How to become a prima donna

The spectacular coloratura soprano, Susanna Chakhoian, performed to the accompaniment of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine conducted by Volodymyr Sirenko. The program included popular arias and little-known operatic pieces by French and Italian composers. Coloratura is an Italian word that means “coloring,” so every coloratura soprano is expected to warble like a nightingale or sound like a stream ringing its way down its path, reaching the powerful and precise high notes.

Chakhoian demonstrated her vocal skills, stage presence, and refined artistry, turning an academic concert into a first-rate show. She sang Olympia’s couplets from Jacques Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann made up like a wind- up doll. She used a fan coquettishly while singing Rosina’s cavatina from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. The orchestra did its best to emphasize the effect. Philine’s polonaise from Ambrose Thomas’s Mignon (a scene from a beautiful but almost forgotten opera that presents an incredibly difficult challenge to singers) was a virtuoso performance that resulted in an ovation and a multitude of bouquets from the singer’s fans.

During the soiree Chakhoian appeared as a romantic, comic, and drama heroine. Her best-known song, Lucia’s cavatina from Donizetti’s famous opera, had a restrained, tragic touch to it, while Helene’s fiery bolero from Verdi’s Les vepres siciliennes and Musetta’s touchingly coquettish aria from Puccini’s La boheme marked the concert’s finale, leaving the audience dazed with admiration and completely oblivious to the heat in the concert hall. The following interview took place after the concert.

“I really like the term ‘dramatic identification,’” Susanna admitted, “although the stage director, Roman Viktiuk, is strongly opposed to it. He says an actor should let his or her personality loose. What he means is that there are embryonic concepts of most versatile characters in every actor — well, like behavioral models — and an actor must let them surface at the right moment and merge them into a programmed character. Then this actor will be absolutely convincing to the audience, even when playing a character that would seem totally alien to that actor.

“That was how I developed my Musetta in La boheme. I started by learning my part and tried it with the conductor, Mykola Diadiura. I was then in my fifth year [at the conservatory of music] and an inexperienced singer. I sang my part carefully and kept my tempo. Then Maestro Diadiura stopped the performance and told me, “Everything’s nice except that Musetta isn’t Tatiana Larina [from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin].” I had to shed my severe approach and look for an all-out coquette in myself.”

You made your debut as Musetta in Kyiv. Can you explain what a debut means to an actor?

Susanna: A debut is a stressful event, of course. Even now I am all nerves and feel as though I won’t be able to utter a sound when I hear the chords announcing my appearance on stage (and Puccini’s music doesn’t help my nerves because it rises in crescendos). But then I start singing and everything is fine. I studied under the masterful guidance of Yevhenia Miroshnychenko. This famous singer and professor helped me master all the secrets of my trade, vocal and dramatic skills.

Every actor has to follow his or her own way to mastering this profession. What about you? Did your parents or teachers play any role here? Did you find your own way?

Susanna: I dreamed of becoming a singer, and my determination and a bit of luck must have helped me reach my goal. I owe a great deal of my current status as an operatic singer to my parents: my father Valerii Yeremovych, and my mother Halyna Ivanivna. Both of them are folk musicians, carriers of Armenian and Ukrainian culture — and I started learning from these cultures when I was a young girl. My father, an orchestra conductor, organized a folk instruments orchestra in Odesa, and I performed popular songs to their accompaniment. My debut on stage took place at the legendary Odesa Opera when I was 12. I sang Shainsky’s Kukla (Doll). I guess I was born as a singer that day, hearing the huge audience applaud. I know from family stories that when I was born (at 7:15 p.m.) my father was putting on a concert. He came home late, so the seconds during which I was born could be counted by the waves of his conductor’s baton. It was in May, the time of the state exams. My father was running down the corridor of the conservatory. His friends stopped him and asked whether he had had a boy or a girl. He wasn’t sure and said in embarrassment, “All I could see were long fingers.”

That may explain your parents’ desire to turn you into a pianist.

Susanna: I graduated from the Odesa Conservatory majoring in piano, after attending Ludmilla Ginzburg’s classes. Then I had an internship in France. I even received an invitation from Dmitrii Bashkirov to enroll as a postgraduate student at the Royal Academy of Madrid. But I also wanted to sing and this desire, fortified by vocal classes conducted by Halyna Polyvanova (while attending piano classes), prevailed. At first my friends, even my parents, didn’t take my cherished dream seriously, so it took all of them completely unawares when right after graduation I went to Kyiv and applied to the vocal department at the conservatory. Yevhenia Miroshnychenko was then putting together her vocal class. She heard my coloratura, appraised my vocal experience, and enrolled me as a third-year student. But the very first time I attended her class, I realized that I still had much to learn, so before I started singing I had to go through the scales, arpeggio, warm-up exercises, getting my vocal skills in proper shape.

Has your experience as a pianist come in handy in your vocal career?

Susanna: I think that my character, a big part of which is stubbornness, must have had a positive effect. I studied at the conservatory with fanatical dedication. My previous training allowed me not to become distracted from the main discipline. As a pianist I may have a special perception of the opera — I mean I can hear it from the first to the last scene. I always come to the theater long before the performance starts. I do my makeup, put on my costume, even if I am only coming on in the second part — that puzzled the wardrobe people at first. The thing is that I need a few minutes of silence before the performance, so I can abstract my mind from everything else and focus on the main thing. I listen carefully to the overture, then to my colleagues singing their parts, and finally mobilize myself to do my part. Partnership on stage is a very delicate matter. When you really have it, a performance is bound to be a success, even if some of the cast members have problems with their voices, or if someone gets confused about the mise en scene. After all, actors are human.

Some critics believe that in the hierarchy of the opera dramatic identification comes third, after vocal skills and music.

Susanna: When I enrolled at the Kyiv Conservatory as a third- year student, I missed the drama classes, so I had to learn this on my own. I try to avoid the operatic conventionality of my images and restrictions on movements while on stage. For example, when we were working on Romeo and Juliet, the director ordered me to sing my part dancing in circles, turning my back to the audience and conductor. Doing this was no problem because I was not bound by all those cliches. I’m very grateful to Yevhenia Miroshnychenko, who was an excellent actor and a follower of the school of Maria Donets-Tesseyre. She taught me an image-bearing way of thinking. By the way, Ludmilla Ginzburg taught me the same way; she saw poetry in music, especially in piano music. As it was, Miroshnychenko ordered us students to act even when we were singing scales. The same sequence of seven notes had to be sung with a touch of love, anger, softly. We had to think up our own warm-up vocal exercises based on an image, so that our inner emotions would be reflected in our voices. This kind of dramatic training is very helpful in developing one’s vocal skills.

Do you add your own traits to your characters on stage?

Susanna: It’s best to keep your very personal traits to yourself, but as an actor, you have to consider every image very carefully. In all classical operas coloratura sopranos play tragic heroines in love. Here it is important not to romanticize every image but try to convey earthly feelings of love, allowing for a given character’s traits, the times, and the setting. For example, Gilda and Juliet are very different characters. One is almost an orphan, who lives in a simple house, with only one maid from the lower classes. Her interests are limited: home and church. The other character was raised surrounded by love and luxury. And I have to convey the difference between these characters with my voice.

The National Opera of Ukraine comes first for you now. Is there anything else that is important to you?

Susanna: It is important for any young singer to take part in competitions — preferably to win them. I believe that vocal competitions serve to temper your character and offer an opportunity to climb up another rung on the ladder, get a new contract, and see the big world. One day I got a phone call from Germany. I was invited to sing in Carl Orff’s scenic cantata Carmina Burana. I had never performed this part before. When I was asked whether I knew it, I said yes without hesitation, but when it transpired that I had to perform in two weeks, I got nervous. But I never thought of backing down. In the end, when Marco Boemi asked me to sing the part of Leila in Bizet’s Les pecheurs de perles, I admitted I wasn’t sure if I could cope with the task (there was very little time left for rehearsals). Anyway, I must have an adventurer’s streak that makes me set far-reaching goals and do my utmost to reach them.