The bus stop. It's a place I often find myself spending time as an Adler Fellow. I currently live in the Inner Richmond area, which is a good forty minutes from the opera house, but you can't beat the rent or the myriad of multicultural cuisine just steps from your door. Every morning, I wait for the 38 bus with my fellow passengers in silence, and it never ceases to shock me when someone speaks to me. "How strange!" I think to myself, and wonder what it is about me or my demeanor that invites conversation. What gives people the courage to strike up a chat? Such is the subject matter of LOVE/HATE, a modern love story about two people who meet at...you guessed it...the bus stop. And just as life imitates art, art often imitates life.

As a native New Yorker, if someone had told me 3 years ago that I'd be working with the San Francisco Opera today, I'd have thought they were crazy. But, here I am, in California, having graduated from Merola and finished with my 2nd year as an Adler, and a lot has changed. One could say it has actually jump-started my career in singing because the past 2 years as an Adler were the first that I've sustained my income solely from singing. I've been coached into many roles, been given the time to learn a technique that works for me, and worked with a lot of the people we call stars in the opera business.