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Lighting up the Skylight
Rising star Alicia Berneche to tackle classic role
By TOM STRINI ?Journal Sentinel music critic
Jan. 26, 2001
Alicia Berneche laughed off the idea that she is the Sweetheart of the Skylight.
But there's no laughing off her string of brilliant performances in Milwaukee with the Skylight Opera Theatre. She was a sparkling Josephine in "H.M.S. Pinafore" last January; the cool object of desire in the "Seduction of a Lady" episode of Richard Wargo's "A Chekhov Trilogy" in March of 1998; insidiously funny as the pious and gossipy Cissie Cassidy in "Losers," the second half of Richard Wargo's "Ballymore," in early 1999; and an irresistible Mag in "Winners," the first part of "Ballymore."
Mag carried the otherwise shaky "Winners," and Berneche's exuberance in the role made the young soprano someone special in Milwaukee. But she could top even that performance Friday, when she takes on the title role in Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" at the Skylight.
The Skylight is an ensemble house rather than a star house, and Berneche's outstanding prior performances came in the context of ensemble shows. "Lucia" is a star vehicle. The score is loaded with virtuoso coloratura, and the intensely Romantic and tragic role peaks with a famous mad scene. The legendary Maria Callas is credited with bringing the role and the opera to a new level of seriousness, and every lyric soprano since has been measured against her.
Berneche, who has sung the role in concert but never in a fully staged version, has been listening to Callas' 1955 version and to Edita Gruberova's 1991 recording. But she won't copy them; one lesson she has learned at the Skylight is to be herself.
"I no longer feel that I have to be someone else," she said in an interview before rehearsal. "When I was younger, I tried to force myself into that box, and it caused undue stress. My Lucia will crawl around a table licking knives - I don't think Callas would have done that! It's pretty fun - not your average Lucia."
Berneche's flat-out physicality is one reason stage directors love her. Many singers resist any action that might impede vocal production.
"She's fearless," said Richard Carsey, the Skylight's artistic director. "She's an actress - an actress. 'Ballymore' really showed it - she was jumping around that grassy hill constantly, throwing herself on her back and hitting high Cs. She never says no; maybe she just doesn't know that it's supposed to be hard."
Beyond that, Berneche's musicianship has impressed Carsey, a conductor-pianist by trade. She learns music quickly and on her own; many singers must have notes piano-pounded into their ears.
Carsey also spoke of Berneche's incredible character range. Her roles at the Skylight have been an aristocratic Russian, a fluttery English ingenue, a chatterbox Irish schoolgirl pregnant out of wedlock, a snippy pious Irish schoolgirl, and now Lucia, doomed to descend into madness and death as a result of a loveless arranged marriage.
'Gatsby' a turning point
She is best known outside Milwaukee for playing languid, sexy Daisy Buchanan in John Harbison's "The Great Gatsby" at the Lyric Opera of Chicago last fall. She stepped in for indisposed Dawn Upshaw, who had created the role at the Metropolitan Opera the year before. Berneche plans to understudy Upshaw at the Met when the opera is reprised there next year.
Berneche, a recent alumna of the Lyric's two-year apprentice program, triumphed in "Gatsby" at a venue that has the attention of the whole opera world. Offers came pouring in; she's now booked solid for three years and has had to turn down many offers. "When Alicia first came to us, she was already in fairly good shape," said Bill Mason, the Lyric's general director. "She knew theater; we used to talk about Shakespeare. What an artist such as she gains from us is the experience of working in a major company with the best in the world.
"Obviously, we intended to use Dawn Upshaw in 'Gatsby,' but when Dawn had to drop out we all thought that Alicia would be a terrific Daisy. The result was gratifying, not surprising; someone in whom we had great faith came through. She's determined and smart and I would think that she'll have a satisfying career."
A theatrical childhood
That career began when Berneche was just a kid growing up in Kokomo, Ind. A friend of the family was an English professor with a Shakespeare specialty, and he introduced Berneche to theater when she was very young.
"His daughter and I used to put on scenes from Shakespeare," Berneche said, laughing. "I did Romeo when I was 6 years old!"
Through childhood and adolescence, she did all the theater one could possibly do in a small city in Indiana. By age 12, she had decided to be a Shakespearean actress. In high school, she was on the forensics team, acted in school plays, staged plays on her own and played the violin. The one thing she didn't do much was sing, until she went to an Episcopal priest for help with her English declamation. He suggested singing, and Berneche started studying with him.
"He didn't know that much about singing, but he knew enough to free up my breathing. And he was a great pianist and he taught me how to phrase and bring out emotion. After two or three months of that, I knew I wanted to be an opera singer."
With that in mind, she went off to DePauw University, a small liberal arts school in nearby Greencastle, Ind. There, in January of 1990, she found Vergene Miller, who remains her voice teacher. In addition to her DePauw bachelor's degree, she holds a graduate performance diploma from the Peabody Conservatory of Baltimore.
"I was gone on sabbatical the first semester," Miller recalled in a phone interview from Greencastle. "This little girl came to the door. She said: 'I waited for you. You tell me what to do and I'll be able to do it.' "She was terribly talented. She sang 'Queen of the Night' (a notoriously difficult aria from Mozart's "The Magic Flute") her first year. In her junior year she started winning contests and everything started to click."
Working on the fine points
Miller, like the Skylight's Carsey, noted Berneche's musicianship. She doesn't have to teach notes when they get together. "We talk about how to sing," Miller said. "We work on the extremes, the top and bottom, and what to do to make the extreme ranges come out. We work on ways to pace energy, so that she'll have voice left at the end of a long role, such as Lucia.
"Her voice has gotten bigger and sturdier since 1990, and it's been very natural growth. She's having a good time discovering what she will be as a singer as the voice continues to grow. I think Lucia will be a big part of her future."
Berneche said that 10 years ago her voice - which today is bright and powerful, but not shrill, and possessed of an almost tenorial ping - was very high and very light. "C above high C was nothing to me, and I could hit high Es all over the place," she said. "But there were big register breaks in my voice and not much on the bottom. My voice has dropped a little and become more consistent. As I get older, it gets more lyrical, which I love. I'll never be a Turandot, but that's good - it's too much work. The lyric coloratura and soubrette roles are better fits for my personality."
Her personality is winning, onstage and off. Face to face, she is warm and engaging. Her openness and energetic charm are hard to resist. She laughs readily and talks a lot, but Berneche is no witless canary. A thoughtful and astute analysis of the structure of Harbison's "Gatsby" rolled off her tongue during the interview.
Craig Rutenberg, a vocal coach for the Lyric Opera apprentices, e-mailed to say, "She's an extremely intelligent lady who knows her stuff. When there is a snag in the preparation of work, she knows enough to go right to the heart of the matter. Alicia's greatest strength is the honesty of her vocal expression. She is a terribly good and kind woman and I think these qualities shine through her music making. If she has any weaknesses, I think it would only be her reluctance to own up to her own worth."
Being herself
The Skylight was the first place Berneche worked after her Lyric apprenticeship. Berneche says the company has been crucial to her development.
"My two years at the Lyric were great for instilling tradition," she said. "You go into someone's office there and see pictures of Callas and Tebaldi on the wall looking down at you. I came here trying to sing like them. And Richard would say, 'Who are you trying to sound like now? We want you to be who you are.' He was very diligent about that."
Her directors at the Skylight have been Dorothy Danner in both Richard Wargo operas, William Theisen in "Pinafore" and now Paula Suozzi in "Lucia."
"I don't think I truly learned to act and sing together until Dottie (Danner)," Berneche said. "She knows how to find that vocal moment that is motivated by stage action. She's very good at tricking singers into being good actors - all of them are.
"Safety and security are important in finding your own voice, and the Skylight is a safe, secure place. Everything good and unique you saw in me in 'Gatsby' - I got it here."
Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Jan. 28, 2001
Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel |