Read on to discover all about the beauty pageant queens who have offered musical performances as their 'talent' – that opportunity for contestants to showcase their artistic skills.
While everything from performing a monologue to speed painting, hair dressing and ventriloquism have featured as beauty pageant talents over the years, playing an instrument and singing are always popular choices. And while most performances are, of course, more American Idol than the Met, there have been some memorable turns of the classical persuasion...
Beauty pageants and classical music... Angel Blue
Today Angel Blue is one of the world's most sought-after sopranos, and performed in the Last Night of the Proms 2024, during which she flung roses into a delighted crowd.
Blue's teenage years at the prestigious Los Angeles County High School for the Arts paved the way for an undergraduate degree in piano and voice at Redlands University in California, and then on to a masters in opera at UCLA. So far, there had been a logical progression towards a career in music, but then Blue’s life took a curious twist.
‘I wanted to go on to higher education, but the family finances had been pretty depleted after my three older sisters had been put through college. As it happened, in my last couple of years at high school I had shot up in height, so that by the time I was 18, I was five foot eleven and a half. My mom said, “Why don’t you enter a few beauty pageants? The prize money can be pretty good, you know.” To be honest, I was appalled – my first reaction was that as an aspiring opera singer, beauty pageants were beneath me. However, I got over my snootiness and I did end up applying, and I loved it!’
'I thought beauty pageants were beneath me, but I loved it!'
She was, unsurprisingly, a huge success as a beauty queen, combining looks, poise, talent and a winning personality. She was crowned Miss Apple Valley and Miss Hollywood, and went on to be first runner-up in the Miss Nevada and Miss California pageants. As her star turn, she would sing a snippet of Violetta’s ‘Sempre libera’ from Verdi's La traviata.
Blue’s winnings helped her fund her education, but the whole culture of pageantry also gave her a chance to think about herself and how she was perceived by the rest of the world. ‘I think it helped me inhabit the person I am more fully, and be comfortable with my place in the universe. In a pageant, the petite woman standing next to me might be five foot two, but why make comparisons? We are who we are, with all our differences, and that’s something to celebrate.’
Beauty pageants and classical music... Betty Cantrell
Angel Blue is not the only beauty pageant veteran to offer musical performance as her ‘talent’. In September 2015, Betty Cantrell from Georgia wowed the crowd with her dramatic and accomplished rendition of ‘Tu? tu? piccolo iddio!’ from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. She went on to win the title of Miss America 2016.
Beauty pageants and classical music... Grace Stanke
Further classical success occurred in December 2022 when Grace Stanke from Wisconsin won the coveted Miss America 2023 title after playing 'Summer' from Vivaldi's Four Seasons on her violin.
She went on to earn her bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently a nuclear engineer and nuclear energy advocate at Constellation Energy.
Beauty pageants and classical music... Theresa Vail
Then there was Kansas National Guardsman Theresa Vail, who in a 2012 qualifying competition for Miss Kansas took the unusual decision to sing ‘Nessun Dorma’ from Puccini’s Turandot with just two days’ notice.
The unfortunate Vail had been informed that her chosen talent of archery was unacceptable, as Miss America’s insurance policy has a ‘no projectiles’ clause. ‘I’d never sung opera in my life,’ said Vail. ‘I had an appreciation for it, and I sang soprano in choir back in high school, but I hadn’t sung since then and certainly never opera.’
Amazingly, watching YouTube videos of the aria did the trick and Vail was duly crowned Miss Kansas in 2013. But despite hiring a vocal coach to compete at national level, the 2014 Miss America crown proved elusive.