Sondra Radvanovsky’s signature colour is red: the red of her favourite ball gown, the red of the racy sports car in her garage and the red of blood shed on theatre floorboards in her performances.
The soprano, who just celebrated her 45th birthday, is on the brink of gaining acclaim for tackling all three queens in Donizetti’s Tudor operas. It is a difficult task, rarely accomplished.
She has been Anne Boleyn (the beheaded wife of Henry VIII), Mary Queen of Scots (the murdered Catholic queen) and is now poised to be the Virgin Queen herself, Queen Elizabeth 1, who doles out deathly retribution.
The three operas — Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux — are referred to as the Triple Crown of opera. Soprano Beverly Sills is reported to have said tackling the three shortened her career by five years.
But Radvanovsky displays no nerves about the challenge as she rehearses for the Canadian Opera Company’s Roberto Devereux, which opens April 25 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
On a day off from rehearsing, she’s nestled on the couch in her sock feet looking out the windows at the forest encircling her rural Caledon home. Her husband, Duncan Lear, is making turkey meatball soup for a dinner party the next day and has whipped up a gluten-free loaf of bread for breakfast toast.
“This is me, sitting in our home of the middle of nowhere,” says Radvanovsky, an American who has embraced Canada. She is applying for Canadian citizenship, which is complicated by her frequent absences to perform.
“I’m American by birth, but I consider myself Canadian,” she says.
She is enchanted by Canadian politeness (“If I hit your car, you apologize”) and modesty (“Americans always have to be the best”).
Alexander Neef, general director of the Canadian Opera Company, got to know Radvanovsky when she made her Canadian debut in 2010 in Aida.
“She has an instrument of rare quality; the size of the voice, it is a large voice,” he says, adding that her coloratura is rare for a voice as big as hers.
“She has incredible communication,” says Neef. “You know she is going to be good before she even opens her mouth.”
Director Stephen Lawless, helming Roberto Devereux, has called her “the complete singing actress,” according to Neef.
“She is the modern diva, with all the elements of grandness expected from her singing but a very modern girl and down to earth,” Neef adds.
Director William Friedkin (TheExorcist, The French Connection) says the statuesque beauty is one of the best actors he’s ever worked with.
“I’ve directed a number of films and stage productions, some have won Academy Awards,” says Friedkin. “She’s as good an actress. Forget how great she sings, she is about to become a great star.”
Recently Friedkin took singer Barbra Streisand as his guest to see Radvanovsky in his production of Suor Angelica by Puccini. Although Streisand is “notoriously shy,” she insisted on meeting Radvanovsky after her performance in Los Angeles.
“She’s got the chops, she works at it and takes nothing for granted,” says Friedkin.
“I would use her in a film any time. She is without limits.”
Radvanovsky’s vocal coach, Anthony Manoli, says Queen Elizabeth in Roberto Devereux is a tough role; she is both a formidable, powerful aging monarch and a woman in love.
“She’s got to be Elizabeth the Queen and Elizabeth the woman,” says Manoli, who has worked with Radvanovsky for almost 20 years.
He has watched her perform in opera houses around the world and says fans who come backstage are often taken aback by her down-to-earth nature.
“People fall in love with the persona, they are looking for grand gestures. What they meet is an individual with balance.”
He recalls arriving at intermission of a production of Norma to hear that Radvanovsky had fallen during the first act after stepping on her dress. He found her playing onstage, in front of the curtain, with two children.
“She just shook her head and laughed,” he says. “She keeps going, she keeps smiling.”
Radvanovsky recently had the disturbing incident of none of the guns firing during the assassination scene in Tosca.
Finally, the intended victim “just fell down,” she laughs.
Now that Roberto Devereux is in her repertoire, Radvanovsky will perform all three of the Donizetti queen operas at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for its 2015-16 season.
She admits to being a little nervous about the ambitious programming, primarily because to her knowledge it has never been performed in the same opera house in the same opera season by the same soprano.
Devereux is the toughest of the three, she says. “You need a good actress, good music and good singing to make it. The music is bloody hard.”
Until then, there’s the quiet of her country home, the pleasure of driving the red 1967 Alfa Romeo that was her 10th wedding anniversary gift and her collection of tea cups from around the world.
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