STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Teresa Castillo and Jordan Weatherston Pitts can vouch for the fact that success on the opera stage  does not come overnight.

In their case, it’s a journey that involved a skunk and bloody knees.

But they’ve endured to take to stages around the world. And they’ll perform in Ketchum tonight—Wednesday, March 2--singing a variety of opera and musical favorites, including selections from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”

The performance organized by Sun Valley Opera starts at 7 tonight at The Argyros in Ketchum. Tickets are $50, available at https://theargyros.org/calendar/jordan-weatherston-pitts-and-teresa-castillo/ or by calling Robyn Watson at 818-577-7811.

Both Castillo and Pitts fell in love with opera at an early age.

Castillo, a Costa Rican-American soprano who grew up in the Denver area, spent her childhood singing along to Disney movies and listening to the Maria Callas opera records her mother played.

“Opera stuck in my head--it was the one music that could bring me to tears. It just moved me intensely,” said Castillo, an award-winning singer who has performed for the Lyric Opera of Chicago and at Carnegie Hall.

Pitts, a tenor, used to sing the entire score of “Wizard of Oz” to his mother as a 6-year-old growing up in Brooklyn, wearing red slippers in place of Dorothy’s magical ruby slippers. He found his calling at 16 when a friend invited him to see the opera “Carmen.”

“My mouth was open the whole time. I was shocked people could create a sound like that with their body, that they could sing over the orchestra without a mic,” said Pitts, who has sung with New York City Opera and others since earning a Master’s Degree from Boston University.

Both artists have paid their dues as they’ve climbed the ladder in their chosen profession.

“It’s hard,” said Castillo. And it’s a very expensive career to pursue.”

Voice lessons, for instance, cost between $150 and $200 an hour and coaching another $60 to $120 an hour. Nice gowns start at $500, although Castillo has found some nice ones at consignment stores and through donors who donate their gowns to singers.

Not only are there travel expenses but aspiring opera singers have to pay to enter competitions to get noticed. And singers must pay $15 to $30 each time they apply for an audition.

“The year I graduated from college I was applying for everything—I spent $3,000 in a year and only a few of those applications resulted in auditions,” said Pitts. “One job I had paid just $150 a week so you can see how a singer can be left with a high mountain of debt to climb. But it’s a joy to be able to do the thing you want to do.”

 Pitts was part of a group of young performers taking “The Ugly Duckling” into schools for Opera Saratoga when the incident with the skunk occurred.

It was the third week of a month-long tour that involved hitting the road at 6 a.m. each day and the performers were exhausted. In the dark, they hit a skunk which ended up stinking up the cardboard fence they carried around on the top of their mini-van.

“We set up this fence, which had been duct-taped a million times, and the whole stage smelled like a skunk. But the show must go on,” recounted Pitts. “Somehow in the middle of the show we all started laughing so hard thinking how ridiculous it was that all of us adults were dressed like farm animals and everything smelled like a skunk and we had a room full of kids yelling and screaming. We finished the show, but we couldn’t wait for the tour to be over.”

One of Castillo’s most memorable mishaps came when she was playing Lady Larken in “Once Upon a Mattress”—a humorous adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea.”

“The director gave me a big trunk to push across stage and I was doing so in very dramatic fashion,” she recalled. “I got to going so fast the trunk and I hit a brick wall and I hit my head and fell. I could hear the audience gasp so I started a fake cry and the audience cracked up.”

Loving the hilarity, the director asked her if she could do it again.

“I looked at my bloodied knees and I said, ‘It happened once. Never again!’ ” Castillo recounted

Castillo came to the attention of Sun Valley Opera through Opera San Jose where she will sing Maria in Bernstein’s “West Side Story” April 16-May 1.

She suggested she be paired with Pitts, who had posted a Tik Tok video of her singing the Queen of the Night’s first aria from “The Magic Flute.” That video went viral and brought Castillo to the attention of Lyric Opera of Chicago where she covered the role of Konigin der Nacht.

“Having someone else on stage with you—100 percent takes the pressure off,” she said. “When it’s just you, you’re so much more vulnerable. It’s scarier.”

Castillo grew up listening to “West Side Story” and can’t wait to sing favorite selections for the Sun Valley audience: “I saw the movie when I was young and was immediately drawn to it—the music makes me want to move and the last scene always makes me weep.”

Bernstein’s music is among Pitts’ favorites, as well.

“For me, it’s about Bernstein’s use of rhythms and gigantic melodies that stick in your ear forever,” he said. “The music has fire and energy--complex rhythms meeting gigantic melodies.”

Castillo hopes she can forge some semblance of financial stability in her career. And, as she gets older, she wants to make sure she has enough balance in life to entertain friendships and even a romantic relationship.

“I would drive myself crazy if all I did was sing—having a life that’s 100 percent about music would be too much,” she said.

Pitts has his heart set on singing at The Met.

“But I also want to sing consistently repertoire that excites me,” he said. “I’m already living the dream in a way, and I just want to create great music the rest of my life.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Jordan Weatherston Pitts was on a roll when the pandemic hit, bringing his career to a temporary halt.  In response, he created a Young Artist Community tracker to help up-and-coming performers.

It provides a platform for young artists to learn about such things as the wages and benefits being offered and other information that can pave the way for success.

“It blew up--we now have 5,000 young professionals. I call them, ‘My kids’ and they call me ‘Mom,’ ” said Pitts. “I just believe we have to be transparent. There’s no way the industry can continue the way it did before the pandemic. I worked like hell to get where I am, but I want to give back, as well.”