UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Mezzo soprano Bonnie Cutsforth-Huber's personal journey has included some dramatic highs and lows worthy of an opera, the art form to which she has dedicated her life.
Raised on the expansive prairies of a Saskatchewan cattle ranch, Cutsforth-Huber is now an assistant professor of music at Penn State Altoona. She discovered her passion for singing at a very young age, when her Scottish-born grandfather would teach her folk songs as they rode his lawnmower. She recalled that his singing voice was untrained but "one of the purest and most beautiful tenors I've heard to this day," and it inspired her to pursue music as her life's path.
After earning bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in vocal performance and musicology, she built an active career in oratorio, cantata and operatic circuits. She won critical acclaim for such roles as Dalila in Saint-Saens's "Samson et Dalila," Marcellina in Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" and the title role in Bizet's "Carmen."