Danielle is a Kansas native residing in Oklahoma City with her husband David and furry son Albere. As an artist-scholar, she actively performs, teaches, and researches.

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PERFORMER

Danielle is a lyric coloratura soprano with experience interpreting a range of roles. Recent concert work includes singing the soprano soloist for the Bach Magnificat BWV 234 with Westminster Presbyterian as well as Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, IV with the Oklahoma Community Orchestra. In 2021, she collaborated with Dr. David Forbat, presenting three Chopin lieder in Polish from Op. 74, in multiple recitals.

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Two days before the 2020 lockdown in the Midwest, Danielle sang Michael Daugherty's Labyrinth of Love (2013), a theatrical 40-minute song cycle, with the UCO Wind Symphony as the guest artist. In 2019, she sang Belinda in Dido and Aeneas with the early music ensemble Collegium Musicum, while earlier that year she played the title role in Handel's Rodelinda with the University of Oklahoma Opera Theatre. In May 2018, she premiered the main character in Nicer When You Smile by Oklahoma composer Chris Prather at Opera on Tap's 10-Minute Opera Festival. She also sang in the chorus of Tosca with Oklahoma City's Painted Sky Opera in their 2017 season. At her engagement with the National Music Festival in Maryland, she was the soprano soloist for the Verdi Requiem and Serpina in La Serva Padrona.

 

Other roles include Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Adele (Die Fledermaus), Contessa di Folleville (Il viaggio a Reims), Sister Genovieffa (Suor Angelica), Papagena (Die Zauberflöte), and Le Feu (L’enfant et les sortileges). In addition to full roles, she has worked with significant pedagogues, performers, and composers. Under the guidance of W. Steven Smith, she interpreted Lucia (The Rape of Lucretia) and Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier) for scene performances. From 2012-2014, Danielle coached with Samuel Ramey, performing a scene from Dinorah in his Scholars Concert. In 2013, she was the soprano soloist for the song cycle Songs of Heaven, where she sang for American operatic composer Carlisle Floyd.

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Danielle is deeply dedicated to musical outreach and public education, specifically exposing the community to opera and classical vocal music. In 2016, she founded the Oklahoma City chapter of Opera on Tap, a

501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides performing opportunities for local professional singers in the metropolitan area. She regularly programs, performs, and emcees monthly events. Additionally, Danielle is an eager advocate of new music and new works. In 2021-22, she produced a new Oklahoma opera, No Justice, No Peace, a timely and poignant opera about a black family enduring police brutality.

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TEACHER/PEDAGOGUE

2021 marks Danielle's tenth year of teaching, with seven years teaching at the higher ed level. Danielle is on faculty at the University of Central Oklahoma School of Music, where she teaches applied vocal lessons, lyric diction, opera history, and research/writing courses. She started her career in higher education as an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City Community College and has also worked on staff at the University of Oklahoma teaching non-majors Understanding Music.

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As a voice pedagogue, Danielle has had the privilege of teaching hundreds of students over the past decade. She currently teaches her private studio from her home in southwest Edmond.

 

Teaching through a holistic approach, she works with singers and pianists to develop healthy technique as well as cultivating communication skills so they can clearly express ideas. In addition, she has crafted detailed processes to help students learn music and language efficiently. Danielle is committed to her students, helping them gain the tools to be empowered musicians. In addition to 20+ years of vocal training, Danielle is a trained pianist, having played for 26 years. 

 

She is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing,

American Musicological Society, and the Rousseau Association.

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RESEARCHER

As a musicologist, Danielle specializes in opera studies. She is drawn to opera’s collaborative nature that merges multiple artistic disciplines into one art form: music, aesthetics, dramaturgy, versification, acting, costumery, dance, stagecraft. Thus, her various research efforts shed light on opera’s multi-modal dimensions. Though disparate centuries, her primary research focuses on both eighteenth-century French comédie, culture, and philosophy, as well as twentieth- and twenty-first century American opera. Her dissertation centers on the latter, considering the pioneering operatic institutions who have helped shape new American opera. Through extensive interviews with industry leaders, Danielle is illuminating trends in commissioning, composition, production, and consumption in the early twenty-first century. Her published dissertation is currently embargoed as she develops it into a monograph. Her secondary research interests are characterized by the question of style. She is intrigued by the assimilation of various idioms in composition, looking at how this materializes in the work of J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Grétry, Heggie, Meyerbeer, Mozart, Rameau, Rossini, Wolf, and Verdi.

 

Regarding scholarly activity, Danielle is committed to performative musicology and is an active speaker at professional conferences, specializing in pre-performance lectures and providing succinct social media content. Her previous lectures as the resident musicologist for Painted Sky Opera served a varied demographic of audience members. In recent years, she has presented at the National Opera Association Conference, the American Musicological Society Southwest Regional Conference, an international conference in Spain, and the Rousseau Association Colloquium. Additionally, her most recent publication is a chapter entitled, “Sensibilité, Self-Sacrifice, and the Sentimental: Examining Jacques-Marie Boutet de Monvel and Nicolas Dalayrac’s Ideological Diversion Philippe et Georgette (1791) at the Salle Favart” in Singing Speech and Speaking Melodies: Musical Theatre (1650-1918), published by Brepols Publishers in 2021.

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EDUCATION

Danielle received her Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Oklahoma in 2021. Additionally, Danielle has two Masters of Music, one in Opera Performance (2014) and another in Music History/Literature (2015), both from Wichita State University. Her Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance is also from Wichita State University (2012).

At OU, she studied with Dr. Leslie Flanagan and coached with Dr. Elizabeth Avery. At WSU, she studied with Dr. Deborah Baxter and coached with Samuel Ramey. 

Danielle musicological advisor was Dr. Sanna Pederson at OU, and her thesis advisor/musicological mentor was Dr. Mary Channen Caldwell.