Deseret News – Meet the Utah mom who doesn’t mind being a terrible mother in Utah Opera’s ‘The Magic Flute’

by Lottie Peterson Johnson SALT LAKE CITY — After months and months of relentlessly begging her mother for voice lessons, Celena Shafer got her wish. For the first few lessons, the then-seventh-grader sang somewhat timidly, using what she called her “nice, quiet church voice.” But once Shafer warmed up to her teacher, she was ready to divulge a secret: “There’s this other voice that I can do that you should hear,” she confided to her teacher.

Performing regularly with Utah Opera and the Utah Symphony has brought things full-circle for soprano Celena Shafer, who debuted with the symphony in 1992 as a Salute to Youth soloist when she was a 17-year-old senior at Viewmont High School.

It was a voice that Shafer, the fifth of eight children, used all the time in her Centerville home — except when sitting at the dinner table. Her parents had to draw the line somewhere. It was loud, big and full. It was opera. Upon hearing that voice, Shafer’s teacher didn’t waste any time. She pulled out a book called “26 Italian Songs and Arias” and Shafer never looked back. Read on at deseretnews.com