Katerina Utochkina

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Katerina Utochkina

Mezzo-soprano

Toronto, Ont.

Zita in Gianni Schicchi and Suor Osmina in Suor Angelica

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Though she is the daughter of two classical musicians, Katerina Utochkina began to explore rock music in her teens. Her father, a bassoonist, encouraged her love for rock by teaching her to play the guitar. But Utochkina realized that she felt most passionate about the classical music that she grew up around in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Utochkina arrived in Toronto at 18-years-old. Right away, she and her mother searched for a place where she could pursue her love for classical singing. Her mother, a flautist who played in the orchestra at several Saint Petersburg opera houses, encouraged her to apply to the Glen Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music; in 2015, Utochkina graduated with a performance degree from this school, gaining experience in both music and theatre.

“Your whole body becomes an instrument for expression,” she said. “I don’t think it gets more exciting than this!”

In the 2016 Halifax Summer Opera Festival, Utochkina will play both Zita in Gianni Schicchi and Suor Osmina in Suor Angelica. Both these roles are very different from Utochkina, but she’s excited for the challenge. She usually prefers to play roles who she has a personal connection to, such as the feminine yet tough female roles common in Rossini operas.

Soprano stars, such as Anna Netrebko, Joyce Didonato or Sondra Radvanovsky, who have mastered Rossini roles, inspire Utochkina. However, she also admires musical theatre stars, like Idina Menzel or Lea Salonga, because they, too, bring emotional depth to their work.

“Opera is an undying art form, it explores the depth of the human emotion that people can still relate to hundreds of years later,” she said. “Our audiences have a lot of choices and for them to choose opera, it needs to stand out from the rest of the entertainment by being what is has always been: exceptionally profound, grand, displaying a wide range of human emotion through the drama and heightened expression that it known for.”

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Education

Performance Diploma from The Glenn Gould School

Past Performances

Toronto Operetta Theatre

Summer Opera Lyric Theatre

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July 15, 2016July 15, 2016

Ariel Lefebvre

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Ariel Lefebvre

Baritone

Barmont, QC

Garibaldo in Rodelinda

Ariel Lefebvre fell in love with classical repertoire after his high school music teacher introduced him to Schubert. Lefebvre couldn’t get enough of Schubert’s “Erlköning,” which describes a child’s death.

“Erlköning can easily leave a strong impression on an angsty teenager,” Lefebvre said.

Ten years after first hearing Schubert, Lefebvre completed his Masters in Opera/Voice Performance at McGill University.

Though he calls himself a music kid (to this day, he still loves John William’s soundtrack to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back), he also loves the stage. His involvement in high school productions allowed him to discover that he was a daring actor

This summer, at the Halifax Summer Opera Festival, Lefebvre will play Garibaldo in Handel’s Rodelinda. This role combines Lefebvre’s love of acting and singing because Garibaldo pretends to be a loyal counsellor to the new king of Milan, but secretly plans to steal the throne for himself. Not only does Garibaldo sing several beautiful, bass arias, but he also requires an actor who can act caring one scene, yet cutthroat the next.

His inspiration for his baritone voice is the French tenor Georges Thill. Lefebvre finds his singing technique to be flawless, and thus an amazing model for younger singers.

Yet Lefebvre’s love of music extends beyond his own voice. Since he began singing classical repertoire, he has loved the Queen of the Night’s aria because of its vocal acrobatics, as well as Tosca’s final lines before her death (which he once unsuccessfully attempted to sing).

“Most of my favourite singers have been dead for a long time since they belong to a bygone generation of singers from the first half of the 20th century,” he added.

By looking back at opera, Lefebvre believes we can improve opera’s reception today. In the 18^th century, opera was a social event; now, it’s perceived as stuffy, with no food or drink allowed in opera theatres.

“For the last couple decades musicians have been trying to give historically accurate performances,” he said. “Why not try historically accurate audiences?”

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Education

Bachelor and Masters of Vocal Performance, McGill University

Past Performances

Buoso’s Ghost 2015

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July 14, 2016July 14, 2016

Lauren Halasz

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Lauren Halasz

Voice type: Soprano

Hometown: Ottawa, ON

Role in HSOF 2016: Prima Sorella Cercatrice in Suor Angelica

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Lauren Halasz still has the recording of her first singing recital.

She can now compare that first recital to another first: singing in a full-length, fully staged opera at this year’s Halifax Summer Opera Festival.

“It’s amazing to hear how different I sound,” she said.

The incoming junior at the University of Western Ontario was lucky enough to have a grandmother who took her to the opera two to three times every year. In fact, much of Halasz’s love of both music and opera began as a small girl: at three-years-old, she began singing in choirs, then she began piano lessons, and throughout all that, she was watching the “Met Live in HD” series, where she discovered her idol, soprano Anna Netrebko.

To honour her Czech grandmother, who originally introduced her opera, Halasz dreams of playing Rusalka in Dvorak’s opera of the same name.

“I would really love to honour that part of my heritage by performing in Czech operas one day,” she said. “The music is also amazing, and who wouldn’t want to be a mermaid?”

As much as Halasz thinks like a performer, she also knows how important audience is to opera. With many operas containing racist and/or sexist sentiments, directors and cast members must learn how to deal with these challenges in a modern context. For instance, Cosi fan tutte, one of the operas being performed at this year’s HSOF, is based on the premise said by Don Alfonso: all women cheat on their partners. Halasz knows this premise is false, but she also understands that Cosi is entertainment and Don Alfonso is a delight to watch.

“I understand that a lot of these operas are products of their time period. The sentiments are those that most people, hopefully, do not agree with anymore,” she said. “I think that, as an audience member, as long as the production doesn’t try to present sexist and/or racist plot lines as truth, I understand that it is not a modern opinion.”

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Education

Completing undergrad at the University of Western Ontario in Honours Voice Performance
Expected graduation date: 2018

Training from The Canadian Operatic Arts Academy
2015

Past performances

Cast of Gold Fever Follies, a professional summer stock theatre company that puts on an annual show based on the early gold rush days in Rossland, British Columbia
2015

Played the Female Scarecrow in R. Murray Schafer’s music drama, The Spirit Garden (Cobourg, Ontario)
2016

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