Winnipeg soprano excited about her debut with Manitoba Opera

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This article was published 19/11/2014 (4329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the curtain rises Saturday night for Manitoba Opera’s 42nd season-opener, Fidelio, not only will it mark the local première of Beethoven’s sole opera, but also the company debut of Winnipeg-born soprano Lara Secord-Haid.

“This opera is incredibly beautiful,” the 26-year old rising star with a stratospheric, two-plus octave range says in a recent interview. “Rehearsals have been going really well and I’m just thrilled to be a part of it all.”

Secord-Haid performs the role of jailor’s daughter Marcellina in the opera, which celebrates courage in the face of tyranny. Her guileless, 17-year-old character is in love with Fidelio, a.k.a. the heroic Leonore, who disguises herself as a young man in order to rescue her husband/political prisoner Florestan.

The 150-minute production (sung in German with English surtitles), directed by longtime Manitoba Opera general director/CEO Larry Desrochers, also honours the recent opening of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. It fast-forwards Austrian librettist Josef Sonnleithner’s original tale to Germany 1989 and the historic fall of the Berlin Wall.

Desrochers, now in his 15th year at the helm, says he has been watching the singer’s career blossom for several years, inviting her to perform as a special guest for the company’s 2013 Bravo Gala fundraiser while waiting to find the perfect role for her.

“Lara as a person is incredibly sweet,” he says of his casting choice over the phone. “So it wasn’t hard to take that natural sweetness and convert it into a bit of naiveté on the part of Marcellina. The scenes that she’s in are lovely and she does a lovely job.”

Currently based in Winnipeg, Secord-Haid recently graduated with a master’s of music degree from New York City’s prestigious Julliard after studying four years at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music. She first discovered her passion for singing while preparing for her bat mitzvah when she was 12.

“I always thought I could sing but never really got any positive feedback,” she recalls. “But then, at my bat mitzvah, I was reassured that I did have an instrument. It felt really good to find out that other people also thought I had a voice.”

They certainly weren’t alone. Last month, the lyric coloratura soprano sang in contemporary music ensemble AXIOM’s program at New York’s Lincoln Center. She also performed as Tytania in Opera on the Avalon’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream last June in St. John’s, N.L.

She’s been chosen twice to compete in the finals at Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company’s Studio Ensemble Competition, selected out of hundreds of applicants vying for a spot in the COC’s training program for emerging artists, as well as being named a semifinalist in the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg’s 2014 McLellan Competition last March.

She received accolades for her first major operatic role — Donna Elvira — during the Banff Centre’s Opera as Theatre Program’s production of Don Giovanni in August 2012. She also marked her Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra debut, performing Howard Blake’s The Bear in 2009.

Her vocal gifts, matched only by a charm and poise well beyond her years, also caught the eye of the New York Times, which lauded her effervescent portrayal of Giulia in Juilliard Opera’s 2012 production of La Scala di Seta for its “flinty acuity.”

The only child of Winnipeg entrepreneur/philanthropist Elba Haid — with Lara’s name inspired by her mother’s own legendary relative, Laura Secord — and architect Marshall Haid, Secord-Haid credits her father, who passed away unexpectedly three weeks before her Banff première, for instilling a love of opera in her. “I was lucky to have music in the house all the time,” she says.

She stays grounded by practising yoga and meditating regularly, in addition to spending hours each day vocalizing and studying scores.

When asked what inspires her as an artist, the gracious singer doesn’t miss a beat.

“I think just the music itself. It’s pretty astoundingly amazing,” she says. “There’s also such a palpable energy to live music. Whenever I find myself at an opera, I find myself falling in love with it all over again.”

Fidelio runs Nov. 22, 25 and 28 at the Centennial Concert Hall.

holly.harris@shaw.ca