INTERVIEW: Opera legend Lucine Amara is excited for Verismo Opera’s ‘Aida’ in NJ
Lucine Amara, the artistic director of the New Jersey Association of Verismo Opera, is excited to have audiences enjoy Giuseppe Verdi’s grand opera Aida, which will play the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, New Jersey, Sunday April 23 at 3 p.m.
Amara is no stranger to Aida. The legendary opera star performed the title role 36 times at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. All told, she played the Met’s stage 882 times in 56 different roles, according to her biography. Her other engagements over the years brought her to the Baths of Caracalla in Italy, San Diego and San Francisco.
“It’s a wonderful opera, and it’s very beautiful in scenery and sound, the orchestra, the voices,” Amara said recently in a phone interview. “It really is a great opera.”
Sometimes when Verismo Opera holds auditions, Amara will sit in and try to figure out which singers are the best for the roles she knows so well. Her overall goal as artistic director is to help younger singers and try to teach them the value of good opera presence and proper breathing.
“Young singers come along, and they are not tutored properly,” she said. “They’re not taught proper breathing, and they push the voice. And before you know it, the voice is gone, and you have to be very careful as a singer not to over-blow your vocal chords. That’s important. You can’t sing loud, louder and loudest. … You go outdoors, and you start yelling. And before you know it, you’re hoarse, and that happens to a lot of young singers. They feel they have to be loud. Well, the singing is not always loud. There’s beautiful passages where it’s piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte. You can’t sing in one loud voice.”
Amara had a mentor and vocal teacher herself. Back in San Francisco, she was tutored under a Viennese expert who taught the opera performer how to properly sing for the piano. “You have to know how to phrase certain phrases,” she said. “Young singers get up there, and they think they have to sing loud to be heard. I could whisper from the stage, and the people always said, ‘Oh, we heard you.’ I said, ‘Of course, because I project.’ I don’t yell.”
Amara said that Aida requires good actors and actresses to inhabit the roles on stage. Verdi’s opera is not simply a showcase for good singing. The performers need to embody the characters so that the audience believes them on stage. “When I get on stage and sing the role of Madame Butterfly, I’m no longer Lucine Amara,” she said. “I’m Madame Butterfly or Aida. … You have to become the character that you are singing.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The New Jersey Association of Verismo Opera will perform Aida at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, New Jersey, Sunday, April 23 at 3 p.m. Click here for more information and tickets.
