Divo Diva Café offers live music from venue founders & friends

I often ask musicians about their best, worst, and weirdest experiences while performing in and around San Diego. In the case of classically-trained soprano and mezzo-soprano Victoria Robertson, these three categories melded in one sun-fueled fusion. “During the pandemic, I was singing opera from my front porch in North Park, every Sunday since March 2020. I was determined to do it every Sunday no matter what.” One Sunday, “I think it was 105 degrees, and I only managed one-and-a-half songs before I felt like I was going to pass out. But I did it. Three people showed up. Those three people, I invited up to sit in the shade, under my porch.”

A New Jersey native, Robertson came to USCD in 1992, and it’s been her home base ever since. She’s worked in television for the SD-based AWE network, toured the world performing with the USO, and founded an opera advocacy program called Opera4Kids. “I was living in North Park for 17 years, in the same blue house on Villa Terrace that I considered my real home. At the end of the pandemic lockdowns, about 2021, the owner finally sold the house, and I moved to an ADU ‘temporarily’ in the back of my friend’s place — in North Park still.”

The latest manifestation of her workaholic sensibility is the Divo Diva Café, a European-style cafe, coffee house, and wine bar that opened last September on Fifth Avenue in Hillcrest. The Diva is Robertson herself, and the “Divo” (the lesser-known male equivalent) is friend and business partner Rosario Monetti, an operatic tenor and native of Naples, Italy who moved out here to stay in 2009. Robertson says that the two don’t sing continuously at their new digs; as is typical for such operations, they exhaust themselves just running the place. But they do break out a few duets — and even occasional solo outings — for evening sets and special events.

“We just sing off the cuff, very impromptu. Sometimes, we use backing tracks; a lot of times, we just sing a cappella. We’re opera singers, so we rely on the vocal line more than the production value of the track. A lot of pop music, the interesting parts of those songs happen in the backgrounds, but with opera, it’s so vocal-driven.” The song list taps Monetti’s musical roots, with Neapolitan standards such as “O sole mio” and “Torna a Sorriento,” plus the well-known aria “La donna e mobile,” from Verdi’s Rigoletto. They supplement these with a more recent crowd-pleaser, “Time To Say Goodbye” aka “Con te partirò,” made famous by the blind Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.

“A lot of the songs we can do as duets, switch back and forth [on] who takes the melody line. In concert, I’d say 50 percent is duets and then 50 percent we split between solos.” The Great American Songbook also gets a workout, with Sinatra and his posse represented by “Fly Me to the Moon,” “You Make Me Feel So Young,” and “Besame Mucho.” Robertson favors “At Last,” a “bluesy” tune dating back to WWII, but made famous by Etta James in the early ‘60s. “Rosario loves ‘Quando Quando Quando,’ which we do as a duet, him in Italian and then I’ll sing it in English.”

Contemporary pop also enters the mix. “In my twenties, I was known in San Diego for being a singer/songwriter with my guitar. When the pandemic hit, I brought out my guitar again, and got hired to sing every Thursday night at the Westgate Hotel, doing acoustic covers from Fleetwood Mac to Elton John to Adele. And sometimes, I do acoustic nights like that at Divo Diva. We’re both very diverse.” The Café hasn’t yet expanded into full evening food service, but Robertson says they offer wine, coffee, pastries, and Italian bread. “Eventually, we’re gonna have pasta dinner evenings.” Local musical talent rotates through many evenings, among them guitarist Carlos Velasco and flamenco dancer Lakshmi Basile, aka “La Chimi.”

“I think classical music continues to be a very important part of society in education,” says Robertson. “Perhaps it is not being shared so much with young audiences,” which is why she works on Opera4Kids. “I think that those experiences should be formed with the family, when a child is young, to give a sense of inspiration. Classical music doesn’t seem as well funded as it once was, and that reflects in the quality and quantity of the productions. However, it is very important that we keep this beautiful art form alive.”