Hope sings eternal with opera

It was the day after Christmas, 2007. Nicole Percifield rose at 4 a.m. on her family's 4,000-acre farm. Driving to Calgary International Airport, her dad was trying to cut the Canadian chill, but Percifield worried what the car heater's hot, dry air would do to her vocal cords. She was due in Minneapolis for a callback audition for the Minnesota Opera's Resident Artists Program (RAP) and she couldn't be too careful.

Long story short, Percifield had plenty of time to rehydrate. Weather delayed her flight from Alberta, and it wasn't until 3 p.m. that she walked into the Opera Center to show Dale Johnson, the artistic director, and Floyd Anderson, head of the resident program, that she had the right stuff.

"Tomorrow I'm going to sleep," Percifield said when Johnson and Anderson asked if she was too tired. Then, lowering her chin, she seemed to drop into a trance and her powerful mezzo voice delivered "Iris Hence Away" from Handel's "Semele." Next, they asked for Mozart's "Deh per questo" from "La Clemenzo di Tito." Johnson and Anderson invited her to talk about goals, passions, life on the farm. ("You develop a connection with the earth.")

The marathon paid off when Percifield became one of five chosen for the program from among 600 hopefuls.

In August, Percifield found an apartment in Minneapolis. Six days a week, through next April, she and seven other resident artists take master classes, yoga, acting and movement, and get private coaching.

The eight -- five singers, a coach/accompanist, assistant conductor and assistant director -- are paid for a season while they work in mainstage productions and perform concerts away from the opera. For example, Percifield sang in the ensemble of the opera's "Abduction From the Seraglio" this fall. Last weekend she and soprano Jamie Rose-Gaurrine, another resident artist, sang with a baroque group of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. In the new year, she will sing roles in the opera's "Faust" and "The Adventures of Pinocchio."

"It's made me more eager to get going in my career," said Percifield, who turns 26 in February. She had a strong résumé before auditioning for the RAP -- education at Manhattan School of Music in New York and the New England Conservatory of Music -- but this is the difference between a professional and a school atmosphere.

This month, Johnson and Anderson were back at it, listening to a new batch of young artists who want the chance to work in a professional opera. Again, the odds are long. Maybe three will be chosen from more than 500 who tried out in Minneapolis and New York.

"You can hear it in the first 32 bars," Johnson said. "You're looking for an intangible specialness, a beautiful, healthy sound. I listen for artistry, musicianship, someone who innately understands the composer's intention."

Anderson leaned back during a short break and quipped to a visitor: "This is the 'American Idol' of the opera world."

Thank you, very much

Auditions are tense business. Singers dressed to the nines, lugging the omnipresent water bottles, are ushered into a rehearsal hall to face Anderson and Johnson.

"Hi (insert singer's name). Can we hear the (insert composer's name)?"

They sing.

"Great. Very nice. Can we hear the (insert opera name)?"

They sing.

"Great, great. Thank you, (insert singer's name)."

Friendly yet brisk, Johnson and Anderson tap notes on electronic résumés during the arias: "a little brittle," "a bit squeally," "mellow sound," "odd style."

At some point, Anderson would drag the singer's résumé into one of five folders on his computer: Possible RAP; Encourage; Think About; Sorry; Never Again.

"If I were an administrator, I'd be colder," said Johnson. "I was a pianist for many years, and I saw the horrible stress these kids go through. I feel so bad for them. Through undergrad and grad school, some have spent $100,000 for the chance to do this, and I feel really terrible about it. It makes me very sad. Some of them are this far from making it. They never made the last foot to the finish line."

Anna Steenerson, 27, flew herself here from Mauldin, S.C., and spent two nights' lodging for the six-minute chance to impress Johnson and Anderson.

"Things went OK, but you're your own worst critic," she said afterward. "The high notes went well, but the low notes weren't great. That stinks."

Steenerson, a soprano who has a good friend in the program, wasn't worrying whether she'd get a callback ("no, you have to let that go"). She said she was looking forward to singing with the Pensacola Opera, from January to May. Then it's back home to South Carolina, her temp job and the occasional chance to sing at weddings.

Anderson would only say, "She's on our radar."

Eric Neuville, 24, a lyric baritone who grew up in Waupaca, Wis., fared better, scoring a callback.

"I wasn't anticipating it, but it feels good," he said.

A 2006 graduate of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Neuville studied in Germany before moving to south Minneapolis and getting a job in a wine shop. Regardless of what happened in his next tryout, he was looking forward to 10 days in New York on the audition circuit and trips to Wolf Trap (in Virginia), Houston, Utah, Pittsburgh and Seattle. It can get pricey, but Neuville said opera hopefuls get good at economizing.

"You call your friends in those cities and beg them to let you stay on their floor," he said.

Needle in a haystack

The audition, of course, is an imprecise science. Anderson recalled a fascinating mezzo he was very excited about after an audition -- even though he later could not remember her voice.

"She was such a great performer," he said. "So we invited her back and I purposely didn't look at her so I wouldn't get drawn into her spell, and we realized she didn't have much voice at all."

Conversely, Brad Benoit, a tenor from Chicago, gave a terrible first audition, but Johnson sensed an artistry. He came back the day after Percifield did last December.

"He blew us away in the second audition," Johnson said. "It was night and day."

Then there are the gems who are found only after listening for hundreds of hours. James Valenti, the now hot tenor who sang "Romeo and Juliet" with the Minnesota Opera last January, spent two years in the RAP after Johnson and Anderson discovered him on a trip to New York.

"We auditioned in this horrible little Broadway rehearsal room with a Burger King downstairs," Anderson recalled.

"Tiny room, terrible piano, and we were really grumpy," Johnson added. "So this kid who's about 12 feet tall walks in and we thought, 'Well, here's another one.' And he started singing and it was the quality of the voice, even back then when he was 21. We just went, 'Oh, my God.'

"And this poor kid. He was so nervous, sweating buckets of water and his hands were shaking -- they were blue -- he was a mess. But there was something, and we said, 'We have to take him.'"

Valenti has become a sensation in the opera world, with recent celebrated performances in "Madama Butterfly," "Faust" and "La Bohème."

"You listen for a throat," Anderson said. "You hear a throat and how it mechanically works. Does it have an ease and expansiveness, an innate sense of artistry?"

Percifield had that quality.

"When we first heard her, we thought it was a world-class voice and an unusual timbre," said Johnson. "She stood out because a lot of lyric mezzos sound alike, look alike, they all sing the same music. She was very different. Very tall. A kind of fullness and an interesting quality that made her pop out from all the mezzos."

Percifield stopped in to listen to a few auditions this month. She empathized with singers who were in the same nervous place she was last year at this time.

"I realized, though, how much the panel [Johnson and Anderson] wants the singers to do well," she said. "That's good to know."

Johnson would never tell someone in an audition that they should look at another line of work. But after a year in the program, if a singer decides that the life of an opera singer has lost its luster, "I tell them that is perfectly fine."

Percifield, however, is focused more than ever.

"I would love to stay here for two or three years, depending on what opportunities are here," she said. "Your contract is renewed based on what they need, but I would love to be here."

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299