Soprano Elizabeth Futral grew into role of Violetta

By Andrew Adler • aadler@courier-journal.com • September 27, 2009

Looking at the length and breadth of her repertory, it's apparent that soprano Elizabeth Futral brings a ravenous curiosity to her life as a professional singer.

Although she may be best known for essaying the role of Violetta in Verdi's “La Traviata” — which gets its second and final performance Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Brown Theatre — her interests go back as far as Handel and can extend as far forward as Igor Stravinsky and Andre Previn. Within the general boundaries of being a lyric coloratura soprano, she has been decidedly fearless.

“It's been like this my whole career, and it doesn't seem to be stopping or slowing down,” Futral acknowledged during a recent interview before plunging into a full day of rehearsal. “I love learning new works and not allowing myself to get in any rut.”

A veteran of some of the world's most prestigious opera houses, trained at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Futral has learned how to be both adventuresome and patient in her choice of repertoire. “On the one hand, you sort of predicted that your voice might work well in certain repertory in a couple of years,” she said. “On the other hand, there are times when I say, ‘I just want to try this kind of music — and now that I'm a little older, maybe it will work.'”

You just have to know yourself, Futral emphasized, and how far you can push the most personal of musical instruments.

“As your voice matures, it gains a little bit of weight,” she explained, “and people do that in different ways in different parts of their voice. You just have to gauge yourself, with your teachers and with conductors who hear you, and say, ‘You can do this well.'”

Indeed, Violetta was one of those roles that initially gave her pause. “The first time I did it was sort of a trial run,” she said, recalling her debut in the assignment 10 years ago at the now-defunct Opera Pacific. “I felt it was a fairly safe place to try it out. But I felt a little daunted by it and put it back on the shelf. I waited 2½ years before I tackled it again, in Denver. It felt much more manageable. I could meet it head-on.”

Almost before she knew it, Futral seemed to be singing Violetta all across the fruited plain.
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“I really got hooked by it,” she said of “La Traviata,” “and by her. I made a pact to myself that I wanted to do one ‘Traviata' a year until I couldn't see anymore. I think I told my husband. And it has come true.”

Has it ever. Over the last couple of seasons, Futral has sung Violetta at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Washington National Opera, San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera and Deutsche Oper in Berlin, and later this season, she'll sing the role at the San Diego Opera.

All of these companies are substantially larger than Kentucky Opera. But Louisville holds an advantage those other cities can't match: Futral's parents live here, having moved to the city when their daughter was in her teens (she grew up largely in Covington, La.).

Because “La Traviata” is “on the heavier side” compared to what she often sings, Futral chose to wait until she gained “emotional maturity and the vocal maturity” necessary to take on Verdi's celebrated Fallen Woman.

“It's one of the most demanding roles,” Futral said. It took her quite a while before she gained “a larger sense of the depth of this woman — being able to get closer to understanding who she was and what she was feeling. I couldn't possibly have felt those things at 25.”

Futral herself wears her interpretive passions frankly. “You have to know how to handle the emotions of the piece while trying to sing, and how it affects your voice,” she said. “There are several moments of the opera where I really feel on the verge of tears” — particularly in the climax of Act Two, when Violetta agrees to leave her lover, Alfredo, after his father, Germond, says she will disgrace their family.

“That point of desperation happens,” Futral said, “and there's still more singing to do. When you try to fight that, you get a lump in your throat and it tightens — that's the absolutely worst thing that can happen to your voice.”

Reporter Andrew Adler can be reached at (502) 582-4668.