Educator
Blackwell has always seen herself as an educator as well as an opera singer, partly because of her roots as a music teacher. She recalls about her years spent teaching in the late 1970s, "I taught at two parochial schools, one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Bethesda, Maryland, and I had to fight for my children to be able to go down to the Kennedy Center to see an opera. I got the English teacher, the history teacher and the art teacher to come together and work on this project where we all talked about the music, the art, the history and the literature from the period."
This interest in education continued into her opera career. For many years, Blackwell participated in a program called the "Affiliate Artists" where she went into the community and talked to people one-on-one to educate them about and inspire interest in opera. Blackwell says, "We don't have audience participation anymore, partly because of being raised on television. We have become an audience that receives entertainment in a passive way. I think in order to participate you have to have knowledge and knowledge means you have to take the time to sit down and educate. When you are able to communicate with people and show them you're just another human being with a gift, it makes all the difference. My gift happens to be singing. When you go to an opera you see so many people, but you don't have an opportunity to have that one-on-one contact and that's what was so great about that program."
In 2002, Blackwell's work as an educator took on a more official form when she became an adjunct faculty member at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She taught master classes at the school for four years. Blackwell has also been invited as a guest instructer at several universities and conservatories throughout the United States. She currently teaches on the voice faculty of Barnard College.
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