When a soprano regarded as one of the world’s most important singers decided to open an opera academy close to her suburban home, she joined forces with an established music school set at the junction of two major roadways, some 25 miles north of New York City. That is how the Renata Scotto Opera Academy, founded in 2003, came to be part of the Music Conservatory of Westchester, a 75-year-old community music school in White Plains, N.Y. Besides being known for graduates like pianist Garrick Ohlsson, the conservatory is led by a board chairman who is Scotto’s neighbor in the leafy community of Armonk, where she lives with her husband of 40 years, Lorenzo Anselmi.
Each June for the past three years, the conservatory has turned over its 35 newly renovated practice studios and 150-seat, spanking new recital hall to the academy for four intensive weeks of classes, coaching, and concerts. The students, most of whom are professional singers with budding résumés, must make their own living and dining arrangements and manage their own transportation for the duration of the month-long program, a potential inconvenience that most seem more than willing to bear. Those without cars who find housing in Manhattan may have the easiest commutes, as the train from the Grand Central Terminal arrives a short distance from the conservatory’s door.
Being close to New York City has other virtues. Singers such as Deborah Voigt, Aprile Millo and Veronica Villarroel have lent their support to Scotto’s efforts by performing at gala benefits the conservatory holds each year for the academy.
Scotto accepts a maximum of 14 students each year, chosen after an arduous audition process. They pay $1,650—or, if they are lucky enough, are subsidized by sponsors—for a program that features one-on-one study with Scotto every other day, and vocal and acting coaching sessions from leading opera figures on the days in between.
Last June the coaches were Ken Noda of the Metropolitan Opera, Lynn Baker of the New York City Opera, and Cristina Stanescu of the Manhattan School of Music and Mannes School of Music. John Fisher, director of music administration at the Met, conducted private master classes with singers, while Ira Siff of La Gran Scena coached interpretation. Students also heard a lecture on Baroque opera by opera conductor Will Crutchfield, and a talk on the care of the voice by Dr. Linda Carroll of the Grabscheid Voice Center of Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. Usually the public is invited to two events, an open master class and a grand concert that brings the academy to a close.
Scotto, an energetic and glamorous 71-year-old, presides closely over all the academy’s activities. These begin with the auditions, held in the spring, when she sits in the front row of the intimate recital hall and listens intently to each applicant. She is polite, but wastes little time with singers she deems ill-prepared, unready or simply untalented.
“If I don’t have the vision of someone improving their career, I don’t accept them,” she said in an interview a few years ago.
“I think we’ve heard enough,” she is apt to say when an audition is not going well. On the other hand, she is careful with fragile egos.
“I’m always very nice—you’re dealing with a human being,” she said. “You have to be delicate, especially when you talk about weight.”
An attractive appearance wins high marks from Scotto. After all, this is the singer who immediately went on a diet after performing in 1976 in the first ever live opera telecast. She played Mimi in La bohème to Luciano Pavarotti’s Rodolfo, and was so appalled after seeing herself on television that she lost 45 pounds, most of which have remained off her svelte frame.
What she looks for in a singer, she said, after the academy completed its third annual session last June, are voice, musicality and stage presence.
“To have a beautiful voice is not enough,” she said emphatically. “You have to like to act. An opera is a play with music—and some singers are dead on stage.”
Her dream student is a talented newcomer who wants to expand his or her repertory or needs help refining technique.
“All my life, I’m trying to understand the difference between singing Bellini, Verdi and Puccini,” said the Italian-born Scotto, who still rolls her r’s and speaks in a lilting accent. “It’s a question of style,” she said. “To be ‘numero uno’ you need classic, first-level style.”
In the afterglow of the just-completed academy, and right before she took off for Italy for a summer vacation, she reminisced about some of the students who had spent the last four weeks with her in White Plains.
“Stephen Costello is going to have a great career,” she said of a tenor from Philadelphia. “He has everything.”
Laura Vlasak Nolen, a mezzo-soprano from Texas, was “a fantastic talent,” she said, “born to be on stage.”
David Won, a native of South Korea, had a “young, wonderful voice,” but he needed help with style. “I didn’t like his legato, the coloring of his phrases,” she said. What she helped him with was, “a deeper approach to the music.”
Some of the academy’s past students include Melanie Vaccari, who went on to make her New York City Opera debut in Carmen in 2003; Natalya Kraevsky, who received offers of professional management and was cast in a major role at the Virginia Opera after participating in the academy; Ellie Dehn, a national finalist this year at the Met National Council Competition; and Eglise Gutierrez, who has been especially active on the opera stage and, among other coming engagements, will perform the title role of Lakmé with Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall in February.
It can’t hurt that Scotto is now in demand as an opera director who sometimes is called upon to suggest a singer for a role. When asked if she helps singers find work, she replied, “absolutely!” and noted that agents were also routinely invited to attend the academy’s public master classes and concerts. Her passion for her new profession as director also makes her an ongoing role model for singers, who may wonder what lies beyond their vocal golden years.
“Theater, music and opera have been so much a part of my life that I didn’t care about stopping singing” after 50 years, she said. “I wake up not thinking about my voice, but about what I can do in the theater.”
Note: The conservatory’s phone number is 914/761-3900. The academy does not have a separate phone number. The opera academy administrator is Katy Flint Coppinger.
