Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe is the daughter of a jazz musician and his wife, a German translator. Blythe was raised in Mongaup Valley in upstate New York, and studied voice at the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, NY, with Patricia Misslin. Upon graduating in 1993, Blythe won an audition with the Metropolitan Opera's National Council. As a result Blythe participated in the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and worked as an understudy, making her Met debut as the offstage "voice" in a production of Wagner's Parsifal. This earned Blythe her first turn in the ro...