After conquering cancer as a teen, this Newfoundland opera singer looks forward to career on the stage

Elizabeth Whitten · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 08, 2025 4:30 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

After a cardinal Newfoundland woman's beingness was uprooted with a crab diagnosis astatine a young age, she turned to her passionateness for music.

Now, Paige Sargent, a mezzo-soprano opera vocalist from Lewisporte, N.L., is embarking connected a vocation connected the signifier with her graduating recital this week astatine Memorial University's School of Music successful St. John's.

"When I was 16, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin's lymphoma and truthful I had to benignant of halt school, [and] moved to the Janeway to acquisition attraction for my cancer," she told CBC Radio's Weekend AM.

"But portion I was doing that, I continued my euphony each throughout."

Sargent was successful the infirmary for six months and had to acquisition 8 rounds of chemotherapy. In May she volition people 5 years of being crab free.

"Obviously, it was a precise traumatic acquisition to person crab astatine 16," she said.

She spent her archetypal twelvemonth astatine assemblage recovering mentally. But, she said, her professors were knowing and welcoming.

Falling successful emotion with opera

Sargent says she was introduced to opera by a cousin, who had conscionable travel location from a U.K. travel wherever they had seen a musical. 

After learning more, she fell successful emotion with opera, she said.

Sargent took singing lessons arsenic a kid and developed her operatic skills, similar utilizing her dependable to capable a large room.

"I started taking lessons with Leslie Hewlett and we worked connected my classical technique, doing babe bits of opera, portion she helped cogwheel maine up to get acceptable to spell to euphony schoolhouse and truly good tune that technique," said Sargent.

LISTEN | CBC's Heather Barrett speaks with crab subsister and opera vocalist Paige Sargent:

In the mediate of it each was the COVID-19 pandemic, which she says added much isolation connected apical of her treatment.

But adjacent done that, Sargent says she told her euphony teacher she inactive wanted to proceed with her voice, soft and acting lessons, which they did implicit Zoom.

"I was the pb successful a philharmonic and I said, 'Please fto maine inactive bash it adjacent though I'm successful the Janeway.' And they said, 'You cognize what, we'll marque it work.'" Sargent said.

Sargent says she attended rehearsals connected FaceTime, singing songs hundreds of kilometres distant portion successful the hospital.

"The nurses, I think, look to similar that I was singing opera. I deliberation they recovered it a spot entertaining, I hope," she said.

After Sargent graduates from MUN, she's heading to British Columbia to implicit a masters degree.

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