About a month and a half ago, I was finishing up Oberlin’s spring opera, a double bill of Later the Same Evening & Bastianello. After opening night, our assistant conductor, Matthew Brown (and also my former 10 a.m. Elementary French class buddy—truly a bonding experience), pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to be in a brand-new one-act chamber opera he’d been writing. He was hoping to premiere it before graduating.
I have always had a special interest in contemporary American opera because of how real the stories can get, and how it connects with the audience in such a unique way, so of course I instantly said yes. Even though my junior recital was literally the next week, I told him that once that was over, I’d give this project my full attention.
And then I opened the score… and screamed a tad.
The music was absolutely gorgeous. The first time I heard my character’s aria, I cried. But alongside that beauty was the very real realization that I had just committed to learning a full role in contemporary opera—atonal lines, unexpected intervals, rhythms that don’t exactly sit comfortably in your body right away. I had dipped my toe into this world with the spring opera, but this was a much bigger role.
I’ll be honest: aural skills has never been my strong suit. This kind of music didn’t come easily to me. But Matthew was incredibly patient, and over the next month we met at least three times a week. Those coachings became my anchor—spaces where I could ask questions, work through tricky passages, and slowly build confidence in something that initially felt way out of reach.
At the same time, the piece itself was still being finished. New scenes would come in, and we’d learn them almost in real time. It definitely felt like a race—both for me to learn the music and for the opera to fully come together—but the story made it worth it.
I was playing Matthew’s great-grandmother, a Norwegian immigrant living in New York City during the Great Depression. The opera centers on one night when her brother, whom she hasn’t seen in ten years, unexpectedly shows up at her door. They only have that night to reconnect before he leaves again.
During the week of the premiere, we rehearsed for about 13 hours. But by the time performance day arrived, I felt ready—or at least ready enough. I had one goal going in: I wanted to make at least one person cry during my aria.
The nerves were definitely there at the start. But once I settled into the character, everything else faded a bit. Even though I had the music in front of me, which isn’t my favorite, because I like feeling fully immersed, I was still able to connect to the story in a real way. To add a bit to the nerves, Matthew was not only the composer, but also the conductor. So yes, I performed the entire piece while making eye contact with the person who wrote every single note.
I achieved my goal tenfold, and had many people come up to me in tears after the performance ended.
More than that, though, it was one of the most meaningful experiences I’ve had at Oberlin. There’s something really special about being part of a new work—about helping shape a character and bring a story into the world for the first time. It felt collaborative and personal in a way that’s hard to describe.
