Published: October 10, 2008 11:25 pm      

NIAGARA FALLS: Songbirds to offer duet of Holy Matrimony

It may be the only wedding in recent memory that could end up as a great music disc.

That’s probably to be expected since the bridal party contains enough opera singers to produce a musical revue.

It all started when Niagara Falls native Maria Fasciano decided not to pursue a career in health care. Instead, she chose to follow the advice of her music teachers and take a shot at becoming an opera singer.

Certainly there had been clues to her destiny. Like when she was five-years-old and her grandparents took her to a production of “Carmen.”

“I stood up in the audience and started singing along,” she recalled, smiling at the memory.

Her high school chorus teacher, who met her when she was a senior at Niagara Falls High School, was struck by her big voice.

“There was a richness and timbre to her voice,” said Bill Fay, the music director at the school said about Maria. “It was really mature beyond her years.”

About that time she returned to the Music School of Niagara, where she had taken some classes when she was small. Her teacher, Ann Kennedy, insisted she take her talent seriously. “She said, you need to go on a real audition,” and pointed Fasciano to the School of Music at Fredonia, alma mater to both Kennedy and Fay.

Encouraged, Fasciano enrolled at Fredonia and, upon graduation, headed to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester to get her masters degree.

If her life were an opera, it would have been there that the script would read: Enter Vernon.

Vernon De Carlo, 28, was living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina blasted the city. His home in St. Bernard’s Parish was filled with eight feet of muddy water and his school, Loyola University, was shut down. Luckily, he had a friend at Eastman, and he transferred there after the Rochester school offered to cover his tuition, room and board.

When Fasciano first laid eyes on Vernon he was singing from the opera “Romeo and Juliet,” re-enacting the scene where Romeo stands beneath Juliet’s balcony. Fasciano was intrigued. “I thought, ‘Wow. He can sing outside my balcony window anytime,’” she recalled, smiling up at her finance as they stood near Niagara Falls on a recent sunny day.

Shortly after they met, the two were assigned to perform as young lovers in a song from Mozart’s “Cosi Fan tutte.” By then, their combined destiny had pretty much revealed itself. They were already dating.

At the semester’s end they both landed spots with the Chautauqua Opera and spent the summer at the Chautauqua Institute, performing in a variety of productions and recitals as part of that prestigious community’s art season.

After their November 29 wedding at The Holy Family Church, formerly St. Joseph’s Church on Pine Avenue, the pair will begin the arduous work of crafting opera careers, and are already imagining a bohemian life that will see them auditioning at as many “cattle calls,” as possible. “We hope that opera companies see they can save money on our room and board if they hire us both at the same time,” Fasciano said, only partially joking. Both are delighted to have the opportunity to pursue — together — careers that they love.

“It’s a real labor of love,” Fasciano said of her career choice which, she explained, requires athletic ability while singing and acting, often in languages one might not actually speak. “It’s kind of like rubbing your tummy and patting your head,” she added.

Surely, when the two tie the knot in November to strains of “Ave Maria,” and “The Lord’s Prayer,” performed by two of the five opera singers in the bridal party, St. Joseph’s Church will fill with notes unlike any heard there before. Then Maria Fasciano and Vernon De Carlo will begin their marital duet, with the hope, as they say, of making beautiful music together.

Contact reporter Michele DeLuca at 282-2311, ext. 2263.