February 11, 2010 12:01 AM
Teri Bibb has had a long love affair with romantic music.
After all, she sang the role of Christine 1,050 times in "The Phantom of the Opera."
"It's partly the story," said Bibb, a soprano who still spends most of her professional time singing about love, phantom and otherwise. "It's a classic beauty-and-the-beast, tortured-genius story. And the score is so memorable, it still makes people cry."
She'll be trying to elicit tears of joy Saturday when she joins tenor Dennis McNeil during the Stockton Symphony's Valentine Pops concert at San Joaquin Delta College's Atherton Auditorium.
"It was huge," Bibb, 49, a Van Nuys resident, said about her experiences as Christine Daaé in Broadway and national touring productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 epic. "Keep in mind, I still sing a lot of those songs. It's one of my biggest credits. It's still packing people in. It's not going anywhere anytime soon. I'm tremendously fortunate. It's the role of a lifetime, and I still love it."
As part of their musical valentine, Peter Jaffe conducts Bibb, McNeil and the orchestra during familiar "Phantom" songs such as "Music of the Night," "Speaking of Love," "All I Ask of You" and "Think of Me."
They'll also get romantic with tunes from "Les Misérables," "West Side Story," "Man of La Mancha," "My Fair Lady," "Girl Crazy," "Carousel," "Brigadoon" and "Kismet."
It's Bibb's third appearance in Stockton and her second with Jaffe as the orchestra's leader.
Bibb - who has performed for two presidents, hung out with Broadway producer Harold Prince, sung duets with Jose Carreras, accompanied a couple who were competing on TV's "Dancing With the Stars" and performed from Wichita, Kan., to London's Royal Albert Hall - still has plenty of Christine left in her.
She and two friends who frequently have played the role - Karen Culliver and Mary D'Arcy - now perform as The Phantom's Leading Ladies, a Los Angeles-based trio that sings contemporary pop and traditional songs from Broadway.
"We all had known each other a long time through the business, and we found ourselves in L.A.," Bibb said of the group that's performed in a wide variety of formats, including Jerry Lewis' 2004 telethon.
"The Three Tenors were all the rage. Why couldn't we do something like that? So, we put our heads together, and it took off. It's been tremendously rewarding. We have fun."
She's also been singing with McNeil, 49, an operatic tenor based in Los Angeles, in different settings for 10 years.
"I'm lucky," said Bibb, an upbeat and enthusiastic personality who's married to Andy Umberger, a film and television actor.
"I'm one of those who's known since a very early age what they wanted to do."
Born into an Air Force family in Big Spring, Texas, she also lived in Altus, Okla.; Washington; and Fort Worth, Texas, when her father was a flight engineer during the Vietnam War (1968-69).
"My parents told me I sang before I walked," Bibb recalled with a chuckle.
"They remember me getting out of bed when they were having a card game with friends and singing. They'd say, 'Teri, go back to bed.' "
Her voice and skills on piano and clarinet earned a scholarship at Oklahoma City University.
"It was sort of full immersion," said Bibb, who also plunged into summer stock theater and was weaned on "Gypsy," "George M." (she spontaneously learned to tap dance), "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Pajama Game." "Dancing, singing, doing it all," she said.
"That's how you start. It was slave labor practically, but it was a great experience."
In the mid-1980s, some summer-stock friends convinced her that New York was her destiny.
"It was either stupidity or it was huge," she said with a laugh. "It was huge."
She moved in with a friend in Brooklyn. However, "I did not wait tables," she said of the wannabe actors' stereotype. "I was not cut out for that."
Instead, she monitored newspaper listings and "went to every open audition call" she could while taking acting and dancing lessons.
Finally, she was picked to play Judy Turner in "A Chorus Line." Umberger played the "guy running the thing" (the director who's picking dancers in the musical).
She earned her Actor's Equity card - becoming a certified professional - while performing in "Little Me" at Washington's Ford Theatre in 1985-86.
She acquired an agent, and after doing shows in Connecticut and New Jersey and repeatedly being rejected during auditions, she became Christine in 1990 and would play the role for 3 1/2 years.
Her prince had arrived in the form of Harold Prince, the Tony Award-winning Broadway veteran who chose her for the part.
"It was me and Hal Prince in his office," she said, still sounding a bit humbled. "It was pretty crazy and extremely nerve-racking. I was staring at the multiple Tony Awards on his desk."
Accompanied by the U.S. Army Band, she and four cast members of "Phantom" sang during a 1990 White House command performance for President George H.W. Bush, his dog and South Korea's president.
"It was the most nervous I've ever been," said Bibb, who got to take Umberger with her.
President Bill Clinton later watched her perform in "Phantom" at the Kennedy Center.
In 2006, she got a phone call at 8:30 on a Sunday night. "They needed someone to sing Christine," she said of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" producers. No problem.
Bibb recently spent six weeks in a musical revue at Ventura's Rubicon Theatre and is "about to do a little production" of "High Spirits" - a musical based on Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" - with Los Angeles' Musical Theatre Guild.
She's also preparing to return for a "really amazing" 10th anniversary performance ("The Night of 1,000 Voices") at London's Royal Albert Hall on May 2. It includes a 600-member choir of community chorus singers from throughout the United Kingdom.
For now, she's bringing some love to Stockton and, as usual, anticipating the future.
"I just want to keep singing," Bibb said. "I've achieved a lot of my dreams. One thing I still haven't done ... is to originate a role on Broadway. That would be really the top."
Contact Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com.
