Stepping Onstage as a Waitress, She May Exit the Met as a Star

New York Times
April 1, 2006
Stepping Onstage as a Waitress, She May Exit the Met as a Star
By DANIEL J. WAKIN

Until 18 months ago, Erika Sunnegardh, a soprano, had never sung an opera role on stage.

For nearly 20 years she toiled as a waitress, caterer and tour guide in New York. Sure, there was singing: a few recitals and plenty of funerals as a church cantor in the Bronx. Often the choice boiled down to rent or voice lessons.

But in a story that will give a jolt of hope to every would-be performer with a serving tray, Ms. Sunnegardh, 40, has been assigned to appear today at the Metropolitan Opera in the title role of Beethoven's "Fidelio" as a last-minute substitute for an ailing Karita Mattila. What's more, the performance is one of the house's Saturday radio broadcasts, heard by 10 million people around the world.

Compare it to the Yankees starting a pitcher who had done nothing more than toss batting practice, or the president appointing a beat cop as defense secretary. In the annals of opera, it ranks with Plácido Domingo stepping in for Franco Corelli in 1968 to make his Met debut.

Astonishingly, the Met embraced Ms. Sunnegardh solely on the basis of two brief auditions in May 2004, well before her first appearance on any opera stage.

She was engaged to cover for Ms. Mattila in the current run of "Fidelio" and to give one performance, on April 13. She is also covering Elsa in this season's "Lohengrin" and will sing a Valkyrie during the Met's tour to Japan in June. Next season, she will sing the First Lady in Mozart's "Magic Flute," will cover Elettra in his "Idomeneo," and in the biggest break of all, will share a run of Puccini's "Turandot" in the spring of 2007.

"We were amazed at how big the voice was, especially at the top," said Jonathan Friend, the Met's artistic administrator and main talent searchlight. She had other attributes, he said: beauty and maturity. "She was, as a human being, grown up," he said. "She had had another life, and knew what she didn't know."

Mr. Friend cautioned against raising expectations too high. He noted that Ms. Sunnegardh was still working on improving the middle of her voice. More immediately, he added, "To ask somebody to make their Met debut on a broadcast of a role this size and difficulty, replacing Karita — it's asking a lot."

Met officials said they could not recall a similar debut, particularly for a singer of such relatively advanced age. Joseph Volpe, the Met's general manager, wrote about her discovery in his memoir, "The Toughest Show on Earth," which will be published next month.

"Not since Rosa Ponselle's debut in 1918, opposite Caruso in 'La Forza del Destino,' has the Met given an unknown singer such an opportunity," Mr. Volpe wrote.

Ms. Sunnegardh said last night that she felt bad that the opportunity came at the expense of Ms. Mattila. But she added, "I'm excited, I have to admit." She said having 24 hours' notice before a performance as a cover was a luxury, because "It feels like everything is in place."

In an interview on Thursday, before learning that she was to go on stage today, Ms. Sunnegardh, who lives in Riverdale, spoke for two hours at an Upper West Side cafe about her difficult road. She was articulate and seemed self-assured and relaxed, occasionally brushing back a wisp of ash-blond hair.

The humbleness of waiting on tables, she said, prepared her to deal with the pressure of a big career. Singing at funerals taught her that musical performance was not a celebration of the ego but something to be transmitted to other individuals. Years of struggle freed her from the debilitating fear of failure.

"It's an interesting life, but I am so ridiculously and gleefully happy and blessed," Ms. Sunnegardh said. "There's something to be said for running into the wall. Falling down and picking yourself up is great life experience."

Ms. Sunnegardh's career was delayed despite an impeccable musical pedigree. Both parents were prominent voice teachers in Sweden, and a half-brother is a tenor. Her father, Arne, was the last teacher of Birgit Nilsson, the legendary Swedish soprano, and a touring accompanist for the tenor Jussi Bjoerling, another great. She had superb training in Stockholm, attending a choir school and studying modern dance.

At 19, restless at the conformist nature of Swedish society and feeling what she called the normal desire of a teenager to escape one's family, she came to New York to dance. "I had those little misguided dreams," she said. "It was probably mostly a cover for getting away from home." Her manager, Ann Braathen, suggested that Ms. Sunnegardh may have wanted to escape the pressure of her heritage.

She eventually went to the Manhattan School of Music, graduating in 1992, but was poorly trained. Her voice was bell-like and clear, but not under control, "sort of like a wild horse," she said.

Ms. Sunnegardh's voice leans to that of the dramatic soprano, the heaviest and most powerful of the soprano categories, and one that generally develops late anyway. Lyric sopranos, by contrast, can be fully formed in their 20's.

Without technical assurance, Ms. Sunnegardh lacked confidence. "Vocal technique is like money or sex," she explained. "If you don't have it, it's all you think about."

She worked in restaurants to make ends meet, sometimes waiting on former colleagues and teachers. "It's hard. I was 30 years old and waitressing, and didn't have any proof I'd do anything else." She catered parties, serving canapés to members of Lincoln Center boards, among others, and worked as a personal assistant to an executive and translator.

In 1996, brought in by a music-loving pastor, she began singing at Holy Rosary Church in the Bronx. "I got a weekly dose of feeling needed, yet egoistically very insignificant," she said.

Ms. Sunnegardh went back to school, earning a master's degree from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. And then came a teaching breakthrough.

"I went through a lot of soul-searching," she said. "That's when I realized the only person I hadn't asked for help on a very technical level was my mother." It was a difficult thing to do, Ms. Sunnegardh said, but the focus — a sort of narrowing — that her mother, Margareta, gave to her voice was the turning point. She then moved to a teacher named Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs, with whom she still studies. Ms. Blancke-Biggs, in turn, opened her voice, teaching her to "let it rip."

Another turning point came on a sweltering summer day in 2003, Ms. Sunnegardh said, when she found herself dressed in a polyester tuxedo with a wine bottle in each hand while catering a Hamptons wedding, near tears with the futility of her efforts. Ms. Sunnegardh said she shook off the self-pity and took stock of the good things in her life. "It sort of pulled the plug on the drama of going out and singing for people." She began auditioning that fall.

In January 2004, she contacted Ms. Braathen, whom she had long known. Ms. Braathen's family had taken in the 6-year-old Ms. Sunnegardh for a time when her father died. Ms. Braathen listened to a CD of her singing. "It was stunning," she said. The manager arranged an audition for the Malmo Opera, which immediately hired her to sing "Turandot" in September 2004, which would become her debut.

In March 2004, Ms. Braathen was chatting with Mr. Friend, of the Met, and dropped Ms. Sunnegardh's name. He probed a bit, asked to hear her and was so impressed that he arranged for James Levine, the Met's music director, to listen to Ms. Sunnegardh on the Met's main stage. Mr. Levine was enthusiastic.

Since then, Ms. Sunnegardh has sung another "Turandot" in Sweden, several orchestra concerts there, and a "Fidelio" with the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee.

Ms. Sunnegardh continued waitressing until two weeks before her Malmo debut. She had credit card bills to pay, after all. "It's 15 years of creeping debt," she said.