Boy, can she talk.

In a never-ending stream of ebullience, her need to take minimal breath is probably governed by her stratospheric ability in coloratura soprano music with a voice that covers four octaves, all with ease, going to double high C in the top one.

Suffice to say, phenomenally high.

"I don't know where I got it from but I have it," she said in the Old Hall Hotel's piano lounge in Buxton last Saturday, oblivious to people hearing when she sang snatches of this or that to illustrate a point.

Not a double high C, so there were no breakages!

She didn't train as a singer and discovered she was a coloratura soprano by accident but did work as a chemist, clarinetist, saxophonist and flautist, all of which she teaches privately in Orlando.

"I enjoy any form of teaching," she says and describes herself as "a great Anglophile", having voraciously read English literature from the age of eight.

Since May, she has driven truckloads of 45 people around the safari reserve at Disneyland in Florida and answered their questions on 39 species.

"Disney has always had an ethos or ethic that I like," she offers as an excuse.

But, running through Elise's life from the beginning, has been Gilbert and Sullivan.

One of six children: "A big treat when were kids every year, usually Christmas time, was when dad pulled out his reel-to-reel tapes of popular Gilbert and Sullivan operas. I was spellbound.

"My dad (a chemical engineer) was an amateur singer and we always sang in the car, things like A Wandering Minstrel from The Mikado.

"I learned harmony through listening to dad."

At college in Dover, Delaware, she joined the chorus and band, began playing the clarinet at 12, learned to read music and was soon turning piano pages at local G&S productions which pushed her over the top.

"I caught the bug and was crazy about Gilbert and Sullivan."

She joined the company's chorus as an alto, decided to have voice lessons that were offered by the college – five minutes a week! – and was told she hadn't a very good voice and would never be a soloist.

Deciding on a practical subject for her college degree, she chose chemistry but G&S was never far away.

"I often had to work long hours because I was always behind everyone else.

"I'm a terrible procrastinator. I was very particular doing my experiments and as I waited for them to process in the lab I would sing Gilbert and Sullivan along with tapes I'd brought until I couldn't sing any more."

Gaining a chemistry degree at 18, she moved to Orlando and auditioned for the role of Pitti-Sing in a production of The Mikado.

Great personality, they said, but she didn't get the part.

The assistant music director offered her voice lessons and began training her as a mezzo. Two years later she auditioned for The Pirates of Penzance.

Same story!

She tried for Pirates again when the Central Florida Light Opera Company was formed and this time got the part of Isabel, who doesn't have any solo music but was ripe for Elise's comic talents.

Cue her big turning point at the age of 29.

When the ailment-prone diva singing Mabel was unable to rehearse yet again, the director asked if anyone knew the part so that he could have a rehearsal.

She had auditioned as a mezzo without been tested but, by now, through imitating her, Elise had realised she could sing as high as Valerie Masterson on her D'Oyly Carte recording of Pirates.

Tentatively she put her hand up when no-one else did.

"Being a crazy Gilbert and Sullivan person, of course I knew the part of Mabel, and Sergeant of Police and any other part you'd care to name. 'Can you sing it right now?'" he asked.

She thought about Valerie and did Poor Wandering One, E flat and all.

"I didn't know that was really high. I didn't realise most singers don't sing that high.

"I didn't think I had done anything extraordinary but he just stared at me in disbelief. He said: 'I must see you after rehearsal.'

"I did the whole part and afterwards he started testing me. We went higher and higher, higher and higher until he almost went off the keyboard. He said: 'My dear, you are a coloratura soprano."

Bill Doherty, now president of the International Opera Centre of America in Orlando, was the director and nearly 20 years later she is still working with him – she is singing in Lucia di Lammermoor next January, having previously done Violetta (Traviata), Gilda (Rigoletto), Queen of Night (Magic Flute).

"He's got a company in Italy at present and I was supposed to go with them but I chose to come here. I love to do opera but I love Gilbert and Sullivan more," says the soprano.

On her third G&S Festival visit – the first was initiated by one-time Sheffield pianist Clive Woods – she offers a third solo concert on Tuesday, More Sopranos of the Savoy, as her first appearance in 2006 was in Sopranos of the Savoy.

Meantime, tonight there is The Rose of Persia with some acting and pruned dialogue which Elise instigated and produces. She directed her first, fully-staged G&S in February: Pirates.

Sullivan's last-completed opera, Rose of Persia (libretto by Basil Hood), is the best of his post-Gilbert works.

Elise agrees and feels the incomplete next one, finished by Edward German, The Emerald Isle, is "pretty good too."

"I saw Haddon Hall here last year when the place was packed and I thought it was under-served.

"Sullivan's music is worthwhile and deserves to be heard. I thought, how would it be if we got the best performers. I talked to people and I think we have ended up with a very good cast" – you can believe it with Nick Sales as Yussuf.

It would be hard to imagine anyone but Elise as Rose-in-Bloom.

She is and gets to sing 'Neath my Lattice, "a whizz-bang of a coloratura aria."

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