She had the music in her – and 40 years later, it’s still going strong.

She is entering her 11th season with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, one of the nation’s most prestigious opera companies. Married and now known as Sarah Hatten, she serves as the opera’s wigmaster and makeup designer.

“All my music roots, all my theater roots got started in Fort Dodge,” she said. “Coming from a smaller town, I’ve been blessed to work with world-renowned singers and designers and directors. It’s something I can get jaded by. I often have to step back and be thankful for that.”

Her success has not been easy or by accident. It took a passion to succeed, paying her dues, working at venues throughout the nation including the Des Moines Metro Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Columbus Opera, Toledo Opera, the Cabrillo Music Festival in Santa Cruz, California, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She has also worked at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York, and the major opera companies of Los Angeles, Omaha, Cleveland, Sarasota, and Central City (Colorado), as well as Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre and, in Los Angeles, the Pantages Theatre and the Geffen Playhouse.

-Submitted photo
Sarah Hatten adjusts a wig, a routine part of her job with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The Fort Dodge native holds the Lyric Opera’s Marlys Beider Wigmaster and Makeup Designer Endowed Chair.

“I traveled for a very long time,” Hatten said. “I was traveling two thirds of the year. Having an almost fulltime job doing what I do now is rare. When the Chicago opening came up, six people sent me the posting including my best friend and my husband.”

Hatten and her husband, Brett, were married in 2007 and moved to Chicago in 2011 when she was selected to fill the Lyric Opera’s Marlys Beider Wigmaster and Makeup Designer Endowed Chair. She and Brett and their children Lillian, 7, and Owen, 5, live in suburban Naperville, where they moved a year ago from Chicago’s South Side. Brett is customer success specialist with MongoDB. They met in Ohio, through a dating website, when Sarah did a year of graduate school at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Her 11 years in Chicago are the longest she has lived anywhere since Fort Dodge – where she was born in 1980, a year after her parents Jim and Ellen Diehl moved to the city when her father was hired as respiratory therapist at Trinity Regional Hospital.

Jim Diehl grew up in Albert City and Ellen Heydon on a farm near Coon Rapids and met when they attended Westmar College in Le Mars.

“I was starting a Christian music group and he auditioned,” Ellen Diehl said. “We were married the summer before our senior year.”

Theirs was a musical family, Jim and Ellen singing solo and duet. Sarah was joined by her brother, Evan, and her sister, Melinda.

“All of us would sing as a family in different churches, weddings and other venues around the city,” Ellen said. “All of the kids were involved in the high school musicals.”

Evan had the lead role in the FDSH production of “The Music Man.”

“My parents were some of the biggest influences on my career,” Hatten said, “initiating my love of music and singing. We were always performing in church, around the community. Without that I wouldn’t have had such a passion for it, it probably would have started later.”

Ellen Diehl served as executive director of the Fort Dodge Area Chamber of Commerce from 1992 to 2002. Jim took a respiratory therapist position at Mary Greeley Hospital in Ames and commuted there from Fort Dodge, before they moved to Ankeny in 2005. She served with the Des Moines Metro Opera for seven years. Both are now retired. Their son, Dr. Evan Diehl, lives in Iowa City and works in internal medicine at UnityPoint Health – St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids and their daughter Melinda (Sanchez) is in social work in the Des Moines area.

Growing up in Fort Dodge, Hatten said, “We were largely involved in our church, First Assembly of God. It took a lot of our time. But a lot of my growing up really involved music lessons, productions and choir. I got my first job at age 14 at Bloomers coffee shop. I worked there for a couple years and then went to JCPenney’s and then Target.”

At Fort Dodge Senior High, Sarah took part all four years in the school’s annual musical – her first three years when it was directed by Larry Mitchell until he retired in 1997 and in her senior year when it was directed by Gary Rock, now deceased.

Hatten said Mitchell and Rock played large roles in her love of music.

“Larry was more focused on theatrical and musical theater,” she said, “and Gary more in the classical music sense. That’s when I segued to soloist stuff. I found my voice lent itself more to opera.”

“She had a beautiful voice, she was a really good musician,” recalled Mitchell.

She also was involved in concerts, vocal competition and took voice lessons (from Rosalind Lind) throughout high school. “My interest in working backstage came from all of the school productions, community shows and church productions that I was involved with growing up.”

Simpson College in Indianola was attractive to Hatten because of its strong classical opera program. The director of its music program, Robert Larsen, also was director of the Des Moines Metro Opera – and that tie was fortuitous for Hatten.

“I decided to go to Simpson because I was interested in the music camp that they did during the summer for high schoolers,” she said. “It was more classically driven. It was my first exposure to opera, and I fell in love. I went to music camp all four years of high school in the summer, even after I got accepted to school. The benefit of going to a smaller school is that you get exposure to everything.

“Though I always loved the hair and makeup element of getting ready for a show, that wasn’t something I’d even thought of doing until I met my mentor Joanne Weaver at Des Moines Metro Opera. She’s the one who gave me my first internship.”

The summer after her first year at Simpson, Hatten was a props artisan at the Des Moines Metro Opera and met Weaver, who introduced her to the idea that hair and makeup design could be a career.

“I had a lot of interest in doing hair and makeup, and like many students I was frustrated in the progress my voice was making and a singing career,” Hatten said. “So, I then took an internship with Sarasota Opera and continued to work for Joanne Weaver there. This career clicked right away for me, and while I finished my degree, I switched from a Bachelor of Music to a Bachelor of Art with a music focus, and I started working in hair and makeup right after school, with very heavy focuses and most of my work in opera.”

Hatten, 41, said she learned on the job – “I didn’t go to cosmetology school, I just worked my way from the bottom to the top, and there’s so much that you can’t learn in a school or class setting. Like any job or trade, there are instances to the rule that are going to bend and unique things you can’t prepare for. Our department is comprised of a mix of skills: some are licensed cosmetologists, some make-up artists, and we teach them how to put wigs on. To work in the shop, it does require the skill of being able to build wigs and style them, but hair cutting and color requires licensed training. In terms of running a show start to finish, you don’t need licenses as much as you need experience.

“Doing hair and makeup gives a different viewpoint – regionally, you work more with the singers, living with them and working with them, and it’s more intimate. As a former performance singer, I understand the anxiety of singing on stage and am able to be sensitive to a singer’s needs before they head on stage, and of course, everyone has a different process. Generally speaking, you’re among the first people that a singer sees when they come off stage, along with the dresser…whatever is happening onstage with the singer, you’re the first person to come in contact with that – you learn to go with the flow and keep the show going. When hiring crew members that is almost more important than their skill set. You can learn what goes on with a show, but you can’t teach personality.”

In July, Hatten and her assistant, department coordinator Allison Burkholder, and their staff will begin preparing for the 2022-23 Lyric season – a season that begins Sept. 9 with “Ernani” and includes performances of “Fiddler on the Roof” and “West Side Story.”

“The first performance will be in September, so we will be making wigs and getting them styled,” she said.

“I think I have realized that my favorite part of the job is the process, the collaboration, problem-solving, especially in new productions, conversations with the costume designer and director. It’s a collaborative process, there’s a creative element, seeing it going from something on paper to onstage is incredible.”