Less than a year shy of his upcoming debut as Alidoro in La Cenerentola at the Metropolitan Opera, John Relyea is doing a lot of preparatory work, including performing the role in New Jersey as a sort of rehearsal for the Met. It’s a fairly common approach, something that a number of singers might do–but most singers take a very different route getting there.
Born in Toronto, Canada, Relyea, the son of singer Gary Relyea, played many instruments instead of singing opera. For a time he considered the classical guitar as a career choice. When he was 17 years old, his father asked him, “Why don’t you try singing a few notes?” Relyea complied and found singing was a lot easier than playing musical instruments. “I took that as a sign,” he says. “And it was a lot of fun.”
Relyea decided not to go to a university for a bachelor’s degree, instead opting to study privately. What followed was a lot of intensive technical training from his father and the beginnings of a professional career. In this way, Relyea prepared himself to eventually audition for the Curtis Conservatory of Music.
“I in no way regret my decision to bypass bachelor studies,” Relyea says, citing the two years he spent readying himself for the notoriously intense Curtis auditions. “I wanted to focus on what I was doing–singing. Training at Curtis is very focused, with a teacher/student ratio of five to one. You could get lost at a university by the mere fact that there is a huge student body.” Relyea was one of seven applicants accepted to Curtis from an initial pool of about 650.
Relyea believes good technique, guided by a master teacher, is the key to a successful opera career. “Master teachers find very simple answers to lessons you can spend a lot of time learning. With singing, because it is such a specialized art form–opera–so much is based on the individual and a good teacher.” The baritone says his current teacher, Jerome Hines, believes there tends to be an imbalance sometimes between instruction and repertoire, with a teacher guiding technique versus a coach, stressing repertoire. In Hines, says Relyea, he has both a teacher and a coach.
In retrospect, Relyea is glad he chose the path he did because if he had gone to a university, “I think I would have lost ground. I knew it was up to me to find a good teacher, build up my voice, and build my repertoire.”
