What is an Opera Abecedarian?

Where did your🕸️🪵name come from?

Response to a Writing Prompt

Good question.

According to the Oxford Language Dictionary, a-be-ce-dar-i-an is from late Latin abecedarious and the early 17th century abecedarian noun meaning a person who is just learning, or a novice engaged in elemental learning.

I chose this name for my blog and my email address at the very time I was stepping into an entirely new field, pursuing an entirely different career at the tender age of 47. It was 2013, I had been bitten by the opera bug and was sitting in my living room listening to Maria Stuarda on WQXR from the Metropolitan Opera. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I knew this was the next thing to do.

An abecedarian is one who learns the ABC’s of something. With nothing but vision and a scrap full of grit that I’d scraped up from the core of my being I established myself a word person in a musician’s world – There was no program for learning libretto writing that I could get into at the time so I launched a self-study course. The right teachers came in and out of my life at the right time, which was a blessing, and still it was the school of hard knocks and failures that taught me the most (and they still do.)

It’s taken 13 years to call myself a professional in this industry but here I am. I will always be an abecedarian (coming from a beginner’s mind)

Each failure and success I mark in this industry is simply another opportunity to grow. I get up the next morning and return to my work.

That is a life worth living.

Life is short | Make Opera

Also an abecedarian when it comes to illustration.