#148: Valparaiso by Paula Moore
City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CKOI
Peak Month: April 1984
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #7
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Valparaiso”
Lyrics: “Valparaiso”
Paula Moore was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She grew up in a musical family. Her mother had a passion for opera and lieder (voice and piano). Paula’s family later moved around, including to Chicago, Evanston (Illinois), France, and Spain. Her first stage appearance was at age seven in Evanston, Illinois, in a play based on Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Liebelung. She portrayed the main character The Golden Fish, who narrates the ensuing drama from the depths of the Rhine. After moving to New Hampshire, at the age of sixteen Paula Moore acted in a chamber theater adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dubliners and portrayed Angélique in Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid. She studied French Literature and Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin for two years, while studying serial music with composer and conductor René Leibowitz.