Linda Dobbs, soprano, has been a member of the voice faculty at Marshall University, where she also directs the opera program, since 1982. She has appeared in opera, oratorio, musical theatre and as a chamber music recitalist in Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio and Washington D.C.. She holds the Bachelor of Music (music education) and Master of Music (voice performance) degrees from Bowling Green State University, Ohio with additional studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Her students have performed with Opera in the Ozarks and Sieur DuLuth Opera, with summer musical theatre companies, and pursued have graduate study in schools throughout the United States. An avid supporter of interdisciplinary learning, she has participated in developing distance learning programs that integrate the arts with social studies and language curricula in schools, and with university, community singers, and young students produces opera for family audiences. Her articles and reviews of new works for young singers have been published in the Journal of Opera for Youth, Inc. and she is the librettist for The Fiddler’s Ghost, an opera for children by composer Albert Zabel, published by MMB Music. In 2000, during a six-month sabbatical in Ireland, she studied the transmission of traditional folksongs from Ireland and Scotland to America returning to present lecture-recitals on her study. She performs that repertoire with the Celtic band Blackbirds and Thrushes.
In July 2007, she taught and performed as a guest of the University of Brasília, Brazil and was a featured performer and teacher at the Festival Internacional de Inverno de Brasília 2007.
Dobbs recently received the Distinguished Service Award from Marshall University for her work with arts in the community. She can be heard on the CD Rallying Round Our Liberty, performing music from the Federalist era of the United States with her husband, flutist Wendell Dobbs. Dobbs and her husband are the parents of a son who is studying at university.