Aria dreams

She could have been the girl next door, if not for her gorgeous voice that has thrilled audiences from La Scala to the Met to the Staples Auditorium at Hendrix College.

Susan Dunn, the classical vocalist whose roots lie in Bauxite, parlayed a stunning voice and engaging personality into a brilliant singing career that took her around the globe, performing in untold number of venues with the greats of opera and the music community.

Mike Kemp  

Susan Dunn poses in the office of the Hendrix College president during a visit to the campus on Friday.

Dunn returned to Arkansas recently to sing for the Hendrix College faithful and other fans of serious music. They heard a class vocalist who has starred in diverse musical genres, including solo recitals, opera, musical theater and concert work.

"My mother told me that when I was 2 or 3 years old, I would sit entranced listening to the music and watching opera stars on television," Dunn recalls. Whether that ordained her operatic career is left to conjecture.

A recent conversation with the eminent vocalist brought forth a plethora of elements attuned to the music world - and an amusing anecdote, again attributed to her mother.

"My mother said she was more nervous at my debut as a 5 year old singing at a church program than she was when I appeared at La Scala in Italy," she laughed, her accent rich with the southern drawl of her youth. She had made her debut in "Aida" on the stage of the famed Milan's La Scala opera house.

Performing operatic arias is not a vital aspect of Dunn's obsession these days, being almost totally consumed with her position as professor of practice at Duke University, where she heads the vocal program, teaches voice and directs the Opera Workshop.

Her current performances are made up of music for solo piano and voice, and offerings of master classes in voice, focusing on vocal technique and interpretation.

Dunn, a member of the Hendrix class of 1976 and a 1988 Hendrix Distinguished Alumna, was here for the inaugural performance in the Harold Thompson Recital series at Hendrix.

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"I was in Conway three years ago for a memorial service for Harold Thompson, with whom I enjoyed a close relationship as a music faculty member who most influenced me."

Dunn credits Thompson with encouraging her to pursue her dream of being an opera singer. Thompson served as emeritus professor of music at Hendrix and as a member of the faculty from 1954-1992. A bequest from his estate created the Harold Thompson Recital Series, which covers the cost of bringing world class performances to the Hendrix campus.

"Mr. Thompson was very patient with me, very nurturing and supportive," she recalls. "He'd allow me to visit the record library and I would listen to recordings because I didn't have access to records, and I'd think of myself as Joan Sutherland or other stars. Of course I didn't sound like any of them but in my head I was one of them. I suppose that it is true that if you have a dream of something and you work hard at it, you'll get there."

Dunn enjoyed a spectacular ride in opera, scaling the heights at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, the Sydney Opera House in Australia, Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, the Lyric Opera Chicago and other important opera houses, singing the works of the masters - Wagner, Verdi, Mahler, Strauss - and working with the world's preeminent maestros, such as Georg Solti, James Conlon, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta and Daniel Barenboim.

"Unfortunately, opera and classical music have been in decline for many years," Dunn said sadly, suggesting that "part of it is due to easy access to television and movies. People don't want to go out as much as they once did. And live performances are not as popular in general any more. There used to be a thriving community of artists going around the country."

She notes opera is extremely expensive to produce. And there are few opera houses that exhibit today, although there are regional places that do two or three productions a year.

"Opera is often looked upon as elitist entertainment. And for whatever reason it doesn't have as much cachet anymore to be an opera donor."

She mentions costumes, scenery, name singers and full orchestras as elements that affect the expense of opera. Her husband, agent Scott Tilley of Durham, N.C., can attest to the elephantine cost of staging operatic performances, as he once operated a regional opera company, she said.

Dunn has core beliefs about the wonder of the music world and the people who inhabit it, people like Luciano Pavarotti, with whom she performed. "I've had great experiences with some great people," she says, intimating that performing with Pavarotti has its own rewards. "He has a fabulous voice and he is a warm and giving man."

And yet, singing with the Italian star can be intimidating, since the audience is riveted on the colorful tenor to the detriment of performances by others in the cast, she noted.

"He has such a tremendous presence," Dunn said.

Certainly, her title role in "Aida" at La Scala was a "great thrill," she said. "I've had a fabulous ride as an opera singer. I must say I had great times and made a lot of wonderful friends. It is something I'll never regret doing."

Her emergence as a true Verdi soprano was hailed by aficionados worldwide, and she continued to exalt in concert performances of Wagner's "Die Walkure"; at Lincoln Center with the New York Philharmonic; with the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Lenora in Verdi's "La Forza del Destino", at the Vienna State Opera as Amelia in "Un Ballo in Maschera"; and at the Australian Opera as Desdemona in "Otello".

Several record labels carry her name. As the soprano soloist in the release of the Verdi Requiem, Dunn's recording with Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony was awarded the Grammy as Album of the Year in 1988.

There are highlight performances. Dunn's repertoire is vast, encompassing the years since she left Hendrix and enrolled in Indiana University, and finally at the University of Illinois, where she garnered the award as a Distinguished Alumna.

She is no longer on the operatic stage. "I haven't officially retired from it, but a combination of many factors changed my focus. I had become dispirited and discouraged with a nomadic lifestyle and I decided to look at teaching. I sent out resumes and Duke hired me. So now I teach and I perform at concerts and recitals around the country.

"No, no, I'm not sitting on the couch and watching TV and eating bon-bons," she laughed.