“Felice mi fa” Meet Soprano Emily Margevich!

Hello, everyone! For those of you I haven’t met yet, I’m Emily Margevich! OperaDelaware has created a new staff role called a “Company Artist”, and I am thrilled to be the first one on the job!

My fiancé Dylan and I just moved here to Wilmington less than a month ago, specifically for my new job at OperaDelaware. Along with singing roles and performing solo concerts this season (stay tuned for those exciting details!) I am going to be working on the engagement side of OperaDelaware! Write to me if you have an idea to help our company, what theme of music you want me to sing for a solo concert, or if you’d like me to sing at a holiday party or any party! emargevich@operade.org

Speaking of parties, I will be singing Musetta in our La bohème! Her story begins with arguably the best entrance in all of opera, and she brings the party to Christmas Eve at Cafe Mumus! The title of this post is a quote from her famous waltz aria and translates to “it makes me happy”! That could be the title of my future singing memoir. Music, and singing in particular, does make me happy like nothing else. It has always been the energy and joy of my life, and when I was little I used to run around saying “I love singing!”. I still run around saying that, and to my good fortune one day OperaDelaware heard me! My relationship to performing and singing goes beyond description, but I’ll try to find some words:)

Music is so powerful and helpful for all of us in so many ways, and it connects us by sharing emotions and stories. Since you’re reading this opera blog, I’m sure you know what I mean. You don’t have to sing, or understand Italian, or know who Puccini is to be able to viscerally respond to the music and the reality of La bohème. This is my second time being Musetta living in this perfectly told bohemian story. I first sang the role at The Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia where I just received my Artist Diploma this past spring. Maybe I should start at the beginning of my singing story. After all, Julie Andrews has taught us that the beginning is a very good place to start.

The very beginning started in Chicago, where my entire family is from and where my mom began her dancing career. A year after I was born, my family moved downstate Illinois to a tiny town called Hoopeston. There, my mom opened a dance and theatre school and my grandma taught piano and voice upstairs. My grandma passed away six Julys ago, and I completely credit my opera singing to her expert ears and wise guidance. I will attach one of my favorite pictures with my grandma on this blog! I’ll dedicate a blog to her in February!

My mom also started a community theatre group, and from those experiences, I knew I wanted to make performing the center of my own life. My parents and grandparents always made our music and theatre fun. The purpose was to bring high quality art to a small town while focusing on inclusion, community, self expression. You can have fun while working very hard and being very serious. Introducing and sharing some great entertainment and stories with people through kindness and play is what I found in OperaDelaware that is so similar to my upbringing. It was always fun and real.

I became my stage animal self by being blessed with a mom who knows what it means to be a professional performer while keeping the humble heart of an invested citizen. I’ve kept this foundation with me, I think that’s why I love this art form so much - it’s never been work.

The first show I was in happened when I asked my mom if I could be in the chorus of her production of “Oklahoma!”. I was two years old, watching her direct and choreograph, and I knew every line and every step. I started doing professional musical theatre as a child when I told my parents around age seven that I wanted to do this for my life. I’ll add a picture from “Oklahoma!” and one from my first professional show “The Christmas Schooner”. (I’ll tell you more of that amazing show on a later blog!)

When I would land a professional musical theatre job, my Dad and Grandpa tag teamed in driving me 2 hours from downstate Illinois to Chicago from October to January- four weeks of rehearsals into eight shows a week. We’d do this routine throughout my adolescence at various Chicagoland theaters, all while I maintained straight A’s in school! Woohoo! It takes a village, and I can already tell you Delawareans embody that truth. Let me know if you want to hear more about the working theater kid process, and I’ll do a blog focused on it! Should we have a Musical Theatre night at OD Studios?

When I was about 13 years old, my grandma broached the idea of singing opera music. I didn’t grow up with opera music; in our small town of 4,500 people the closest opera house was 2 hours away, and we were a musical theatre family. We didn’t know you could enjoy both! My grandma studied as a singer, pianist, and violinist at her public high school, but her own talent must’ve heard something different in my sound that had an operatic possibility. When I go back to listen to our voice lesson cassette tapes, I do hear this little voice with vibrato and sizable, classical tendencies. So, when the time came, my mom and I college shopped for opera singing schools!

I decided to give college six months to see if I liked classical music half as much as I loved theatre, otherwise I was going to continue working professionally, make my way to Broadway, and skip college. Well, my voice and I fell in love with opera. Completely. I chose DePaul University for my undergraduate when I immediately responded to the mezzo soprano and amazing educator, Jane Bunnell. She told me I owed it to my instrument to discover my vocal potential. I stayed at DePaul for my graduate degree, too, for a new teacher at DePaul, Nicole Cabell. She and I clicked instantly, and her extraordinary skill and dedicated faith in me completely brought me to where I am today. I had a wonderful director and teacher named Harry Silverstein at DePaul, too. He taught me what I know about the craft of opera, and he and Nicole always made “felice mi fa” ring true for me, just like my grandma did, which is why I knew I needed to live in the opera world. Singing opera made me the happiest because it’s the extreme of singing!

After DePaul, I went to AVA in Philadelphia, and being on the east coast led me to all of you here in Delaware! A friend of mine at AVA referred me to Brendan when he was looking for a last minute replacement for a concert, and the rest is history!

I can’t believe we are opening in Delaware in just a few weeks! I hope to see you all at the show to introduce you to my parents, my sisters, and Dylan, so please stay after to say hi to me!

Don’t miss emily as musetta in la bohème
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Emily and grandma at the piano.

Emily and young opera fans at a recent operadelaware event.