Opera star stays on song to battle her own drama
Barbara overcame huge obstacles to establish herself as an acclaimed soprano, writes Andrea Smith
Sunday October 18 2009
'I always try to save the drama for the stage, but my own life is like an opera," says soprano Barbara Quintiliani.
And she isn't exaggerating, when you consider that she has overcome a difficult childhood, survived a house fire, and fights a daily battle against the ravages of multiple sclerosis.
The funny, chatty Bostonian is here to perform the title role of Maria Padilla at the Wexford Festival Opera yet singing is something that she could never have imagined would become her career when she was growing up in a poor household in Quincy.
"I have one brother and two half-sisters from my father's second marriage," she says. "The four of us are very close, but none of us are very close to our parents, because we had a very rough time growing up. My mom was an alcoholic, and I worked very hard at school, because I wanted to do something better with my life."
Then Barbara's career guidance counsellor advised her that taking an arts class was a requirement to graduate and so she chose singing as a subject.
"I was a teenager with attitude and had a real chip on my shoulder," she laughs. "At one point, my teacher told me to learn a piece from Faure's Requiem. I copied what I had heard and sang it that way, and was really just making fun of it. Her eyes grew really wide, and she said, 'I had no idea you could sing like that.'"
Barbara ended up doing a solo at the next school performance and when she was brought to see a performance of Carmen, she was utterly captivated by the singing, the orchestra and the costumes, and decided there and then that singing would be her life.
"Music came into my life at a very dark point, because my mother was very troubled and my brother and I basically were left to fend for ourselves," she says. "Music was like a light that came in and scooped me up, and I don't think I'd be the same person if I hadn't found music."
Now 32, Barbara says that she will always be grateful to the many "beautiful" people and public-school teachers who gave their time and money to help her, people who pooled their money to make sure that she got there.
From her debut at Washington National Opera in 2002 as Electra in Mozart's Idomeneo, Barbara has won huge critical acclaim for her voice. The Boston Globe called her "the Verdi soprano the world has been waiting for," and she became the first American woman in more than 25 years to win first prize in the Francisco Vinas International Singing Contest.
Then in 2006, things started to go wrong and she began feeling very ill. Her own doctor dismissed her complaints as flu or depression, and refused to take her seriously.
It was when Barbara was due to sing at a concert in Boston in October 2006 that she lost the feeling down the entire right side of her body. Thinking she was having a stroke, her husband, Stephen, brought her to the emergency room, where she had procedures such as an MRI scan and a spinal tap. Then someone came into her room, baldly told her that she had MS, and left.
"I didn't really know what it was," she says. "It was a very dark place to be, but I learned from the experience that I have a beautiful husband and family, and wonderful friends who really care about me as a person," she says.
"I have the relapsing, remitting form of the disease, so after the first big flare-up, I was able to work again, once I looked after myself. I have a lot of nerve pain in my hands and feet, and suffer muscle spasticity, so some days it'll be a decision to get out of bed. But every time I get up out of bed and walk to the opera house and get on the stage, I win."
Barbara and Stephen, whom she married straight after university, nearly died a few years ago, when their building caught fire -- caused by smoking workmen laying a new floor in the hall. It was very dramatic, she says, but thankfully they were saved by the Boston firefighters who took them, and their two cats, out on a ladder.
While she is glamorous and gorgeous, Barbara's weight fluctuates as a consequence of the medication she is on, which she says causes some problems for people in the industry.
"Some people prefer people who look like a Barbie doll," she says. "It kind of makes me angry when they say that this is real, because I'm real. There's not a lot I can do about my weight going up and down. If some people in the business are not OK with it, that's their business and their prerogative."
She is also an advocate in relation to the abuse of children.
"I think kids can only bear darkness and tragedy for so long before they crumble," she says. "I think I was on the verge of crumbling when music came in to my life. It saved me as a person, not once but twice."
Wexford Opera Festival opens on Wednesday. Maria Padilla opens on Friday for three performances only. www.wexfordopera.com or 053 91 22 144
- Andrea Smith
Originally published in
