Camille Lopez sings her own time
November 25, 2002 | 12:00am
Vienna-based Filipino soprano Camille Lopez describes herself as a traumatic soprano. Traumatic? Don’t you mean dramatic, I ask her.
At this point in her career, Lopez feels she’s better off ignoring labels. "I really hate submitting resumes," she says. "One of the first lessons in creating a music career is to have a clear idea of what category you belong to."
It’s a problem she has discussed with her voice teacher, who convinced her that what is important is not how she boxed herself as a singer but knowing exactly the operatic roles she can sing. Although her teacher has pigeonholed her as being a spinto soprano, she feels she’s more of a dramatic soprano, even a high-voiced mezzo soprano.
"I will be putting myself in trouble if I declare myself a spinto, when my voice is basically dramatic, even mezzo, because I’m most comfortable in Cavalleria Rusticana, Eboli in Don Carlo and Ortrud in Lohengrin. At the same time on an international level, my voice is not as big as real mezzos."
Another issue she has difficulty coming to grips with being more forthright about her talent.
"There are lots of opportunities, but there are lots of competition," she admits. "You have to make your presence felt because that will give you an edge. You will have to blow your own trumpet, and blow it as loud as you can. And that’s what I’m having a hard time doing."
Lopez has been in Vienna since 1996, soaking in opera and the musical life in this part of the world. The road to an international operatic career is long and arduous and she feels it is here where her luck might just come.
Classical music and opera have been suffering a dwindling public worldwide, a fact she believes is true. In Europe, she says only Germany and Austria continue to have a strong following for the musical arts. Elsewhere, in artistic centers like France and Italy, the number of concert and opera goers are slowly going down, brought on by the lack of a young crowd.
Despite this drop in audience, there are still many hopefuls in search of that right break that will give them a crack at world stardom.
She has dropped out of conservatory, preferring private lessons when her schedule permits it. She works full-time at the Philippine Embassy in Vienna as a consular assistant, processing passports for the more than 25,000 Filipino nationals in this part of Europe. It’s a 9-to-5 job, which she admits gets in the way of her musicmaking.
"I need to get away from that and find a job singing, or else I might end up staying there forever," she quips.
All this has not daunted her hopes, yet. When she realized she wanted to pursue a career singing opera, she already knew it wasn’t going to be an easy life.
"I just didn’t foresee it to be so much more difficult," Lopez adds. "The music industry that covers opera is totally different from what we know here in the Philippines. It requires a different mentality, a different kind of attitude."
She believes she has more to offer than all the other upstarts she meets when she does the rounds of choral auditions.
"Sometimes, when I look around the room, I feel as if I were competing with professionals, people who already have a careers. The way they carry themselves and the way they talk to you, you would really think they’re obnoxious. But when they start singing, I realize they are still just students like me. It’s all in a matter of attitude and mental preparation. Unahan lang talaga, golpe de gulat," she explains.
Maybe, she has learned to blow her own trumpet a bit. But her credentials prove her talent. Lopez has sung in numerous productions, concerts and recitals here in the Philippines and abroad. Her stage performances include: for Chase International, Mama Euralie in Ahrens and Flaherty’s Once on this Island; Jack’s Mother in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods; for the University of the Philippines Malikka in Delibes’ Lakme and Giulietta in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann; Metella in Offenbach’s La Vie Parisienne; Fanny in Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio; and for the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, Mimi in Puccini’s La Bohème, the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and the Marschallin in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. She has also appeared as Mrs. Grose in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, Flora for Art and Music’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata, and as a soloist with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, she has sung in Bruckner’s Mass in C-minor, Vivaldi’s Magnificat, Mozart’s Requiem and Verdi’s Messa da Requiem.
She has no regrets so far. She realized singing would be her life even as a young child. She started playing the piano at an early age, but found the discipline not to her liking.
"I just didn’t have the patience to practice, especially the pieces that my teacher would assign me," she explains. "I didn’t have a hard time working on the music that I liked, but not the music I had to practice."
She knew singing was for her when she was in grade school.
"I got a different feeling singing," she says. "Whenever I sang, it was like I was pouring out my soul. That was the deciding point in my life. I was 11 years old."
Wasn’t this suprising considering that her mom, Dr. Myrna Lopez, is a choral conductor?
"My mom didn’t influence me in any way," she declares.
Even if with much effort in Austria she doesn’t clinch success, she would be perfectly happy just finding work as a chorister in one of Europe’s many opera houses or coming home to the Philippines, coaching other singers find their voices.
"Okay lang sa akin," she admits, with a laugh. "I don’t want so much pressure that I will no longer enjoy singing. I’m being practical, yes. But at least when I come back here, I’ll come home knowing that I did my best, that I gave it a try."
For her concert for the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Filipino Artists Series tomorrow night, Lopez sings a program of lieder, operetta arias, Spanish songs and kundiman. Pianist Najib Ismail accompanies her on the piano.
"I didn’t want a program that is too cerebral," she says. "I’m singing songs that I like, that I think the audience will like. I’m not even singing any opera this time."
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