Profile | Canadian mezzo-soprano on finding her feet at the Metropolitan Opera, the anxiety to perform well, and why singing Carmen scares her
- Carolyn Sproule was sure from a young age she wanted to be a singer, but put so much pressure on herself as a Juilliard student she began to have doubts
- Now, she tells Kate Whitehead, she accepts the butterflies that come before a performance such as the title role in Opera Hong Kong’s production of Carmen
The sound of music I was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1988. I’d wanted to be a singer since I was four years old. My father is a lawyer and my mother a risk manager – they are both open-minded, curious people and were happy to nurture me doing whatever I wanted to do. My mother rented The Sound of Music movie when I was four and I fell in love with Julie Andrews. Every week we went to the video store to rent a movie and every week I’d ask for The Sound of Music.
When I was five, my mum bought me a Fisher-Price recording device and I’d go to the basement for hours and record myself singing over and over. I had the usual short attention span of a kid, but when it came to music, I could spend hours fixated. My mum tried to get me singing lessons when I was five, but no teacher would take on a five-year-old and they suggested she start me on piano. So I started learning at five and then started dance and acting lessons. In eighth grade, I sang O Holy Night in the school Christmas concert and felt very comfortable on stage.
Laser focus Throughout my teenage years, my goal was to learn one new song a week – to really learn how to play it properly on the piano and sing it. When I came home from school, I wouldn’t watch television, I’d go straight to the piano and play and sing. Pretty consistently, my singing and music teachers were telling me to take it a little easier; I was so keen.
There were so many amazing artists to listen to and learn from, there are so many interesting aspects to this art form – the languages, the style, the acting, the tradition of the artists that have done it before you – I found it an endlessly fascinating world.
When I was 14, my mother remarried and was moving to South Carolina (in the United States), I didn’t want to move there. I heard about an amazing boarding school called Interlochen Arts Academy, in Michigan, and applied and was accepted. I was there a year – it was a wonderful place, set in nature, where you did half the day in academic classes and half the day in music and acting and languages – and then I transferred to a similar school outside Boston, where there was a voice teacher who was amazing.
Claim to fame Ever since I saw the movie Save the Last Dance, about a ballerina who wanted to go to Juilliard (a New York school for performing arts), I knew that was what I wanted to do. It was very difficult to get in, so I knew it had to be the best place. It had been a goal for such a long time but when I got there it was different from what I’d expected; it was a difficult time for me. It was a school where there was a lot of pressure and as I was such a perfectionist the combination was tough.
Between the ages of 18 and 21 is a time when there should be a lot of ups and downs, you fail, it’s part of the learning process, but to me it didn’t feel that it was going to be OK to take a risk. I began to doubt that this was what I wanted to do. I thought I needed to not obsess so much about the singing, so I applied for an exchange programme with Columbia University midway through my first year. I got the chance to study political science, economics, neuroscience and even did a semester of Mandarin [Chinese]. I really enjoyed exploring things other than music.
Soul singer By my third year at Juilliard, I was getting a lot of performance anxiety. I put so much pressure on myself and was thinking I didn’t want to be a singer any more. I heard about a great voice teacher, Stephen King, who in the summer teaches at the Aspen Music Festival and School. I was accepted to study with him and that was when everything changed.
He had a way of talking about singing that was very technical and physiological and it helped me so much, I rediscovered my natural voice and this pure expression of my soul and spirit. We had just one hour a week together – I would record the session and spend the subsequent six days listening to it over and over again, transcribing it, thinking about it.
Opera singing is so technical, it’s incredible how some words can completely change your physiology and ability to sing high and low, loud and soft. Within six weeks there was no question; I knew I wanted to be a singer.
Bundles of energy I finished my degree and went to Houston to study with Stephen at Rice University, and spent the next two years of my master’s degree working with him. Typically, after your master’s in music as an opera singer, you do a young artist programme or an apprenticeship at an opera house. I did it at Houston Grand Opera Studio, which was fantastic, there was a lot of opportunity to go on stage, and I continued to work with Stephen there.
Things really transformed, I went from doubting what I was doing to loving it. Throughout the education process and even as a professional artist, you have so many people giving you their opinion. There are so many aspects, you want to give a good performance in terms of the sound, passion and energy but also in terms of the language, acting and artistry.
I think it was trying to do all of that really, really well, it just overwhelmed me and caused a lot of anxiety, which is something I’m still working with. I’ve learned that you can see it all as energy, you can put so much energy and focus into a performance and those butterflies – also energy – can be a positive thing. Sometimes, if you are relaxed and too complacent it’s not the best performance.
Family fortune It’s quite a big transition from young artist to professional, you have to get an agent, which can be tricky, and you have to get your first jobs. During my first year of the young artist programme I did a lot of auditions and didn’t get any jobs or an agent. I was a few months into my second year and getting a little nervous when, finally, an agent wanted to work with me – which was great, but there were still no jobs.
It’s my first time in Hong Kong. I found the 21-day quarantine difficult at times, but then I’d pinch myself because I’m literally living my four-year-old self’s dream – I’m here to sing Carmen
It was quite perplexing because I was getting good feedback, but no one wanted to take a chance. I was getting a little worried midway through my second year in 2014. I had nothing lined up for my next year, and I auditioned for a bunch of companies and then for the Metropolitan Opera. The Met gave me a contract as an understudy for the following fall and, a week later, gave me another contract to sing in the opera Hansel and Gretel, and a couple of days after that they offered two more contracts. In the end, they offered me jobs for the whole season. Now I’ve been at the Met for six seasons, it feels like a family.
Sweet taste of freedom I’m so grateful for everything I have manifested, but it’s amazing in this career how often you don’t get the job. There have been instances where I have really wanted something and I’ve worked super hard for it and didn’t get it, and that can be difficult. As the pandemic was hitting, I got to sing my first leading role at the Met in Così fan tutte, it was amazing to sing a whole big opera on that stage.
Other than the Met, I’ve been a freelancer working in Canada and the US and a little in Europe, and I’m super excited to be in Asia. It’s my first time in Hong Kong. I found the 21-day quarantine difficult at times, but then I’d pinch myself because I’m literally living my four-year-old self’s dream – I’m here to sing Carmen, which is a dream role.
There is something about this character that scares me a little bit, which is part of the reason I’ve been dying to sing her. She is very different from me, so there is something freeing in playing a character who you would not be in your real life. Carmen is completely unedited, she is herself 100 per cent of the time. Because she is a gypsy and a woman, she can’t really be free – it’s a patriarchal society – but she’s aspiring to be free.
