Tatiana Troyanos - Early Life

Early Life

Born in New York City, Troyanos grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, where she attended Forest Hills High School. Her parents, who had separated when she was an infant and later divorced, were operatic hopefuls who "had beautiful voices"; her father, born on the Greek island of Cephalonia, was a tenor and her mother, from Stuttgart, Germany, was a coloratura soprano. Troyanos spent some years at the Brooklyn Home for Children in Queens, which she described as "bleak but marvelous." She attended Brooklyn Music School on scholarship, studying piano. She wanted to become an opera singer from an early age; her musical inspirations included Mario Lanza and Jane Powell ("my father and mother, obviously") and later Maria Callas and Risë Stevens. She sang in school choirs and the All City Chorus; when she was sixteen, a teacher "tried to find out who the voice belonged to ... and got me to the Juilliard Preparatory School and my first voice teacher." In her late teens, she moved to the Girls' Service League at 138 E. 19th St., near Gramercy Park, and later to a co-ed boarding house on E. 39th St. near the old Met, where she was a frequent standee. She found a job as secretary to the director of publicity of Random House.

In addition to choral work, including a scholarship at the First Presbyterian Church, Troyanos continued at Juilliard where she eventually began vocal studies with Hans Heinz, whom she called "the major influence in my life ... Our work together built the foundation that was so essential to my career."