Vacaville’s Mary Cornelison Muehlenbruch is a woman of numerous talents. She is a lyric soprano whose operatic accolades stretch up and down the entire Golden State. She is a Master Photographer whose work includes weddings, family portraits and literally tens of thousands of local high school students’ senior pictures over the years.
Muehlenbruch is also a producer and director of popular melodramas and murder-mystery whodunits. Tony Wade, Back in the Day Just to show off, she’s also a wife and mother. Born in San Diego, Muehlenbruch evidently inherited some of her musical genes from her mom who played trumpet with the Los Angeles Junior Symphony Orchestra, conducted by famed composer John Philip Sousa, when she was just 9 years old.
“I did choir and musicals and during summer I auditioned for the San Diego Starlight Opera. It was kind of like San Diego’s Music Circus and it was an open-air theater in beautiful Balboa Park and I think it seated 2,000 people.” Muehlenbruch performed in many operas and musicals and because of her powerful singing voice often secured the leading role of the ingénue.
She also performed with a group called The Mario Singers, named after a now defunct San Diego eatery, and they sang everything from Broadway standards to opera to pop and performed in numerous places including the Queen Mary ocean liner in Long Beach. She credits much of her success as a singer to Robert Austin whom she met and befriended when they were both in a produ.