Lessons learnt in a Louisianan Baptist church and from diva Virginia Zeani helped make Elizabeth Futral the in-demand coloratura soprano she is today.
At the Met: Elizabeth Futral as Princess Yueyang in The First Emperor
If it’s August, it must be New Zealand. American coloratura soprano Elizabeth Futral is a busy woman. After playing Nedda in NBR New Zealand Opera’s production of Ruggero Leoncavello’s Pagliacci, she’s off to Chicago to sing in a concert performance of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville. “And then I will go – where will I go? – to Carnegie Hall, I think, to do a piece I just sang the US premiere of, a one-woman opera called Emilie. After that, I’m recording some songs by a composer friend of mine. And then I’m doing my first Così fan tutte, as Fiordiligi, in Washington in February and March.”
If Futral’s CV since she first made her mark in 1994 is a hectic read, imagine living it. “It’s all I can do to remember what comes next and then after it’s done I promptly forget.”
She has the score for Così with her, along with a couple of others, preparing for them while she rehearses Pagliacci. “It’s a little dance I have to do.”
August was supposed to have been spent at home in rural Virginia with conductor husband Steven White, one of the few times their schedules allowed them to be there simultaneously. But “things come up and you say, ‘Oh, I definitely want to do that’, and then suddenly the calendar is full.”
Nedda was a role she’d sung once before and enjoyed, New Zealand was a country she’d always wanted to visit and so here she is – with White about to join her.
Roles Futral has sung more often include Lucia di Lammermoor and, most notably and frequently, Violetta in La Traviata.
“That was a role I said no to quite a few times before I finally said yes. For lots of reasons, I didn’t feel like I was ready for it. Then the moment came and I sang it in a small company in California, just three performances. I finished work on it and thought, ‘Yeah, well, I think I’ll put that back on the shelf and wait a few more years before I tackle it again.’ It went fine but it’s just such a big chunk of singing and such a big character psychologically to get into and I just thought, ‘It’s a little too much still right now and I need a little more maturity both dramatically and vocally.’ So I waited three or four years and then I came back to it and then it felt really comfortable and right. So I thought, ‘I’d be really happy if I could do one of these a year and that sort of happens.”
Futral has had “a couple of nibbles” from companies wanting her to sing Marguerite in Faust but has held off. “I’ve always wanted to sing Marguerite and that is on the cusp of being right for me, and in the next couple of years hopefully I’ll do that.”
Growing up in Louisiana, Futral loved to sing, including gospel and solos in the Baptist church her family attended.
In church, she learned the importance of singing to communicate and inspire the congregation. And of singing from the heart. “That’s what I try to do now, too. But it’s very different. I’m trapped behind a lot of artifice. But the idea of really singing from my heart is still who I am.”
Another lesson came studying under Romanian soprano Virginia Zeani – “a real diva, the first woman I met where, oh my God, wow, when she walked into the room she just bowled you over with her personality and this persona she had”.
Zeani told Futral she needed to love her own singing; if she didn’t enjoy the sound she was making then an audience couldn’t. “It’s about being generous with your sound. It’s not an egotistical thing. It doesn’t mean you are in love with yourself. What it means is you enjoy that sound, you caress that sound. There is a bit of indulgence there and I think I hadn’t given myself permission to be indulgent with my singing. To hold a high note longer not because I was trying to show off but because it was beautiful.”
CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA & PAGLIACCI, New Zealand Opera, St James Theatre, Wellington, August 27-September 3; Aotea Centre, Auckland, September 15-25.