Sondra Radvanovsky, the Anti-Diva

“You want to know a funny thing?” said soprano Sondra Radvanovsky when asked about her reputation for being the ‘anti-diva’ of opera singers. “As lighthearted as I am off stage, you would think that I would do comedy well onstage. Nope!  I love, love, love tragedy and dying onstage.”  

It is Sondra Radvanovskyno wonder Radvanovsky enjoys performing tragic roles: her first glimpse of opera was seeing Placido Domingo in Tosca, which she watched on television when she was eleven years old. She had always sung in the church choir but seeing the drama Domingo could achieve with both his voice and his character left her mesmerized, and soon thereafter the precocious Radvanovsky set to work persuading her mother to let her start taking voice lessons so that she could perform just like Placido. It was this voice teacher who recognized the budding singer’s god-given talent. “And not just any music,” Radvanovsky said, “Opera!” 

She debuted in her first professional opera as a smoke girl in Carmen when she was thirteen and knew from that experience that opera was her calling. (She also confesses to having a little crush on Escamillo in that production, which only fanned the flame.) “I was just entranced by everything about live opera,” she said, “the visceral thrill of being on a stage with an orchestra in the pit; the human voice live with all its perfections, as well as imperfections; the difference that would occur from night to night. But mostly, for me it was the drama and being able to be transported to someplace different than where we were, and that was in a very small town in Indiana.” 

Interestingly, after all these years singing professionally, Radvanovsky still considers Placido Domingo her mentor, and says she felt like she knew him after watching him on television. Of course none of this would have happened if it weren’t for a few people closer to home, most importantly her church choir director and the local opera director, who both took Radvanovsky’s mother aside and said that they thought her daughter had something special. “With their guidance, I found a voice teacher who knew how to deal with young talent and shape a large voice at an early age.” And, she said, “I mean, I was singing both the “Cherubino” arias in Le Nozze di Figaro at fifteen years old!” 

It hasn’t always been an easy road for Radvanovsky who said there have been many tears along the way, along with a potentially career ending surgery on her vocal cords to repair an injury sustained when she was eight years old. But all that fell away when, two days after her twenty-fifth birthday she stepped on the Metropolitan Opera’s stage and realized that she was right where she belonged. “Easy to say now after being there for over fifteen years,” she said, “but at the time I just knew in my soul that I was to sing at that opera house. I think I am a very, very lucky girl who found her home early in life.” 

Radvanovsky made her Met debut singing “Ritorna vincitor” from Aida.  “Who does that on the Met stage,” she said, “and is still standing at forty years old to talk about it?! I was a very misguided girl with loads of enthusiasm, and thank goodness the Met believed in me enough to ask me into the Young Artist Program for three years.” In those three years, Radvanovsky’s voice teacher taught her how to sing properly and how to be a ‘real’ opera singer. “Without the Metropolitan Opera, I am sure that I would not be where I am today, one hundred percent sure,” she said, and added, “Peter Gelb, the head of the Metropolitan Opera, has really taken me under his wing, and has allowed me to shine in the house that I call home and for that I am thankful.  I am making many interesting debuts at the Met in the next few years – some I think people will be very surprised about but all very exciting.”  

Today, her voice has matured to the point where she finally feels like she is on top of her game, ready to sing roles she only dreamed of when she first appeared on stage at the Met. “I really feel like I am in control of my instrument instead of it controlling me,” she said. “I recently left my voice teacher of sixteen years and I feel like I have a fresh, new start on my singing.” With a renewed freedom and control of her career, Radvanosky says that her repertoire is getting lighter, unlike many singers who start to lean toward heavier roles as they get older. So, not only is she singing her first Tosca in Denver and her first Aida at home in Toronto, but in the next few seasons, she is actually making a return to the lighter, bel-canto repertoire of Bellini and Donizetti. “I have a Norma, as well as the Donizetti Three Tudor Queens scheduled, and I can’t even tell you how excited I am about this,” she said. “Last season I sang Lucrezia Borgia in Washington DC and it was like a revelation for me – this is my repertoire!” 

This past year has been an extremely busy one for Radvanovsky and her husband, who travels with her to most venues; they were away from home nearly eleven months out of the last year, which meant that when they closed on their new home in Toronto last September, her husband had to oversee the move alone -- Radvanovsky was in Chicago singing Ernani. Since then, the couple has together spent a grand total of one week in their home, hardly enough time to feel settled. But as summer approaches, Radvanosky will have the chance to take a break and relax. “I try and make a rule that we spend the summers at home,” she said. “Singing the repertoire that I sing, as well as with the international schedule that we keep, I get tired both vocally and physically. During the opera season there really is little time to take a vacation, let alone go home and sit in front of our new fireplace. Our glamorous sounding lives are really filled with living out of two suitcases for about ten months of the year in someone else’s apartment somewhere else in the world.”  

But grueling schedules aside, opera calls with plenty of juicy roles for Radvanovsky. Among her most favorite are those that hold a combination of elements that speak to her: character, pacing, and intensity. Of the characters she is most attracted to, she prefers the ones that seem most like a ‘real’ person, someone that everyone in the audience can relate to. She said, “I just sang Lina in Stiffelio at the Metropolitan Opera, and it is one of my favorite roles that I have done thus far in my career. Her music has this vulnerable quality to it that I just love to sink my singing/vocal chops into.” When it comes to the flow of an opera, Radvanovsky truly enjoys the pacing of Puccini, which, like Verdi scores lets the soprano shine in the last act. “I look at so many of the Verdi operas that I sing,” she said, “Il Trovatore, Don Carlo, Luisa Miller, I Vespri Sicilianni, Aida, Un Ballo in Maschera, Tosca, all of them have such drama -- vocally and dramatically -- for the soprano.” But, she added, “Instead of a few moments that are dramatic in Verdi, you have this high intensity all the time in Puccini. Suor Angelica, Manon Lescaut, and Tosca, all have these amazing vocal lines and melodies, as well as real drama that is very draining but fulfilling for me as an artist.” 

So just how does one so in demand keep her feet on the ground? “I think that after being in the Young Artists Program at the Metropolitan Opera for three years and watching all the singers who came through there, the people who I related to the most were the approachable ones – the ones who were real,” she said. She also acknowledges that she has a strong support system: a group of level-headed people who would “kill me if I were anything else than who I am, a Midwestern girl at heart. I truly love what I do and am so grateful that I get paid to do what I love and maybe that is what shows when I am working.”