Singer returns to Detroit Opera House stage to rouse memories with music

Following her own familiar footsteps, Lauren Wagner, 70, stepped onto center stage again at the Detroit Opera House Saturday morning.

“My heart wants to sing every song it hears,” Wagner sang, swaying as she performed "The Sound of Music" before her greatest fans.

Her words brought tears to the eyes of some family and StoryPoint Saline Senior Living staff who were present for the private show.

The former opera singer, who has dementia and now resides in the Saline senior living community, revealed glimmers of her old self with each song, said Katie Jacquez, Lauren’s 37-year-old daughter.

The family had chosen to bring Wagner to the opera house in an effort to rouse her memories in a more familiar setting, she said.

“We got lucky today that she was ready to sing,” Jacquez said. “It just brought back a lot of nice memories.”

Wagner’s soprano voice soared through songs like “The Sound of Music,” "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and “Con Te Partirò” as beautifully as she had once sung in leading roles at Seattle Opera, Carnegie Hall and New York Feld Ballet, Jacquez said. Wagner had also performed several times at the Detroit Opera House.

These performances, spanning through the 1980s, composed a decorated career for Lauren, Jacquez said.

Geoffrey Jacquez, her 67-year-old husband, thinks fondly of mornings in New York City where he’d wake up and seek out morning newspapers for Lauren’s latest performance reviews, he said.

In the midst of struggles to plan for or predict next steps in Lauren’s care, watching his wife sing brought him a bit of peace, he said.

“It’s good for everybody,” Geoffrey Jacquez said. “It certainly makes me feel better. That’s a strange word, 'better.' But more connected. It makes me feel more connected and overall happier.”

He and other relatives now regularly see Lauren at least once a week, he said.

Katie Jacquez said her most precious memories of her mother were not on stage or in big cities, but at home helping her rehearse or listening to her sing arias to help her get to sleep. Prior to her retirement, her mother spent a lot of time on the road performing, and Jacquez said she always wanted to tag along.

“As a child, I remember lying under the piano with her pianist, Fred, who’s like an uncle to me,” she said. “Listening to them practice George Gershwin or Bernstein or listening to Handel. It was really fun to remember the songs she used to sing.”

A wave of emotions returned to Jacquez, then, as she helped her mother pick out a sparkling blazer for her performance and later again together, reading for the first time a Lears magazine article her mother had been featured in.

Wagner had said in the article that she always tried to explain to her daughter how long she’d be away before coming back home — a present-day reminder of how the two had missed each other back then, Jacquez said.

Jacquez, who now works as a LinkedIn designer, said she also cherishes her mother’s voice and creativity as artistic forces that shaped her into the person she’s become.

Lauren’s sister, Karin Wagner, said she felt the music on Saturday pull her back to memories of Lauren’s performance at The Metropolitan Opera.

“When she sang and when she finished her performance, her sound was hanging in the whole auditorium,” Karin Wagner said of Lauren’s performance in a mid-1980s competition at The Met. “It was perfectly quiet. And then as soon as she finished, everybody let their air out.”

Saturday almost felt the same, Karin Wagner said.

Lauren Wagner’s love for music follows her everywhere, even now in a memory care program, said Sydney Stites, StoryPoint Saline’s life enrichment director who helped arrange Saturday’s events.

“She can always be found singing,” Stites said. “She’ll just stop staff and ask, even if you’re talking, ‘You have a beautiful voice. Are you an opera singer?’”

Wagner performs weekly at the senior home and won the community’s Ageless Talent Show in 2023, a testament to the light she radiates among others, said Amber Fugate, a StoryPoint Saline caregiver.

Between songs Saturday, Wagner bowed slightly, smiling, and thanking her audience.

“I hope we spend many times together,” she said, before leaving the stage.