Five days before she was scheduled to compete in the finals of the 2009 Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions, 20-year-old soprano Nadine Sierra woke earlier than usual with a scratchy throat and mild congestion. A cold is any singer’s constant nightmare, but a cold the week of the finals for the competition of the world’s most famous opera house is a particularly cruel nightmare, especially if you’ve dreamed of singing at the Met since your earliest years.
Often dubbed “the Met Contest” by singers, the competition has been called the “American Idol” of the opera world. And while it is not yet televised, the contest does offer its share of drama, divas, potential stardom, and stinging commentary.
When Nadine was 11, she took a class trip to New York City. They hit the usual tourist spots, but they also got tickets to see Rossini’s The Barber of Seville at the Met. By the end of the opera, every other kid in the class was sound asleep. Nadine, however, was not only awake, she was transfixed. The grandeur of the stage and sets, the humor and drama of the story, and the beauty of the music all held her spellbound. She returned to Florida dreaming of one day singing opera at the Met.
Nadine began studying privately, and by the time she was in high school, it was clear she had a major talent. After hearing a 13-year-old Nadine sing an aria, a famous soprano who would prefer not to be named remarked, “I didn’t have that voice until I was 18.” She was invited to join the chorus of the Palm Beach Opera and soon joined the opera’s Young Artist Program. The other singers were in their mid-to-late twenties. Nadine was 14.
In high school, Nadine began traveling to New York City to work with teacher and soprano Ruth Falcon, who teaches at the Mannes College the New School for Music. After high school she was accepted by the Juilliard School and offered a full scholarship, but Nadine chose Mannes and a teacher she trusted rather than a big-name conservatory.
I first heard Nadine sing at a lesson with Falcon a few days before the national semifinals of the Met Contest. Even on her warm-ups, she sang with an irrepressible musicality, like an actor who can’t resist giving a Shakespearean flourish to a casual phrase. The seemingly mundane exercises blossomed into small feats of expressiveness, miniature arias with artfully shaped phrases and graceful hand gestures.
For the contest, she had to prepare five opera arias in four different languages. Nadine’s repertoire consisted of Handel’s “Piangerò,” Mozart’s “Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben,” Gounod’s “Je veux vivre,” Mascagni’s “Flammen, perdonami,” and Douglas Moore’s “The Silver Aria.” Though the singers are allowed to choose their first aria to sing, the judges can request to hear any aria second, so it’s essential that all five arias be perfectly polished.
Falcon’s suggestions that day were fairly minimal—this close to the competition, the essentials of diction, dynamics, and phrasing were secure.
After singing through her repertoire, Nadine listened to Falcon’s take on various New York agents, many of whom were already interested in representing her. Having seen other young singers launch into a demanding professional career at a young age and suffer vocally and personally, Falcon wanted Nadine to avoid a similar fate. Nadine is the youngest singer Falcon has ever taught who has made it so far in the Met competition. Were she to win, the pressure to begin a career would be immense.
Having advanced to the semifinals of the competition was already a major achievement. Out of 1,500 singers from 15 regions across the country, 23 national semifinalists were chosen. Most of the semifinalists were in their mid-to-late twenties; Nadine was the youngest to qualify.
Two days before the semifinals, Nadine and 22 other young singers met at an orientation on the Metropolitan Opera’s stage. The director of the competition introduced herself and congratulated the singers, emphasizing that they were now in a different league, on the verge of major careers and management contracts. She reminded them that the invitees to the semifinals on Sunday were powerful people in the opera world—agents, managers, artistic programmers—in short, potential employers.
After the orientation, they got a special tour of the Met’s labyrinthine backstage passages and chambers. It was Nadine’s first time backstage and, more than anything else, she was overwhelmed by the sheer size of things. “Everything is big—the name, the stage, the reputations of the singers, the salaries,” Nadine commented to me.
Singers were asked to arrive at the Met by 11 a.m. on the morning of the semifinals, but Nadine was preparing her usual concoction of hot tea, lemon, and honey by 7:30. The next few hours were devoted to hair and make-up, which can play a decisive role in competitions. With the Met’s new emphasis on live HD broadcasts to movie theaters around the world, the appearance and sensuality of singers has become more important than ever. The classic opera joke of a 300-pound soprano playing a seductive heroine who drives men mad with lust has become an increasingly rare reality in today’s opera houses, where many casting directors favor slender singers provocatively (un)dressed.
The child of a Portuguese mother and a Puerto Rican father, Nadine has coffee-colored skin, dark eyes, and a slightly exotic, Mediterranean appearance. Her tall, striking figure could easily meet the new visual standards of the opera world.
One of Nadine’s secrets to success is her ability to transform nervousness into excitement. While other singers backstage are frantically pacing, clenching their hands, and generally freaking out, Nadine tends to find a nice patch of carpeted floor, kick off her 3-inch heels, and lie down. She stretches, does yoga, and hums along with the songs others are rehearsing. But she retains a peacefulness that not only makes her life easier but her singing better. Nerves mean tension, and tension affects breath control and tone quality.
By 11 a.m., Nadine was settled in a dressing room backstage with an upright piano, a couch, and mirrored walls fringed by dozens of light bulbs. Given the Met’s star-studded history, she couldn’t help but wonder who had sat in this room before, fixing a stray hair before a debut or collapsing in a glow of sweat and make-up after a triumphant aria.
Just after 1 p.m. she heard the announcement: “Ms. Sierra, stage right. Ms. Sierra, stage right.” She reminded herself that actual opera singers did this all the time. If they could sing a three-hour opera to thousands of fans, she could sing for 10 minutes to a few hundred people.
She began with her Mozart aria. It’s a good-luck aria for Nadine, one she has sung hundreds of times and knows perfectly. More than speed or agility, it showcases tone and musicality, two of her great strengths.
After she finished the first aria, the judges requested “Juliette’s Waltz” (“Je veux vivre”) from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. As her voice raced up and down scales, she swayed coyly, gestured languorously, and let the musical pulse carry her a small distance across the stage. Everything about her presence seemed to enhance the young-girl-in-love quality of the words and music. As soon as the last note sounded, the audience burst into the loudest applause yet of the afternoon. As she walked offstage, the stage director gave her a one-word assessment: “Damn.”
While Nadine went out for Chinese food with friends, I stayed to listen to the rest of the contestants. As the afternoon dragged on, I began to realize how many subjective factors could sway the judges’ evaluation. For example, there was a singer’s appearance and dramatic movements. And if a singer happened to choose one of the judges’ favorite arias, they might confuse their love of the piece with the quality of the performance. From the interaction of all possible subjective forces, a decision that aspired to objectivity would somehow arise. I started to see why so many singers considered competitions hopelessly unfair.
When the final singer finished, it was nearly 5 p.m. The judges conferred for half an hour while the friends, family, and opera elite made anxious small talk on the tier level. Finally a woman emerged, and the 23 singers clustered behind her. She took a sheet of paper from her pocket and got right to the point. “The 2009 finalists are . . . ” Each singer stepped forward as his or her name was announced to a burst of applause. She read seven names, and Nadine was not among them. At the last possible moment, and last from her list, she read, “Nadine Sierra.”
It was two days later that Nadine woke up with the first symptoms of a cold. She was determined to fight it with tea, sleep, and vitamin C. Even if her voice croaked like a toad, she wasn’t going to miss the chance to perform at the Met.
The cold felt a bit better on Wednesday. But when it was still there on Thursday with the finals being on Sunday, she started getting scared. Despite her attempts to sleep, she was getting only about six hours a night. Her habitual calm was finally ruffled—she woke up singing parts of her arias in her head, thinking about things to change, German words to pronounce, phrases to accentuate and shape. She dreamed that she walked onstage the day of the finals, opened her mouth, and forgot everything.
On Saturday, the day before the finals, she bought a humidifier and got a massage. She had a short coaching with Falcon and her voice wasn’t feeling right. She went straight to bed, but she slept horribly. She had the same nightmare about forgetting everything and woke repeatedly with worries about the cold—worries that kept her from the sleep that could cure the cold.
Somehow the night passed and suddenly it was the morning she had been waiting for. She made her customary thermos of hot tea, lemon, and honey and then took a long, hot shower. Through some combination of vitamin C, adrenaline, and humid air, she felt better.
By 11 a.m. she was at the Met. After running through snippets of her arias onstage, she settled into the soothing task of doing her hair and makeup. Unlike the closed semifinals, the finals were open to the public. Instead of singing for 100 people, she would perform for close to 4,000.
There were eight national finalists who would compete that afternoon, four men and four women. Up to five winners would receive a prize of $15,000 and capture the attention of the most important people in the opera world.
While the first six singers performed, Nadine did floor stretches, massaged her facial muscles, and sang along with the other contestant’s arias. Finally, she heard the loudspeaker page “Nadine Sierra, stage right.” As she walked onstage, she noticed she could see only the first six rows of the audience—but she could feel a tremendous energy and tension in the air. She wore a blue gown with minimal frills that exposed her shoulders. Her hair, like the curtains of the Met’s stage, was swept back and pinned in ornate folds.
With the help of advice from Falcon and various vocal coaches at the Met, Nadine had settled on the arias by Mozart and Gounod for the final. She imbued “Juliette’s Waltz” with the same breathless, love-struck quality as the week before, nailed all the tricky fast sections and high notes, and flung her arms open as if to embrace the audience on the final note. They instantly exploded. The applause and shouts began even before the orchestra had played the last note. While Nadine stood on stage her phone buzzed noisily backstage in her dressing room, jammed with encouraging text messages from friends.
Nadine had no memory of singing her Mozart aria; she only heard the waves of applause that began before she had even finished. This time there were no ecstatic texts from friends; they were waiting to hear the results.
After the last singer finished, baritone Thomas Hampson read the names of the winners. He read the first three—
no Nadine. The first three winners assembled onstage, each shaking Hampson’s hand after his name was announced. Nadine’s chances had dropped from five in eight to one in four. But before there was more time to worry, Hampson announced, “Our final winner is . . . Nadine Sierra!”
Nadine walked out across the stage, beaming and listening to the loudest ovation of her life.
Since her victory, Nadine has continued her studies at the Mannes College the New School for Music where she is now in her senior year. Through her association with the Marilyn Horne Foundation, she has traveled to Italy and Greece to give recitals. She has yet to finalize plans for her post conservatory career, but is considering a variety of Young Artist Programs.
