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The women on the Save Our Fine Arts of Winona committee almost swooned.
Ruth Marg remembers Marc Schreiner as a scrawny 97-pound teenager. Today he's an operatic pop star — at least in the eyes of Winona's fairer sex — and a hunk.
"The ladies just about fainted when he walked in the door," Marg said.
In town from New York, the 33-year-old tenor paid a visit to Marg and the other SOFA ladies, who gave him their first college scholarship in 1990. He hadn't seen some of them since 1999, and, before that, high school.
The Rollingstone, Minn., native also stopped at Winona Senior High School to perform for students of his former choir director, Bruce Ramsdell.
Schreiner had only been back to Winona a few times since graduating in 1990. His parents Tim and Theresa Schreiner now reside in New Richmond, Wis. When he learned SOFA picked up the tab for the WSHS musical, he offered to put on a benefit concert Friday.
"It's nice of them to let me do a show," he said. "I really hope people come out."
Schreiner's road to opera started his sophomore year of high school, when he quit the swimming team to try out for the school musical.
"The pretty girls were in the musical and they definitely weren't on the swim team," he said.
He expected a spot in the chorus, but landed the lead in "Annie Get Your Gun."
Schreiner always enjoyed singing, but hadn't considered making a career of it.
Pretty soon he was taking voice lessons from Ramsdell, and heading to Simpson College to study music education.
He enjoyed acting, and in college got his first crack at opera in the chorus of "Susannah."
"(It was) musical theater on steroids," he said. "I was totally hooked."
He sang professionally in the Houston Grand Opera chorus to put himself through graduate school. Other than a year break from life on the road, he's performed ever since.
Schreiner now lives in New York City — where many opera companies hold auditions for productions.
He prefers playing dramatic characters, and said the gusto of singing and acting without a microphone leads to an emotionally-charged production.
"Where opera is being done at its best, it's so thrilling," he said. "I love that you can feel when the audience is there with you and when it's not."
Schreiner said more young people are getting into opera, and the art form is evolving.
Though he's seasoned in modern opera, which employs more complex music composition and contemporary techniques, he's still fond of classical opera— the pop music of its day.
"The great works are timeless — they're about the same stuff we're going through now," he said. "(We're) telling the same stories in an elegant way."
Reporter Shannon Fiecke can be reached at shannon.fiecke@winonadailynews.com or (507) 453-3519.
