By snoadmin
Cal State Long Beach senior communications major Sarah-Anne Bennett has been around the world and back, thanks to her opera-singing talents.
Bennett has given opera performances in Italy, Slovenia and Hungary, and also been contacted by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lakers and Anaheim Ducks to sing the national anthem at games.
“I’m a huge sports fan. Give me any sport and I’m there,” Bennett said. “It’s exciting, because not only do I get to sing for so many people and not only do I get to represent our country with the national anthem, I get to stay and watch the game.”
Bennett, 21, said that her favorite performances would include all of the national anthems she has sung.
“When you perform in operas at school and on campus, there are probably a good 150 people max in the audience,” Bennett said. “It’s a more intimate setting. But when you sing the national anthem, you’re in front of thousands and thousands of people.”
Bennett, who can sing in six different languages, has taken English, German, French and Italian diction to learn how to read the music she is singing. She said her favorite language to sing is Italian because it comes the easiest for her.
Bennett was offered a full scholarship to CSULB and started off as a music major before switching to communications. Even so, she said she is very passionate about the music department on campus – now called the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music – because of all the opportunities it has given her to succeed as a singer.
Jonathan Talberg, director of choral, vocal and opera studies, took the university’s Chamber Choir to New York City’s Carnegie Hall on April 24, 2007. Bennett said that the performance was a dream of hers and it was one of those things that she could check off of her “bucket list.”
Those kinds of things are what are make the music program at CSULB so great, Bennett said, because there are so many supporters who have faith in the program, which recently received CSULB’s largest donation ever at $16.4 million.
“It was very, very affordable,” Bennett said. “[It was] nothing of what a week-long trip to New York should have been, and you know we are college students – we are struggling to eat sometimes, let alone go to Carnegie Hall.”
One thing Bennett said is great about the music program is that students are given free voice lessons. She said it’s beneficial because if you want a good music teacher, the prices can add up.
Bennett started becoming interested in music when she was about five years old after her father and stepmother took her to see “Phantom of the Opera.”
“I begged my mom to buy me the CD, and she bought me the highlighted CD and I learned the whole thing in about two weeks,” Bennett said.
After that, she was put in voice lessons and children’s performing arts groups.
Bennett has received many awards, such as Southern California Vocal Association (SCVA) competitions in high school, and won the Opera Pacific Laila S. Conlin Vocal Competition. She was also a part of the Orangewood Children’s Foundation event called the Orange County Teen Star, which she won in 2004. Through it she able to sing for actress Jamie Lee Curtis and first lady of California Maria Shriver to raise money for benefits.
Even though opera seems like her life, she can also sing pop and do musical theater. Bennett tried out for “American Idol” last season in San Diego, but only made it past the first two rounds. She waited seven-and-a-half hours just be told she looked like the typical blonde Orange County girl.
“I don’t know many typical blonde Orange County girls that sing opera, so they must have had a lot of them that day,” Bennett said.
Aside from music, Bennett enjoys traveling and being outside. She hopes to study abroad in Australia next semester and to audition for opera companies there as well.
Bennett also posts clips of her musical performances on YouTube.
