On November 29, 10 young singers will participate in the COC Ensemble Studio Competition, competing for cash prizes and a position in the prestigious Ensemble Studio training program for emerging artists. Each day we will introduce you to one of our finalists. Today's finalist? Soprano Lara Secord-Haid.
For Winnipeg’s Lara Secord-Haid, a soprano, opera is a family affair.
Lara’s father is responsible for introducing her to opera. “I was drawn to opera because of the quality time I spent with my father, starting when I was very young, listening to the Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera,” she says. “My dad played the music so regularly in our house and I found myself drawn to the drama and acoustic aesthetic of this art form.”
Since falling in love with opera as a child, Lara has gone on to study vocal performance at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and pursue a master’s degree at The Juilliard School in New York.
Lara has played Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni (The Banff Centre), Giulia in La Scala di Seta (Juilliard) and Mme Silberklang in The Impresario (Little Opera Company). She has also been featured in concert performances at Alice Tully Hall, the New England Conservatory and Juilliard. But her dream role? She would love to play Violetta from Verdi’s La Traviata and the title character in Alban Berg’s Lulu.
Read more...
Posted by Kathleen Keenan / in Ensemble Studio / comments (0) / permalink
On November 29, 10 young singers will participate in the COC Ensemble Studio Competition, competing for cash prizes and a position in the prestigious Ensemble Studio training program for emerging artists. Each day we will introduce you to one of our finalists. Today's finalist? Bass Nathan Keoughan.
For bass Nathan Keoughan, home is hard to forget.
Nathan was born and raised in Charlottetown, P.E.I. and still finds it hard to pry himself away from the Island. But he’s managed to do so long enough to attend the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he is currently completing a master’s degree in Vocal Performance.
Before moving to Boston, he received his bachelor of music from the University of PEI, but Nathan says that his opera career “was not the original plan.” An accomplished theatre actor, Nathan portrayed Royal Gardner in Anne & Gilbert (Harbourfront Theatre) for three consecutive summers, and also played Edwin Simpson in Nine Lives, a musical about the life of L.M. Montgomery, for the Charlottetown Festival.
It was theatre that gave him a taste for performance, but opera that captured his imagination. “As my training continued at UPEI through the years, my amazing teachers, Stephen and Sung Ha Shin Bouey, introduced me into the world of opera, and with the help of YouTube I was soon a huge fanatic,” Nathan says. “What really draws me to opera is the culmination of such a focused singing technique while having the most dramatic of intentions and, on top of that, keeping up with the rich orchestral music underneath you.”
On November 29, 10 young singers will participate in the COC Ensemble Studio Competition, competing for cash prizes and a position in the prestigious Ensemble Studio training program for emerging artists. Each day we will introduce you to one of our finalists. Today's finalist? Mezzo-soprano Danielle MacMillan.
Toronto mezzo-soprano Danielle MacMillan’s childhood dream was to become an astronaut. “My brother and I would wear underwear over our heads and run up and down the hallway pretending to be space cadets,” she recalls. (Clean underwear only, of course.)
But Danielle’s interest soon shifted to the performing arts. After a childhood spent dancing, acting and singing, it’s no wonder she was drawn to opera, an art form that allows her to combine all of these interests. “I find the combination of movement, action and voice on one stage and the emotional sincerity that reaches a listener's soul – that may move them to tears, laughter or surprise – very compelling,” she says. Opera, she points out, is a full-body experience.
Danielle completed her bachelor of fine arts in music at York University and followed her undergraduate degree with opera workshops and training programs in Italy (Istituzione Teatro Lirico Sperimentale di Spoleto), New Brunswick (St. Andrews by the Sea Opera Workshop) and Montreal (International Vocal Arts Institute). She recently spent two years studying at the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music.
Sara Fulgoni in the COC production of Bluebeard's Castle. Photo: Michael Cooper © 2001