November
19, 2004
Meet
Frances Perkins Scholar Anne Vittoria
 Photo
by: Todd M. LeMieux
Anne Vittoria |
This fall, the College’s Frances Perkins Program
enters its twenty-fifth year of providing nontraditional students the opportunity
to resume—or in some cases, embark upon—their college educations.
Throughout the coming year, the College Street Journal will run a
series of articles about the program and its participants.
Four years ago, Mount Holyoke welcomed Anne Tremblay into its Frances Perkins
program. Age forty-something, in the midst of a divorce, with three children,
Tremblay was finally ready to finish a college education that had begun more
than 20 years earlier. This year, she will graduate bearing a new name she
chose to reflect her life’s endeavors: Anne Vittoria.
A native of South Hadley, Vittoria entered the University of Massachusetts
in 1973 as music major and French horn player. A personal tragedy caused
her to drop out of school, and she soon she found that her musical ambitions
had taken a backseat to marriage and motherhood.
During those years, said Vittoria, “I had always had a burning desire
to go back to school.” But her family commitments and her then husband’s
strenuous objections had kept her at home. Six years ago, she mustered the
courage to contact the Frances Perkins Program. After consulting with Carolyn
Dietel, the program’s associate director, she earned an associate’s
degree at Holyoke Community College and in 2001 enrolled at Mount Holyoke.
Reflecting on the unraveling of her marriage, she recalled that good news
from Mount Holyoke—such as receiving her acceptance and her financial
aid award—lessened the sting of her personal difficulties. “I
knew this was the place for me,” she said. “This has been a fantastic
journey of self-discovery and confidence building.”
Vittoria is majoring in music with a minor in religion, two disciplines that
are thoroughly intertwined in her life. She has always loved singing, and
for the past seven years has worked as choir director and cantor for the
Roman Catholic community of St. Theresa of Lisieux in South Hadley. Among
her many activities, Vittoria has founded the Girls’ Inc. of Holyoke
Community Chorus. This month the girls will join with Mount Holyoke’s
Jazz Ensembles under the direction of Mark Gionfriddo for a concert titled “Sisters
in Jazz.” They will perform Friday, November 19 at 7:30 pm in McCulloch
Auditorium of Pratt Hall.
Earlier this fall, Vittoria performed an ambitious senior recital titled “Now
I Become Myself.” “There was a religious theme connecting most
of the pieces,” Vittoria said. “I chose expressions of love for
God and family.” She sang nine songs from the seventeenth century through
the twentieth century and then, with a choir of FPs as well as several women
from the community, she performed three pieces by living women composers.
The highlight of the recital was a choral setting by Gwyneth Walker of a
May Sarton poem, “Now I Become Myself.” Her newly assumed surname
comes from another recital piece, a seventeenth-century song by the Italian
composer Giacomo Carissimi, which, she explained, “speaks of being
victorious in my heart.”
Vittoria is grateful to the music faculty, including visiting instructor
Mark Bartley, Hammond-Douglass Professor of Music and choral director Catharine
Melhorn, associate professor Larry Schipull, professor and chair Linda Laderach,
and Mark Gionfriddo, director of jazz ensembles, instructor, accompanist,
and Catholic music director. After graduation, Vittoria hopes to attend the
Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, California.
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