Oklahoma City University to Confer Beverly Hills Soprano Honorary Doctor of Music

Friday, December 14, 2007

4p.m.-Winter Commencement

Oklahoma City University will grant an honorary Doctor of Music degree to Beverly Hills soprano Demetra George (Mustafoglu), formerly Debbie Giannopoulos, who was crowned Miss Oklahoma and All College Basketball Queen while attending OCU. She was also Miss Teenage OKC winning the national talent award and has appeared on NBC, CBS, PBS, national radio and at Carnegie Hall. She has sung for 4 presidents to date and was inducted into the OCU Performance Hall of Honor.

 

George has sung with over 150 symphony orchestras and has guested with the Japanese Philharmonic, Sofia Bulgaria State Theater Orchestra and the Fundacion Musicale de Honduras and starred in operas in Boston, Houston, Tampa, Palm Beach, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oklahoma City. She has been the resident soprano for the Nevada Opera Theatre in Las Vegas for the last 10 years singing their leads, and in the spring she will perform as the first American artist with the Baku, Azerbaijan Philharmonic in a pops concert of opera and Broadway.

 

In 2002, George made the Grammy List Nominations for her CD, “Demetra George Sings Love Arias” and in 1995 the Governors of Oklahoma and Florida, Keating and Chiles, honored her for her production of “Help for the Heartland, With Love from Florida” concert, which raised a considerable sum for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.

 

George is active and decorated in many organizations among which are the World Affairs Council, LA Consular Corps, the American Friends of Israel and Turkey, the ALS organization, ATAA, ATASC, Optimist Club, and TALL which is a ladies organization she founded 5 years ago that aids blind and underprivileged children in the US and abroad.

 

When not on stage or serving the many roles as mother and wife, (her husband Mike Mustafoglu, a businessman, is also the Honorary Consul General from N. Cyprus to the US) George teaches privately 80 students in LA and Palm Beach and has had 13 young students in lead roles on Broadway in such shows as Annie Get Your Gun, Beauty and the Beast, Falsettos, Grease, The King and I (Tony award cast), Les Miserables, Lion King, Into the Woods, Sound of Music, Wicked and Wonderful Town. Disney and Family Channel movies star her students also.

 

“I’ve been blessed to travel and meet amazing people throughout the world. I have learned that you must have a dream, a passion, and that if you work hard, have courage, care about people and live with integrity, you will find success and happiness. In my music, I am a servant of God and I breathe life into the notes on the page and make them live as I bring joy to others. Each day I live, I aim to infuse the same joy and passion for life into the lives of the people around me.”