Elisabeth Halliday likes wearing pink berets and singing arias, though not necessarily at the same time. She is a junior double degree student, majoring in voice at Peabody and German at Hopkins. Music runs in her family.
Her mother is a professional singer and her father plays piano on the side. When she was four, she performed in her first musical production at church.
Every year, her church also produced a Gilbert and Sullivan production, which she was able to participate in starting in third grade.
"I like the shows we did at church because it was a low stress environment, which is rare in performance. There was lots of positive feedback and energy," said Halliday.
She didn't get interested in classical singing until sophomore year of high school. "Not only did I discover that I liked singing classical music more, but I also found I was much better at it," she said. However, she doesn't find that the majority of people (whom she likes to pretend don't exist) appreciate classical music as much as her.
"Most peoples' introduction to classical music is boring stuff that people play on the radio. People don't realize that there's classical music that's just as crazy and insane as pop rock," said Halliday. She remarked that, although parts of Carmina Burana are often played on commercials and everyone likes it, the comment, "what cool music" never translates to "oh, is that a classical piece?"
Unlike most singers, she doesn't get stage fright or think of singing as a challenge. For her, the difficulty is finding the time to practice so that she can perform.
"The voice program and Hopkins are pretty intense," Halliday said.
Most recently, she performed Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle with the Peabody Singers, the top choral group at Peabody.
Halliday also performed last spring as a soloist in Carmina Burana. Although she likes both types of singing, she finds switching between them to be difficult.
"Choral singing is much more restrictive because you have to blend in more as an instrument. Lots of soloists damage their voices because they don't know the technique," said Halliday. "It becomes much harder to do choral singing the older you get and the more training and experience you've had."
Although she now lives near the Peabody campus, she doesn't feel integrated into the vocal community. "None of my close friends are singers, although I think it's okay to be away from the drama that is the vocal program. I do identify with being a Peabody student, though," she says. As a double degree student, she doesn't have much free time, but she has managed to found a Unitarian Universalist group on campus and serve on the DSAGA board.
When Halliday graduates, she plans to move to Germany to pursue opera singing because there are many more opportunities for American singers to perform. "There aren't very many openings in America so most people end up being voice teachers," Halliday said. "That's why America has better voice teachers, whereas most singers in Europe teach voice on the side. It's much more of an art form in America."
In the meantime, she will be performing music by Lori Lateman based on poems children wrote during the Holocaust for a friend's recital and will be involved in an opera next semester.
