Lilly Blake wanted to be an opera singer; she

chose marriage and a family instead. Now

she teaches voice at the high school, tends

to her family, and wears her opera costumes to

bed at night.

Her daughter Christie is about to begin her

freshman year at a college in the Midwest. Lilly s

best friend Carole, whose daughter is also entering

college, is accompanying Lilly and the two girls

to the campus for freshman orientation. Carole

has arranged while there to have an affair with

a tennis coach.

Someone else will show up at orientation with

plans of his own: Howard, Christie s boyfriend.

(Howard is a little strange.) When Lilly s husband

Frank finds out that Howard s there, he ll go into

action himself-gready to Christie s embarrassment

and Lilly s chagrin.

This singing teacher has a lot on her mind just

now, particularly her elderly parents. Her father has

been doing some peculiar things--her mother

thinks he is seeing another woman, however

improbable that might seem to Lilly.

But the leading lady of The Singing Teacher has

much too keen a sense of the ridiculous to let any

of it get her down. And she is too busy, too good at

coping. She may stand in her living room late at

night and imagine herself singing an operatic aria and

taking a bow, but she knows where reality begins

and leaves off. She keeps her head on straight, even

when all the supposedly normal people around her

start acting crazy.

There s plenty of craziness to go around in The

Singing Teacher--the kind of everyday craziness