Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian has quickly found her voice

[Azat]

By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 11/23/2001

 

Isabel Bayrakdarian is still in her 20s - her mid -20s, she will emphasize - but she has already engineered one of the most promising careers in opera. It's hard to think of a new lyric-coloratura soprano since the young Barbara Bonney who has excited the makers and shakers of the music business, and a growing public, as much as Bayrakdarian has. She has won competitions sponsored by Placido Domingo and the Marilyn Horne Foundation, and both legendary singers are now among her supporters; critics and audiences go crazy for her.

 

A week from tonight Bayrakdarian sings a recital in Jordan Hall for the FleetBoston Celebrity Series, but that won't be her Boston debut. In 2000 she sang with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops on Armenian Night. A Globe critic, Susan Larson, praised her ''chops, charm, and musicality,'' and went on to specify that ''her voice is clear, bright but warm, and well-anchored to the breath, and, more importantly, her heart. Her coloratura is ridiculously immaculate and full-voiced (no skimming over the fast notes) and her diction uncannily pure.''

 

Bayrakdarian didn't start to take singing lessons until she was 19, and so far she has sung in only a handful of operatic productions. ''I had always sung in church,'' she said over the phone from Toronto, ''and when I was at the university studying biomedical engineering, I started to take singing lessons as a hobby. I did this because I wanted to sing better in church - it was completely unrelated to what I am doing now.''

 

Bayrakdarian was born into an Armenian family in Lebanon; she came to Canada when she was 14. ''I was like every teenager, coming to North America. It was supposed to be everything I had ever seen in the movies, the golden land.''

 

The soprano was lucky in choosing her first voice teacher: Jean Mcphail remains her instructor today. ''At first I was taking lessons only once every two weeks. Every day I was suffering from a serious lack of sleep and rest and surviving on coffee alone because of the demands of my biomedical engineering program. There were lots of days when my voice simply said `forget it' once we got to about F or G. So for a long time we wondered whether I was a soprano or a mezzo. Once I got some sleep, and once my instrument had matured, my voice found its place as a soprano.''

 

Bayrakdarian says she does not mind all the time she spent on her engineering studies. ''I don't regret it at all - in a bizarre way it has added to my performances because it helped me experience more of life. What we are onstage is interpreters, and the more you know about life, the more you are sensitive to it, the more you can express and interpret.''

 

The soprano's career began the same day as the convocation at which she received her engineering degree. ''My family was supportive all the way, but they were all concerned that I should graduate so that I would have other options in life if the singing didn't work out. I agreed with them. At the convocation, I sang Mozart's `Alleluia,' and my first contract started that very day with Glimmerglass Opera in upstate New York, where I sang in Gluck's `Iphigenie en Tauride.'''

 

The ''green light'' to pursue singing came earlier that year, when Bayrakdarian was one of the winners of the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions. ''I wasn't nervous at all about singing on the stage of the Met, and I know why: I was more nervous about the chemistry and physics reports I was preparing back in my hotel room so that I could send them back to school.''

 

Bayrakdarian played her first leading operatic role in the summer of 1998 at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. On one day's notice, she took over the part of Pamina in Mozart's ''The Magic Flute,'' winning the praise of the public and of the Academy's director of vocal programs, Marilyn Horne - who invited the youngster to sing at her birthday party in Carnegie Hall, alongside Renee Fleming, Bryn Terfel, Jerry Hadley, and Dolora Zajic, among other luminaries. (The Marilyn Horne Foundation underwrote Bayrakdarian's New York recital debut, and is a sponsor of her Boston recital.)

 

Martha Jones, director of the FleetBoston Celebrity Series, says, ''For many years we have had an agreement with the Van Cliburn Foundation to present the winner of the Cliburn Competition, and now we've reached a loose agreement with the Marilyn Horne Foundation to present an artist supported by the foundation every two or three years. It is very tough to build an audience in this city for a singer, so the singer has to be exceptional. Isabel was so successful at the Pops we felt she would be an appopriate person to launch this series. We also wanted an artist who would be willing to participate in our educational activities, so Isabel is going to the Boston Arts Academy for three workshops.''

 

Bayrakdarian says, ''Miss Horne has been extremely generous to every single one of her students and protegees - I am only one of hundreds she has helped. She and I have kept in touch. I go to her for career advice and I listen to what she thinks. I love participating in outreach performances - I still remember the days when I was in school myself; it wasn't that long ago. I had to find my own way, had to learn to listen to my own voice. I think it is so important to find your own way instead of copying someone else's.''

 

So far, the soprano has sung Rosina in ''The Barber of Seville'' and Adina in ''L'Elisir d'Amore''; when we spoke she had just come from singing Euridice in Gluck's ''Orfeo'' opposite Ewa Podles in Ann Arbor (''She is simply the best Orfeo you will ever hear''). With the Chicago Lyric Opera she sang Catherine in William Bolcom's Arthur Miller opera ''A View from the Bridge,'' and she will repeat it for her debut at the Met next season. Later this year she sings Cleopatra in Handel's ''Giulio Cesare'' with Canadian Opera, Susanna in ''The Marriage of Figaro'' at the Opera Bastille in Paris, and ''a lot of Mozart and a lot of Handel are coming along in the future.''

 

Home remains Toronto. ''Home is where your loved ones are, and that's where my family is. As for the rest of my life, I am single, and let's leave it at that.''

 

For her recital Bayrakdarian will work with the pianist Martin Katz, who has often played with Frederica von Stade. ''We'll do a Vivaldi motet, Debussy's `Cinq Poemes de Charles Baudelaire,' some Spanish songs by Granados and some Russian songs by Tchaikovsky, along with a sprinkling of Armenian composers.

 

''Armenian music is something I grew up with, and speaks closely to my heart - on a lot of levels I feel it very personally. I tried to come up with a program that is nonstandard, that gives the audience the chance to hear music that is not so readily available - things that will keep me interested and the people in the audience, too. I don't like to sing opera arias on recital programs - in opera you use a big brush; in recital, the paintwork is very delicate. To do both is good for your voice and good for your psyche.''

 

This story ran on page C13 of the Boston Globe on 11/23/2001.

© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

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[MosJan]

Bravo !!!

 

n@ranq der mer dziyn@ chen lsel