As a teenage voice student in Bethesda, Md., Andrea Carroll attended operas at Washington National Opera and Wolf Trap and was “floored by the talent on stage.” Despite her youth, she’d already decided to pursue an opera career—and though some aspiring singers might have felt threatened by the glittering vocalism she heard at those D.C. houses, this soprano, now 24, knew she would someday sing with both companies. “But that day,” she admits in a summer phone interview, “came much sooner than anticipated.”
Having spent the 2012–2013 season in residence at the Houston Grand Opera Studio and the summers of 2012 and 2013 at Wolf Trap as a Filene Young Artist, Carroll makes her Washington National Opera debut this month in Florencia en el Amazonas, reprising the role of Rosalba, which she sang at Utah Opera in 2013. Performing as a principal in her hometown is heady stuff for someone who graduated from Manhattan School of Music two short years ago, but Carroll seems both grounded and grateful when she reflects on her success.
“I grew up with unconditional support from my parents,” she says, “but it’s still hard to believe I’ll be at Washington National Opera this fall, and it’s such a gift to track my progress and reconnect with the goals I had 5 or 10 years ago.”
I caught up with Andrea (pronounced An-DRE-a) Carroll while she was rehearsing Carousel at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y. Returning to that summer company was another homecoming because she was the youngest singer in the Glimmerglass Young Artists Program in 2011. This season she was cast as Julie Jordan opposite Ryan McKinny’s Billy Bigelow, and Carroll credits Francesca Zambello, artistic and general director of Glimmerglass and artistic director of Washington National Opera, for noticing her three summers ago when she sang a small role in Zambello’s production of Later the Same Evening.
“When I first got to Glimmerglass,” Carroll explains, “I was wide eyed and excited, but extremely nervous about doing the Young Artist Program. I was intimidated because it was such an incredible group of singers and I learned a lot from them. It was Francesca Zambello’s first season as general director, and along with appearing in John Musto’s one-act opera, I was in the ensembles of Annie Get Your Gun and Carmen. It was one of my first times singing with a large orchestra.”
Carroll may have been a novice but she impressed her director, who writes in an e-mail, “Ever since I saw Andrea in our Young Artist Program at Glimmerglass and then later at Houston, I knew she was a major talent—full of charm and wit, with expressive vocal abilities. Her great poise and immediate connection to the audience were obvious from the get-go.”
One of Zambello’s hallmarks at Glimmerglass is to present a golden-era musical without amplification, and this year Carroll felt privileged to play the quintessential Rodgers and Hammerstein heroine. “Carousel has become so important to me,” she says. “It is challenging and dark and wonderful, and we have a great cast. It’s easy at first read to think all the characters are stock characters, but I’m convinced that Julie is neither weak nor a doormat. My priority is to highlight her bravery and the incredible sustaining unconditional love between Julie and Billy. Their love has to be so passionate and pure that you don’t see Billy as an abusive horrible man or Julie as a weak victim. And it’s all there in the script.”
She cheerfully mentions that musical theatre was her first love, even though she mainly sang in auditioned choirs as a youngster and was on the dance team at Bethesda’s Walt Whitman High School. Ironically, she didn’t perform in Whitman’s yearly musical until she played the title role in Elton John’s Aida during her senior year. That performance won raves, and NPR subsequently asked her to appear on their January 13, 2008, radio broadcast of From the Top, a showcase for classical musicians ages 8 to 18. Because Carroll had studied voice with singer Kay Krekow since middle school, she felt confident performing Donizetti’s elegiac “Eterno amore e fè” and Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Poor Wand’ring One” for the program, songs that displayed her versatility and growing commitment to opera.
“By then I felt comfortable in my body and felt natural as an actress,” she explains, “and I liked channeling my energy and portraying different characters. But musical theatre seemed like fun, whereas arias offered a true vocal challenge. I loved the technical aspects, and opera felt like an art form.”
To her surprise, she now has access to the best of both genres, acting and singing in musicals produced by companies such as Glimmerglass and Houston Grand Opera, where she spent last May singing Anne Egerman to Chad Shelton’s Fredrik Egerman in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Shelton, a veteran tenor, quickly observed his much younger colleague’s polish and he told a Broadway World reporter, “The girl who’s singing Anne—Andrea Carroll—she’s really fantastic, bubbly, and perky. [She’s] perfect . . . .”
An Emphasis on Technique
Fantastic? Perfect? Carroll earns such accolades from colleagues and critics wherever she works. The New York Times dubbed her “a soprano to watch” in 2012 while reviewing Die Vershworenen at Manhattan School of Music. That summer, in a review of Don Giovanni at Wolf Trap, the Washington Post praised Carroll as “a tender Zerlina . . . a fizzy voice matched by a firecracker stage presence.” A 2013 Wolf Trap review for Il viaggio a Reims led Opera News to declare, “Andrea Carroll gave a particularly impressive performance as Corinna. Her rich, dark, low register and gleaming top put a deeply expressive spin on every line.” And praising Carroll in A Little Night Music at HGO, Broadway World said, “She sings . . . with a dazzling timbre.”
Carroll admits she reads reviews, though not compulsively. “I think that if you get a great review, you can use it on your website—but it’s only one person’s opinion, and I don’t put much stock in them especially with all the controversy over body shaming and weight in casting right now.” Though she’s thin and fit, the singer stands a bit under 5’1, and some people have made an issue of her height. “One person told me I’m a Countess stuck in Susanna’s body,” she confides with a rueful laugh.
But Carroll’s much too sensible to waste time fretting about biases she can’t control. Instead, she strives to refine her technique, knowing she’s still developing her full, rich lyric soprano. “I’m lucky to have had wonderful vocal instruction during college. I left the Manhattan School of Music with a great foundation and a strong knowledge of my technical strengths and weaknesses. And my current teacher and I have a fantastic working relationship. I feel completely comfortable exploring what works for me and what doesn’t, and I end up leaving my lessons as though I’ve just had an hour of therapy.”
If Carroll needs an objective opinion of her sound or if she has questions about the music business, she knows exactly where to turn. “All singers are bombarded with opinions,” she adds. “Most remarks are well intentioned, but they can be confusing. So it’s important to me to have a few people I can always go to for advice or constructive criticism. These are mentors I trust implicitly and who have my best interests at heart. They’re not afraid to tell me I shouldn’t take a certain role or to say, ‘Hey, I heard you last week and I’m concerned that you were flat in your middle voice.”
She also deeply values her recent apprenticeship at Houston Grand Opera Studio. “Everyone there is invested in starting your career, nurturing your career, and developing a long-term relationship with you,” she says. “In the same vein that I trust my mentors, this is an entire company that I trust. A lot of the technical improvements in my voice are due to the stage time I got there—and even understudying in the rehearsal room, you work with seasoned singers you’ve heard about for years. There’s an entire staff of coaches and language teachers, and you begin to feel celebrated for being the artist you are.”
Though she hasn’t yet entered many competitions, she was proud to win the Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCollum Competition in 2012 and the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2010, both of which boosted her visibility. “The more you perform, the better you’ll be,” she says, “so any competition is a chance to try out an aria, to conquer your nerves, or to get feedback from people in the business.”
Rosalba at WNO and Future Roles
Though Carroll spent her formative years in Maryland, she was born in Bangkok. Her father Alan worked at the World Bank until this past January when he retired, so her parents spent the first part of their marriage in Nepal, Thailand, and Bolivia. Her mother Sonia hails from Guatemala, and Carroll’s first language is Spanish—which makes her current role in Florencia en el Amazonas, a Spanish-language opera, an ideal fit.
“Having the opportunity to do “Florencia” at Washington National Opera [September 20–28] is the most excited I’ve been in years,” Carroll exclaims. “Other than a few art songs at my senior recital, I’d never gotten to sing in Spanish. But I still read voraciously in Spanish and I’m a gigantic Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez fan. The fact that this opera’s about magical realism . . . well, it’s thrilling. I’m bilingual, and there’s something about singing in your first language that makes it really special. Also Daniel Catán’s music is like Puccini, Debussy, and Ravel all mixed together, and it feels good to sing.”
She describes her character as an independent journalist who knows what she wants and goes after it. “Rosalba’s been obsessed with Florencia (Christine Goerke), a great opera diva, since she was young. She knows everything about her and she’s writing Florencia’s biography. But she’s never met Florencia, so there’s much at stake for her. At the same time, she falls in love—but love wasn’t in her grand plan, so it’s a great plot and a juicy part!”
Carroll is booked well into the future and she’s thinking ahead to repertoire. “Luckily, my ‘dream roles’ are not too far out of reach,” she comments. “I’m dying to sing Adina in Elixir, and I’ve always wanted to do Lèïla in The Pearlfishers, which is coming up at Utah Opera next year, and I’ll be doing Gilda at Opera Santa Barbara in November.” She would also love to sing Lucia, Amina in La sonnambula, Elvira in I puritan, and Violetta. “I’m really going through a phase where I love all the Bel Canto heroines,” she adds, “so I think the common theme here is that I like singing in Italian.”
Before she starts rehearsals for any role, Carroll works with the text for a while, analyzing the arc of the character. “But in recent years,” she confides, “what has worked for me the most is trying to get rid of any stigmas or preconceptions about any given show, because it all changes when you walk into the rehearsal room and hear the director’s concept and see the set and start to interact with your colleagues. Once you get to know the energy of the room and the people you’re working with, you have to be open to new ideas and discoveries.”
Carroll has also learned that it’s useful to take breaks from the pressures of performing. “I really enjoy yoga and I love to dance,” she says. “I’m not the swanky club kind of dancer, but I love salsa dancing. If I can find a Cuban restaurant with a house band, that’s my perfect night off. I also love being outdoors and I would like to explore more of the U.S. I’m going to be at Seattle Opera next April and May singing Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos, and I look forward to seeing the Pacific Northwest and doing some hiking.”
For now, she’s a happy nomad, having put her furniture in storage in Houston. “This coming year it doesn’t make sense to keep an apartment anywhere because I’m traveling so much. But if I do have a week off here or there, I’ll go back to Houston and have as many lessons and coaching sessions as possible.”
Sage Advice—Even for Herself
When I ask if she has any advice for those who want to follow in her footsteps, she pauses. “I’m still a young singer,” Carroll observes, “so it seems strange to be giving advice to someone starting out. But I’d tell people not to get caught up in the drama and fast-paced nature of the industry. That’s very important. Sometimes it’s better to have blinders on, because comparing yourself to others can be destructive.
“But my main suggestion is to know exactly where you are now and be OK with that. Know your age and how it relates to your voice type, because some singers have longer to wait. I have bass-baritone friends, for instance, who won’t grow into the best roles until their 30s. So it’s important to embrace the uncertainty. And, finally, you should find a teacher who works for you. No matter how successful you are or where you are in your career, continued vocal development and new technical discoveries are immeasurably important. The educational journey never stops, so you and your voice teacher should always feel like a team.”
As our conversation winds down, I ask Carroll if she has a philosophy that helps her deal with the unexpected ups and downs that all singers face. “I think my new mantra is patience,” she says. “In the past, I’ve been hypercritical of my vocal development, but now I want to be patient with the arc of my career. I don’t do well when I don’t have a project, so I’m learning roles even though I haven’t been offered them yet—Adina, Lucia, and Anne Trulove—while also preparing Léïla for Utah. I’m trying to manage my time well, but the main thing—the same advice I’d give others—is to trust where I’m at.”
