13 January 2010
Ailyn Pérez enthuses about the exciting opera debuts she has coming up and her belief that she was born to sing...
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It’s testament to how busy Ailyn Pérez’s schedule is right now that it takes me two weeks to pin her down for a chat. The 30-year-old Mexican soprano, a native of Chicago, has been in ever-increasing demand in both Europe and America since stepping into Anna Netrebko’s shoes as Juliette at the 2008 Salzburg Festival. She recently made her debut at the Berlin Staatsoper (in La Traviata in September; she was subsequently invited back almost immediately to sing Pamina in Die Zauberflöte) and the season ahead, which includes a Barenboim-conducted Simon Boccanegra with Placido Domingo and a debut at La Scala, looks set to send her stratospheric.
‘I know, it’s crazy!’ she giggles, in her honey-tinged voice. ‘It’s so exciting. It definitely feels like a new phase. Up until I graduated in 2006, I only knew I had the potential to be an opera singer. Now it really seems to be transitioning into something else.’
Well, yes. These days, it’s safe to say Ms. Pérez is most definitely an opera singer, although it’s also apparent that the recent acclaim and glory have not gone to her head. ‘The student in me never dies,’ she confesses. ‘I feel like I am always learning, and the critic in me, oh my… I’m critical to a fault!’
Her inner critic notwithstanding, Pérez is taking to this triumphant ‘new phase’ like the proverbial duck to water, finding particular rewards in Berlin, where she has been singing at the Staatsoper with the likes of René Pape. ‘That house is so historical, it’s a magic experience to sing there’, she enthuses. ‘But there is something else, too. I think artists in Germany must be raised differently. They have this word, kollegen, that would be translated as ‘colleague’, I guess, but it’s more than that. They have real professional intensity, but they’re also so warm. It’s a great atmosphere to work in, and I learned so, so much.’
Pérez, who is married to the award-winning young tenor Stephen Costello, will be heading back to Unter den Linden soon, to do that Boccanegra. Is she excited about performing with Domingo? ‘Listen, you can be the hottest talent of today, but nothing can substitute forty-odd years of being on stage. I am ridiculously thrilled to be working with him and Barenboim. The way maestri like that approach music, they’re not having to prove themselves, they’re just loving it, and you can hear it.’ Not, she concedes, that you must have had the decades of experience of a Domingo or a Barenboim to attain such a quality: she observes something similar in her 34-year-old contemporary, the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. ‘To see Yannick in performance, he’s so free, and there’s this joy. It’s infectious! That really inspires me.’
You get the sense that Pérez, whose disarming combination of enthusiasm, humility and intelligence positively bubbles over in her conversation, is not a difficult human being to inspire. ‘I love going to the theatre, movies, musical theatre, or just sitting in the park watching people go by’, she explains. ‘What we do is so layered, and you can go as deep as you want. There is so much out there, and nothing that you invest in the craft is ever going to go to waste: you draw on everything you can.’ She describes her former Maestro from the Academy of Vocal Arts, Christofer Macatsoris, as being ‘transcendent’ in his ability to communicate the intricacies of vocal colour and shade; and refers often to the great sopranos – Callas, Scotto, Caballé, Price, Fleming – with almost childlike awe.
‘Those artists can transport’, she reflects. ‘Their music can transport. And that’s what I’d like to contribute to the world, what I believe I was born to do. That’s my life.’
© Clemency Burton-Hill