Ms. Whitfield sang with San Jose Symphony many years ago. I really enjoyed her.

Next came four seasons with the San Francisco Opera chorus where she learned some valuable lessons.

Lesson 1: “I learned that whenever something went wrong you had to hide right away because (opera director) Kurt Adler was coming and he would yell at the first person he saw.”

“It was fabulous,” she added in the next breath. “I was a professional musician and it was exciting.”

Lesson 2: “The most difficult part of being in the opera chorus was you spent every moment downstairs in the dressing room with a room full of women who all wanted to be soloists and we, the kids in their 20s, were not beloved by those women. I learned how to get on … It was great training for show business, it really was.”

I read it here