From humble yet musical beginnings through to a career as an international opera singer, Mary Callaghan Lynch is on a mission to bring opera to the students of Detroit.

(0:17) We meet the Callaghan family, huddled around the TV watching Giancarlo Menotti’s opera Amahl and the Night Visitors.

(2:19) We hear about Mary’s successful career as an international opera singer and her opportunity to perform Amahl for the 50th anniversary with the composer himself serving as maestro. We learn how this performance inspired her to form an educational opera company of her own.

(5:10) Mary discusses her unique relationship as friend and voice coach to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.

(7:15) We learn about all that goes into creating an opera experience of the highest quality to be brought to kids in schools, from singers to costumes to sets and beyond.

(10:59) Donna Rhodes, former Superintendent of Redford Schools, addresses the skepticism that some felt toward the initiative, but she affirms the overwhelming positive reception.

(14:00) We hear about the status of arts and music programs in schools today, and how Motor City Lyric Opera works to remedy that, bringing opera to over 70,000 students every year, and the notes and praise they’ve gotten in response.

Reporting by Maggie Bickerstaff; production and narration by Ron Pangborn

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Mary: Every holiday season, we would gather around the television, which of course we weren't really encouraged or allowed to watch very much of, but we would watch Giancarlo Menotti's opera Amahl and the Night Visitors. And it actually, it was the first tele-broadcast of the Hallmark Hall of Fame series. And what they did is, they commissioned Giancarlo Menotti to compose a holiday opera for families. And I was so struck. It's really, my most cherished childhood memory was watching this opera.

Narrator: This was the first opera, specifically composed for television in America. And Mary was entranced. She sat there, slack-jawed and wide-eyed taking in the story of the magi. And it was somewhere in the euphoria of the performers' vibrato and their patter that Mary made a decision: she would be an opera singer.

It wasn't entirely inconceivable. For one thing, music was in her blood. Her mother was a professional singer and her father was a church organist. Her parents actually met on the set of an operetta in high school where they were both cast as romantic leads. But financially, it was close to impossible. The lessons, the training, and the numerous instructors at an opera track would demand for well outside the realm of possibility for Mary's parents. She'd have to work with what she had: a uniquely extraordinary exposure to classical music within her home, raw talent, and a dogged persistence. In the end, it turns out that would be enough.

This is Mary.

[singing]

Mary: As fate would have it, many years later, I had the great opportunity and honor to produce and to perform the role of the Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors with Giancarlo Menotti himself directing the 50th anniversary production.

Narrator: And that performance gave Mary an idea. An idea to be a channel to the esoteric world of opera, for the people of Detroit. To make what is traditionally perceived as a music for a select few for everybody. To expose children to the potential lodged in their lungs. To give them a dream and a hand with that dream.

This is the story of the Motor City Lyric Opera.

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Mary: I felt really driven to be able to bring opera to the inner city kids and to do it without charging them, because obviously they had no budget.

[singing]

Mary: I think people are thirsty and hungry more than ever for music and, you know, with everything so automated and digitized in our culture you know, live, unamplified music, I think that's the thing, you know, we create and give presentations that are not amplified. So a lot of these children have never experienced music that isn't amplified.

Narrator: So with that idealistic vision. In mind, Mary founded the Motor City Lyric Opera to...

Mary: Bring highly artistic musical presentations to the students and families of metro Detroit free of charge.

Narrator: The first step was to pull a team together.

Mary: I have an extremely dedicated Board of Directors that share in the mission intimately and passionately and are generous and support what we do.

Narrator: You may have heard of one of the board members.

[A Natural Woman playing]

That's right. Aretha Franklin. The Queen of Soul was an opera fan, and she's a woman who deserves her own tangent, so here it goes:

Mary: So I get a call from her people and I was like, “Woah, what?". And I said, “Oh, okay, I'm a soprano, but I can, I'll learn it, you know, and teach it to her. So it was the beginning of really a very special, tender relationship with Aretha, because, I think mainly because I never exploited it and I kept it very private, because she was very private. But what happened is she sang it at a performance in New York at the Waldorf. As fate would have it, the Grammy Awards were the following week. Well Aretha never flew. She drove to her gigs, you know, she had a bus. And this is a true story, a half hour before she was to go, Pavarotti was to go on to sing the Nessun Dorma, she was at the Grammys, they said, “Pavarotti is ill, Ms. Franklin, would you please do the Aria?"

[Aretha Franklin singing Nessun Dorma]

Mary: She was really extraordinary. I cannot sing her praises enough. And I'm so grateful that I had the honor of working with her and that we actually became friends.

Narrator: So Mary had an impressive Board of Directors. The next step was hiring a cast and crew.

Mary: I hire absolute professional singers because when you're introducing this precious audience of children to opera, I want them to see and experience and listen to the best. And so it's like a twofer, you know, they're not only being exposed to this transformative art form and we have sets and costumes, Suzanne Hanna, and the costume designer from Michigan Opera Theatre did our costume design. And we still have the production, the sets, the costumes. But we have a pianist, we don't have an orchestra, but they're also, we send materials ahead of time and about opera terms, how to be a good audience member, but also giving guides for the teachers.

Narrator: And then, of course, the music.

[singing]

Mary: The Billy Goat's Gruff, is set to music of Donizetti and Mozart, and the music is so great. We did do a production of, really a gorgeous production of The Magic Flute that we did for high school students. And it's one of my all time favorites because of the fantasy, and of course Mozart, in fact, I tell the kids, you know, Google, go home, the older students that know how to, you know, Google, Google, Mozart, M-O-Z-A-R-T, and just listen to any of his extraordinary music, because there's something so universal about Mozart's music.

Narrator: So while budgets were pared down and schools were cutting their art and music programs, teachers were let go, paints and pianos were gathering dust, Mary conjured all her resources and relationships to bring opera to children. Not just any opera, but the highest caliber opera there was, because she knew what she was up against: getting millennial children interested in opera. But she deeply believed that if she made it the best she could, kids would love it as much as she did.

Mary: What I think does set us apart is we've anything I've chosen, I've wanted it to be multilayered and even deeper than the music. That, and of course, when I talk to the students, the little children, you know, they, l say, you know, there'll be a quartet and four singers will be perhaps singing completely different lyrics or words, I tell them words. But because of the music, you understand what's going on. It's the music that propels and can tell the story when you may not know exactly, you know, the texts that's being sung.

[singing]

I think, you know, of course we wanted to be able to create audience members, but I think just the mere fact of exposing them to something they may never have and may never yet again experience, this beautiful art form of voice and instrumentation and the set and the costumes. Yeah, there's nothing like opera when it's done well.

Narrator: If you were anything like I was in elementary school, you may still be a bit skeptical about the feasibility of holding the interest of a room full of pre-K through fifth graders in a 10 minute aria. At its launch, there were definitely skeptics. Some teachers at schools didn't think it would hold their students' interest. I mean, five-year-old Mary might like Mozart and Donizetti, but what about the average five-year-old? The one perfectly content with Raffi and Sesame Street?

[Raffi playing]

Donna: I had many teachers who had never heard it before and didn't think they'd like it. We had people say, I don't know," some teachers have the third, fourth grade kids, “I don't know if they're going to like that. It might be too babyish," they would say. And I said, “Just give it a try. You know, if you bring them, if you bring one group in and you don't think you want to bring your other group in, then you know, that's your choice, but I really want you to give it a try."

Narrator: This is Donna Rhodes, the former Superintendent of Redford Public Schools. She's been bringing the program to her schools for years. When she retired, she joined the board. And she gets the skepticism.

Donna: Well, honestly, I came from a family that liked music, but we didn't have a lot of money. And opera was way beyond our ability, my parents' ability to take us to a performance. And it wasn't the kind of music that either of my parents had grown up listening to.

Narrator: Her husband, who was also an educator, saw an early performance by the Motor City Lyric Opera for students from the Farmington Hills Schools, and he told Donna to try to book it for her schools. She did, albeit a little anxiously in the face of reluctance.

Donna: Many of the parents who have never heard of it and didn't even, were wondering what we were doing when we were bringing up or to a school, because it sounded like an old people's thing. And we certainly changed their minds on that one.

Narrator: It was a hit. To quote two six year olds...

Child 1: It was amazing

Child 2: It was unbelievable, when they would sing. [sings]

Donna: You know, and the children were just amazed at the voices. They didn't, they wanted every question. We had a Q&A at the end and every time they would say, “How do you make your voice do that? Because it's so different than the singing, obviously, that they do in their music programs. We found that engagement was just much more than we had anticipated in the way that they are entertained now. And so for those children, who've not had that opportunity, it's an experience that is totally different than any other kind of musical performance. And the fact that it's not that this is a play and as well as being sung by beautifully talented opera singers, that experience is very, very rare for many people. Many of them wrote about the voices and how they sing, that they didn't know they could sing like that, and they'll draw little pictures of themselves singing and that kind of engagement, I think, is so powerful. And it's powerful in the fact that we were able to offer them that. It may be something that they will never again see until they're adults and make that personal choice.

[singing]

Opera singers: Did you hear that?

Kids: Yes!

Narrator: Bingo. That's exactly what Mary was hoping for. Because as someone who grew up without means, she sees the innumerable blessings that she received from exposure to the arts, through her family and her schooling. She thinks of the thousands of Detroit Public School students that have grown up without art or music classes of any kind. Today, almost 70% of the Detroit Public Schools have no art teachers, 60% have no instrumental or vocal teachers. That's roughly 25,000 students this year who've had no exposure to plucking an instrument or molding clay or singing a scale. So school by school, performance by performance, Mary's trying to change that, as their website states, “To be part of the Detroit Renaissance, embracing the community with productions of the highest artistic integrity."

Mary: It's really difficult to put into words, but I have watched it, I have seen it, and we literally have thousands and thousands of “thank yous" with drawings, from pre-kindergarten to fifth graders, thanking us for the beautiful music. Several saying, “I want to sing high like you," or “loudly like you," and teachers will say the children spoke for weeks and kept talking about it. Music can truly be transformative. And of course I believe great music is extremely transformative. Can transport you, can change you, can elevate you, can give you a different perspective. I feel so blessed that I was able to stay in Detroit and be able to enjoy the career that I have had.

[singing]

When it comes to crunching numbers, art is never going to be very persuasive. It's always deemed a luxury. The cream on top that's unnecessary in the face of 86% of Detroit students who qualify for free lunch programs, or in the face of maximizing standardized test potential to secure more funding. But Mary sees life without art as meaningless. For her, it's the breath that sustains us, a life force that can propel people through the difficult circumstances. And she thinks it's a pretty important thing to give these kids, too.

Mary: I think the other thing about great music is it's healing. I think it really, it can be a healing experience. Music can truly be transformative. And of course I believe great music is extremely transformative. Can transport you, can change you, can elevate you, can give you a different perspective.

Narrator: Decades ago, a young Mary grew up the 14th of 18 kids. Her dad worked three jobs to keep food on the table: teaching at Marygrove College, working as a music director at St. Bernard's and St. Catherine's, and then Holy Name Parish in Birmingham. They built a home life founded on a rich religious, artistic, and musical environment, observing the liturgical calendar and marking its occasions with song and drama and holy music. St. Augustine's dictum, “who sings prays twice," became their family model. Her upbringing was far from the world that often gets associated with opera appreciation. It was a life of chaos and hand-me-downs and scrimping and pinching. And art was the thread that kept the family united. Each morning, her dad proclaimed which feast day it was. They would read the breviary twice a day and they would sing. Their tiny house was full of music, was a beautiful life, but one that seemed worlds away from a life performing throughout the US and Europe, but that life beat gave her a grander scope. And it's that beat she wants to put into the hearts of Detroit kids.

[musical cadence and applause]

Narrator: Detroit stories is a production of the Detroit Catholic and the Communications Department of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.