Rosanna E. Tufts has a Master of Music degree in Music History from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In her hometown of Duxbury, Massachusetts, she began piano lessons at the age of 6, and began formal voice training at the age of 14. A soprano, she has sung for many churches and synagogues in the Baltimore-DC area, specializing in the sacred works of the Classical and Baroque composers as well as “early” Renaissance music.

But her real passion is musical theatre and light opera, which allows her to both sing and act, and sometimes even dance. Her first experiences in small parts or chorus were in The Boy Friend, Li’l Abner, The Pirates of Penzance, Oklahoma!, Wonderful Town, and Where’s Charley? When she landed her first leading role, it was one of the toughest in the repertoire: “Cunegonde” in Candide, which calls for some real coloratura fireworks. Since then, she has played lead and supporting roles in many other productions, including Little Mary Sunshine, Once Upon a Mattress, Yeomen of the Guard, Iolanthe, The Gondoliers, The Sorcerer, Trial By Jury, Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Merry Widow, H.M.S. Pinafore, Die Fledermaus, The Magic Flute, and Kismet (for this last, she was also the Director).

Along the way, she sang in the Baltimore Symphony Chorus. Highlights of her time there include the inaugural concert for the opening of the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, a performance of The Planets at Carnegie Hall, and singing the Verdi Requiem with Luciano Pavarotti and Lorin Maazel, in a performance that was recorded for PBS airplay. She was also one of the founding members of the Concert Artists of Baltimore, singing under the baton of renowned conductor Edward Polochick.

Her first experience as an arranger was for the Reverend’s Rebels of Goucher College, a “Sweet Adelines” type of female barbershop group. But she didn’t really start to develop her chops as a composer until after she discovered a local community of Neo-Pagans in 1984. Having just completed a graduate-level course in ethnomusicology, she immediately recognized the significance of her “find.” Immersing herself in a world of primitive ritual, symbolism and fire circles, she began learning the strategies of trance-inducing chant, world-beat percussion, and folk-based ballads based on the European Grail Mysteries and other time-honored myths from around the world. Some of her work from this period can be heard on her CD from 1994, Follow Me to the Forest. She also devised all orchestral arrangements for (and played two characters in) According To Us, Charles Butler’s original musical of three rehabilitated homeless people.

A girl’s gotta eat, though, and over the course of 20 years she worked in a health food store, a bank, a church office, and (most successfully) for a Human Resources consulting firm. She became a Certified Compensation Professional, doing projects for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Community College of Baltimore County, the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, and several community banks. Her first marriage to a professional magician ended in 1993; her second marriage to a electrical rail mechanic resulted in the birth of her daughter in 1999. She is currently employed in the HR department at the Community College of Baltimore Country.

The Birth of an Opera

Hypnotized for so long by the “conventional wisdom” that she couldn’t make a living as a professional musician, she earned her living doing things that were sorta-kinda OK, yet she lacked a sense of real direction and purpose . . . until New Year’s Eve, 2005. On that night, at an adults-only event, she and two other actors performed a one-act play that she wrote, that depicted a spiritual process she was going through at the time. Her leading man played the role of Mars, the God of War, while she herself played “Mary Tie-Her-More,” a delicate Edwardian ingénue who is seemingly too fragile to be able to take what Mars is dishing out. But when she does begin to understand what he wants, and says the right thing, the God of War transforms into Venus, the Goddess of Love.

With only two rehearsals, and despite being very inexperienced, the man who played Mars brought an unexpected and extreme sexual sizzle to the performance, which in turn brought out the very best in Rosanna’s expressiveness. It was the most extraordinary rapport she’d ever felt with any leading man she’d ever worked with. The audience was not just entertained, they were actually riveted and moved. The experience rocked Rosanna’s world, and brought her back to her roots, reminding her of what made theatre so exciting for her in the first place. “What did I do right?” she asked herself, “How do I do more of it, and in a way that’s accessible to a wider audience? Why does Theatre matter?”

She cogitated on this for the first four months of 2006, until mid-May when she had a vision of auditioning for a new musical, one that would require her to be . . . tied up for half of the show. “What if somebody actually did such a thing?” she wondered, “What would the story be about?” A few days later, upon waking up in the morning, it all came clear: “Of course! It’s the legend of Persephone, reinvented as a rock opera in modern dress.” Her beloved “silent-movie heroine” character from the Mars and Venus play would transplant effortlessly into this expanded setting. In the next moment, it was also clear that if it was to happen, she couldn’t wait for somebody else to do it – she would have to write it.

Suddenly Rosanna was no longer just another wanna-be soprano, along with a gazillion other girls, waiting for somebody to “throw her a bone.” Now she became a pro-active soprano with a “USP” (Unique Selling Proposition), able to offer something compelling and completely original, that nobody else is doing.

And that’s how The Passion of Persephone was born.