Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia)
December 4, 2004 Saturday
Final Edition
Diversity & the diva
by Mike Devlin, Times Colonist
IN CONCERT
The Victoria Symphony Legacy Series featuring soprano Isabel
Bayrakdarian and conductor Tania Miller
When: Tonight and Monday, 8 p.m.
Where: Royal Theatre
Tickets: $22-$59
– – –
What a long, arduous journey to Victoria it has been for Isabel
Bayrakdarian. But after a week-long trek that included nine time
zones, four countries and plenty of jet lag, the Armenian-Canadian
soprano is finally in the Garden City, sounding every bit as chipper
as I was led to believe she would be.
“This is nothing. This is a joy, because it’s part of the whole
thing,” she says from her hotel room Friday morning, less than 12
hours after arriving from Toronto via Spain. “No complaints!”
It is clearly not Bayrakdarian’s nature to complain. In fact, the
hyper-busy Toronto resident couldn’t have a nicer disposition —
which is, to be honest, a pleasant surprise given the diva tag so
frequently applied to singers of her calibre.
While stories of passport-toting opera singers with miniature
lap-dogs and even smaller attention spans abound, it was Bayrakdarian
who fretted when our pre-arranged interview was late to start. Just
minutes away was her rehearsal with the Victoria Symphony, who she’s
performing with for the first time tonight at the Royal Theatre.
Bayrakdarian wanted to make every effort to conduct the interview.
“I don’t want to stand you up,” she explains. “If you don’t know that
I was waiting for you, you would think that I was a temperamental
diva. And I don’t want that.”
Her debut with the symphony is arguably the highlight of the
orchestra’s 2004-2005 season. Bayrakdarian, who was born in Beirut to
Armenian parents and emigrated to Canada with her family when she was
15, is considered by many to be among the best at her craft.
She has a world of accolades to support that view. Performances with
Yo Yo Ma and Pinchas Zuckerman; recitals at New York’s Carnegie Hall;
and an honourary fellowship from The Royal Conservatory of Music,
given this June to both her and the Barenaked Ladies for making a
lasting contribution to the arts.
“It’s too much,” Bayrakdarian says incredulously. “It’s way too
much.”
All this from a performer who hadn’t sung a note professionally until
1997. Since then, her stratospheric rise to fame has been as mythical
as some of the roles she’s lent her voice to: as Catherine in A View
from the Bridge at New York’s Metropolitan Opera; Elisa in Il Re
Pastore at the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels; Susanna in Le Nozze
di Figaro at the Opera Bastille in Paris; Clorinda in Il
Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda at the Los Angeles Opera; and
Zerlina in Don Giovanni at Germany’s Salzburg Festival.
If her resume seems impressive for a performer of such a young age
(which, by the way, she chose not to divulge), it is by design. “I
thrive on change, that’s what it is,” Bayrakdarian says.
“My nature, I’m game for anything. I never say, ‘No, no, I
shouldn’t.’ The only time I do that is when it comes to actual music
for the voice. I treat the voice as an instrument. That’s the only
time I become very logical. Any other time I want as much experience,
as much variety.”
Bayrakdarian’s voice was given wide circulation in 2002 via two
acclaimed films: Victoria-bred filmmaker Atom Egoyan’s Ararat and the
second instalment in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, The
Two Towers.
She was a natural choice for both. Her resonant, pitch-perfect tone
fit perfectly with the pair’s epic scope, and was used beautifully
during the widescreen battle scenes that lay at the heart of each.
Her inclusion in Ararat arose from a fast friendship with Egoyan, who
is also of Canadian-Armenian heritage.
According to Bayrakdarian, the two met serendipitously when she was
working on Joyous Light, her chart-topping CD of Armenian sacred
music from 2002, and Egoyan was deep into Ararat, a controversial
telling of the forced evacuation and eventual genocide of more than a
million Armenian people at the hands of Turkish troops in 1915.
Her involvement in the project brought back a wave of old memories,
many of which took their toll emotionally.
“If you speak with any Armenian, we can’t be unbiased about it,
because each and every one of us, just like the Jewish holocaust, has
had a family member who has been affected by the Armenian genocide.
You can’t say it’s a political thing. It’s political, spiritual,
everything. It’s a personal thing. There’s no need to add other
adjectives to it. It’s a personal story for each and every human
being that is born Armenian.”
A far less draining experience for Bayrakdarian was working on the
Grammy Award-winning soundtrack to The Two Towers, and in particular
with Oscar-winning composer and Toronto native Howard Shore. It was
fun but also very stressful, Bayrakdarian remembers, especially
following the series’ immensely successful first instalment.
She recorded her parts in London at the same Abbey Road studios once
used by The Beatles. At the time of the recording, she was in
residence at Opera Bastille in Paris, making not only her Paris debut
but her major role debut and Figaro debut as well.
“It really was a lot of fun to go to London, record this for two
days, and come back to Paris,” she says. “It was a very, very nice
change. The pressure came later, when they said, ‘I hope your
publicist is ready.’ ”
Despite all she has accomplished in the opera world, Bayrakdarian
claims very little compares to the Lord of the Rings experience. “Two
years later I still get fan mail,” she says with a be-mused laugh.
“If only opera was this popular.”
GRAPHIC: Photo: Special to Times Colonist; Soprano Isabel
Bayrakdarian sings with the Victoria Symphony tonight and Monday. She
still gets fan mail for her work on the The Two Towers film
soundtrack.