Taking abroad career view
by Olin Chism - Dallas Morning News, January 11, 1997
Soprano Laura Claycomb has sung leading roles in Paris, Geneva and Turin, Italy. She's sung small roles in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. She's sung no roles in Dallas - her hometown.
What may seem at first glance to be a curiously skewed career is easily explained by three factors: She's new to opera, she's had some phenomenally good luck, but success overseas doesn't quickly translate to success at home.
Ms. Claycomb is currently appearing in the Washington Opera's production of
Mozart's
La Finta Giardiniera (The Gardener in Disguise)
. She took advantage of her American engagement (she lives in Rome) to fly to
Texas to visit her parents and sister in their North Dallas home. There she
talked about her unusual career.
The 28-year-old grew up in Dallas, attended Highland Park schools and got her
degree in 1990 from Southern Methodist University, with a double major in
foreign languages and music. In 1991 she began a three-year apprenticeship at
the San Francisco Opera.
Then came 1994 and a storybook break.
" I was supposed to do a little audition tour of New York," she says. "I had just gotten an agent, had my bags packed, and I was supposed to leave that day. Then I got a call from Europe. It was Christine Bullin, who used to be the head of the young artists's program at San Francisco. She was doing some consulting for Hugues Gall, the director of the Geneva Opera.
She said "Laura, could you come to Geneva and cover some rehearsals for I Capuleti e I Montecchi ?" I said, "Well, are you going to pay me?" She said " Of course." So I went. ".
Geneva was having a problem with Bellini's opera ( I Capuleti e I Montecchi is Italian for The Capulets and the Montagues ; it's a setting of the Romeo and Juliet story). The soprano who was originally to have sung Giulietta (Juliet) had pulled out because of sickness. A substitute was tapped, but couldn't arrive for 10 days. Ms. Claycomb was to fill in during rehearsals and stand by in case of trouble. She had done the same thing for the same opera and the same singer in San Francisco, which is why Ms. Bullin remembered her.
Then came another stroke of bad/good luck: On the way to Geneva, Juliet No. 2 was shaken up in a minor car wreck and canceled. So Ms. Claycomb found herself doing all the performances. She was warmly received, and her European career was under way.
Here the story takes another twist. In 1995, Mr. Gall, who had become the head of the Paris Opera, signed Ms. Claycomb to cover I Capuleti again - for the same singer as in San Francisco and Geneva. And once again she pulled out, leaving Ms. Claycomb to perform. Then fate in the form of French unions intervened: The company's technicians went on strike, leaving Ms. Claycomb to do a single concert performance of Bellini's opera.
Finally, this October, she got to do staged performances of the role in Paris - not as a cover, but as the scheduled singer.
During the last two years she has had a rapidly expanding European career, singing lead roles with a number of major companies. She's become something of a regular at the Paris Opera: She is scheduled in Rigoletto and more Juliets. She soon will do the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor at La Fenice in Venice (at a substitute theater; the historic one burned). Outside Europe, she'll sing Gilda in Israel and Santiago, Chile.
And in the United States she's taking secondary parts (in La Finta Giardiniera she sing the role of Serpetta, a maid). Why? She says she doesn't want to lose contact with American companies and audiences.
However, Ms. Claycomb's hometown won't figure in her career any time soon. Jonathan Pell, director of artistic administration for the Dallas Opera, says he first heard her in San Francisco. She's auditioned for him, he says, "but nothing has worked out."
Ms. Claycomb says she has had some wonderful breaks. "I've been in the right place at the right time. And I've been prepared - that's the key, of course."
She gives major credit to the San Francisco Opera and its apprentice program. "That really ahs done everything for me, I think. Because you cover small roles, you cover big roles, you do small roles, you do a little bit of everything. You get to know conductors, you get to know how people work."
Ms. Claycomb says there are many details about performace that are never taught; singer have to learn by doing. For instance, at her first rehearsal in San Francisco, she was so startled by the sound oft he prompter speaking her words - she had never worked with a prompter - that she missed her entrance.
"Little things like that, you never think about," she says.
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