Born July 31, 1944 on her brother Melvin’s 5th birthday, Patricia Wise became an opera singer of international renown.  In El Dorado, her family first lived at 616 N. Alleghany and later moved to 417 N. Atchison.  Patricia has a daughter, Jenny, born in May of 1985.

After appearances at opera houses throughout the United States, her career began with the New York City Opera.  Singing as a leading soprano with the Vienna State Opera for many years, she holds the honored title of Kammersängerin from the Austrian State Opera.

Patricia has appeared in all the world’s major opera houses and concert halls, and has done extensive recording and film work.  She is remembered as executing her operatic roles with great aplomb, often receiving huge ovations after her arias.  Her voice is described as sweet in timbre, very focused.  She typically commands difficult music with ease and handles coloratura passages superbly, giving absolutely riveting portrayals of the various characters.

Now Professor of Voice at the Indiana University School of Music, she also teaches master classes in Vienna and New York City.  She also serves as coordinator for Indiana University’s School of Music Abroad Program in Vienna.

Continuing to appear in opera and concert, both in America and abroad, Patricia tries to keep the sense of the music and the love of the music.  She believes that performing before an audience involves a certain amount of “bearing your soul and giving yourself in love” to the audience.  She says that the more the audience feeds you, the more you feed them.  She is known for a different approach that many singers, trying to think of Mozart and Strauss while singing Varga.

Enjoying her two favorite hobbies, playing piano and reading, Patricia often chooses to play piano works by Mozart, Debussy, Chopin, and Bach.  When she wants a real challenge, she goes for the gigues and French Suites of Bach.

Wise is a member of Alpha Delta Pi (Tau), and has been an honorary member of Pi Kappa Lambda Music Fraternity since 1966.

She considers herself fortunate to have sung with and become friends with some of the world’s greatest singers, including Placido Domingo, José Carreras, Montserrat Caballé, Sheryl Mills, Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne and many others.


CONNECTION TO BUTLER COUNTY

While attending upper grade school and Jr. High in El Dorado, Kansas, Patricia Wise began to study voice with Rosemary Burr (Holthaus), who later taught with the Wichita school system.  Patricia was gifted with a voice that did not need years of development as a more dramatic type of voice would.  Hers is a light, lyric, coloratura voice.

Her parents, Melvin R. and Genevieve Dotson Wise, were always supportive of her musical interests.  It was from her family that the love of music was instilled.

Her father played sousaphone and piano, as well as singing bass in a barbershop quartet.  Like him, she loved singing the harmony lines of music.  Her grandmother had played piano professionally in 1920s Wichita for silent films, and her grandfather was a violinist in the 1800s, playing for square dances.  His violin, restructured to accommodate his being left-handed, is one of her prize possessions today, reminding her of her musical roots.  Patricia went on to not only sing, but play piano and the violin.

When she was 13 years old, Patricia’s mother suggested that she take voice lesson; maybe then she could sing in the church choir.  Asking her bridge club friend, Rosemary Burr, to give Patricia lessons, she was told that lessons are usually started at 15 or 16 after the voice had time to mature a bit.  But insisting that she should just hear Patricia sing, Rosemary agreed to do so.  Upon hearing her, she immediately said, “I’ll take her!” So voice lessons were begun, singing a repertoire appropriate for a young voice.


COMING TO & LEAVING THE AREA

The Wise family moved to El Dorado, Kansas about 1952, moving here from Wichita, Kansas.  Mr. Wise had been a fireman in Wichita. In El Dorado, he found employment first as a salesman, then later a roustabout in the oil industry.

The family moved on to Great Bend in 1959, where Patricia attended two years of high school.  Then the family moved to Midland, Texas, where she graduated from Robert E. Lee High School, just a few years ahead of First Lady Laura Bush.