Utah Festival Opera's father-daughter act

Logan » Washing stage makeup off their faces, father and daughter sit side-by-side in a dressing room reminiscing about their first encounter with Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Mikado."

One of the first shows I saw my dad perform in, recalls Vanessa Ballam. She helped me learn my lines, adds father Michael Ballam, founder and general director of the Utah Festival Opera.

In the Ballams' first "Mikado," he was the star, playing leading man Nanki-Poo at the 1988 Kentucky Opera in Louisville. She, an elementary student, was his line coach -- and a good one at that. She learned the lines faster than he did.

The bond between the performers goes beyond blood ties. Now, 20 plus years and

many memories later, Michael Ballam plays Ko-Ko to his daughter's Yum-Yum, on the stage he developed out of a dream and where she first discovered her love for performing.

"It's my dad's fault I got bitten with the bug to go into the theater," Vanessa says. "I believe in the magic that can be created on the stage because I watched him do it all of my life. I knew from a very young age that this is what I wanted to pursue."

Her father, a professional opera singer and musician, was his daughter's first voice and acting teacher. In this dressing room after a July matinee performance, he apologizes for passing along "the curse," the love of performing.

He spent 25 years on the road. As a traveling performer with six

children, Ballam remembers the exact night when he decided to involve his family in his career. His wife, Laurie, called, while he was performing at Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center, and asked him to talk to a distraught Vanessa, who had just finished watching the Italian opera "La Traviata."

Hoping to calm her down, the singer asked his then 6-year-old daughter to tell him about the opera. "The story is about a little girl, whose dad is an opera singer and he is gone all the time," Ballam recalls hearing his daughter pretend to translate the Italian lyrics over the phone. "She said to him, 'If you don't come home, my heart is going to break.' And he waits too long and when he comes home she dies, and they clap."

That inspired Ballam to always bring at least one of his children with him when he traveled for the next 15 years. Once back in his hometown of Logan, he began a campaign to save and preserve Logan's Ellen Eccles Theater, and in 1993, launching the summer opera festival, now in its 17th season.

Sharing musical and performing talents in a family isn't all that rare. More unique in the opera world is the ability to share the stage as professionals, says Michelle Peterson, company manager of Utah Symphony | Utah Opera, whose sister, Leslie, is the company's vice president of development.

The Petersons are the daughter of the late Glade Peterson, founder of the Utah Opera. Michelle Peterson remembers sharing the stage with her father as a child in a production of "Madame Butterfly."

"We had exposure to it and great love for it and stuck with it, even though we are not performing opera," Peterson said.

All six Ballam children have acted --- Olivia, performs in "Camelot and Carmen," two others in this season's four show-repertory. But Vanessa is the only one to pursue a career in theater. She studied theater at Utah State University, reigned as Miss Utah (1999-2000), and then earned at MFA in acting from Indiana University, her father's alma mater. For the past three years, she worked as a resident artist at Santa Maria, California's Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts.

As Vanessa 's career began to take off, it has become more difficult for Ballam to cast his daughter at UFO. "I've had to follow her around the country to see her play," Michael Ballam says, raving about her performances of Shakespearean ladies, such as Lady Macbeth and Desdemona.

This year, her father wanted to cast Vanessa in the UFO's production of "Camelot." He threatened: "I told her if she wanted to remain my daughter, she had to come and play Guenevere."

The timing was right. Ballam not only recruited his daughter, but her new-husband, actor Stefan Espinosa, for the season. The newlyweds tied the knot in May.

After a July matinee performance of "The Mikado," Vanessa says she was considering her good fortune, as she took bows between her new husband and her long-time mentor, her father. "I'm trying to be like him," she says.

"She has always had this gift," Ballam adds. "I stand in the wings and cry because she is all grown up."