Vince Russo, Mendocino Music Man

Story by Denice Breaux

Amid so much lively art in coastal Mendocino, it is easy to take for granted some of our most influential artists, especially those of unassuming demeanor. A local gem since his arrival in 1995, Vince Russo— musician, scholar, teacher and all-around sweetheart of a guy—has offered our small community the benefits of his talent, knowledge, and vast international experience.

The oldest of four boys, Vince was born in Carmel, California in 1944 to a warm, Italian family. Even though his mother was not of Italian stock, Betty Lou Posey became immersed in the culture when she married Salvatore Russo, “a Steinbeck boy—a liberal, bohemian Cannery Row fisherman” who moved to Monterey from Pittsburg, California in 1926. Though Vince’s parents weren’t musicians, they sang a lot and loved to harmonize. His mom was a good dancer and his dad, whom everyone called “Dody,” listened to opera.

“When you’re born into an Italian family, you’re born on an opera stage,” muses Vince, who was raised with his grandparents in the house speaking Italian and English. “There is so much going on, so much in the Italian culture that has a theatrical quality.”

Vince attended local parochial schools where he participated in theatrical pieces, singing and dancing in original skits and snippets from musicals using the local United Service Organizations’ stage. After hearing him sing, the USO manager offered to help Vince find a voice teacher and a sponsor to pay for lessons. Of two possible teachers, Vince picked the “flamboyant” one, Nancy Ness Bowman, a Norwegian opera singer famous in the 1930s and married to an American diplomat from South America who had retired in Carmel. Along with voice instruction, Vince, who’d had a brief stint with the accordion at age eight, also learned piano from Nancy Ness. Beside the good fortune of studying with a top instructor, Vince was also deservedly blessed with the support of people who wanted to help him and awarded him scholarships to pay for lessons.

In 1962 Vince auditioned for a summer stock theater group coming through Monterey that used locals to round things out. From the cattle call he was chosen for Take Me Along with Jack Carson, and Show Boat with Dorothy Dandridge. Thus was Vince Russo’s magical and fortuitous introduction to professional theater at age seventeen on the stage of The Old Monterey Opera House.

After studying music at Monterey Peninsula College, Vince transferred with a jazz scholarship to San Francisco State University in 1965 where he earned a B.A. in theory, literature and performance. Then for his M.A. in vocal performance he studied with John Large who was earning his second doctorate at Stanford University in the department of acoustics, studying registration in singing, and teaching classes at S.F. State. Fascinated by Large’s work, Vince began working with him on his master’s program. “John was a great baritone and performed with people like Sherrill Milnes,” recalls Vince. “He had a wonderful background, and I learned so much from him.”

In 1969, after Vince’s graduation, John Large moved to the University of Southern California, and Vince continued his studies with him, William Vennard, and Jan Popper, professor of music and director of the opera theater at UCLA.
Seriously studying German lieder and mélodies françaises, Vince’s affinity for the French and his lyric baritone voice were well suited to the vocal repertoire art song. From Los Angeles he entered many competitions in that genre, winning among other awards the National Association of Teachers of Singing competition for the state of California. “I met so many interesting people in L.A. whose influence opened many doors for me elsewhere,” says Vince.

In 1971 Vince Russo performed in six operas with the Santa Fe Opera, including a world premiere of Heitor’s Villa-Lobos’ Yerma in which Vince sang and danced. The following year he won two scholarships to study voice in Paris with baritone and master Pierre Bernac, living at the Fondation des États Unis campus and meeting many wonderful people. In 1973 École Normale de Musique de Paris awarded him his licence de concert, the equivalent of a master’s degree in French vocal literature. As was required at the completion of the École, Vince sang for a jury and won first place, much to his amazement. “I was shocked,” he recalls. “After I sang my pieces, I just left to catch the Métro when I was flagged down: ‘You won! You have to go back!’ So many guys sang before me who I thought were much better, but the judges liked me a lot. That was such a big event in my life. Then French mélodies and art songs became my specialty.”

Back in the states in 1973 and uncertain what to do next, Vince got a job in San Francisco at Carl Fischer’s Wholesale House and soon things “catapulted and shifted for me in many ways,” says Vince. His voice teacher John Large was being transferred to University of California at San Diego and suggested that Vince accompany him as a teaching assistant. “I was reluctant to go because I was having fun in the city, and with my European experience, people were listening to me. I was getting San Francisco Opera Guild jobs and auditioning for all kinds of programs in the City,” says Vince. Nevertheless, he went to San Diego planning to travel to the Bay Area when necessary and enrolled in UCSD’s Ph.D. program, “one of the best moves I’ve made, though there have been many. These were my ‘golden years,’ from Paris through San Diego.”

In 1975 Vince auditioned for the San Diego Opera Company, but when he didn’t hear back from them considered returning to Europe. Then in 1976 UCSD sent him to Italy as part of a research project to seek out the original one-act manuscript of Donizetti’s Betly which had since been re-written into two acts. That mission was accomplished, and Vince’s job was to make a singable version of the opera which was eventually published by International Music Co.

After about six months in Europe, Vince received a telegram from the San Diego Opera saying that they had many roles for him. It posed a happy dilemma, but Vince returned to San Diego as Artist in Residence, singing comprimario roles which required singing and acting often in roles secondary to famous opera stars. He played one role after another, including the priest in the world premiere of Menotti’s Juana, La Loca with Beverly Sills with whom he also sang in the PBS production of The Merry Widow.

The opera’s artistic director Tito Capobianco and his ballet dancer wife Gigi “liked the way I moved, so they used me a lot, and we became close friends,” recalls Vince. And because San Diego is not very far from Hollywood, it is a destination for many industry opera lovers. When Vince was playing the role of Gravedigger in Hamlet with Sherill Milnes, Burt Lancaster showed up at a rehearsal and just sat smiling. Afterwards a nervous Vince asked him how he liked the performance, and Lancaster suggested that he have fun with his prop, maybe “pour liquor down the skull’s mouth or practice juggling with it.” It turned out to be good advice, says Vince.

Besides performing with the San Diego Opera from 1976 to 1983, Vince taught part-time in San Diego at the United States International University in their school of performing and visual arts. During this time, he also taught musical theater classes in England for a year through an USIU program.

When Tito Capobianco left the San Diego Opera as its director in 1983, Vince returned to San Francisco briefly before joining John Large at North Texas University to work on their publication International Journal of Research in Singing and Applied Vocal Pedagogy. Like a rocket scientist of music, Vince explains that his work was done in “psycho acoustic research that has to do with listening and how we perceive sound, (studying) the male registration using the bel canto model of registration using chest and head voice.” While keeping the journal alive he later taught at Texas Christian University and continued to perform, presenting thirty-six solo recitals between 1985 and 1995.

Vince returned to California in 1995, checking out Mendocino where he had visited friends in the past. Although the coast seemed isolated and without much activity, after three months he thought, “I’m fifty-one years old, I’ve already had a great career performing and teaching, so maybe living here might not be such a bad idea.” After meeting musicians and producers Clare and Danny Barca, he was lured into the position of vocal coach for Gloriana Opera Company’s production of Man of La Mancha. “I still didn’t feel really settled here,” recalls Vince, “but I began to think of it as a welcome hiatus from all the university stuff.”

Unlike even the community theater full of professionals he had known as a kid in Monterey, the Mendocino scene offered a few people with some background and training, but many without either. Vince found it refreshing. “I loved it. It was fun to be without the restrictions and pressures of university work,” he says. “Any bit of progress was appreciated, and it was wonderful to see people who had no idea how to read music up there singing and performing so well.”
In 1996 Clare Barca with the help of Vince established Opera Fresca, staging Cosi Fan Tutte. Also that year Walter Greene, a co-founder of the Mendocino Music Festival who knew of Vince from S.F. State, pulled Vince into the Festival’s production of Carmen in the role of Zuniga and also to work with the chorus. Opera Fresca continued to flourish with an opera every year, and Vince played a role and prepared the chorus in each. When he realized he was "having too much fun,” he rented a room and stayed. “Mendocino was an interesting place to be after all, and I never thought it would be.”

It is no wonder Vince Russo came to be known as “the chorus man.” For many years he continued his double duties as performer while preparing the choruses for Gloriana, Opera Fresca and the Music Festival, involved in numerous grand productions from Bye, Bye, Birdie to The Magic Flute to Don Pasquale.

Of the local talent Vince says “I love the people I work with. I’m a mother hen kind of guy, and after I’ve worked with them and taken them as far as they can go, (you) just have to love them whether it’s perfect or not. I expect professional standards from all the locals.” He continues, “But it’s difficult at times. Those who don’t have professional quality voices or don’t read music fit in beautifully and learn from the others, and occasionally bringing in outsiders the community rounds out the mix. You can surround a quartet of good singers with a lot of different voices and it’ll work.”

Realizing that his health demanded the rest, Vince is taking a break this year from complete involvement in all three venues. “I love working, but I want to be in the best form to enjoy it.” Happily, all is well, and a rested Vince continues to coach private students who find he can be as demanding of the individual as he is of the chorus.

A separate story would be needed to convey all the high praises from the beloved teacher’s many satisfied students who represent an array of backgrounds and musical abilities. One mezzo-soprano studying with Vince for seven years notes that “he can be a taskmaster and knows when you haven’t studied” and considers him “one of the highlights of my life.” She also speaks of his emotion that comes through and when singing a duet with him sometimes sees tears in his eyes.

Another student believes that with “keen ears and a magical bag of tricks Vince helps to achieve the best sound. Though you must have correct physical anatomy to become a world-class singer, he can help anyone get better.” Another agrees that “he could teach a cow to sing,” and appreciates that the inspiring and insightful Vince will work with students in any form. “When I had a hankering for torch songs, that’s what we worked on.” One student who sings soprano in an a capella quartet says that, besides being her best voice teacher ever, Vince can take people who are primarily dancers and turn them into singers.

Vince agrees that, unlike as it is with ballet dancing, the voice can be trained at any point, but still “there is a certain quality, a je ne sais quoi that makes the voice sound professional, an innate gift that cannot be trained into anyone.”

Lately Vince has been spending more time in Monterey with his family as his eighty-five-year-old mother faces health concerns. Though his brother Sal continues taking great care of Mom at home, Vince anticipates retiring to that area in the not so distant future. He’ll return frequently to Mendocino, of course, staying connected to music and friends; hardest of all to leave might be the two-year-old twin daughters of close friends Samantha Abbott and Chris Skyhawk, to whom he has become an adopted uncle. “I have fallen in love. It’s a gift that goes both ways and has added a dimension to me that I really needed in my life at this point.” Vince has taught little Inyo and Kiara a few Italian phrases, and “when I hear ‘Uncle Vinnie, mi amore,’ I melt,” he gushes.

Such tenderness and reciprocity is apparent in much of what Vince does, and his gifts have made Mendocino an even richer place than when he arrived. As local performer Sandy Glickfeld observes, Vince Russo is “a big-hearted, talented and skilled music man,” and, though he’ll be missed should he move to Monterey, it is, after all, “to be with his mother, which speaks of his heart.”