Boston Lyric Opera

“Alyson Cambridge…is a dynamic soprano with unlimited potential. She has a natural stage presence that carries her scenes. Vocally, her solos are unparalleled."
- Rob Levy, St. Louis Gateway Arts, Playback Magazine, May 2005

“Soprano Alyson Cambridge has a lovely voice … along with a magnetic stage presence and an attractive person.”
- Sarah Bryan Miller on Cambridge as Juliette in Romeo and Juliette, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 2005

You recently toured Japan as Frasquita in Carmen. What was it like performing in a different culture?
It was a very different experience than singing here, or even singing in Europe. Carmen has some real show stopper tunes and I was expecting raucous applause like you would hear in the United States but the audiences there are very polite. You felt the appreciation; it was just not as audible as it is here. After the show, we had so many fans. It was five city tour and some people saw us at all five different cities in Japan. We had a couple of guys follow us on to the platform at the train station to get our autographs and I had people give me envelopes already addressed and stamped saying “please, send me your headshot with your autograph.” So the fans are really diehard.

How do you prepare for very emotional scenes, such as Mimì’s death scene? How do you maintain your composure?
It takes a lot of practice vocally and emotionally. I think the only way to prepare yourself for the performance so that you can emote properly but not compromise your singing is to find that line. In the rehearsal process, you have to cross that emotional line where you might break down in tears. I sang Suor Angelica a few years ago and there’s a scene where the Princess comes in and she tells Suor Angelica that her illegitimate child has died. Suor Angelica sings this amazing aria about her child without a mother, senza mamma. During the rehearsal process, there was just one day I was so emotionally invested in the scene and I completely broke down crying. We had to go on with the scene, though, and I tried to sing through all the tears and the sniffling. I needed to go there to know what my boundaries were and I think it’s going to be the same thing with Mimì.

How do you prepare for a role that’s in a language that you don’t know very well?
A lot of coaching! When you don’t speak the language, the inflection just doesn’t come as naturally as if you do speak the language. So I really have to go through the text to make sure that I have a feel for the language in my mouth. So when I start singing it with all the notes, I already have that sense of how it should feel in my mouth and I can make the right choices musically.

When did you first start singing opera?
I started at a pretty young age; I was twelve. My mom used to listen to opera and I was at my friend’s house one day and I was joking around imitating an opera singer. And my neighbor’s mom said to me “you know, Alyson, that’s not half bad, maybe you should take some voice lessons.” So I went to this voice lesson and this woman said, “OK, your mom says you imitate opera singers, I want you to just sing a scale for me but do it in your opera voice.” I did it and she said, “Wait a minute, you’re only twelve?” She asked me what kind of music I liked; and I said, “Well I really love Whitney Houston and Tiffany and Madonna” and she goes “Well, dear, I really don’t think that that’s the kind of music you’re going to be singing. I’d really like to train you classically.” And that’s kind of how it all started.

You majored in voice performance and sociology at Oberlin College and Conservatory; do you feel like sociology has affected you in your opera career at all?
I don’t know if it’s necessarily influenced my opera career. I do take a lot of pride in being an intelligent singer, though. I was encouraged at different points in my college career to drop my sociology major. But as much as I was a musical person, I was always an academic person too. I worked hard to get good grades and I really enjoyed sociology. If I was stressed out from singing or opera rehearsals, then I could bury my head in a book and write a paper on some really interesting subject. I got just as much fulfillment out of that as I did in singing.

If you weren’t an opera singer, what do you think you’d be doing?
I think I’d be a lawyer. That was the other thing that I was considering in school. I think I’d be doing something within the law that was close to my heart, something that I believe passionately in—it would probably be something to do with women’s rights.