Ellen In Turkey

I grew up in a suburb of Manhattan where I spent most of my time as a violist in various classical music activities, including the Long Island Youth Orchestra summer tours which took me all over the world and made me the kind of person who would move to Turkey on a whim.

I went to college at Indiana University in Bloomington, where I got a much better liberal arts education than my parents had expected. I was also subjected to incompetent vocal instruction and was grossly miscast in the operas. I can’t think of a reason other than inertia to explain why I stayed to get my master’s degree.

After floundering for a couple of years I exchanged the uncertainty of a singing career for the more traditional route at Harvard Law School. After graduation I followed my parents and brother to Southern California, where I worked at a Los Angeles law firm for 3 years before returning to singing full-time in 1991.

My international singing career had its ups and downs, but was mostly spent at the Metropolitan Opera in New York singing small parts. My current life as an expat in Turkey and occasional travel writer is the subject of my blog ElleninTurkey.com