By Natasha Barbieri
When I transferred to Andrews it was a leap of faith and I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of their vocal program. I remember walking into my first choral rehearsal with Stephen Zork and the Andrews University choral and feeling quite apprehensive. We sang ‘The Lord Bless you and Keep you’ and when the time for the tenor solo arrived I heard this beautiful big voice bellowing out from across the room. I was completely taken back and yes, I admit, a little intimidated. Eventually, I got to know Anthony as more than just the voice that projected above ALL of us in choral. He is one of the most confident performers I have known and someone I respect for being unabashedly himself. Anthony has the kind of voice that is special enough, with the right guidance, to create a wonderful career for himself in opera.
“I guess I listened to some classical music as a kid because my parent’s listened to it,” he says very matter of factly. “Other than that I got into listening to classical music because I joined choir my senior year in high school – which is also how I started singing. As far as opera goes, my mom tells me that I started singing opera when I was three years old. Having watched an old cartoon called, ‘The Whale who wanted to sing at the Met’ and she said I started imitating him. I have no idea how it sounded, probably hilarious. And then I just kind of always had it in my head that I could ‘sing opera.’ I don’t do anything with it but just used it as a party trick sometimes and then my choir teacher from high school heard me and told me that I should be a voice major.” After joining the choir for a year Anthony says, “I decided to just go with it.”
Anthony eventually decided on attending Andrews University, because of the scholarships they offered and it was also the school his parents went to. At Andrews, Anthony developed his talent under the instruction of Stephen Zork and others. He quickly was singled out for solo’s in the select choirs, and also participated in opera scenes and productions which included, L’amico Fritz, HMS Pinafore, The Stingiest Man in Town and The Pirates of Penzance. He also further developed his musicianship in the Andrews Wind Symphony and became their principal trumpet. It was during this that Anthony began to audition for competitions thanks to the encouragement of an adjunct professor, Cristina Piccardi.
“She was good friends with Andrew Fisher and I, and decided that we were old enough to just start doing these things and getting used to them. So she told us about them and said that we should try them and we both said, ‘That sounds great.’ We both had to take a look at the list of arias that we knew, and we went over them with Cristina and she did a lot of coaching with us to see which ones were viable. That was the point that she handed me ‘Che gelida manina’ the La Boheme aria. She actually taught me that aria and coached me through learning it. She also gave me ‘Pourquoi me reveiller’ from Werther and that one I actually memorized in the car while driving to the Metropolitan Opera competition.” Of course, he did, trust Anthony to pull that off. “It was all just Cristiana’s mastermind, and then Andrew and I going along with it. It was a really good experience to just do it. Especially somewhere where we weren’t going to audition again.”
It was about the same time that Cristina began to encourage Anthony to pursue young artist programs over the summer. “She sent me a link for the Ferro Vocal Program in Italy and that was one of the few that was still open for auditions that late. So I went ahead and send them a tape and went to Italy that summer and sang with them.” It was an important step in realizing how his career should move forward. “Talking to those teachers there and getting some insider information allowed me to open my mind to what opera as a profession really was.”
Anthony continued to audition for various competitions including the Lyric Opera of Chicago. “I went in with the same arias that I had done for the Met audition and at that point, I was like ‘There is no possible way I’m going to be getting into this program or move on to any next level’. So I was pretty much doing it for the fun of it just getting another audition under my belt. I wasn’t thinking very much of it.” Anthony sang the aria ‘Pourquoi me reveiller.’ He says, “They asked me a whole bunch of questions afterward about how young I was and about Andrews because they’d never heard of it before and then they asked for ‘Che gelida manina’ which went also really great – it was definitely a good vocal day! They asked me quite a few more questions after that and then said out of the blue ‘How would you like to be in the finals’ and I was like [stuttering] ‘That…. Would be great.’ And I was completely blown away.”
When the time came from the finals Anthony had prepared a new aria ‘Di rigori armato il seno’ from Rosenkavalier. He had performed the piece once in St. Joseph with Paul Mao and also had coaching on it with Alen Darling (one of the coaches at the Lyric Opera of Chicago). “He had really liked that aria in my voice and thought it was a good addition to my list. So I went ahead and switched out one of the arias from my list.” The pressure was on. “I sang that for them because they requested it as the second aria, and I completely bombed the entire aria and cracked the high B and it was very dramatic, excitedly horrendous,” he says laughing. If there’s one thing about Anthony it’s his inability to let a mistake keep him down for long. “I did not actually get into the program. It was a very good experience, it taught me a lot about how easy it is to lose track of your technique when you are nervous and you are actually worried about what you are auditioning for rather than doing what you know you can do.”
He explains further, “The Met competition I wasn’t really expecting much, I was nervous definitely but not overly. Then the Chicago one initially I wasn’t nervous at all because I wasn’t expecting anything. I had just a normal little flutter in my stomach maybe but for the final one, I was terrified. Super, super nervous and was not handling it well. I’ve since learned some technique for calming myself that I did not have then.”
Techniques for nerves? Do share! “Well, when I went to the AIMS program in Austria they had a teacher there who was giving a pep talk on stage nerves basically. They had done some studies about subconscious reactions your body has to certain actions, one of them is if you take your hands and extend them out straight out from your body up in the air. It’s an autonomic response that your body has to making yourself bigger and it releases testosterone into your body. Testosterone is the opposite of cortisol (the hormone that produces the nervous feeling) so it counteracts that feeling of nervousness. The other one is to ‘bear your teeth’. The way they said to do that was by putting a pencil in your teeth, but you can also do that by smiling and just by ‘bearing your teeth.’ It has that same kind of response which helps you to feel less nervous in general. We call the hands straight out the ‘power pose.’ So now whenever I’m at an audition right before I go onto the stage, I have a pencil in my teeth doing the power pose and it’s just a kind of a thing I do before everything. I constantly have people asking me, ‘What are you doing?’ and I say, ‘I’m doing power pose.’” His pose has become popular amongst his friends at Washington University and even beyond.
“It’s really amazing how well it works… honestly, the ‘power pose’ is very effective. If for no other reason than to be a placebo that feels funny to do and you laugh and it relaxes you. I mean I totally believe the autonomic response as well but if it works because it’s a placebo why do I care?”
The AIMS program also opened the doors for potential management for Anthony. “There were a couple of managers who gave me their cards and told me to call them as soon as I move to Europe. Which basically pretty much everyone in Europe assumes that for Americas it’s a guarantee that they will end up moving to Europe at some time,” he says in good humor. Anthony is not sure if that is the right door for him but says that the offers were “a great kind of encouraging moment to get anyway.”
Part of building a career is deciding which opportunities to go for and also learning to say no. Anthony was offered the role of Don Jose in Carmen and although he initially accepted decided it was not the right thing at this time. “I realized in the end that it wasn’t actually within my fach and that I was probably overextending myself to try something that heavy this early in my career. And they had someone else they could fill the stop with so I respectfully declined.”
At this time Anthony is singing Lyric tenor repertoire although it is too young to judge. He is currently in his senior year at the University of Washington. At this point, he doesn’t see a Master’s program in his future. “In general traditional educational systems have always been sort of difficult for me. Not because I struggle with school intellectually but because I don’t fit well within the system. I question things too much,” he laughs.
What are his dreams for the future? “I would definitely love to perform Rodolfo and the Duke of Mandtour would definitely be high on my list.” As for the wonderful world of crossover, Anthony is open to whatever opportunities come his way. “I could definitely see myself doing crossover work. Here at the University of Washington, I got asked once to do a musical theater duet and I really, really enjoyed doing that. And it actually fit really well within my voice.” His duet partner was thrilled as were several more in the audience. Anthony has since been asked to perform more musical theatre songs. “I’ve been working on a solo piece for someone’s recital right now called the ‘Hundred Story City’ and I’ve been doing a couple of other non-classical things and it’s really enjoyable. Honestly, I would be just as happy doing musical theater s a profession as I would opera.”
