On September 22 the opera company's 45^th season at the hall will begin, as well as its final one at a place that for the over 55s will always be the O'Keefe, even if they now reluctantly call the structure The Hummingbird. It is there they started to come long ago to listen to opera, but also to watch the National Ballet of Canada perform, and countless touring company productions. For better or for worse, the O'Keefe was the place to go to for opera buffs in Toronto even though it was less than ideal because the hall's cavernous reaches made good sound a hard-to-come-by commodity and "made artists feel the audience wasn't involved with them," says Muriel Smith.

Today the Hummingbird is quite a different place from the one that saw the COC's first performance there almost 45 years ago, points out Smith, the company's librarian. Changes have been made to the acoustics in the past decade that have brought some improvements to sound, although it cannot alter the disconnection artists feel with the audience. Few people, who were part of the COC at the first O'Keefe season, are still around, but Smith, 67, was and still is. The former school teacher, who for a time was an aspiring opera singer, remained loyal to the company and has served it in various capacities.

She had an unlikely background for someone who today is wholly involved in the COC's life. Smith was born in farm country in the small community of Ravenna on the west side of Blue Mountain, near Collingwood, Ontario. As a youngster she always loved to sing and sometimes sang solos in her church choir. When she was about 13 or 14, "I'm not sure when, I had the radio on CBC and heard this wonderful singing. I didn't know what it was." She pauses briefly, then admits, "Opera was not in my vocabulary," nor was it in her family's.

While in high school, she happened to read something about the Canadian Opera Company, "and that directed my footsteps to the COC." That story changed her life forever.

For our chat, Smith and I are sitting in a restaurant not far from the COC's offices near Front and Church Streets. It is one of our particularly hot and humid Toronto summer afternoons. She has been patiently waiting for me because I am late for my appointment. Instead of being annoyed, as most people would be, she is cheerful and relaxed, and truly one of the best ambassadors the COC could have. Listening to this lively woman, it is hard to believe that she could ever have come from a background where opera was an unknown quantity. But it is easy to believe that her first real voice teacher turned out to be George Lambert, teacher of the great Canadian tenor, John Vickers. It is proof that the young farm girl had the determination to make opera her life when she grew up.

With high school graduation not far off, Smith chose a practical career solution and decided to become a teacher. She headed off to Stratford's teachers college for a one year course. When time came to apply for her first job, she gambled and applied to only one place, Clinton Public School in Toronto, so she could study music after hours. The gamble paid off, and that is how she became Lambert's student for two years.

While taking singing lessons at the Royal Conservatory of Music, she met Herman Geiger-Torel, one of the founders of the COC and its first general manager. "My entrance into the [professional] singing world was at a time when they needed singers for the off-stage chorus in Otello. I was sent to the Royal Alex (Royal Alexandra Theatre) and I thought, 'can La Scala be long off?'" She laughs at her naiveté. The chorus is where she stayed until 1964 when she sang the role of Frasquita in Carmen with Vickers as Don José. "That was wonderful," she beams as she remembers that event in her life.