7 minute read
Francesca Chiejina Opera star rocking London
Soprano Francesca Chiejina is one of the rising stars of the opera world. Over the past couple of years, she has appeared in several productions in the UK including Puccini’s La bohème, Handel’s Amadigi, as the soloist in Berg’s Seven Early Songs and Britten’s Miss Jessel in Turn of the Screw.
She is currently on an eight-month contract with the UK’s Royal Opera House. She will be touring and taking part in numerous performances including as the High Priestess in Aida in London, which runs until spring 2023.
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In this exclusive interview, she tells Omar Ben Yedder how she became so passionate about this form of art and why more needs to be done to encourage greater diversity in the industry.
Francesca Chiejina
The soprano with the luscious voice
African vocalists have explored and triumphed in virtually all forms of singing from choral to pop and everything in-between, but there have hardly been any opera singers from the continent – apart from a small but highly electric group from South Africa including the great soprano Pumeza Matshikiza and Pretty Yende. Perhaps the lack of role models in the rest of Africa has contributed to this. If so, the Nigerian-American Francesca Chiejina (below right) is on song to change all this.
She came into opera much later than is usual for this most exacting of vocal disciplines – when she was about 20. Her route was also unusual, she arrived via studying classical music. and says that opera is such a weird genre that no journey is conventional. Her parents were aspirational and introduced her and her siblings to music at a young age. “I think I was the only one that stuck to it. My brother was more of a computer guy.” Her parents took the age of seven, but she fell asleep, she admits.
Chiejina left Nigeria at the age of 10, carrying her violin as hand luggage, to go to the US with her parents. She credits the US schooling instruments and arts. She picked up America. Music lessons were free and she was often part of orchestras and choirs. She recalls that people often said she had ‘a voice’ and that there was something there but she was focused on a medical career.
But the feeling that she had something special in her voice and her increasing love of music kept nagging at her. “I started to think about music again. I thought, OK, I’m young, this is the time to take a risk.” But there were lots of tears; her parents thought she was having a mid-life crisis. “But they were supportive,” she recalls. “My mom accompanied me to my audition, and both said that I was a grown-up and it was up to me to do whatever I needed to.” She got a Fulbright scholarship to study music and later gained entry into the famous Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. parents even more – if someone else believed in there had to be some talent there.
Singing came about literally by accident. She broke her left ankle playing soccer, which meant she had to She joined the choir because she had heard it was an easy grade and she already knew how to read music. It was there that she discovered that she really enjoyed it.
The main characters in operatic drama are generally played by sopranos and tenors. As such, Cheijina says, they are the most stress-inducing roles also.
No such thing as a fi nished article
feels she’s improving but thinks that article. “As I get more experience, as my voice ages, as my body ages, it will just be a constant work in progress.
“That was hard when I was a young
line. But it’s also what I like about it. It’s always challenging me, so I’m never coasting.”
At 31, Chiejina is still young in her industry. She estimates that sopranos don’t reach their peak until they’re in their 40s. And even then, you’re still practising numerous hours a week.
Chiejina describes herself as an opera geek. In her spare time, on YouTube. To this day, she says, watching and listening to opera brings her emotions that nothing else does. “Opera is so dramatic on its own. The range in which sopranos sing really strikes to people’s core. I know when I hear a lot of sopranos sing, I get chills.”
We met Chiejina in Covent Garden, a stone’s throw from the Royal Opera House. It was a little after the tennis star Serena Williams’ retirement. Williams was seen as an inspiration to so many young Black girls but opera is still very much a White environment and also seen as the preserve of the privileged.
She acknowledges that opera does have its issues when it comes to diversity, and, also, she adds, it had its #metoo moment, although it was not as public as in other industries.
As for her own role models, she says that the spark and catalyst for diving in and pursuing a degree in music was hearing black sopranos on YouTube. I heard Marilyn Horne, who is not Black but was one of the Leontyne Price and seeing their faces and features I just thought, I could be at home here if I play my cards right.”
Getting more young Black women to join her industry is like to spend more time doing. But she pushes back when I put to her that the industry is old-fashioned and parochial. “We strive to uphold the tradition [of opera] but we’re always bringing new ideas. Most people come into opera because they are passionate about it. They have unique and wonderful stories and come from all over the world. And you will become opera singers, physicists...”
She enjoys the element of teamwork that opera comes with, parts together. The director has a lot more say, but it’s a spectacle that is built collectively, from the orchestra to the singers to the set and costume designers.
One point she does acknowledge is that it is costly to become an opera singer, and so it may be seen as elitist,
Her experience in the US is quite unique she says, and she would like to see governments making music as accessible as it was for her. The pandemic forced a lot of talented people out of the industry, she adds. She was lucky, she admits, and recorded three operas during the period that were streamed.
Wider appeal
She feels that opera is gaining a wider appeal across the continent. “The a community that’s building.
“There is April Koyejo-Audiger, an amazing British-Nigerian soprano; we were in La bohème together. Even in Nigeria, they see what we are doing over here. You can learn a lot through YouTube; many Nigerians I know are training themselves through YouTube. Even on TikTok, there are so many people keeping opera alive, modernising it. I think that social media has been a saving grace for the art form.”
Her own native Nigeria has two prominent companies, the Abuja Opera Company and the Muson Centre.
Her last visit to Nigeria, a supposed holiday, involved a lot of work, she laughs. Her proud parents made sure she gave a performance. She also went back to her music school, Muson, to give a masterclass. Does she follow the other genres, such as Afrobeats, taking the world by storm? She does and it’s great she says, because it encourages people to see music and the arts as a viable option for kids to make a living and succeed, which wasn’t always the case for traditional families.
When I ask her whether there are any major goals she’d like to achieve – knowing that she performed in Carnegie Hall in New York in 2018 – she explains that part of the fun of singing is being in the moment. “I’ve already achieved a lot more than I ever dreamed of so early in my career. I goals such as ‘I want to sing solo’. Rather, I want to continue enjoying what I do, continue improving and to be able to help other people who want to do the same.” Music to our ears.
