She is from Cuba. He is from Turkey. They met, bonded, and fell in love at the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA) in Philadelphia. She is now recognized as one of the world’s major coloratura sopranos. He is a bass-baritone whose international success is considerably above average for his age. Meet opera’s up-and-coming power couple: Eglise Gutiérrez and Burak Bilgili.
I caught up with them during Gutiérrez’s debut in Madrid’s Teatro Real as Elvira in Bellini’s I puritani. They shared with me the story of how their careers began essentially in tandem with their relationship and how they are growing as both artists and as a family.
Meet Eglise
As a child and adolescent growing up in Cuba, Gutiérrez had no inkling that she would ever be an opera singer, although she always liked to sing. “Cuba is a very musical country,” she says, “and everywhere you go you hear music.” Her stepfather played the guitar, and she liked to sing along, interpreting everything from Cuban folk songs to the Beatles. She had a knack for singing harmony, and friends would tell her mother, “Your daughter has an amazing ear.” At the encouragement of others, her mother sent her to a school with a strong music program where she was soon at the top of the class. Although she began classical guitar lessons at the age of 10, her preference, she says, was for “singing, singing, singing.”
In high school Gutiérrez continued studying classical guitar. She liked to listen to jazz and pop music by Led Zeppelin, Queen, or Pink Floyd. “But I didn’t like opera,” she recalls. “I studied classical music, but I didn’t like opera—never. I liked acting and I used to do funny routines with my friends making fun of opera singers.” When she thought of a career, it was as an actress. “I thought of going to university to study acting and theater,” she says. “A friend of mine who was an actor studying at the [University of Havana] told me, ‘Eglise, you have an amazing voice. You should go do an audition in the voice department because there you’re going to have five years of acting classes plus voice training.’”
In her first month at the university, a teacher gave Gutiérrez a recording of Maria Callas. Listening to it brought on a conversion of sorts. She would never again make fun of opera singers. “After that I totally fell in love with opera,” she says. “Maria Callas was and still is my inspiration.” An accomplished (and, in Cuba, legendary) voice teacher, Maria Eugenia Barrios, a graduate of the Moscow P.I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory, grounded Eglise in the fundamentals of vocal technique. She was the first of three teachers who would help train her gifted voice.
After graduating from the university, the young soprano moved to Miami to join her father, a former political prisoner in Cuba who had acquired U.S. citizenship. Within the Cuban community, Gutiérrez found people who appreciated and admired her voice and, as she says, “trusted her talent.” She sang wherever she was asked: churches, weddings, and family gatherings.
The first time she went to the opera in Miami, she remembers thinking, “Oh my, I wish I could be singing in the chorus!” She subsequently auditioned and was accepted. Having that wish come true reinforced a characteristic positive attitude. Being able to experience opera within the production was another important and formative experience. But she was careful not to strain her voice. “I tried not to push my voice because that could be dangerous if you want to be a soloist.”
Critical for her development into the singer she is today was finding voice teacher Manny Perez in Miami. He recognized a special quality in her voice, especially unique for a coloratura. He diligently went about training in the technique and style necessary for Bel Canto, focusing her on the most appropriate repertoire. After her general vocal preparation in Havana, Gutiérrez now began to specialize in Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti. “That’s the difference between my studies in Cuba and Miami,” she says. “In Miami I developed only one repertoire.”
Meet Burak
Born in the town of Akşehir in south-central Turkey, Burak Bilgili, like Gutiérrez, had no idea that he would some day be an opera singer. Although there was no lack of music at home, he grew up in Istanbul thinking he might become a doctor or sea captain.
“My family loves to listen to traditional Turkish classical and folk music,” he says. “Every Sunday morning there was a classical music program on TV, and I used to watch it because afterward, a Western cowboy movie would come on.”
Bilgili’s older brother wanted to sing opera and studied at the local conservatory. “When I was in high school he would vocalize in his room,” Bilgili recalls, “and I would make fun of him by imitating the sounds he was making. Now he is a pop star in Turkey and I am an opera singer.”
By age 19, Bilgili had forgotten his dreams of healing the sick or sailing the seven seas and he began voice lessons at Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul with Professor Güzin Gürel. He first studied voice outside of Turkey at Parma’s Accademia Lirica Internazionale, where he studied with Katia Ricciarelli and Bonaldo Giaiotti for three weeks. The Turkish State Opera in Istanbul gave Bilgili his first stage experience, first as Don Geronio in Rossini’s Il turco in Italia in 1998 and then as Abimélech in Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah the following year.
How They Met
Bilgili first heard of the Academy of Vocal Arts from another Turkish singer studying there who encouraged him to apply. “I didn’t have any money to go to the USA for the audition,” he recalls. But his voice teacher thought it was a great idea and helped him get a travel grant to make the trip. Gutiérrez’s teacher, Perez, also told her that she must seek admission to the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia. In September 2000, Gutiérrez and Bilgili were among 10 students selected from over 100 applicants to begin the AVA’s four-year artist diploma program.
Although Gutiérrez had been in the States, she had lived in the Cuban community in Miami and barely spoke English when she arrived at AVA. Bilgili, fresh off the plane from Turkey, was in a similar situation. It was a big sacrifice to move to Philadelphia, “far away,” as he puts it, “from my family, my culture, and my food.” Their lack of English-language skills and immersion into a new culture was an immediate bond between them. “We were very close friends from the beginning,” Gutiérrez says.
They soon formed other bonds as they began AVA’s rigorous training schedule. “In the first week . . . we had coachings eight hours a day,” Gutiérrez says. “They will do anything to see how strong you can be.” Four years later in 2004, Gutiérrez and Bilgili were among just four of the initial 10 to graduate. “Many people leave because they can’t take it.”
By then they had run a gauntlet of competitions, winning prizes in most of them. The couple’s résumés contain a host of similar names: the J. Parkinson Italian Opera Competition, the Loren L. Zachary Competition, the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation International Competition, the Gerda Lissner Foundation International Vocal Competition, and the Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition in Finland.
“At AVA, the student dean’s office on the second floor has information about all the competitions,” Gutiérrez says. “Thanks to my husband, I went to a lot of them.” They also found additional competitions in Classical Singer. Burak had a subscription, and both highly recommend such resources to young singers.
Since neither could count on significant economic support from their families, the competition prize money was a welcome extra source of income beyond their AVA fellowships. But there were also other advantages to competing, beyond the monetary ones.
“You never know with competitions,” says Gutiérrez. “You can win; you can have a good day. You can have a bad day. If you don’t win, you say, ‘I came to have an experience.’ Then you start to win and you become strong and you have confidence. And this helps prepare you to be on stage in the future. But the most important thing in competitions is that you’re going to learn a lot of repertoire. If you don’t win, you don’t lose because you learn new music. And you meet other people who hear you and become interested in you.”
“The most important reason for going to competitions is to put your name out there,” agrees Bilgili. “Managers or companies hear your voice and learn your name.”
Bilgili and Gutiérrez began to develop habits of mutual support in those competitions, habits which grew and adjusted to the demands of their careers. Those competitions also provided the couple an opportunity to grow together and learn how to be supportive of one other. “We went together and we supported each other,” says Gutiérrez, who calls Bilgili her “second set of ears.”
“It’s different than when you are by yourself,” adds Bilgili, “because it’s important to have someone there saying, ‘You’re great!’”
Another important name appears on both couple’s résumé: their mutual teacher Bill Schuman. “His energy is amazing,” Gutiérrez says. “He continues to be an important guide for me and is very supportive of my career. I prepare new operas with his help, especially those in the Bel Canto style.”
In addition to Schuman’s excellent teaching, the couple also had access to AVA’s many other highly skilled coaches and teachers. Burak speaks of Music Director Christofer Macatsoris, Executive Director Kevin McDowell, Maestro Tom Krause, and coaches Danielle Orlando, David Lofton, and Richard Raub.
Such an impressive team of professionals helped Gutiérrez and Bilgili to gain the needed skills to first succeed at AVA and then launch international careers. Gutiérrez sang her first full opera as Amina in AVA’s production of La sonnambula. While still in the program, she also had her first professional debut in Lucia di Lammermoor in Bogotá and made her Carnegie Hall debut in Mozart’s Requiem.
Bilgili’s professional career took off with an even greater burst than Gutiérrez’s. In 2002 he had his debut at La Scala as Don Alfonso in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia followed by a string of debuts in the U.S.—Sparafucile in Baltimore Opera’s Rigoletto in 2002, Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville with Pittsburgh Opera in 2003, and Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome that same year. His Metropolitan Opera debut was a baptism by fire. On May 7, 2004, while an understudy for Leporello in Don Giovanni, he went on in the last performance without the benefit of a full-stage or orchestra rehearsal. He won the audience’s thunderous applause for his rendition of “Madamina, il catalogo è questo.” His triumphal success merited an interview by NPR.
Mutual Support
During their last year at AVA, Gutiérrez and Bilgili moved in together. Three years later in 2007, while in the middle of traffic in Istanbul, Bilgili caught Gutiérrez by surprise and proposed marriage. It was the logical conclusion to a relationship forged over years of ongoing mutual support. Their paths to AVA were as disparate as their national backgrounds—but once they met, their careers took on a new energy nurtured by their love and friendship.
When asked about the advantages of being married to another singer, Bilgili says, “To have someone who knows this job and supports you is very important.” Mutual support has become a major component of their married life. “When I’m performing, she comes to support me,” he adds, “and [when] she’s performing, I go to support her. The thing is that before the performance we get so nervous. Somebody has to make us calm.”
Of course, there are also times when their careers require them to be apart, Gutiérrez once joined Bilgili in Montreal while he was performing Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. While there, she received a call from Berlin’s Deutsche Oper to be a last-minute replacement in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor. Although they both had been looking forward to their time together in Montreal and a last-minute trip to Berlin wouldn’t come cheap, Bilgili didn’t hesitate. “We are going to buy the ticket and there you are going!” he remembers telling her. “There is a moment,” he says, “you get an opportunity and you have to grab it. She learned that, and I learned that.”
“It was the biggest opportunity in my life in that moment,” Gutiérrez adds. “It was so important, you have no idea. It was the Deutsche Oper. It was a risk, but it was a big, big success!”
Two Become Three
In the midst of flourishing, peripatetic careers, the couple recently welcomed baby Lucia Ilayda into their lives. Her middle name is Turkish for “pixie” or “nymph,” and her first name comes from Lucia di Lamermoor, an especially significant opera in Eglise’s career. She made her professional debut singing the title role in Bogotá in 2003 and later found out she was pregnant while performing the same role with Florida Grand Opera. She was three months’ pregnant when she was suddenly called to sing the role with Roberto Alagna at the Deutsche Oper. She performed it again at Finland’s Savonlinna Opera Festival two months later. So naming the baby—who was born in 2010 on Gutiérrez’s own birthday—“Lucia” came naturally.
Gutiérrez only had to cancel one engagement while pregnant, Gilda at London’s Royal Opera House, and only in her third trimester. As Gutiérrez’s due date approached, Bilgili was between gigs and returned to Philadelphia for his week off, hoping to be there for the baby’s arrival. He had to fly to Munich on September 27 for his next gig. The baby was born the day after.
When Lucia was five weeks old, the three traveled to Vancouver for a production of Lucia di Lammermoor, in which both Gutiérrez and Bilgili performed. And little Lucia has been traveling with them ever since, due to a crammed performing schedule and thanks to the invaluable assistance of Gutiérrez’s mother, Divina. So far, according to her proud father, little Lucia is very adaptable and loves meeting new people.
Bilgili says becoming parents is the best thing to happen in their lives and has affected their careers in a positive way. And Gutiérrez heartily agrees.
