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According to the Boston Herald, soprano Kelly Kaduce has “star written all over her.” The Hollywood Reporter says “Kaduce sings beautifully, with a clarity and melting delicacy in her upper register that is hard to resist …” And the St. Louis Gateway says her “raw energy and angelic voice cuts through the stillness of the air, roaring and shaking the audience.” Recently, Ms. Kaduce spoke to BLO’s Leah Moens about her career and what it means to be a “Diva.”
Thaïs is both a Company and role debut for you. How do you approach a new role?
The part that excites me the most is looking at a role dramatically and coming up with dramatic ideas that engage me. I like to see what can I do for the character to make it exciting to me and in turn make it exciting for the audience.
What percentage of your time on stage would you consider singing and what percentage acting?
It’s a hundred percent on both sides (laughs). I focus on the acting because once that is free, everything else is able to be free; your voice becomes free, all of it comes full circle. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I think the ideal is an audience so engrossed in the drama that perhaps they forget that you are even singing.
Thaïs is the last installment in our Diva Season. What is your reaction to the word “Diva” and what makes this role a “diva role?”
Well, I wouldn’t classify myself as a Diva. [laughs] I think “Diva” has come to represent someone who is difficult and demands being the center of attention—at least that’s what I associate it with! So I’m not a Diva—I don’t enjoy being difficult! [laughs] In a role like Thaïs, or Violetta, or Lucie … a large role that spans so much music and so much text, you have an opportunity to show what you can do both musically and dramatically … With the girls in The Diva Season, you have such an exciting transition to show and not only are you doing vocal acting, but you also get to do physical acting. That’s a thrill to be able to do as a performer: to play a character that is so multi-dimensional.
What is your favorite role to sing?
That’s a tough question to answer because I usually find something in every character that I really love. Marguerite in Faust and the title role in Suor Angelica come to mind because they both have such emotional arcs. It’s really fun when you get to make big transitions on stage. Marguerite specifically because she starts out as this innocent, naïve soprano girl and by the end she is just cuckoo! I really enjoy performing something that is so broad. Thaïs does the opposite—she starts out crazy and then ends up humble.
Do you think the story of Thaïs is still resonant today even though our society is dramatically different?
I look at Thaïs as a love story, and how love can mean different things to different people. Love to Thaïs means physical love—it’s more of an ethereal pure love that she later finds through Athanaël. For him of course, love is his demise and downfall—he starts out with a pure love and gets caught up in the physical love. I think love translates over all boundaries and over all kinds of crazy plots no matter what they may be!
You weren’t an opera singer by training until you came to Boston in 1996—then what happened?
I started as a biology major in my undergrad. I always sang—my first solo was when I was about four years old in church. So I always enjoyed it, but I never thought you could make a career out of it! I didn’t experience classical music—in particular, opera—until my undergraduate and at about halfway through I changed to voice. I think the switch happened some time in my undergrad. During my sophomore year I had participated in a little one-act operetta and some of the voice teachers came up to me and said: “You know, I really think you should switch your major—you’ve really got something there vocally.” I thought, “Wow, I never thought you could make a career doing it.” It was actually just as simple as that: them saying something and it was kind of a snap! I changed my major. I never really looked back or questioned it. I said my next steps are: I need to get a really good teacher and I need to get out of Minnesota and I need to go someplace where there are more options for this career and through kind of a crazy turn of events I ended up at Boston University.
What is the most difficult aspect of your career? The most rewarding?
The toughest thing is traveling and not having a secure home base. I have a home in Texas, but I am so seldom there. One rewarding thing is being able to give myself a challenge. A challenge to overcome: whether it be vocal or technical or an acting challenge. It’s very rewarding to be on stage and overcome that challenge. Also, you never know how an audience is going to react. When you give so much of yourself and you risk so much … to have an audience respond to you, I think that is the most rewarding thing.
What’s up next for you?
I have been on the road since January and I will not be home until mid-June—I don’t even have time to go home and repack! After Thaïs I go straight to St. Louis to sing Jane Eyre. And then I get to go home!
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