Like many people taking part in the New York City Marathon on Sunday, Susanna Phillips Huntington will be running her first marathon. As a competitive runner, she makes an excellent soprano, which happens to be her day job.
“I think they help each other,” she said recently, of running and opera singing, both of which involve long hours of intense exertion in taxing conditions and an intimate awareness of the body’s many fluctuations. “You always have to be doing a full-body scan. You think, ‘How does this feel? Are your shoulders relaxed? Are you going too fast, are you going too slow, are you breathing?