The Independent Artists Sustaining Cleveland's Opera Community

Sunlight pours through the open window of a practice room on a warm morning at Cleveland State University. Outside, Euclid Avenue hums with traffic as gulls from Lake Erie squawk overhead in the cornflower-blue sky. 

Inside, soprano and vocal coach Madelyn Hasebein plays the grand piano and guides a student through vocal warm-ups for a passage from Wuthering Heights. Leaning slightly forward at the keyboard, she listens closely for the smallest shifts in her student’s breath and posture.

“Let’s come over to the mirror,” she tells Rachel Gardner, a postbaccalaureate music education teacher working through the piece.

The focus of the lesson is not the notes themselves, at least not yet. Instead, Hasebein watches Gardner’s posture closely, analyzing her breath and muscle engagement. They are working on engaging her transverse abdominals, the hidden mechanics beneath the sound.

Gardner sings the line again. When she finishes, she grimaces.

“That was bad.”

Hasebein shakes her head gently.

“It wasn’t bad, let’s rephrase that.”

Gardner pauses, reconsidering.

“It was unsupported.”

Moments like this define the way Hasebein approaches the voice. To her, singing is not just about how the notes sound or musical accuracy but about understanding the body, the breath and the emotional space required to support the sound.

“A violinist has a violin. A pianist has a piano. Our instrument is us,” Hasebein says.

Her focus on the connection between the body and the voice has shaped her path in Cleveland, a city not always associated with opera but one that has quietly sustained generations of the art form. 

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The Manvers Operatic Co. brought the first opera performance to the city on May 23, 1849, in Watson’s Hall, which was demolished in 1880, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.

In a Rust Belt city known nationally for professional sports, museums and rock 'n' roll, opera survives through a patchwork of local companies, including Cleveland Opera, partnerships with institutions such as the Cleveland Orchestra, and freelance performers.

“Smaller companies provide singing opportunities for young singers and singers who choose to make their lives in one region,” says Timothy Culver, tenor and professor of voice at Kent State University’s School of Music. “We owe them a great debt.”

Companies such as Opera Cleveland helped establish the art form in Northeast Ohio before financial struggles forced the company to close in 2010. While the local operatic landscape has thinned out — with fewer companies and roles available than in decades past—the outlook isn’t entirely bleak.

“It’s a great time for new and innovative artistic endeavors,” Culver says. “Creativity is critical to the arts, and new ideas can bring even greater possibilities.” 

Cleveland’s reputation as a classical music city still runs deep, even if opera itself exists on a smaller scale. Institutions such as the Cleveland Institute of Music, Baldwin Wallace University and Kent State Opera Theatre regularly train vocalists who perform nationwide.

“There are so many wonderful people in this community making amazing strides in music,” Hasebein says. “I’ve been Downtown since the pandemic, and I consider Cleveland my home now.”

Opera houses closed, concerts were canceled and many singers lost work overnight during the COVID-19 pandemic. For freelance musicians without steady salaries, the sudden silence of the industry was not only a financial drawback but an emotional one.

 “I started my career in poverty,” Hasebein says. “I made $8,000 my first year out of college.”

Hasebein felt the pressures of building her career and simply trying to get by. Instead of leaving music entirely, she began searching for a different way to support herself and other singers — running her own health coaching business.

She founded Transpose Your Life, where she works as a trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming national board-certified health and wellness coach, helping clients connect their mind, body and spirit.

“It’s for anyone of any background,” she says. “Not just singers.”

While she initially turned to teaching out of financial necessity, she found a profound connection in helping students unlock their instruments.

“It is so crucial for singers to understand how their life experiences, stress and their body all play a role in their vocal function,” Hasebein says. “Being able to address negative thoughts and blockages in the mind or body holistically and supportively with students plays a big role in my journey and what I do in Cleveland.”

She studies with soprano Julia Radosz and returns each year to train with tenor Ferdinand von Bothmer, who co-runs the Lucca Bel Canto Institute in Italy with Radosz.

Her recent work includes a late March performance at Hiram College, where she joined pianist Eric Charnofsky to debut a song cycle by composer Steven Stanziano—two artists she holds in high regard.

Community-focused productions are a testament to the versatility of the art form; as Culver says, “The beauty of opera and live theater is that it can be any size and fit into almost any situation.”

Back in the practice room, after the lesson ends and her student exits, Hasebein sits down at the piano again. This time, she is the one practicing.

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She flips through a marked score, pencil notes scattered across the pages. Before singing, she pauses and inhales slowly, testing the breath the same way she had asked her student to do for the past hour.

Even professional singers practice the fundamentals.

“It’s not just about the notes and rhythms but the story I’m trying to tell as well,” she says.

Opera stories begin long before a singer ever reaches the stage, Hasebein says. They start in quiet practice rooms, where breath, posture and emotion slowly come together to support a single line of music.

“Opera is not meant just for an elite class, or for a certain type of person,” she says. “Opera tells important stories of all kinds of people, often with relevant themes of love, fear and triumph.”

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