When soprano Elizabeth Futral came down with the flu on the eve of her scheduled performances with Music of the Baroque in January, she knew whom she could rely on as a replacement. With only two hours to learn a demanding Scarlatti cantata before the scheduled orchestra rehearsal, soprano Maria Kanyova not only learned the music but scored a triumph at the performance the following night, fully justifying Futral’s faith.
What these two singers have in common is that both owe their professional training to the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists. Futral, a member of the Lyric’s apprentice artist program from 1989 to 1991, is singing major roles with opera companies throughout the world. Kanyova, now in her second year with the program, is poised to make a similar splash once she leaves Chicago.
Kanyova insists she would not have considered taking on such a difficult assignment on such short notice were it not for the confidence she has gained from her work at the Lyric Center. “It has really been a wonderful, priceless experience,” says the Missouri-born soprano, who created the leading role of Leya in the center’s world premiere of resident composer Shulamit Ran’s “Between Two Worlds (The Dybbuk)” in 1997.
All this is music to the ears of Richard Pearlman, the center’s director since 1995 and a man committed to making it the best and most singer-friendly training program in the nation.
“My No. 1 job,” he says, “is making sure the training aspect of the program adheres to the highest possible standards. It’s one thing to have good people in the program. It’s quite another to do everything in your power to make them better by the time they leave.”
This season marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, an unwieldy name for what is, by general consent, one of the top two or three training centers for young singers in the U.S., along with programs in Houston and San Francisco. To commemorate that milestone, the center’s 11 apprentices will appear in a concert of opera arias and ensembles Sunday afternoon at the Civic Opera House, with the Lyric Opera Orchestra conducted by Richard Buckley. Admission is for donors only.
When the Lyric’s apprentice wing was born (as the Opera School of Chicago) in 1974, training was spotty and members got no solo exposure, although they were required to sing in the chorus. Today, ensemble singers perform supporting roles and do understudy work with the parent company during Lyric’s mainstage season. Their preseason training program is broad and intensive, ranging from coaching sessions and language courses to master classes with singers such as Marilyn Horne, Regine Crespin and Renata Scotto, to performance opportunities in the center’s own opera productions.
When ensemble members graduate–most spend two years in the program–they come away with an indelible sense of what it means to be part of an international opera company. “What the singers get is exposure,” says Lyric general director William Mason. “They have the opportunity to perform on the highest level, working with the best people in the business. The things they can pick up here just by osmosis will stand them in good stead once they begin their careers.”
Since Pearlman arrived in Chicago, after nearly two decades as director of opera at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, he has brought about several significant shifts of emphasis in the center’s program.
One change has been to give apprentice singers as thorough a grounding in what he calls “American vernacular music” as they get in foreign languages. Every morning each day for six weeks, ensemble members attend classes where no English is allowed. They also spend hours learning and performing Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter and other music theater songs along with the standard operatic repertory.
“It’s an area that is sadly neglected in their conservatory training,” Pearlman says. With crossover specialist Joel Silberman, a pianist and coach, “they work on classic American theater songs at the same time they are learning Verdi and Donizetti. We show them that through singing in their own language they can achieve verbal nuance and emotional immediacy–the same qualities they need to bring to the bread-and-butter opera repertory, if they’re going to be world-class artists.”
When Pearlman auditions young singers–he and his colleagues hear more than 500 every year, criss-crossing the nation in search of talented wannabe opera stars–he has strict criteria.
“A first-rate voice is a basic prerequisite. If they don’t have the voice to fill the Ardis Krainik Theatre, they’re just not right for the program,” he says.
Superior musicianship comes next. “Performance opportunities come fast and furious here, and if somebody doesn’t have the skills to learn music quickly and be useful to the company, they don’t belong here.” He discourages applicants whose voices are unsuited for the mainstage Lyric repertory in a given season, including “cover” roles. “I don’t believe in bringing somebody here to sit on their hands for six months.”
One apprentice who has emphatically not sat on his hands this season is tenor Marlin Miller, now in his first year with the program. The Ohio-born Miller, seen this year in “Tristan und Isolde” and “Carmen” with the Lyric, was already singing leading roles with various regional companies when the center invited him to become an ensemble member. Pearlman praises him as “a fanatical worker” and “a perfectionist” and considers his progress remarkable.
“I am a Midwest boy who didn’t grow up studying languages,” Miller says. “Since entering the program, there has been a lot of growth in that area, along with my vocal improvement,” he says.
Since Pearlman’s arrival, the center has effectively incorporated the Lyric’s Lee and Brena Freeman composer-in-residence program, not only supplying the singers for the world-premiere productions presented under the parent company’s aegis but choosing the composers and shepherding them through each stage of the creative process. The current resident composer, Michael John LaChiusa, is completing his new opera, “Enigma Variations,” for its scheduled premiere here in June 2001. Parts of the work (which is being co-produced by Lyric and the Goodman Theatre) were presented in a closed workshop performance at Lyric last summer, several months ahead of the New York premiere of LaChiusa’s latest music-theater work, “Marie Christine,” by the Theater Company of Lincoln Center.
Not everyone who graduates from the Opera Center automatically goes on to achieve a major singing career, of course. There are only so many openings to go around, while a number of singers suffer premature vocal burnout and fail, for various reasons, to realize their early potential. But the Lyric’s track record is high. A short list of its star graduates includes Futral, Cynthia Lawrence, Kathleen Kuhlmann, Emily Magee, Harolyn Blackwell, Juliana Rambaldi, Nancy Maultsby, Robynne Redmon, Patricia Risley, Gregory Kunde, Richard Cowan, Mark McCrory and Mark S. Doss.
As for the future, Pearlman expects the Lyric Opera Center to further extend its spearheading role in the composer-in-residence program (“we’ve just scratched the surface”) and is talking with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Ravinia about collaborations. (Ensemble members sang concerts at Ravinia in 1998 and 1999 but were not invited to perform this coming summer.) Singers from the program will present excerpts from Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” and Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” July 19 and 21 at Grant Park.
“I think that the center’s program as currently constituted is in good shape,” says Pearlman. “But for me it’s never good enough. There is always room for improvement, in every area.”
Adds tenor Miller, “It’s not so much the finished product as the journey that makes this so worthwhile for me. That is the joy of singing and the joy of [being in] the program.”
