Tripod: New Orleans At 300

I crashed an opera rehearsal the other day. A large group of vocalists, young, old, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, all the genders, belted out in long rows surrounding a piano. They were preparing for the 75th anniversary celebration of the New Orleans Opera Association. I was there to talk to a mother-daughter opera combo: Givonna Joseph and Aria Mason. “When she was little people would always say ‘Are you going to sing like your mom?’” Givonna told me. “It would drive her crazy. ‘Im so tired, no, I’m not gonna sing… And I said, ‘you’re going to be who you’re supposed to be. I’m not going to tell you what you are going to do.’ And at some point the bug bit her and by the time she got to college, all of a sudden she says ‘I’m going to major in voice.’ What?!” She did name her daughter Aria. “I did,” she confirms. “I took a chance. She could have been tone deaf. That wouldn’t have worked out so well.” Givonna’s been performing since she was a child. She was often the only black girl in