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She has what I feel is a psychic ability to know what we’re going to do, and to walk us through.” She and I have collaborated a couple of times in Europe. With Maestro Eun Sun Kim it’s not dragging. My instrument, while I can get angry, and I do have that burst of drama, I have to be aware, as a color, will it work? She has got to be strong, but she’s got to be so gorgeously lovable. That’s how it’s going to sound, so I have to play into that more loving idea. Even with me trying to make some scary sounds, it still stays a little bit pretty. She has a bite in her sound that was a little bit scary. Very quickly you realize you can only sing your instrument, and you can only give it away. “She had it all, in a way,” Pérez says, “but nobody has it all. Pérez has described Maria Callas as a primary voice from which she took inspiration for her own path, and to be sure Callas casts a long shadow on this role in particular. It’s too soon to say if I’d want to do another run, but I definitely feel at ease putting her story forward.” I think this is a very special time, and a gift. I did so many Violettas, I will hold her as long as I can. “I never imagined I would debut Tosca before Suor Angelica, and before Butterfly. So, Tosca represents a bit of a departure from those and other more lyric roles she has sung in the past, and those coming up soon after this engagement, which include Adina in L’elisir d’amore in Chicago, Alice Ford in Falstaff in Florence, and Manon in Paris. In a career filled with La bohéme and La traviata, Mimì has been the butter, and Violetta the bread for Pérez. People, for our health and sanity, we do need art.” The loss of culture is too big a sacrifice to make. And even if there are challenges, we find a way forward.

The point is, for all of us, to have the theaters open, to have our audiences back, and to keep going. I like to think, ‘now I’m representing this person, this foundation, and this legacy.”Įven now, arriving in San Francisco for five highly anticipated performances of her first Tosca, she says, “It’s hard to talk about the role debut when that’s really not the point. It’s about taking on the responsibility of continuity. It’s about the foundation, and bringing up the next generation. “As much as I love the achievement element of those moments, beyond that, and more importantly, it’s never about us. Speaking recently in an online conversation with Thomas Hampson, Pérez put it this way.

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In that tradition, Pérez went on to her own series of firsts, including being the first Hispanic person to be awarded the prestigious Richard Tucker Award.īut her response to accolades is less about self-celebration and more about taking on responsibility. While studying with soprano Martina Arroyo at Indiana University, Pérez found a role model familiar with breaking boundaries. Janusek,) and singing in choir at Elk Grove High School, Pérez went on to fall in love with opera. The daughter of parents from a small town outside Guadalajara, Mexico, childhood in a suburb of the multicultural mecca of Chicago was for Pérez a foreshadowing of the international life she would come to lead, singing in places like Malta, Istanbul, Amsterdam, and of course, New York, Milan, Munich, and London.įrom playing flute in the junior high band (she still fondly remembers her teacher, Mr. “By trusting the breath, the vowel, the intention, the delivery, and the connection with my colleagues. “My instrument works by connecting emotionally,” she said in a recent Zoom interview with SFCV.

There is much more “we” than “I” in her conversational style, and something in the way she discusses her life and art that brings one far from the world of glam shots and worrying about high notes and nearer to more spiritual concepts of connection, perseverance, and empathy. If there is such a thing as a diva mentality, soprano Ailyn Pérez doesn’t have it.