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Alyssa Chamberlain, 19, will be one of four contestants in Saturday’s Barnum’s Got Talent opera competition at the Downtown Cabaret Theatre in Bridgeport. Her mother’s Barnum Festival highlights came in the mid 1970s, when she performed as a clown.
“My husband always says I am the only man who can say I love my dentist and married a clown,’’ said Gigi, a Stratford native who now lives in Marlborough, Mass. “I started clowning in the Barnum Festival when I was in high school with friends. The road show went to nursing homes and hospitals. It was so much fun.”
Gigi, whose real name is Georgina, said the clown experience even helped her get into dental school. “I interviewed at Tufts with a very stern woman. At the end, she asked if there was anything else I’d like to mention. I told her I’d like to show her what I was doing when I wasn’t at the library. So I shared my clowning scrapbook and we talked for another 30 minutes. I used to joke that I owed my livelihood to the Barnum Festival,'' she said.
The Festival just might be the place that could swing doors open for Alyssa. She is a rising junior at Endicott College and majoring in Communications Marketing. She started in musical theater productions when she was six years old, but her passion is opera.
“I like Italian and French operas,’’ Alyssa said. “I like to be able to sing a song and convey a message to the audience. The thing about opera is you have to learn what you’re singing, because the language is different. And you have to paint a picture as well. It’s a proud moment once you get it. Maybe not everyone will get it completely, but they’ll get the gist of it.”
Alyssa has been studying classical music for years, but finding performance opportunities is challenging.
“There’s not too many solo opportunities,’’ she said. “That’s what I really liked about this. This is my favorite kind of music to sing and I haven’t done that in competitions like this.”
Like her mother’s clown days, Alyssa traveled with a singing troupe during high school that visited nursing homes and other events. “I loved doing that,’’ she said. “It’s like a little theater company.”
A close friend informed the Chamberlains of the Barnum Festival’s opera competition, but Alyssa did not realize the winner will receive a $500 prize. “I really had no idea,’’ she said. “That’s awesome, though. I’m really excited to be in the finals.”
In the audience will be her mother, the one-time Barnum Festival clown who will bring with her a multitude of family members and memories of her comedic past.
“It’s so exciting for me to have our friends and family there,’’ Gigi said. “It’s exciting for me and for her. The place where my father worked for over 30 years is just down the steps from the theater. Living in Massachusetts and having family and friends in Connecticut, they were never able to hear Alyssa sing. This is like a reunion for me.”
The other opera finalists are Jacqueline Mate, 14; Tyler Cervini, 18 and Daniel Satter, 19.
Click here to purchase tickets through the Barnum Festival website. Click here for the complete list of Barnum Festival events.
