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ENTERTAINMENT

Down-to-earth diva Christine Goerke

Janelle Gelfand
jgelfand@enquirer.com
Soprano Christine Goerke, the star of Cincinnati Opera’s Fidelio, in Washington Park just before her performance in the Opera in the Park concert last Sunday..

Christine Goerke’s favorite moment in Beethoven’s opera “Fidelio” has nothing to do with her character, Leonore.

She was in a Cincinnati Opera rehearsal, listening to “The Prisoner’s Chorus,” a heartbreakingly beautiful number in the opera. It was shortly after the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

“My brother is on the police force and the SWAT team in Orlando. So all of that was very fresh in my mind. I sat there listening to this chorus, that is pleading for freedom and hoping for peace and praying,” she said. “I just started crying in the room. I thought, 'This piece of music will always be relevant.' ”

Goerke was chatting in a dressing room between rehearsals of “Fidelio,” presented by Cincinnati Opera on July 7 and 9 at the Aronoff Center, Downtown.

She’s a down-to-earth diva with a big personality and a voice to match. Last Sunday, she wowed listeners with the power and luster of her voice in the aria "O don fatale" from Verdi’s “Don Carlo” and a robust “God Bless America” during “Opera in the Park,” an outdoor concert in Washington Park. Her biggest fans – her husband and daughters aged 7 and 9 – were in the front row.

The next morning, her day started at 6 a.m. as she fixed breakfast for her children. Being a mom has changed her perspective on the role of Leonore, the heroine of Beethoven’s opera, she said.

In the story, Leonore’s husband, Florestan, is a political prisoner. She has disguised herself as a man (named Fidelio) and taken a job as assistant to the jailer in order to find – and ultimately rescue –  her husband.

“When I had my kids, you have this fierce, protective thing that happens to you,” she said. “There is a primal thing, that women have to take care of their families. I feel like that has to be underneath all of this. It kicks in for Leonore, especially in the second half of the opera.”

The updated production of "Fidelio," which is set in the present, connects the story with a struggle for justice that could occur anywhere. It works, she believes.

“It’s very simple, very clear, and it tells the story exactly as if it were set when it was written. It's the story of a family, of a husband and wife being torn apart. It tells the story of politics gone awry, the story of corruption,” she said. “There’s nothing that would take away from the meaning of the drama.”

Goerke’s path to opera began on Long Island, where she grew up in a non-musical family with a dad who was a huge fan of clarinetist/bandleader Artie Shaw. He encouraged her to play the clarinet, and by the end of high school, she had also learned to play every other woodwind instrument.

"Except the bassoon. It’s still a disaster," she laughed. “I decided I wanted to be a high school band teacher, because my teacher was so infectious. I thought, 'I want to do that for kids.' "

But her teachers were more impressed with her voice than her clarinet playing. After changing her career path again to choral conducting, she finally determined that she should sing for a living. Within two years of graduating from State University at Stony Brook, the soprano was singing in coveted young artist programs, including the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Her resume grew impressively very quickly, as opera companies began calling her.

Her role in "Fidelio" calls for a dramatic soprano, one of opera’s most exciting voice types, able to cut through a large Beethoven-sized orchestra. Much of the time, she now sings roles for thrillingly big voices in operas by Richard Strauss and Wagner. She also enjoys the role of the ice princess in Puccini’s “Turandot."

But her voice wasn’t always big. For more than a decade, she performed mainly Mozart and Handel. She last visited Cincinnati as Donna Elvira in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni" in 1999.

“I do miss that, I have to say,” she said, recalling that the role of Don Giovanni was sung by Peter Mattei in his United States debut. She’ll be revisiting Mozart in New York's Lincoln Center at the end of July with Mattei and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra conducted by Louis Langrée, who also leads the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Beethoven writes for her voice, ironically, “like a clarinet,” she said.

“Beethoven was not the most vocal of writers. It seems to me that everything he wrote was written in a very instrumental way,” she said. “It’s a very heroic role. There’s a lot of brass. I’m often paired up with the horns.”

Her character is the devoted wife who must disguise herself as a male jailer. It’s not often that the soprano gets to sing a “pants” role – a woman playing a man. But mostly, she is intrigued by this strong heroine, who accomplishes remarkable things for a woman of her time. (The opera premiered in 1805.)

“To infiltrate a prison – this is remarkable for anybody. But at the time Beethoven wrote this, for a woman, that’s gigantic," she said. "In the end, she does rescue her husband, but it comes at a cost. She has hurt people. It was never what she intended, but she knew she had to do the right thing. She’s a very strong feminine character. That’s what I like the most about her.”

If you go

What: Cincinnati Opera presents Beethoven’s “Fidelio.” Jun Märkl, conductor; Chris Alexander, director

When: 7:30 p.m. July 7 and 9

Where: Procter & Gamble Hall, Aronoff Center, Downtown

Tickets:  513-241-2742, my.cincinnatiopera.org; also at Aronoff Center Box Office.