Carol S. Webber

Carol Staats Webber, Soprano, Professor Emeritus of Voice at the Eastman School of Music and Oberlin Conservatory was born Dec. 24, 1943 and died November 25, 2022. Her luminous presence transformed the lives of all who knew her, friends and family, students and colleagues. She was a remarkable singing artist and an extraordinary teacher. Carol's resilience, profound curiosity and unflinching honesty led her to build a deeply consequential artistic life.

Carol was raised in small towns in Iowa, in the Methodist church where her father was a minister and her mother a music teacher. From an early age, she was most at home in nature, captivated by flowers and birds. She was in love with words and poetry, adored wild midwestern weather and gratified by hard work during summers spent on Iowa farmland. Family life was focused on service, on sacrifice for others and the greater good. Music was a big part of that life of service.

When Margaret Stoltz, a distinguished voice teacher in Ottumwa Iowa, heard Carol's teenage voice sing the obbligato in the Lida Rose quartet from Music Man, she picked up the telephone and called the Staats home saying, "You don't know it, but you have a singer in the family." The family finances were extremely limited, so Carol sold her flute and began voice lessons with Mrs. Stoltz. She was allowed to spend time observing lessons and listening to recordings, often given a score to follow along. Surrounded by music, elegance and beauty in the Stoltz home and flower garden, Carol was transformed.

With encouragement from her teacher, Carol auditioned for the Oberlin Conservatory where she spent her most formative years attaching her love of poetry and language to song, with her profound creative intellect to music. Even as a young undergraduate, she was a student teacher, assigned to help her classmates who struggled with diction or musicianship. The entire Junior class sailed across the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth to spend the year studying at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Here she cemented lifelong friendships and broadened her understanding of the world. It was at the Dom Kirche in Salzburg that she sang her first Bach Aria (Seufzer, Tranen BWV 21) in memory of JFK in the days following his assassination. She sang her first Mozart opera roles accompanying the local Marionette Theater. She mastered the German language, skied in the Alps, smoked cigarettes and fell in love with Wiener schnitzel. Sailing across the ocean left its mark, and from that point on she perpetually longed to be near the water.

Returning to the US, she married her high school sweetheart Lt. David Webber, just as he deployed for active duty in Vietnam as a Navy pilot. Everywhere they were stationed while Dave was overseas, Carol found a way to keep singing and teaching. She learned to cook for a crowd as she and Dave were the married couple in the squadron where everyone gathered and took comfort in being together between deployments. Those of them who survived endured the traumatic experiences and tragic losses of that war together. While stationed in Beeville TX, in 1968, their daughter Lara, was born.

Eventually the young family moved to the Pacific Northwest, settling in Seattle. It was in Seattle that Carol's first career breakthrough occurred, singing Sophie in Werther with Seattle Opera on short notice. Carol became a National Artist with the company and an audience favorite, working her way through all the smaller roles into the bigger ones, gradually forging a performance career spanning the opera stages and concert halls of the country.

Carol beautifully managed the unique challenge of raising a daughter as a single mom following a divorce. Showing amazing strength, she somehow balanced the simultaneous demands of a growing career and a growing child. This strength was always matched by a healthy dose of silliness. She surrounded herself and her daughter with excellent friends who became and remain family to this very day. It was during these early years in Seattle that Carol met composer Hubbard Miller, a musical brother, whose songs and philosophy changed her life and whose music she championed ceaselessly with love.

In 1986, in the midst of her performance career, Carol found her way back to Oberlin, this time as Professor Webber. During these years Carol's career deepened to include a greater focus on recitals, contemporary music, oratorio and symphonic work. She gave a series of performances with the Boston Chamber Players at Tanglewood, joined the Bach Aria Group, and developed lasting relationships with conductors and orchestras around the country singing everything from Mahler to Grieg, Shostakovich to Schwantner. Her poetic precision and musical excellence made her a consistently transformational performer. It was during this era that she joined the faculty of the Eastman School in 1991, filling a position once held by her friend and mentor, Jan DeGaetani.

Carol brought the full range of her life experiences and performance career to her teaching. She vigorously upheld the highest standards of musicality and artistry that set Eastman apart and was a fierce ally for all her students, especially those most in need of support. When she received the Eisenhart excellence in teaching award in 2012, she was hailed by one of her colleagues as "a musician of incisive intellect and vast performance experience" who was "overwhelmingly humane, thoughtful and supportive." A student described her as "a mystic, whose understanding of musicality extends beyond the written page into the depths of human emotion and cultural understanding."

Carol's life was marked by the deepest and truest of connections. She had the ability to make those who feel the most misfit the most unloved and the most cast aside feel that they are in the firmest of embraces. Her dedication to her craft was beyond reproach, with a particular insistence on the primacy of text, authenticity of language and clarity of diction. Her artistry knew no self-adulation, no condescension, no pride or pomp and circumstance. It was all always about the poetry, the storytelling and the music. These are all qualities heard in hundreds of Carol's students around the world.

Legions of her students have gone on to profoundly meaningful careers as singing artists and teachers. Countless collaborative pianists and instrumentalists who made their way into her studio have carried her extraordinary influence into their work. Her students' success in finding their own voices, in telling their own truths in performance are a remarkable testament to her legacy. Equally important and perhaps most significant are those students who have also gone on to be transformational teachers themselves and made deeply meaningful contributions to the lives of others in a variety of ways.

Carol was full of whimsy and joy, and often raucous and effervescent. She loved blowing bubbles, and shared her beloved home on Lake Ontario regularly at parties and with visitors. She enjoyed schmaltzy tunes and popular songs, and was famous for her deviled eggs and salami cheese pie. She grew Iowa corn in her Seattle yard and hydrangea bushes in her Webster garden.

Her last few years were spent living close to family, returning to her most important jobs as mother and grandmother. Even after a debilitating stroke, her deep resilience ensured that she remained connected to her friends and to many of her students, coaching them in person, on the phone, in emails, and taking in their performances wherever and however possible. She guided her grandchildren through their teenage years and her daughter into middle age. We are forever grateful. Carol is survived by her daughter Lara, son-in-law Julio, and grandchildren Elsa and Sam, sister Barbara Dale, brother-in-law Jim Dale, niece Becky, nephews Greg and Marty, and many dear beloved friends and extended family.

Carol's resounding laugh, her vibrant voice, her boundless spirit and deep abiding love will be forever missed, but will carry on in all who knew her.

Donations in memory of the indelible legacy of Carol Webber may be directed to the Eastman School of Music https://www.esm.rochester.edu/advancement. Please designate your gift by typing "Carol Webber Heartsong Fund" in the comments section of the giving page. You may also give to a charitable organization of your choosing.