Carol Todd

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Carol Todd (b. March 6 career as a soprano singer is highlighted by leading roles in prestigious productions of the world's most celebrated operas. Headlining La Rondine or Madame Butterfly ... performing with the Metropolitan Opera National Touring Company or the San Francisco Opera Company ... starring alongside such luminaries as Placido Domingo or Norman Triegle ... her incandescent talent and distinctive style have reflected the sacred traditions while helping to define the contemporary profile of an art form. The word "diva" is thrown around colloquially, but in the case of Miss Todd it applies literally.

Carol Todd was born on March 6, in Long Beach, California to Otto Taylor (a former Long Beach Fire Chief) and Dorothy England. At the age of 10 she took up piano; by 13 she was studying piano and cello with her cousin, the famed cellist Gilbert Reese. Voice lessons had to wait until her mid-teens. After graduating from Long Beach's Polytechnic High School she married and had her first child, Kim.

Miss Todd pursued formal musical education at the University of Southern California with vocal teacher William (Bill) Vennard, to whom she was introduced by Marilyn Horne. At USC she also participated in an opera workshop headed by Walter Ducloux. Mr. Vennard entered her into auditions for the Long Beach Symphony, and she won.

She moved to Carmel, California with her husband, Mr. Tod Faulkner (he eventually served as her PR man for a bit), where he was stationed at the former Fort Ord military base. While in Carmel she performed in the musical comedy Wonderful Town and the opera Amahl And The Night Visitors, but didn't get truly serious about her singing until she moved to Los Angeles and had her second daughter, Kathy.

Miss Todd's professional singing career took off after she won an audition with the San Francisco Opera Company. She received rave notices starting with her first part, as Frasquita in Carmen. Her next appearance in Carmen was as Micaela, performing with Grace Bumbry and Jon Vickers as her Don Jose.

Appearing regularly with the San Francisco Opera Company over the next decade, she sang more leading roles, including Marguerite in Faust, Leonora in Trovatore and the title role in Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Kurt Herbert Adler of the SFOC: "Carol Todd's Butterfly is the most sensitive and beautifully sung I've heard or seen."

Among Miss Todd's professional and artistic highlights was bringing her Butterfly performance to the Los Angeles Music Center. This Los Angeles Opera Company production, conducted by Henry Lewis (Marilyn Horne's husband), was the second ever production at the brand new venue.

Another San Francisco blockbuster was her starring role as Magda in the return of Puccini's La Rondine, as conducted by Anton Coppola, after an absence of 34 years from the SFOC repertoire. Wrote Martin Bernheimer of the Los Angeles Times, "Todd gives what must be the performance of her life. There is much to be said for her ravishing appearance, brightly focused tone and graceful sense of phrase."

The San Francisco Chronicle review chimed in, "It would be difficult to imagine a finer Magda for both looks and voice than Carol Todd, who sang rings around Anna Moffo's recording. Personal restraint and enough power to fill that vast cavern of a house made this a near definitive Magda."

Her career with the SFOC included triumphant productions of La Boheme, The Spanish Hour, and Die Walkuere, for which she shared the stage with Jon Vickers.

Twice she shared a stage with the esteemed Placido Domingo. They collaborated in a Madame Butterfly performance, in Fort Worth, Texas, and were joined in a San Diego performance of Faust by the venerated Norman Triegle.

Invited by the great conductor Zubin Mehta, Miss Todd made solo appearances singing excerpts of Berg's Wozzeck with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and she performed with the Pasadena Symphony.

Miss Todd was chosen to sing and appeared at the 20th Anniversary Meeting of the United Nations, in San Francisco. At this time she was honored to be invited by the Russian Ambassador to sing in Russia, but declined due to contractual commitments throughout the following year. In another major honor, she sang for former President Eisenhower at a gala fund-raising event. And during this time Miss Todd was featured in Look magazine as "an example of opera's forbidden mixture of talent and beauty."

In the 1966 season Miss Todd joined the Metropolitan Opera National Touring Company, and for one year toured the United States and Canada singing Mimi in La Boheme, directed by the noted Jose Quintero.

She returned to San Francisco to sing the role of Queen Isabella for the World Premiere of Christofo Columbo, with composer Milhaud as an honored guest.

Miss Todd gave birth to her third and last child, Christian, before pursuing a rebirth of her operatic career in Europe. The move enabled her to vastly enlarge her repertoire. Performing in the great opera houses of Hamburg, Frankfurt and Vienna, she received special acclaim for her interpretations of the heroines in Madame Butterfly, Tosca and Traviata, and as Desdemona in Otello. After a three-year stint in Lubeck, Germany, she moved to Augsberg, where she sang the European première of Of Mice And Men in German, with composer Carlyle Floyd in attendance and Stephan Mettin directing. Also in Germany she was able to perform with Timm Tzschaschel and baritone Tony Baldwin. In Frankfurt, Christoph Dohnanyi conducted her in Falstaff, where she sang the role of Alice.

In her return to the U.S., Miss Todd sang in San Francisco Opera Company productions of Carmen and then Faust, taking the role of Marguerite.

While living in New York and singing at The Met, she took time out for The Philadelphia Opera Company's production of Desire Under The Elms at Connecticut's Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater, performing with Michael Best and Kenneth Bridges for Music Director Paulette Haupt-Nolen. This was the first opera based upon an O'Neill play. She later sang Manon Lescaut with the Seattle Opera Company.

On the lighter side, Miss Todd co-starred with Darren McGavin in a Broadway road company production of The King And I, appearing in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her forays into musical theater have also included performances in My Sister Eileen and Showboat. For Universal Pictures she's sung and recorded for films and television, in addition to singing for charities. In between operatic and concert engagements, Miss Todd performed in a small but renowned Los Angeles cabaret, Maldonado's, where she sang with Stanley Grover and pianist Dan Gettinger. She especially enjoyed singing at "Pops And Picnic," in California's Napa Valley, with the famed conductor Carmen Dragon.

Throughout her operatic career, Carol Todd has sung on stage with some of the best, including the artists noted previously as well as Mario Del Monaco, Beverly Sills, Giorgio Tozzi and Leontyne Price.

But her collaborators have not been limited to the operatically gifted: Once, her father-in-law (Tod "Kid Mexico" Faulkner Sr.) introduced her to Harpo Marx, and the two performed "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," with Harpo naturally playing the harp.

Miss Todd is now retired and living with her husband, Angel Ramorino, in Van Nuys, California. Before concentrating on opera as a profession she had painted; now, with time for a subject she most enjoys, she replicates paintings by the Old Masters. But the music continues as she helps tutor two of her eight grandchildren, who are up-and-coming musicians.