by Stephanie Manning
When the Phantom of the Opera North American tour visits Playhouse Square in April 2027, Midori Marsh will have plenty of reasons to celebrate. The soprano — who is currently playing the role of Carlotta — grew up in Cleveland Heights, and the city is still home to many of her friends and family.
But Marsh’s first milestone homecoming actually arrives this week. On May 2 and 3, she will join BlueWater Chamber Orchestra for their program “Rustic Reverie,” singing Joseph Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne. Douglas Moore’s Farm Journal and Haydn’s Symphony No. 99 in E-flat Major round out the program, conducted by artistic director Daniel Meyer. Tickets and venue information are available online.
Marsh’s parents still live in Cleveland Heights, and she occasionally comes back to sing for the Church of the Covenant’s Christmas Eve service. “But when it comes to a capital ‘G’ gig, I think this might be my first one in Cleveland,” she said. “So it’s a bit of a thrill, really.”
Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne (Songs of the Auvergne) are a collection of 27 folk songs from the Auvergne region of France. These “are some of the most gorgeous pieces ever written,” Marsh said, adding that she sang some of them a few years ago with the Guelph Symphony Orchestra. “So I was excited to revisit some pieces that I had done before and also to sing some new ones.”
The soprano said the cycle runs the gamut of emotions while still fitting in quite well with the program’s bucolic theme. The songs “are perfect for spring. They’re quite pastoral,” she said. “I love that, in a way, they’re kind of simple. It’s the collaboration between the singer and the orchestra that I think makes them really special.”
The May 2 performance will be held at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle, a venue Marsh has long been familiar with. “It’s genuinely a space that’s designed to make gorgeous music and to be awesome to sing in,” she said.
Plus, “it’ll just be nice to sing something that isn’t Phantom,” she added with a laugh. Marsh has spent the better part of six months on tour, where she and her castmates sing eight shows a week in venues across the country.
But the soprano has primarily built her career as a freelance opera performer, with credits including a three-year tenure in the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio and two summers as a Wolf Trap Opera Filene Artist. So this concert “is really more of a return to form,” she said. “I’m excited to be singing with such an amazing orchestra, and on my home turf as well.”
While in Cleveland, she’ll be sure to check a few things off her list. “I want to eat at Tommy’s. I want to go to Rising Star. I want to have a good bagel and hang out with my people.”
In addition to her Playhouse Square appearance next April, Marsh said she’s really looking forward to the tour’s seven week stop in L.A., which begins this June. And for her remaining week of vacation this year, “I would like to spend it on a Great Lake, because I’m a Great Lakes girl,” she said. “The best way to spend time in the summer is just swimming around in a Great Lake.”
Published on ClevelandClassical.com April 27, 2026
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