Saturday January 19 2008
Young operatic star Nicole Cabell steers a steady course
The soprano, winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, debuts at Opera Pacific in 'The Magic Flute.'
By TIMOTHY MANGAN
The Orange County Register
Nicole Cabell, winner of the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, is currently resident at a hotel near Disneyland, one of her favorite places on earth. Since she arrived in Orange County for rehearsals with Opera Pacific a couple of weeks ago, she's been to the park twice, and will no doubt be going again during her stay, which lasts at least through Feb. 2, when performances of "The Magic Flute" adjourn and she's off to the next big thing in her fledgling career.
Cabell, 30, became a hot commodity with her win in Cardiff. The competition, one of the most prestigious in operadom, also helped launch the careers of such singers as Bryn Terfel, Karita Mattila and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Cabell's schedule filled up almost instantly after the win and she also signed a recording contract with Decca. This year, she'll have but four weeks off from singing, and those, she says, she had to insist on.
No less than Joan Sutherland, who awarded Cabell the prize, advised her to take things slowly. The charming, amiable Cabell, donning a smart denim jacket and black velvet pants, sat down in a dressing room in Segerstrom Hall recently and told us about the gospel according to Sutherland.
"She said in a roundabout way, just don't take on too much too soon, don't go too fast. Take time for yourself to really learn the roles and to take time off and recover. It's wonderful advice, kind of timeless advice. I just wish the world would slow down a little bit for us singers, so that we could do that without falling off the radar in three months. ... It's so crazy these days."
Cabell has followed Sutherland's advice to a point, however. While she's a little too busy for comfort's sake, the roles she takes on are carefully calibrated to nurture rather than challenge her young voice.
"For a while I felt as though I should take on heavier roles sooner than I wanted to. And I actually was considering singing things that, now that I think about it, were not right for me ... And I'm glad I didn't take them, because I don't feel ready for some of these big roles. I have a voice that's similar to somebody like Barbara Hendricks, it's a lighter voice, and if I sing opera they'll have to be, at least for now, lighter roles. That just ensures longevity. ... I'm thinking for the next five years I don't want to venture heavier than Musetta (in "La Bohème").
Born in Panorama City, Cabell grew up in and around Ventura. Her family wasn't particularly musical, but her mother insisted that her children take music courses in school. Cabell played the flute for three years in junior high school, but when marching band duties rolled around in high school she decided it wasn't quite her thing.
She joined the high school choir instead (her mother had heard her singing with the radio, and suggested it) and she soon found she had a gift. She started private voice lessons at 16. During summers she indulged in writing novels, 400-500 page behemoths, and still thinks she might take it up again someday.
"I think what happened," Cabell says, "was when singing came along it was such an extraordinary thing, just to find out that you had a singing voice, that I wanted to pursue it because it was so exciting and unusual. I sort of put writing on pause, I didn't ever think, 'Well, I won't become a writer.'"
She took a bachelor's degree at the Eastman School of Music and then won a place in Chicago Lyric Opera's apprentice program, where she studied for three years. The Cardiff win has turned her into a globe-trotter, but she still makes Chicago, where she appears regularly with the Lyric, her home.
Cabell can be objectively deemed "a beauty." She has an interesting ethnic makeup, part African American, part Korean, part Caucasian. Her marketing has exploited her looks through glamorous photos, something Cabell is wary of.
"Let me put it this way, there are singers right now who are incredibly beautiful and sexy, and I think they have a hard time being taken seriously. I kind of keep myself a little bit under the radar in that way. I don't really play up sex appeal too much because I think that there's a trend going on right now and people may want to categorize you and say, you know, you're one of these actors that sing, as opposed to a singer. For me, singing is extraordinarily important, the acting should come from the voice. People should take you very seriously, I think."
Sopranos Anna Netrebko and Renée Fleming, singers who have managed to combine physical beauty with genuine musical talent, are models for her.
The role of Pamina, which she will sing here with Opera Pacific, sits well for her voice, she says, but the part has its challenges, not the least its spoken dialogue.
"You have to speak in your chest voice. ... If you're speaking on your chest voice, which is how I'm speaking now, and then you have to pop up into your high register to sing, it's tricky to go back and forth. I have a scene where I'm sort of yelling and then a few seconds later I have to sing 'Ah, ich fuls,' which is one of the most difficult arias in the soprano repertoire."
Cabell has already been featured in Decca recordings of "Porgy and Bess" (she sings the role of Clara) and a solo aria disc called "Soprano"; later this year will come a "La Bohème." The Opera Rara label will also release a recording of her in Donizetti's seldom heard melodramma"Imelda de' Lambertazzi."
Opera engagements keep on coming as well, and this year she'll sing Leïla in a Lyric Opera production of "The Pearl Fishers" and make debuts on the stages of the Royal Opera in London and the Metropolitan Opera, where she has signed a contract through 2011.
It's a fascinating life for the young singer, and she relishes the whirlwind of it.
"I get far more intimidated by singing onstage, and reviews, getting reviews," she sighs.
She knows that she's not supposed to read them, but can't help herself.
"You shouldn't, but you know it's like passing a mirror and not looking in, OK? You have to sort of glance."
October 2007
Nicole Cabell knows good career advice when she hears it. In 2005, when the lissome Californian took top honors at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, Joan Sutherland — who presented the winner's trophy to the then twenty-seven-year-old soprano — cautioned her, "Take your time. Don't let people rush you." As Cabell puts it, "Those are sacred words, if you consider the source — and I'm trying to live by them." Nevertheless, success has followed success at a pretty fast clip for Cabell, an artist whose lithe figure, striking good looks and charismatic stage presence have made her a hot commodity in today's image-conscious opera marketplace. A graduate of the Eastman School, Cabell had just completed her studies at Lyric Opera of Chicago's professional artist-development program when she won the Cardiff competition; she was signed almost immediately to an exclusive recording contract by Decca and recorded her first solo album, Soprano, in December 2005, a mere six months after her Cardiff triumph. Soprano, released in spring 2007, offers ample evidence of Cabell's glossy, beautifully colored lyric soprano and her impressive musical intelligence.
One of the cuts on Soprano is a supple "Quando me'n vo," a souvenir of a role that is fast becoming one of Cabell's calling cards. After recording Musetta in Germany for DG, she spent the past summer in Santa Fe in Paul Curran's La Bohème staging. "I learned so much about Musetta during this run. She's three-dimensional — her moods run the full span from capriciousness and anger, which the audience seems to love, to the humanity of the last act. In that part of the opera, I feel the most like myself. She's very different from me in the other acts — she's always so 'on.'"
September brought more Musettas, in Washington National Opera's season-opening La Bohème. This month, Cabell is in Chicago for Lyric Opera's production of the opera, directed by Renata Scotto. "Am I excited to work with her? Of course I am — you can't find anybody in the world with more knowledge of La Bohème than Renata Scotto. I've been dying to work with her, but we've always been on opposite sides of the country, it seems." Meanwhile, Soprano continues to sell briskly. "I'm very pleased with the way the program is balanced between the things I'm singing now, like Musetta and Adina, with more unusual things, like Benvenuto Cellini. I understand that the really familiar, popular things need to be included, but I would love to do an album of all bizarre, crazy, exotic repertory. Maybe next time."
F. PAUL DRISCOLL
The Académie du Disque Lyrique held its prize-giving ceremony at the Opéra Bastille in Paris on 2nd May 2007. The prizes are known as the Orphées d'Or.
The Georg Solti Prize was awarded to a young discographic career: Nicole Cabell for Soprano with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis (Decca).
Saturday April 28 2007Here's an hour of enchantment from the American soprano who won the 2005 Cardiff Singer of the World. There she swept the board with her final item, Teresa's taxing but rewarding aria from Benvenuto Cellini. Here it forms the centrepiece of a recital that takes her with extreme accomplishment through a varied programme.
Perhaps the French pieces suit her best of all, and she seems happy singing in the language. She delivers Juliette's Waltz Song with insouciance with insouciance, then follows it with a deeply soulful account of Juliette's last-act aria. "Depuis le jour" is right up there among the best of the past, with the high note towards the end, touched with pure lightness. The dash of the bolero from Les filles de Cadix is as fitting as it should be.
But Cabell can do many other things so well as to satisfy the most fastidious connoisseur of fine singing. Her bel canto skills are disclosed in Julietta's opening aria from Capuleti, with the even legato a pleasure to encounter. Norina's flighty aria from Don Pasquale isdone with just the requisite allure.
The two popular Puccini arias again show off her clear, clean tone and secure technique, even if one would sometimes like a bit more light and shade in her bright voice.
It's big leap from there to Tippett's A Child of Our Time, but once more Cabell gives every evidence that she knows what she is about and the aching phrases hanging in the air. The Menotti aria is well sung but musically nothing special; "Summertime" gets a lovely reading.
Sir Andrew Davis and the LPO find the right mood for each piece in turn and the recording is faultless. Who knows, maybe Decca has a new Sutherland in view.
Alan Blythe
The Gramophone
Wednesday April 18 2007
Turning singing stars into performing monkeys is nothing new - but antics are becoming ever more part of the job.
Last week on Radio 4's Today programme, the teenage soprano Hayley Westenra tried to prove that her stratospheric top notes could make a dog bark. She failed.
The dog barely growled, though her agent must have been purring at the peak-time exposure, never mind his client's red face.
And last week in Milan, world-class tenor Juan Diego Flórez broke all La Scala taboos by encoring an aria so that he could sing his virtuosic high Cs again.
The American-born Nicole Cabell, 29, winner of 2005 Cardiff Singer of the World, is made of different, sterner stuff. In London for the launch of her debut album of operatic arias from Donizetti to Gershwin, the fastrising soprano finds such behaviour deeply embarrassing.
"I guess we all have to work harder to keep ahead of the game," she acknowledges. "Music colleges are like opera factories churning out hopefuls - but there's a limit.
"Singing is not about high notes and acrobatics. It's about telling a story. All I want is to take the ego out of the equation.
"The idea of encoring a top note, or even stopping to take a bow in the middle of a performance after a showy aria - aagh! The very thought. I can't do all that prima donna stuff."
This elegant and articulate Californian clutches her throat in horror at the idea. Still hardly known here, except to those who delighted in her Cardiff success, Cabell is every inch the glamorous star, with a light, silvery voice equally at home in Italian and French repertoire as in Cole Porter.
"I love doing popular American music. That's my heritage. But I'm not a jazz singer. I prefer to do what's written down."
Cardiff has thrust her into the elevated company of past winners such as Bryn Terfel, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Katerina Karneus.
Her international career is taking off and she has been touted as "the next Angela Gheorghiu", not unreasonably since her first career break came when she stood in at short notice in Berlin for that ultimate celebrity diva, in Roméo et Juliette.
"I did it at a day's notice on only three hours' sleep and with no rehearsal. I've never been so nervous. I knew the role, but I had no idea how my voice was projecting in a new acoustic."
She hasn't yet met Gheorghiu but will sing Musetta to her Mimi in a Chicago Bohème next season.
"Angela can get away with it," she says, tacitly acknowledging that "doing an Angela" has become common operatic parlance for throwing a strop.
"She's a master of the business of self-presentation. It's part of her persona. Some singers are chameleons, always reinventing themselves, like Madonna.
"But by contrast, take Renée Fleming. She's a star, but she deals with it brilliantly. She's much more down-to-earth. Dawn Upshaw is another."
Cabell sees herself more in this Fleming-Upshaw mould, naming those singers as musical role models.
"Maybe it's a lot to do with how you grow up, whether you have to fight to get away from your childhood circumstances, as Angela did in Romania, or whether you're happy with your surroundings and don't need to kick back so much. I had a pretty steady home life."
Her mother, "a stay-home mom", taught Nicole and her brother herself when they were tiny - "so by the time I went to school I was a grade ahead."
Money was scarce but education valued. So, too, was the sense of community. Her grandfather was the first African-American police chief in Los Angeles, her father a policeman and other members of the family have been FBI agents.
"Yes, you could say we're big on law enforcement in the Cabell family! I wasn't aware of much violence or dirty stuff. I never thought my father would run into trouble.
"There was always a sense of wanting to do well in life. Every time we saw Tiger Woods on the TV, my mother would say, 'Now he's an example to follow'."
This is a reference to Cabell's mixed race, which she perceives as central to her identity.
"It's a case of embracing everything, not saying no to anything. My mother always used to say, when you fill in a form and it asks about race, never put 'other'. Tick the boxes for all the things you are." In Cabell's case this is African, American, Korean and Caucasian, visible in her striking, sharp cheek-boned, perfect oval face.
"I feel that I'm all these races. I'm excited watching Barack Obama, especially since I now live in Illinois. The idea of our own mixed-race senator being a presidential candidate makes me proud."
School music, in the southern Californian town of Ventura where she grew up, was limited. "I played flute in Junior High School, and had a natural musical ability, but it was all marching bands and sport and I thought: no way."
She only started singing at the age of 16. "I was crooning along to Kiri on a CD of my mother's, just fooling around. She was the one who said I really sounded like an opera singer and I should do something about it. I was more into bands like Def Leppard, Guns N' Roses and Nirvana."
She acknowledges that much as she loves the classical music she sings, she does not always find it easy.
"I'm like anyone of my generation. I've got a very short attention span. I have to work hard to get to know the music. I didn't even see an opera until I was at college."
One of her most valuable tools is her iPod, which she uses to help her learn roles. "I play it the whole time and spend a lot of time downloading, mostly CDs because I'm always on the road.
But if I'm not working, I'm as likely to be listening to Joni Mitchell or The Doors. You won't find a singer who'd listen to an opera for pleasure when they've been singing one all day! We need a break."
As she points out, opera was - broadly speaking - the pop of its time, and her appetite for all kinds of music, including rock, remains voracious.
"It's important for any performer to know what's going on, what's current. But it's hard to get Americans interested in opera. They tend to think going to a Broadway show is as good as it gets, culturally. It's so different in London."
How so? "I've heard that glamorous couples wanting a good night out go to the opera and drink champagne!" She is rumoured to be making her Royal Opera debut next season, when she can test out her wild hypothesis. The surprise is the degree to which Cabell resists the spotlight at all. "Yes, I've had stage fright. But once I'm up there, doing it, I love it."
She always imagined herself as a backroom girl, perhaps working behind the scenes in the film industry, as a writer or producer.
"I'm a real home body. Living in California, Hollywood was always there as part of the backdrop of childhood.
My best thing, if not going shopping, is being in a room on my own, sitting down for five hours and writing fiction. One day I'll go back to it, but for the moment I've got my hands full."
Fiona Maddocks
Evening Standard, London
Nicole Cabell’s CD debut, as winner of the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, shows versatility as this American lyric soprano’s strength. She encompasses Tippett and Menotti with the same voice of liquid gold as her conventional pieces by Charpentier and Donizetti. In her three Puccini arias she can sculpt slow legato phrases with a sensuality that twine them around you. Yet her rapid floridity is fearless in the long arias by Bellini and Berlioz. Her Gershwin “Summertime” is refreshingly direct. An outstanding launch.
Ian Dando
NZ Listener
This debut CD satisfies on almost every level and, as with her programme for Cardiff, she presents a thoughtful and unusual programme that avoids, for the most part, the usual bleeding chunks that have been recorded to death. Have no fear, though: here are Musetta’s ‘Quando me n’vò’, Magda’s ‘Chi il bel sogno di Doretta’ and Lauretta’s ‘O mio babbino caro’, sung with loveliness and a true sense of the meaning of the lyrics. Cabell’s rich tone is ideal for Puccini and these tracks indicate the promise of some exciting portrayals of his soprano roles in coming years. Indeed, she is about to record La bohème with Netrebko and Villazón for Deutsche Grammophon and will appear as Musetta at Covent Garden in July 2008.
But what excites me here is the inclusion of arias by Berlioz, Tippett and Menotti that on the one hand show Cabell’s flexibility as an artist and on the other make me want to revisit complete recordings of these pieces. The aria by Berlioz with which she brought the house down at Cardiff, ‘Entre l’amour et le devoir’ from Benvenuto Cellini, is equally impressive here. The voice is amazingly focussed and secure, ringing in the top register, and she spits the words out with exhilarating attack. ‘What a curse for woman is a timid man!’ from Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief finds the artist in equally thoughtful and inspiring form, while ‘How can I cherish my man in such days’ from A Child of Our Time is distinguished for Cabell’s complete change of character: the quality in her voice becomes more restrained and mournful to reflect the wartime context of Tippett’s lament.
Gounod’s Juliet is represented by two arias, namely the waltz and the potion aria. The former is wonderfully vivid and flirtatious, even if Cabell seems hard pushed occasionally with the faster coloratura passages (though it’s still exhilarating and would probably bring the house down if sung live with such emotion); the latter is the highlight – deeply emotive and capturing the suffering and experience of the young woman. Bellini’s Juliet (from I Capuleti e I Montecchi) is another imaginative and welcome inclusion and again a very assured and composed performance. Like Juliet’s waltz, Norina’s aria from Donizetti’s Don Pasquale is perhaps a bit hard-driven, but two French arias – Delibes’ Les Filles de Cadix and Charpentier’s ‘Depuis le jour’ from Louise – denote a repertoire that will serve the singer very well in the opera house. The Charpentier in particular lies ideally for her voice and is simply breathtaking.
Without doubt, though, the most personal performance on the disc is ‘Summertime’ from the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. Cabell’s part Afro-American background no doubt influenced her hugely sensitive interpretation of the aria. It’s the icing on the cake of a nearly perfect recording that has stayed in my CD player for days.
Dominic McHugh
MusicalCriticism.com
April 2007
The Cardiff Singer of the World competition has been a springboard to fame for many present day stars. One need only mention names like Karita Mattila, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Bryn Terfel and Lisa Gasteen. Last time, in 2005, the winner was California-born soprano Nicole Cabell, who was immediately signed up by Decca and recorded her debut recital in December that year. With the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis backing her the conditions of the project are the best possible. The playing is certainly superb, further enhanced by the excellent recording.
As for the singer, her first phrases of the well-known waltz aria from La Bohème made me sit up. Here was a voice with a personal timbre: bright, vibrant and with a ring that one more associates with heavier repertoire. It soon turned out that it was not just a voice: her phrasing was so natural, carefully judged no doubt but not in that calculated way that cries out: Listen! How good I am! This was something that came from within, from conviction rather than complacency. What I also felt though was a certain coldness. True, Musetta is a calculating woman but she is also warm and flirtatious, which didn’t quite come through in this reading. The tempo was certainly on the slow side but the singing wasn’t alluring enough. The next aria, also in ¾ time, the quick and virtuoso waltz from Roméo et Juliette, revealed that Ms Cabell’s trill and coloratura technique is in perfect shape. It was a true pleasure to hear this music sung with such full tone yet with elegance and lightness, but even here I missed some warmth.
Recitals of this kind tend to centre upon roughly the same hackneyed standard arias. This is natural enough, but Cabell was bold enough to include several rare numbers. The beautiful aria from the late lamented Gian-Carlo Menotti’s The Old Man and the Thief was an inspired choice and here, singing in her mother tongue, she appeared as warmer while retaining some steel in the voice. Indeed this was great singing, expressive and with well judged pianissimos. The dramatic act 4 aria from Roméo et Juliette also suited her better than the fairly empty waltz and here she created a character with face. She delivered a beautiful O mio babbino caro but, as with the Musetta aria, a little short on charm. For Les filles de Cadix she lightened the tone, it was lively and bouncy, impeccable singing but again that last ounce of charm, of caressing the phrases, was missing.
As Clara in Porgy and Bess she sang the famous lullaby with exquisite shadings, elegant portamenti and a slightly laid back, jazzy feeling. The same can be said of her excellent reading of How can I cherish my man in such days from Michael Tippett’s A Child of our Time, where she demonstrated her fine breath control. I haven’t seen the aria from Benvenuto Cellini included in a recital for ages, so this was another good choice. This three-part piece sets the soprano to severe test, especially the fast cabaletta-like third part. She came out of it with flying colours, showing off a perfect trill in the cadenza. It’s a far cry to the inward Louise aria, which she sang in long phrases and scaled down towards the end to a near whisper. Impressive!
The long aria from I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Bellini’s “Romeo and Juliet” opera, though not based on Shakespeare, opened with Timothy Brown playing the beautiful horn solo delivering an exquisite round tone. Ms Cabell’s opening phrase presented us with a nervously trembling Juliet. Then when the horn came back for a duet with the soprano there was a nice contrast between the mellow instrument and the bright voice. Helen Tunstall’s harp accompaniment to the aria proper should also be mentioned. Overall this aria was one of the most successful in the whole recital.
She may not have the creamy tones one ideally wants in Doretta’s dream but it was still a well considered reading with sensitive phrasing. The concluding aria, Norina’s entrance piece from Don Pasquale, was lively and up to the demands on nearly all accounts. Vocally it couldn’t be bettered, but I missed a smile in the voice – it was too straight-faced. But she is at the very beginning of her career and more stage experience will certainly add to her already well endowed armoury of expressive means. For pure singing she is full-fledged already. Indeed it is a remarkable voice and I am already longing to hear more from her – why not a complete opera? There is for example some Menotti to be recorded.
Göran Forsling
Recording of the Month MusicWeb April 2007
The voice does, indeed, have something of the pashmina about it: long, sinuous phrasing, warm tone and a sophistication that touches everything she sings. Cabell does no more and no less at present than simply sing the music that fits her voice best: Puccini, French opera and American song.
Every register of her voice is illuminated through her generous smile; there’s a sudden sense of lift-off into coloratura and an irresistible glide through every second of schmaltz. Whether experience or a new singing teacher will give her a wider palette of vocal colour, a sharper focus, a punchier edge to phrasing and inflection remains to be seen. But this audience was enthralled by her Musetta Quand m’en vo’ soletta per la via, by her Rondine Che il bel sogno di Doretta and by her Gounod Juliette Je veux vivre. She also brought close focus to three songs by Liszt, consummately accompanied by Simon Lepper.
And it was good to hear Ben Moore’s responses to Keats’s nightingale in his setting Darkling I listen, followed by a tricksy, witty performance of Amor, one of William Bolcom’s superb Cabaret Songs .
Bernstein’s arch I Hate Music spoke of “a lot of folks in a big dark hall where they really don’t want to be at all”.
Hilary Finch, The Times
Nicole's debut album will be a disc of arias in Italian, French and English with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis - one of Nicole Cabell's most important musical mentors.
The flirtatious Musetta in Puccini's La Bohème has become a 'calling card' role and her much loved 'Walz Song' 'Quando me'n vo' was a natural choice to start the album.
Four of the arias - by Bellini, Berlioz, Tippett, and Menotti - figured prominently in Nicole's Cardiff repertoire. She had sung several well-known pieces in the preliminary rounds, "but in the final round there was more eclectic music, including the aria from Tippett's A Child of Our Time and Teresa's aria from Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini, which I think is fabulous." Nicole feels a special obligation to perform in English: "As an American in Cardiff, I thought, 'What could you do, simply because of who you are, that could stand out?' I thought the piece from Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief was a wise choice."
“I am extremely honoured and excited to be recording for Decca. When I look at the incredible list of Decca artists I am joining, I feel especially humbled and look forward to this wonderful new collaboration. As a young artist, I couldn’t ask for a more amazing opportunity!” Nicole Cabell.
American soprano Nicole Cabell came to the attention of the opera world overnight when, in June 2005, she won what has become the most important competition for young opera singers and was crowned BBC Cardiff Singer Of The World. The competition jury included legendary singers Dame Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne and the win placed Nicole Cabell in a distinguished line of Cardiff prize-winners that includes Karita Mattila, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Bryn Terfel.