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This article by Elaine Strauss was prepared for the October 16, 2002 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
In Song, Creating a Brokenhearted Lucia
Soprano Lorraine Ernest has made herself a refined
picture of Lucia di Lammermoor. Imagining herself as the crazed woman
who has just killed her husband, she adds to the notion of simple
madness. "Here’s the way I’m going to play it," she says of
the challenging mad scene in Donizetti’s opera. "It’s my wedding
day and I don’t realize anything horrible is going on. There’s a gap
between what I’ve really done and what I think is going to happen.
I keep going in and out of reality. Mostly I’m out of reality in the
aria. Then I come to realize what I’ve done, and I die mad."
"The visual helps in the mad scene," Ernest says. "Lucia’s
all bloody when she comes out. What makes it dramatic is how sane
Lucia seems. She’s like a rubber band that can be wound too tight.
She has no escape. She gets wound tighter and tighter till she breaks.
You don’t know what caused her to be as she is. She’s fearful and
sensitive. In the first scene she’s the only one who sees the ghost.
Everything affects her greatly; everything goes to the heart."
Opening its 14th season, Boheme Opera stages Gaetano Donizetti’s opera
Friday, October 25, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, October 27, at 8 p.m. at
Patriots Theater of the Trenton War Memorial. The 1835 work is based
on Sir Walter Scott’s "The Bride of Lammermoor." Tenor Barton
Green, who sang Nemerino to soprano Ernest’s Adina in Boheme’s 1999
"L’Elisir d’Amore," appears as Lucia’s lover Edgardo. Baritone
Ed Huls is Enrico, Lucia’s unscrupulous brother; tenor Tyler Clark
sings Arturo, Lucia’s unfortunate husband; and bass Steven Fredericks
is the Lammermoor chaplain. Princeton native Reegan McKenzie directs.
The action takes place in 16th-century Scotland. Seeking to extricate
himself from political adventures and financial failures, Enrico Ashton
arranges for his sister Lucia to marry the well-situated Arturo. Lucia
is in love with Edgardo, an enemy of the Ashton family. After Enrico
shows Lucia a forged letter designed to show Edgardo’s infidelity,
Lucia agrees to marry Arturo. Edgardo appears at the wedding ceremony,
insults Lucia, and challenges Arturo to a duel. Overwrought, Lucia
kills Arturo, and dies overwhelmed by her sorrows. When Edgardo hears
of her death, he kills himself.
Playing Lucia requires both stamina and artistry. The ill-fated heroine
is on stage for almost the entire opera. "There’s one scene before
I come on and that’s it," says Ernest. "The others get to
warm up the audience and then I’m pretty much the heavy artillery
the whole way through."
One commentator calls Lucia’s mad scene in Act III "both inspiration
and incentive." The aria is transparent, with no place to hide.
The soprano sings along with a solo flute, sometimes following an
opposing melody line, sometimes in unison with the instrument. The
vocalist needs both power and flexibility.
Boheme’s "Lucia" is the traditional version, shorter than
Donizetti’s original, and, making peace with vocal reality, performed
lower than Donizetti’s pitch. "Lucia was originally written a
step higher," Ernest says. "I would love to sing it there."
To sing at dizzying altitudes comes natural to her.
She credits the upper limits of her voice with her success in competitions.
Having won the Sullivan Award, and placed in the Birgit Nilsson and
Liederkranz competitions, she says that "it’s very helpful to
have a freakishly high or low voice. I have high voice. That’s why
I don’t have a problem as the Queen of the Night."
Ernest downplays the importance of success in competitions.
"It doesn’t mean anything about what kind of career you’re going
to have," she says. "Some people are great competition singers.
You’re really competing against yourself. You don’t hear the other
singers. You don’t think `I have to sing better than that person.’
It’s like bungee jumping. You push yourself."
For her, opera performance, with its emotional and physical demands
is more demanding than competing. "Opera is larger than life,"
Ernest says. "You’re singing all your emotions. Technically, you
need a lot of practice for the hard spots. When I have difficult phrases,
I practice every day. I practice until it feels natural. Anytime you
have the emotion behind what you’re singing, the body follows. Suppose
something scares you and you scream really loud. The body supports
the scream, rather than trying to suppress it. That’s what learning
to sing is about: how to support that emotion."
"What opera singers do isn’t normal," she says. "We sing
over orchestras and choruses. We’re wearing costumes that are corseted,
and we’re wearing wigs. And, ordinarily, there’s no amplification."
"We’ve become a very visual society," Ernest says, responding
to a question about the stereotype of overweight singers playing romantic
heroines on the stage. "We want opera to be somewhat believable,"
she says. "But once I hear someone who’s great, I couldn’t care
less about their weight. Then you realize that opera’s about the singing."
About herself she says, "I’m on the chunky side, but I’m not fat."
Ernest grew up in Norman, Oklahoma. "I’m a huge Oklahoma University
fan," she says. "It’s almost a religion." She played softball
through college, and enjoys sports both as a participant and as a
spectator. If her cramped schedule allowed it, she would play golf.
She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Oklahoma City
University. Her training includes an apprenticeship program at the
Tulsa Opera, and two years at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.
She is presently a master’s candidate in voice pedagogy at Westminster
Choir College of Rider University.
Comparing opera in Oklahoma with opera on the Atlantic seaboard, Ernest
says, "There are amazing singers in Oklahoma, and great teachers.
Oklahomans have really good ears. But there aren’t tons of voice teachers.
There’s more going on on the east coast. That’s why I’m here."
She left Oklahoma 12 years ago. "When I get on the phone, I fall
back into that accent."
"Everybody sings in my family," says Ernest. "My parents
do the solos in church, but they’re not classically trained. They’re
in their mid 50s. They have high voices, soprano and tenor. I guess
I inherited that." Ernest declines to tell her age.
When she was in junior high school, Ernest knew that she wanted to
sing professionally. She keeps in shape vocally with fortnightly lessons
in New York. Joan Lader, her teacher, for the past two years, was
originally a speech pathologist. "She’s great technically,"
Ernest adds. "She’s helped me understand how to make the body
work better."
Ernest chose to study at Westminster after looking over a number of
other schools offering graduate work in voice pedagogy. Preparing
for her teaching career, she has several private students. Meanwhile,
her income from performing keeps her financially solvent.
Ernest coaches at Westminster with J.J. Penna. "It’s like being
in a bubble," she says. "He’s a genius. He knows repertoire,
and he knows languages. He’s a great listener. He works with you,
and tells you what you don’t know. If it’s a matter of artistic ideas,
we work together."
She commutes to Princeton from her home in Clifton and has discovered
shortcuts that cut the trip to 70 minutes. "That’s great for learning
an opera," she says. "I learn the words by keeping the book
in front of me on the steering wheel." She’s not sure how the
hazardousness of this form of study compares with talking on a cell
phone while driving.
Ernest considers Boheme Opera Company an exemplary organization. "Boheme
has given me opportunities to do things I haven’t done before. There’s
such a difference between performing a whole opera and just learning
an aria. When you do the whole opera you get a strong grasp of the
material. Every town should have a company like Boheme. That’s common
in Europe."
Ernest overflows with praise, also, for Boheme’s artistic director
Joseph Pucciatti, and managing director Sandra Pucciatti, his wife,
co-founders of the company. "Joe hires really good singers,"
she says. "He has a good ear." Most importantly, it’s the
warm atmosphere at Boheme that she finds winning. "Opera companies
need to make money to keep going," she observes, "but the
Pucciattis are in it because they love it."
— Elaine Strauss
at the War Memorial, Trenton, 609-581-7200. Pre-curtain talk in theater
1 hour and 15 minutes before performance. $20 to $55. Friday, October
25, 8 p.m. Sunday, October 27, 3 p.m.
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