MAIN STAGE | Marina Rebeka
She has been called the defnitive Violetta of her generation, but there’s much more to Marina Rebeka besides Verdi’s tragic heroine to keep us all enchanted. George Jahn meets the radiant, deeply passionate Latvian soprano as she looks forward to a bright future in opera. RDI A CCI A TI B A AM Rise shine 14 www.operanow.co.uk
ON1213_14_18_CoverStory.indd 14 & 05/11/2013 14:38:45 MAIN STAGE | Marina Rebeka
t all began with Norma, Bellini’s tale of coifed and immaculately made-up for a technical precision and vitality’ in the role love, treachery and self-sacrifce. For photo shoot, it’s hard to tell if she’s heading of Mathilde in the Netherlands Opera Ithe young soprano Marina Rebeka, straight for the stage or the cat-walk. In fact, production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. this may ultimately be the most important I discover that the Armand Ventilo blouse Rebeka considers her voice as a work opera ever written – yet she has never sung was a last-minute loan from a friend and in progress, a still-growing instrument the title role of the opera, and has no plans she’s in open-toed slippers for our interview, that should not be forced into narrow to do so in the near future. fashing bright red toenails in a way that constraints: ‘I’m a soprano, and it’s clear The gifted Latvian singer is perhaps best suggests she has an unconventional side to that I’m not a light soprano; nor am I yet known as a stunning Violetta in Verdi’s La her. This impression becomes stronger as a dramatic soprano, but who knows about traviata, the role that launched her career. It she talks about her life on and of stage. Her the future?’ she says. ‘I can already sing some was Norma, however, that provided her frst fercely blue eyes twinkle with humour or things that are quite dramatic.’ She describes encounter with opera, and triggered her fash with anger, and spontaneous snatches her low register as ‘slowly developing’ decision to become a singer. ‘I remember, of song delivered to make a musical point ahead of her debut as Fiordiligi in Zurich I sat there until the frst interval, and I was alternate with peals of laughter as she relives next year, a role that tests the extremes of shocked,’ Rebeka says with a wistful smile, private and professional ups and downs, the soprano range. Her Violetta certainly looking back to that evening as she sat speaks of likes and dislikes and holds forth suggests that meatier Verdi roles beckon, transfxed next to her grandfather at Riga’s with equal joy of her roles as a singer, wife but she’s not going to push her luck. For opera house 20 years ago. ‘Something,’ and mother. now, Rebeka is content to let nature take its she says pointing to her heart, ‘something course, equating a singer’s voice with a rose answered here. I call it “love from the ritics see Rebeka as a singer with that you cannot force open, ‘because then frst sound”.’ Since that defning moment, a huge future. The New York Times’ it will just fall apart. You have to wait, Rebeka has blossomed from a skinny 13- CAnthony Tommasini praised her and then it fourishes by itself. Then year old with a seemingly impossible dream, ‘clear, bright sound and cool intensity’ in it’s something natural; something true and to an operatic shooting star with a magnetic her 2011 debut as Mozart’s Donna Anna at something beautiful.’ aura on stage. Her track-record is impressive: the Met. Earlier this year, Shirley Apthorp of Rebeka has impeccable credentials when she made her international debut at the the Financial Times described her ‘radiance, it comes to her training: she graduated Salzburg Festival aged 29; and she clearly has a glowing future, with a career that already spans the world, from the Met to Covent Garden, La Scala and Vienna State ‘Violetta is a woman who has lived through Opera. Coming up in December is her Lyric Opera of Chicago debut, followed by the biggest story of her life, the biggest Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles in Zurich. Sitting in a luxurious suite of Vienna’s adventure and the biggest pain in her life. Bristol Hotel with a view over the State Opera House, Rebeka looks every inch So it can never be boring.’ a prima donna in the making. Freshly LUTZ ED
Signature role: as Violetta in Theater Erfurt’s EL shine 2007 production of La traviata HOFF Opera Now DECEMBER 2013 15
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MAIN STAGE | Marina Rebeka