An Interview With Gabriella Reyes
In 2018, soprano Gabriella Reyes made history as the first Nicaragüense-American to sing on the Met’s stage. Even though the Priestess in Aida is a small part, she made an impact on me. Her star has only risen since then, and now she is singing a lead role in the first Latino opera ever to come to the Met, Florencia en el Amazonas. After seeing her stunning opening night, I spoke with Gabriella between performances, and she could not have been warmer. Watch our conversation above or read highlights below!
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Joyful laughs omitted in the transcript due to abundance.
Violette Leonard: You grew up listening to church music and the Met’s radio broadcasts. Setting aside Latino music, did your family listen to or enjoy any non-classical music?
Gabriella Reyes: Yeah, for sure. I grew up being a pastor’s daughter, growing up in church, and we listened to a lot of Spanish Christian music, so a lot of, like, Marcos Barrientos, a lot of… ¡uf! Todos se me escapan ahora [they all escape me now]. And then apart from that, my parents being refugees from Nicaragua, we listened to a lot of revolutionary music, so lots of music from Latino America, from various countries, like Victor Jara and Violeta Parra — they’re both Chilean —, Mercedes Sosa is my favorite, de [from] Argentina, Silvio Rodríguez… So I had a lot of Spanish revolutionary music and folk music in the house all the time.
Do you remember any specific radio broadcasts that impacted you or that you particularly loved listening to, or singers?
I wouldn’t know who was singing because I was so young, but [my grandma] would always listen to Carmen, Carmen was her favorite opera, growing up, and so as a kid I just listened to sooo many Carmens and Toscas, Butterflys — she loved very romantic music — but, as I started studying, people that I loved to listen to… I listened to Ailyn [Pérez] when I was in school in the conservatory so much, I loved, loved — she was kind of my Florencia Grimaldi! So it’s been really amazing to get to share the stage with her.
Life imitates art!
It really does, it really does! I’m telling you. There’s a scene where Florencia is encouraging Rosalba to open up her heart, because in doing so, then her writing will be unleashed, and when Ailyn looks at me and is telling me this, the tears are forming in my eyes every time, because it’s like, Oh my gosh, it’s you! It’s you, and you being Ailyn, an incredible artist that has just reached just such beautiful heights, I would say, in her career, being not only a great singer and artist but a beautiful human being. She’s just so kind and generous with everybody that she meets, she opens her heart. And so it’s been amazing working with her.
Before your debut in Santa Fé, you said that you had only ever sung professionally at the Met and in School. How did that happen?!
My journey has really been a non-traditional journey, I will say, and I recognize that I have had incredible supporters to help me get along with every step; this hasn’t been by myself. I ended up going to the Boston University Opera Institute, where there as well I had plenty of experience on stage, and mind you, the normal singer route is doing summer programs, and that’s where you get a lot of your experience, either through pay-to-sings — do you know what a pay-to-sing is?
Instead of them paying you, you pay them.
That. Exactly. It’s a big business out there! Is it always ethical? Hmm, I’m not sure. But for a lot of people it is important to do that, so the people who have the opportunity and the means do that. I never had the means to do that, you know, I couldn’t afford a pay-to-sing, so really I was waitressing every summer and throughout school I was a waitress 40 hours a week, trying to support myself and go to school and try to become — at the time it was like, I hope that everything works out, because I’m putting all my eggs in this basket of opera singing! … I did the Met competition and Michael Heaston was a judge for the New England region, and when he heard me in Jordan Hall in Boston, he said, “Huh, interesting. Why don’t you come for a coaching for the Lindemann program, I think it would be really good for them to hear you.” And so I went and it was really quick, they accepted me right away after the Grand Finals concert. And I didn’t finish school, I went straight to the Lindemann, and how that’s kind of how the track went, I never worked professionally anywhere other than the Met. … I say I lucked out but it was a combination of very hard work, being in the right place at the right time, and being ready when the right people heard me, being ready to show a product that had a potential, and to show the willingness and the eagerness I had to work and to continue to put in the effort to make this happen.
You made your professional debut after the Met at the Santa Fé Opera as Musetta [in La Bohème]. You also sing Mimì a lot. How has it been for you to sing Mimì and Musetta, and so close together in your schedule?
I do sing them differently, I have to sing them differently. I approach them with different characters, but it’s been so great because I feel like I’ve learned so much more about each other’s character while I’m in the production for the other. While I’m singing Musetta, living in Musettaland, I can be a true spectator of Mimì and take her in, but I just have a lot of fun. Trust me, I love them both, they’re both different animals. I love the fun — not only fun, what I love about Musetta is that people see her as just flirty, just a free woman, but I think that she has incredible heart, and an incredibly fleshed-out self-awareness. She knows what she wants because she’s a progressive woman, but then also she’s the one that finds Mimì, she gets her the medicine, she orchestrates everything, so when I play her, I love that I can play a strong, smart woman. And Mimì I wouldn’t say is any less of a person, she is also so smart and she’s doing what she needs — the women of this opera, they really are the beauty and the brains, because Mimì has to survive and that’s why she knocks on Rodolfo’s door and introduces herself, but also then falls in love. Both of them are wonderful; I love Bohème, it’s one of my favorite operas, if not my favorite.
So now about Ainadamar at the Detroit Opera [spoilers ahead]. What does the role of Margarita [Xirgu] mean to you?
Gabriella as Margarita Xirgu in Ainadamar (Austin Richey/Detroit Opera)
What I loved about Margarita is that I got to explore relationships and grief. Margarita was this woman who adored Lorca with her heart and soul, and the grief and guilt, I think she dealt with some guilt, of not being able to convince Lorca to come over to the US in time. She feels the weight of his execution — spoiler alert, he gets executed! — but the way the music is written, you can feel her pain in the orchestration, like the gut-wrenching guilt, and the way the vocal line is written, and she cries out, it’s like a wail that she has because it hurts when you realize that the person that you love most, her best friend, is dead. She completely breaks down in a scene; “Quiero arrancarme los ojos,” [I want to rip out my eyes] the words, the poetry that she uses is so intense, just like Lorca’s poetry. “Quiero arrancarme los ojos para no verlo sufrir,” [I want to rip out my eyes to not see him suffer] she just wishes that she could turn back time because she doesn’t want to see him suffer. But what’s cool about Ainadamar is that you start off in the present day, where Margarita is now a 50-year-old woman looking back, telling her students about her past, about her relationship, about how she met Lorca for the first time. And she is this beautiful, beautiful stage diva, she has portrayed Ophelia and all the great Shakespearean heroines, so she’s passing on her knowledge, but she talks about why she is the way she is to her students. Then you go back in time in her memories in this opera and as Margarita, playing the character, you have to know what it’s like to portray a 50-year-old woman and also go and in the same opera the next scene, be a young 20-year-old woman, late 20s, and so it’s really cool to kind of explore different time periods and still the same personality, but how does a woman grow and act from the beginning and then 50 years? It’s great, it’s wonderful. And then you have a really beautiful connection with your student, Nuria, in the opera, she’s there listening and asking questions and taking care of Margarita at this point. You see just beautiful relationships between women, between Margarita and Lorca, on top of the music! *eyes and mouth wide open*
Is it complicated to tell the story of a storyteller? As a stage diva, to tell the story of a stage diva?
I would say I have to dig deeper in a way, because it makes me self-analyze, and then also I have to think in the future in a way, because I’m just starting my career. I don’t have the same experiences as a woman who’s 50 years old and has years and years of experience and so I would say yes, it’s kind of difficult for me at this moment, because I feel like I’m just starting, I’m a baby, I’m just getting my feet wet. But I do love transformation, and I do love playing beyond the bounds of my own reality. Doing the divas — for example, Florencia’s something that I would love to sing one day, and I know I want to wait a good amount of time before I even touch it, because I want more experience, I want more stage experience to be able to actively portray a diva, a great diva! I do not think I’m a great diva, I’m just a young singer, here we are!
How important do you think it is for Hispanic singers to sing operas in Spanish?
I think every Latino who is a musician, who is a singer, needs to do something in Spanish. Number one, to get connected to your roots and storytelling, because us as a culture, before colonization, we were storytellers. We were orators. The way we told stories was always through singing or dance; we were born storytellers, for years and years and years. Something ancestral comes up, but also I think [it’s] to heal our souls a little bit, to know that we have a place in this industry, in this art form, and that we belong just like anybody else, singing [opera]. So I think, not only is it important for ourselves, but also on a broader spectrum, for audiences to come and see Latinos singing Latino opera is so beautiful, and it should have been around for a long time, but I’m grateful that it’s happening now, that we’re in a time where it is celebrated and people are trying to do more Latino works and raise up more Latino composers and librettists. It’s a great time to be alive.
It is! What does it mean to you to sing in the first Latino opera at the Met?
Gabriella and Ailyn Pérez (right) in Florencia en el Amazonas (Ken Howard/Met Opera)
It means so much that I am able to be a part of something so historic, to be a vessel and a part of the fabric of the Met history. I think, also being the first Nicaraguënse to sing on the Met stage means so much about representation; you know, as a little girl, I didn’t see anyone like myself doing the work that I’m doing now, and to see that, it just opens up so many doors for so many people, I think. We did this beautiful thing a couple weeks ago where we invited all the Latinos in the building onstage for a photo, and it was so beautiful to see people’s faces light up or be in awe of the great hall that is the Met from the standpoint of being onstage. A lot of them had never been onstage before, so they don’t know what it feels like. My goal was for everyone to know that this opera that we’re doing isn’t just for us, we’re not the only ones that this is for, this is also for them as well, this is to say thank you, thank you for helping the Met be what it is. Really, every single person, every Latino that works in that building plays such an essential role working in development, or working in the mail room, or working in house maintenance, or in the cafeteria. Every single person is part of the magic that is the Met. And it was just so beautiful to give back and to unite everyone. But I really feel like the energy in the house and in the entire building has warmed up a bit, like every time we see a fellow Latino, we’re, like, “¡Hola! ¡Como estás!” [Hi! How are you!] And it’s great! It’s really beautiful! And a lot of them, they’re like, “we’ve worked here for 20-something years, like 30 years, and we’ve never felt seen the way we feel seen now.” And it’s really beautiful, it’s a gorgeous thing, we were all crying up on stage, together we took out all our banderas, so we had every flag represented and everyone was like, “Heyyy!” dancing around, and it was wonderful.
Y ahora Miss Nicaragua ganó el Miss Universe pageant. [And now Miss Nicaragua won the Miss Universe pageant.]
¡¡¡Eso [that]!!! Yes! Yes, what a time. Honestly, what a time! I’m thinking, like, this can’t be coincidence that Miss Universe is Miss Nicaragua, doing Florencia at the Met, it’s just — Pinch me! It’s just too good to be true. It was perfect, divine timing, I would say, for that to happen.
Karma.
Imaginate, como una niña [imagine, as a young girl], we always grew up with this Euro-centric beauty standard, and to know that someone that looks like me, someone who’s from my country, is a global standard of beauty is such a big step. Growing up, my family was the only Nicaragüense family that I was really around, I didn’t really know any other Nicaragüenses, and so the representation that I saw was very limited. And even here in New York, you can’t even find Nicaragüense food. So to see Nicaragua put on the map like this — and she’s the first Central American Miss Universe as well. It’s amazing.
We need to use this interview to get a Nicaragüense restaurant in New York. [Hear that, universe?]
¡Eso! Eso, one day, I’m opening a Nicaragüense restaurant.
Do you have any favorite sections, melodies, or phrases from Florencia?
All of Florencia’s arias, I think the poetry is so beautiful; when she says, “Te siento en el viento,” [I feel you in the wind] like, I could feel you everywhere. When Ailyn — Florencia says, “El amor no aprisiona, es un inmenso mar,” [love doesn’t imprison, it’s an immense sea] it’s as deep as the ocean. Love liberates you. So whenever they’re talking about love, I’m just like, “Oooooh!” [weepy sound] like, melt into a little puddle, so beautiful.
I wonder where Rosalba got her idea about love being a prison.
Well, one, she’s very observant, she’s an observant human being, and so, when she sees Paula and Álvaro bickering and bickering and bickering, I think that’s why she’s really like, “Oh my gosh.” But I think something must have happened to her before this opera, before getting on this boat, for she’s very shut off to love. But also, I would say, she makes false assumptions about Florencia. She sees Florencia’s success and her being single throughout all of her career. I believe [Rosalba] credits [Florencia’s] success to her being single and her being focused on her career, and so for [Rosalba], that’s why I think she says, “Oh, love was invented by someone lazy. Creo que el amor lo inventó un ocioso,” she says. And that’s because she’s such a hard worker, and so she thinks that love would just be a distraction to get what she wants, because she sees how Florencia has reached all these heights, but what she doesn’t know is that Florencia loved before, and that’s what she learns in the end of this opera, that “Oh, wait a minute, Florencia is only who she is, she only had the gift of her voice because she loved, because she experienced that for the first time before she left.” But [Rosalba] had to see that and talk to Florencia and meet her in person to learn it.
You said that your dream role has not been written yet. So what would your dream role be, and if you could commission it, which composer would you commission to write it?
Ooooh! I believe that immigrants have such a powerful story to tell, and I really want to commission an opera one day to tell the story of immigrants, of people who have to cross the border because their countries are suffering, and as refugees, coming to America isn’t the easiest thing, you’re not always welcome. So I believe that there are stories to tell that can be told brilliantly through opera. So my goal is to one day write — I mean, I don’t think I’ll ever write an opera, but you know, give somebody the idea or commission somebody to write an opera. And honestly, a dream collaboration is collaborating with Donald Vega, he is a Nicaragüense composer who works at Juilliard, and he is a jazz pianist as well, and his music is stunning, it’s really, really gorgeous, and I believe he was a Guggenheim recipient or a fellowship recipient for his compositions. I know he hasn’t written an opera before, so it’s a dream collaboration, so maybe to ask him to write an opera for the first time would be really cool. And if it wasn’t him, I’m really excited to work with Gabriela Lena Frank, who’s coming to the Met next year with the Conquest Requiem.
Your dream role has not been written, but do you have a favorite role yet?
Gabriella with Kang Wang in La Bohème (Scott Suchman/WNO)
The easy answer is Mimì. I just love finding more and more about her; each time I revisit Mimì, I just get to learn so much more about the why she is the way she is, and why does she express herself the way she expresses herself. So that’s my dream role that I’ve done so far. Another role that I really, really want to sing is Tosca, but that’s in 8 to 10 years, I would say.
Another stage diva.
Exactly, another stage diva. But I’m going to give myself some time for that.
What exciting things do you have coming up sooner than 8 to 10 years?
Oh! I’m going on tour with Maestro [Gustavo] Dudamel. We’re doing Fidelio, by Beethoven, and I did it over the pandemic with once him already. I’ll be singing Marzellina. What’s really cool about this project is that it’s in collaboration with the Deaf community, and so each character has a Deaf actor paired along with us. When I did it, Indi Robinson was my actor, and she would stand and read my lips in German.
That’s amazing!
It was incredible what they did, because they don’t speak German, so we had to really work together. Maestro Dudamel brought the Coro de Manos Blancas [White Hands Choir]; they are a Deaf choir, and so he flew them all out from Venezuela to Los Angeles to be with us, and it was such a beautiful — a lot of them, this was their first time to America, and they were so sweet and such beautiful human beings. So we’re taking this project, we’re starting in LA and then we’re going to London and Barcelona and Paris, and this is the little tour we’re doing in May.
Why is the Met special to you?
Ohhh… because it’s home! The Met is so special because, well, one, my grandma would listen to Met radio broadcasts, that’s what I grew up on, listening to the Met orchestra play. But also, being an East Coast girlie, I was born in Connecticut, it’s like the home team, it feels like the home team. But also, it was the place where I really grew up. I really matured as an artist from the very beginning, it being the first professional company that I worked for. But also, everybody in the house has really taken me in, like their niece, some of them like their daughter, I have, like, father figures in there too, they’re so sweet! Even in the moments where I didn’t think I was cut out to do this, they reassured me that no, you belong here on this stage, and they affirmed that by hiring me back and giving me opportunities such as Rosalba, Liù in Turandot later this season, next year when I’ll be back, I got a couple other things coming for next year that haven’t been announced yet, but they’ve just always believed in me. And not only that, it’s the best house to sing in acoustically, I just love singing on that stage. I feel free, I feel like I can just give, give the way I want to give, which is I just want it to flow out of me. I don’t need to make myself small in any way in that house. It’s kind of the perfect size for the kind of singing I want to do.
What advice would you give to aspiring opera singers too young to start formal training?
Take in not only opera but watch plays, read, focus on the storytelling portion of it. Get experience joining community theaters or school plays, and get stage experience, real-time stage experience, because the more you’re comfortable being vulnerable on a stage, being your whole self, not just an anxious version of yourself — the more comfort you have, that’s going to translate into your singing. Continue to listen, listen, listen, because listening is your best friend. Don’t just listen to one singer, listen to all singers, all voice types, from all different time periods, Baroque, Romantic… Work on your languages, work on Italian and French and German. Watch TV in German, watch TV in French — but English subtitles —, get the sounds of the language, get it in your ear. It’ll all translate eventually.
And Spanish.
And Spanish! Thank you! Eso! You caught me, thank you for checking me.
How do you see the future of opera?
I think it’s bright. I know a lot of people are worried about it, but I think it’s making such a great turn right now. I see the future of opera evolving, such as we do as humans, becoming more just and I believe that it’s going in a direction where it’ll represent all stories from all different cultures, and I believe that that’s a beautiful thing. And I do see younger faces in the audience, and I think that’s our future, you know? It’s to build up our younger generations, to have care for this art for that has been around so long for a reason. It’s healing, it incorporates everything: ballet, scenic design, costume design, lighting, poetry, singing… It’s such a complete art form that hopefully the next generation will see that and appreciate it.
What can we do to keep opera thriving for them?
I think going out to them, not just inviting people into our house, but we have to go out and be proactive. I believe interviews like this, posting on social media, talking to people — I think word of mouth is really important, because a lot of times, even if I go into a store, if I’m getting a dress or a gown for an event, they’re like, “Oh, what’s your event?” And when I tell them what I’m doing, a lot of times they’re like [gasp], “You can do that? You’re an opera singer? I didn’t know people can do that!” And just sharing my story and making these personal connections and personal relationships with people, I think that makes opera continue. I’m actually going to do something with the Met Education department next week, I’m going to go out to a school and talk to kids and sing a little bit, and I think that’s so important! I love doing that, because that’s how we reach the next generation, especially going out and being a good representative of, “Look, you can do it too. Look, I’m Latina, and I belong here, and you do too.”
