“My path to opera was not planned. And my path through it will be as spontaneous as I can make it,” says Toronto-based soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, seen here as Pamina for the Cincinnati Opera.
WILLIAM LITTLER
NEW YORK – Noticing that her interviewer was eying her coffee cup, the scientist in Isabel Bayrakdarian spoke up quickly:
“This has soy milk in it. You get to like soy. I don’t know if you ever get to love it.”
Dairy products? The cup bearer shook her head, her dark eyes flashing as she added, with a wicked smile, “And coffee leaches the calcium from your body!”
Tempted as he was to pull his chair away from Columbia Artists’ boardroom table and submit his body for detoxification, your humble servant decided instead to change the subject.
It was too early in the morning to confront, across a table, an honours graduate in biomedical engineering from the University of Toronto.
It was almost too early to confront her more recent identity as Canada’s fastest-rising young soprano, the one she will exhibit in her debut performance with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra next Wednesday at Roy Thomson Hall (repeat performances take place April 1 and 3, with an added April 4 performance at North York’s George Weston Recital Hall).
After all, she had just spent the previous evening across 57th St. on the stage of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, joining three other singers (mezzo-soprano Norine Burgess, tenor Michael Schade and baritone Russell Braun), accompanied by pianists Carolyn Maule and Serouj Kradjian, warbling her way through an all-Canadian presentation of Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op. 52, and Schumann’s Spanish Liebeslieder.
Yes, I said all-Canadian.
With all four singers under contract, her manager at Columbia Artists, Elizabeth Crittenden, had sold Carnegie Hall on the maple leaf package and at the concert’s end, a cheering audience applauded the decision.
The concert was emblematic of Canada’s current crop of vocal talent, perhaps the most remarkable the country has yet produced.
Canadians are singing now on almost all the world’s major stages, including those on Manhattan’s 57th St.
Indeed, three of the four Liebeslieder singers had already appeared under Carnegie auspices. Bayrakdarian had not only sung her own recital there, she had begun a complementary career at the nearby Metropolitan Opera House, initially in a year ago as Catherine in Willliam Bolcom’s A View From The Bridge, more recently as Teresa in Berlioz’ Benvenuto Cellini. Not bad for someone who only took up singing to improve her vocal skills in church.
Born in Lebanon, one of six children of Armenian parents, Isabel moved with her family at age 14 to Toronto, where singing in an Armenian church choir became a big part of her life. It still is. Her debut CD for CBC Records, titled Joyous Light, celebrates several centuries of Armenian liturgical music.
“I love the haunting quality of this music,” she explained, between sips of coffee. “There is a bitter-sweetness and you can put so much of yourself into its interpretation. I can go into an Armenian church anywhere in the world, join the choir and start singing. It always feels like home.”
It was during her vocal studies at home in Toronto with Jean McPhail at the Royal Conservatory, carried on in tandem with her academic studies at the University of Toronto, that the possibility of a career in singing gradually emerged for the young chorister.
“We all need idols and when I grew up there was no Armenian operatic singer I could look up to, although I later learned that Lucine Amara was Armenian. So it took time for me to realize I could have a career. All my biographies now say Canadian-Armenian soprano. I’m Armenian by heritage but I belong to Canada.”
Canada and the world, actually. The journey from membership in the Canadian Opera Ensemble (she made her debut in major roles as Rosina in a production of Rossini’s The Barber Of Seville in February, 1999) to stardom in New York, Paris and Salzburg has taken only a brief few years.
“My path to opera was not planned.” she smiled. “And my path through it will be as spontaneous as I can make it. Someone asked me recently what I will be doing in January, 2009. I just will not commit that far. Two or three years ahead yes, but my god, five?”
Bayrakdarian’s reason for caution is obvious. With so few roles under her belt, she is still experimenting with what works for her. “Tosca is a great role,” she explained, “but not for my voice. And I’m not an `ina’ (as in Donizetti’s Norina or Mozart’s Despina), the kind of (soubrette) voice that sings until the age of 40, when they start looking for younger versions of you.
“It is a blessing that my voice has developed at the extremes and gained much more depth in the middle. I find that if you lead a healthy lifestyle, the voice is healthy. Use food as a fuel, not as a way of dealing with emotional problems. I love what Birgit Nilsson said: `Sad birds don’t sing.'”
An obviously happy bird at this stage of her career, Bayrakdarian was effectively launched on the international stage by winning Placido Domingo’s Operalia Competition in 2000. Her combination of vocal freshness, physical beauty and an outgoing personality have continued to dazzle the experts as well as the general public.
Offstage, she loves fast cars, holds a scuba-diving licence and can mix a drink with the skill that put her through the Bartending School of Ontario.
No, I’m not joking. “Just a little wine is enough to make me whooo,” the soprano laughed. “But with my bartender’s licence I can be a great host. I guess it’s the chemist in me.”
It’s the singer in her that she is concentrating on these days, with the international scope of her career making her a connoisseur of travel.
“Every day I count my blessings that I do what I do,” she insisted. “And having a partner who is also in music and experiences all this with you completely changes you (Serouj Kradjian not only makes music with his fellow alumnus of Toronto’s Armenian community, he happens to be her fiancé).
“I love the travel. But I can’t wait for my Toronto Symphony Orchestra debut. It’s singing at home. I love the idea of being able to drive to work. It’s as close to a normal job as I’ll ever have.”
Does she miss the biomedical engineering? “I don’t regret spending those years in science at all. But I am a different person now. Music brings out the best in you. It refreshes the soul. I feel it has made me a better person.”
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