full cloth a new character that has no performance practice of how it has ever been sung before. Favorite collaborations there include with composers Lori Laitman (Hester Prynne, The Scarlett Letter, and many Laitman song cycles performed with my award-winning chamber group Third Millennium Ensemble, at the Kennedy Center, Smithsonian, Library of Congress and featured on NPR radio), Tom Cipullo (where I performed selections of his Glory Denied opera in Berlin, Germany to an audience of over five thousand), and Paul Moravec (with whom I’m currently working, preparing Wendy Torrence in his terrifying horror opera The Shining, based on the Stephen King novel).

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an opera singer is the relationships that I create with my fellow cast members as well as different audience members who have become friends. The shared focus on bringing an opera to life makes for close friendships and the joy of seeing one another at different auditions or singing together in different contexts even years later and then trading stories and catching up is one part of my life as a working singer that I enjoy most.

I also have lovely relationships that came from people hearing me in performances and coming up afterward to chat. One of my oldest friends whom I just had lunch and a swim with last week at her home in southern Virginia, I met when I sang the Haydn Creation oratorio with an orchestra in her town. We had a wonderful conversation about the performance, and I’ve sung for events for her family and friends ever since like birthdays and charity fundraisers. After I sang a concert at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown, Washington, DC, an audience member introduced me to his childhood friend who also sang opera and concertized who lives in New York. When I had contract with Encores! at City Center in Manhattan that required me to stay in the city for several months, I was so fortunate to stay with her and it formed the basis for a friendship that I’ve enjoyed for many years. Each time I sing in New York I stay with her, and we have dinner and great conversation about life on the road and the many joys and funny stories that come with me being an artist, and her memories of doing the same in her earlier life.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Since I am a member of Actors Equity (AEA) which is a membership based on stage experience that helps working singers and actors to thrive, I have been able to work not only in opera but also in musical theatre. I have had several times where I have “jumped in” for a sick colleague and I needed to sing new music on very short notice. I liked the challenge! When I sang at the Kennedy Center in the new musical theatre show by Daniel Sticco, 90 North, for example, Michelle Rios had two roles she was singing and needed coverage for one. She gave me her music, I went to her rehearsals and started reading the part. It got easier with time but I felt good to help and glad to have the stage time. The funny thing about that musical was that the music was always being updated after we would perform in previews for different audiences. The composer would hand us out new musical scores or whole new numbers or just change who would sing what line at different times. They were color-coded, so that the stage manager would give us new colored pages every morning to put in our binders and throw the last colored version of the show away. It required all of me and I still remember that musical as one of the favorite ones I worked in. When I first met the members of my chamber ensemble, Third Millennium Ensemble, they were all set to perform a program also for Soprano and strings, woodwinds and percussion of very challenging Sylvia Plath poetry. The Soprano they had hired bowed out because of the difficulty of the music, and the fact that there was no previous recording of it being performed that was available. I jumped in, and for the two weeks that I had I lived, ate and breathed those seven movements with the chamber group. They were understanding and we all didn’t want to cut the song cycle from the program, so we all pulled together in every rehearsal. The program had already been publicized for months and we wanted for the audience to hear such a beautiful, thorny and highly emotive song cycle. After a successful, albeit nail-biter of a performance of the Sylvia Plath, I was formally invited to join the Third Millennium Ensemble. I stayed with them for over 15 years and we performed gorgeous, challenging modern American music at The Kennedy Center, in the Ratner art gallery in Maryland, the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art concert series, the Library of Congress concert series, and featured on NPR Radio. I sang in Korean, Spanish and Chinese, and performed Stravinsky, Crumb and Laitman, among others.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.SusanWheeler.info
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susan.martosko
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanwheelersoprano/
• Twitter: https://x.com/wheelersoprano
• Youtube: @SusanSingsOpera https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChVhdGg0eSCRZ9osmuXmAvw
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/susan-wheeler-soprano