Soaring Soprano

When she was born, Angel Joy Blue’s father, Sylvester Blue, held her up and noticed that she had a big upper chest and a good pair of lungs. “This is the next Leontyne Price,” he said, or at least that’s what family lore says he said.

Today she is 24, is luminously beautiful and has already sung the role of Musetta in “La Boheme” for the Los Angeles Opera under the baton of Placido Domingo. Sadly, Sylvester passed away in 2006 and missed his daughter’s debut.

But he was there in spirit. “I looked down at Placido, and it honestly did not seem real,” says Blue, a first-year singer in the opera’s Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program, which this year includes seven other singers and one pianist who possess “potentially international stature.”

“But when I caught his eye, he looked so happy that he reminded me of my father,” Blue recalls, “and I just thought, ‘You’re singing for Dad,’ and that helped a lot.”

As a child growing up in Apple Valley, Blue would often take five or six months off from school to travel the country in a trailer with her mom, dad and four siblings, playing instruments and singing classical and gospel music at churches and ministries--a veritable Partridge Family of the early ‘90s. Once she was accepted by the L.A. County High School for the Arts, the family curtailed touring so she could settle down and study.

Next came a music degree from the University of Redlands and a master’s in music from UCLA. Blue won scholarship money by entering beauty pageants. (She was the first black Miss Apple Valley, as well as first runner-up to Miss California.)

Then the opera came calling, bringing her one step closer to being the next Leontyne Price, the woman she most idolizes in all the world (except, perhaps, for her mom). Even as a kid, she was in love with Price. “It wasn’t just her voice; it was her presence. Whenever I see her, I want to cry,” Blue says. “I almost feel like I am a part of her, a continuation of her.”

Angel Joy Blue will perform with the Riverside County Philharmonic (April 6) and at UCLA’s Royce Hall with the West Los Angeles Symphony (April 13). She also is rehearsing the role of Suzy in “La Rondine,” opening at L.A. Opera on June 7.