Note from MaryLou: here's my professional Head shot, taken last November ...............I don't look anything like this, but it's good for programs and such!
Mary Lou Basaraba
Class of 1969
MaryLou Basaraba's "stage name" is Marya Basaraba. She currrently lives in Los Angeles, CA with her husband Tony Anderson. Broadcast personality, musician, film and television actress, Game Show host, cabaret artist and opera singer ...............
Marya has worn all of these hats in an eclectic entertainment career that brought her from Montreal to Los Angeles where she has established a performing life as a highly acclaimed opera, oratorio and symphony orchestra soloist. She has thrilled audiences from Southern California to Newfoundland with an extensive repertoire that includes over thirty soprano and mezzo soprano roles in the operas of Puccini, Verdi and Mozart and the symphonic literature of Barber, Strauss and Beethoven.
This versatile performer has appeared as an operatic soloist at the Grand Theatre de Geneve in Switzerland and the Olympic Stadium in Montreal and on stage with international Canadian super stars, Shania Twain and David Foster. She has acted in films with Bernadette Peters and Jane Fonda, performed as Carmen at the Los Angeles Convention Center with Host, Tony Curtis and interviewed Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Tony Bennet and Sammy Davis, Jr. She is a celebrity in the TV Game Show world as the co host for the internationally syndicated *Super Pay Cards* and starred for several seasons in the most successful night time drama ever produced in French Canada and seen all over Europe, *Lance et Compte*, playing none other than an international opera star!
Recent performances include her solo appearances with the Vancouver Symphony at the opening of GM Place where she replaced Sarah Brightman singing Andrew Lloyd Webber favorites to the standing ovation of 25,000 fans. She sang the title role of *Aida* in the LA Arts Commission production at the John Anson Ford Theater in LA and was presented by the Toronto impresario, Atila Glatz at the fabulous Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver in a *Salute to Vienna* with the Strauss Orchestra of America. She is the Diva in the trio DIVA, DIVO, PIANO and the Founding Director of the Los Angeles Opera Ensemble.
This season she will be singing with the dynamic new BelLA DIVA*s, a trio of gorgeous operatic sopranos and she performs the roles of Madama Butterfly, Mimi and Donna Anna in repertory as the Principal Soprano of the Nevada State Opera. The Montreal Gazette said it all "...........this well known entertainer with a string of stage, TV, radio and film credits as long as her leg and a magnificently trained voice to top it off, totally enthralled the audience ........... She*s a knock out!
You can email MaryLou at [email protected]