Miss Hollywood left the ramp to be simply soprano

MUMBAI: Unlike bottle green, angel blue is not a calm colour. In upper case, at 5’11’’, with doe eyes and long curls, she’s an absolute stunner.
Those who love beauty pageants usually shy away from opera, but the ones who don’t, know that the former Miss Hollywood paraded down the catwalk to notch up the high notes in the world of coloratura. Mentored by opera great Placido Domingo, Angel is a rising star, with a voice at once shining and smoky.
“I am a musician first. I played classical piano for 14 years and I still have a very good feel for it, though I am not as good as I used to be, because I don’t practice,” says Angel, who can seamlessly cross over to the electric bass guitar and the alto saxophone. Her musical prowess has familial roots. Her late father was a conservatory trained musician, whose prime occupation was being a pastor. Her mother, a school teacher, plays the violin and the piano.
The beauty pageants happened by circumstance. “I have three older sisters and my parents saved up for all of them to go to college. When it was my turn, my mom said I needed something to help me get through college. I grew about six inches in my senior year, and my mom said ‘what do you think about doing beauty pageants to get kind of quick money?”
She laughed it off, but when her mother persisted, she said if someone in school hands her a brochure to do a pageant, she would do one. “Sure enough, I went to school the next day, and this girl said ‘Angel you are really tall. Have you ever thought of modelling?’ And I said no, not really. So she gives this pamphlet and it had all the stuff about being a beauty queen.”
Angel competed in pageants in California, her home state, for about six years, winning one title after another: Spring Valley, Apple Valley… In most of them, she was the only African-American to ever wear the tiara. And all that money, including participation fees, saw her through college. And it gave her something more: the power to inspire. “People need to see that beauty is not just one thing, it’s not just blonde hair and blue eyes, not dark hair and dark eyes, it’s basically everything from the darkest to the lightest and everything in between,” says the soprano, who now calls London her home. “When I stated winning pageants, my main goal became to take to young women a message I felt was really strong: Beauty is everything, it’s not just what advertisers say it is.”