Toni Crowder's first glimpse into a world of costumes and drama and music came just moments after her first trans-Atlantic flight.
She was jet-lagged and exhausted. But a performance of "La Bohème" at the Paris Opera House awakened something in the young college student.
"At the end I was weeping, even though I didn't know Italian," Crowder recalled. "It was just the enormous, sheer spectacle of it all."
Today, the Spotsylvania County wife and mother of one is an opera singer, trying to make a full-time career of it.
Crowder has performed from Arkansas to Israel. She's also Tessitura the Opera Clown, a red-nosed ventriloquist who, with her sidekick puppet, Wagner, goes into schools and teaches them all about the often daunting art form.
The road to opera has been a winding one. "There was never a light-bulb moment" when Crowder knew opera was what she wanted to do.
She'd sung in the high school choir in Springdale, Ark. She was also interested in therapy and special education. A high school counselor suggested Crowder combine her loves and pursue a degree in music education and therapy.
So she did. And on a trip to Paris with college classmates, she discovered "the most beautiful music in the world."
Neither of Crowder's parents had been musically inclined--her mom was a nurse; her dad, an engineer.
"My mother's very quiet. I'm not. My dad's mathematically minded. I'm not," she laughed.
After graduating from Arkansas' Henderson State University, Crowder landed a job at a state hospital. When she married husband Kevin, they moved to Texas and she taught music to fourth- through 12th-graders.
Along the way, people encouraged Crowder in her music. She went back to school and earned a master's degree in vocal performance.
When she and her husband, a Mary Washington Hospital chaplain, moved to Spotsylvania and Crowder became pregnant with daughter Aubrey five years ago, she began pondering a way to do opera full time--and make it fun.
"I won't take myself so seriously," vowed Crowder, who has a quick, easy laugh.
Tessitura the Opera Clown was born.
"It was one of those divine ideas an inspiration that just comes to you."
Crowder wrote the one-woman show herself. She went to clown school and learned "the art of clowning." Her mom made the costumes and sewed Wagner, a horse puppet with big teeth and eyes and an Arkansas accent.
In schools, Crowder gives what she calls a "Sesame Street-type" performance, meaning kids can get it and adults also can appreciate the show.
"People develop such a prejudice against opera at an early age," Crowder said. "It isn't all death and dying, not all ladies in brass horns."
And this is what she brings to children in schools across Virginia and the country.
Crowder's dream is to sing at the highest level possible--"be it a small school or a major opera house," she said.
Next Sunday, Crowder will perform with Kevin Perry for "An Evening at the Opera" at the University of Mary Washington. The show benefits the Stafford Regional Choral Society.
Aubrey, a lively 5-year-old, has taken to music, much to the family's happiness. It's a house of music. Her father plays the violin and Crowder sings and bangs out songs on the family's grand piano. Aubrey also plays a tiny violin.
To reach KRISTIN DAVIS: 540/368-5028 kdavis@freelancestar.com