Virginia Beach singer Shannon Crowley is selected for the prestigious Merola Program in San Francisco
By Butch Maier / Photo above: Virginia Beach opera singer Shannon Crowley, a resident artist at the Pittsburgh Opera, joins the acclaimed Merola Opera Program in San Francisco in June. / Photo by Davide Bachman
Virginia Beach kindergartner Shannon Crowley sang Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway in the Providence Elementary School talent show. Twenty years later, Crowley has broken away from a pack of talented artists to join one of the more prestigious opera training programs in the world.
Crowley, 25, was one of 28 artists selected from a record-breaking pool of more than 1,500 applicants for the acclaimed Merola Opera Program in San Francisco. She received the news via email. “I was very, very excited,” Crowley said. “It was a great moment.”
The daughter of Tim and Karen Crowley began her singing training with three years in the Virginia Children’s Chorus. Shannon Crowley got an early start “thanks to my parents recognizing my ability very young,” she said. She attended The Governor’s School for the Arts in Norfolk, which has an opera program, and Ocean Lakes High School in Virginia Beach. Crowley earned her bachelor’s in music from Michigan State University and master’s from Rice University. At both schools, her specialty was voice.
She is in her second year as a resident artist at the Pittsburgh Opera and has been singing opera almost half her life. “It’s an art form that plays on all the extremes of the human experience and the human voice,” Crowley said. “So, it’s very high highs and very low lows, which is always fun to either sing or to experience in the audience. When you’re singing it, it’s quite a visceral experience because the thing about opera is we use no amplification, so there’s no microphones. And so, it’s really a powerful, very loud experience often, and when you’re singing it, it’s very all-consuming in that way.”
Crowley has carefully avoided voice overuse injuries as she looks forward to singing opera for a long time. “In opera, there’s so much training involved,” she said. “A lot of school. And a lot of people do not come into the full maturity of their voices until they are in their 30s, and they continue singing sometimes into their 60s. It takes so much training to know how to sing that powerfully, but also in a healthy way.”
Singing opera also requires going with the flow as the years go by. “It’s a fun thing because the voice is changing as you mature and age, and so, I’m singing different things now than I could have sung five years ago,” Crowley said. “And in five years, I will be able to sing things I am unable to sing now, and different opportunities will arise.”
The Merola Opera Program opportunity arose for Crowley and other artists—singers, pianists, and stage directors—from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Türkiye, China, South Korea, and Australia. Merola nurtures the opera stars of tomorrow through master classes and private coaching with some of opera’s more accomplished singers, coaches, conductors, and directors. Participants receive training in operatic repertoire, languages, diction, acting, stage movement, and professional development. The Merola Opera Program is offered free of charge to all participants.
“This year will mark a summer of transformative growth in San Francisco for this remarkable group of artists,” Merola Executive Director Sean Waugh said. “Once they have completed this program, they will join a vibrant community of distinguished alumni who have gone on to thrilling careers with major opera houses around the world. They take with them the support of Merola’s vast network of dedicated members and supporters, all focused on a commitment to opera’s future.”
Crowley leaves for San Francisco in June and will train there for 10 weeks. “And then, we’ll just see what happens after that,” Crowley said. “There’s not really a perfect career path or way of doing things. It can be done a lot of different ways. There’s a possibility of me going to another resident arts program in the United States.”
Her talent continues to give her opportunities to catch a break, and away she will go on her next adventure.
For more information about the Merola Opera Program, go to merola.org.
Butch Maier
