An American Opera Singer in Europe Returns to Newport Beach

Every year, scores of aspiring American opera singers flock to Europe to land jobs. Most fail. Mezzo-soprano Diane Elias of Newport Beach is one of the exceptions.

Elias launched her career at the Volksoper in Vienna, singing there from 1982 to 1987. Since 1985, she also has been a member of the Stadtischen Buhnen in the venerable musical city of Nuremberg in West Germany.

None of that puts her in the Pavarotti superstar class. But it indicates steady and respectable progress.

“There are a lot of people who start fast and get really big--who skyrocket up and skyrocket down,” Elias said in a recent phone interview. “I’m kind of like the tortoise going on step by step. I consider myself pretty successful. . . .

“Right about now, I feel that I’m on the bottom rung of the top level of a career as an opera singer. I would like to climb that ladder a little bit higher.”

Elias, 37, will return to the church that gave her opportunities in the early days and give a recital at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church of Newport Beach at 7 p.m. on Sunday.

“I have been a member of St. Andrew’s since I was 10 years old,” she said. “They let me sing when no one else would: when I was a kid and when I was studying. They’ve been after me for a long time. . . . It seemed like this would be a good time to come over and do a recital here.”

Elias is bringing Willem Wentzel, her coach and conductor at the Nuremberg company, to be her accompanist.

Born in Connecticut, Elias moved with her family to Newport Beach when she was 10. She did vocal studies at Cal State Fullerton, won first place in the Western Regional Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 1978 and went on to get a master’s degree at Indiana University at Bloomington in 1981.

Then it was off to Europe in 1982.

Was a local career possible?

“Not in Orange County,” she said. “You almost have to go to Europe, although it’s getting better in the U.S. because more regional opera companies are opening up. But seven or eight years ago, going to Europe was the best thing to do.”

Besides, she said, opera singers there are civil servants, with regular pay, pension plans and “a lot of opportunity to do a role a lot of times and get it under your belt.”

She credits the Volksoper for its careful nurturing.

“The Volksoper took me as a beginning singer and built me up gradually,” she said. “The first thing I did was sing and nothing more. The second thing required more acting talent, but little singing.”

(The first role was the voice of Antonia’s Mother in Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann.” The second was Rosalia in Eugen d’Albert’s “Tiefland.”)

It was a big step forward.

“You study for about 12 years and you still don’t know if you can really do it,” she said. “In having to get up on stage and sing 60 to 70 evenings in a single season . . . I got comfortable with my voice and moving around on stage. I also learned German. . . . “I didn’t know any German before I went, which made it kind of hard.”

Hard, indeed, since most operas in Germany are still sung in German no matter what language they are written in.

“For about the first nine months no one (at the Volksoper) spoke a word of English to me. They were under strict orders: Diane had to learn German. Then, about a year later, they began to speak English to me so I knew my German was good enough.”

In Vienna, she sang small roles such as the Third Lady in Mozart’s “Die Zauberflote” and the Sandman in Humperdinck’s “Hansel und Gretel.”

“I learned a lot (vocally),” she said. “Things you can use for more than one piece. You get a bag of tricks you can always use. It was wonderful.”

But she learned more than just voice skills and repertory.

“I learned how to be able to fight diplomatically and politically without selling my soul,” she said. “I thought talent was enough. It’s not. You have to be able to talk a good story and carry yourself as if you can do anything. You have to learn how to get along with your bosses and understand that people are not always actually looking out for your best interests, but you have to pull out your best anyway.”

Still, because the Volksoper puts emphasis on operettas and light operas, with an occasional work by Rossini, and because Elias’ voice was changing--it was deepening--she began to look for other professional opportunities.

“My voice was going into a full lyric mezzo range. They couldn’t give me those kinds of roles. That’s why I left,” she said.

Elias describes her voice as “a full, round mezzo,” which lets her out of the heavy Verdi sweepstakes. But, she said, it still allows her to sing the heroine of Bizet’s “Carmen,” as she did at Nuremberg last year. In German, of course.

But her first big success at Nuremberg was as the composer in Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” in 1986. “This was really the first time I had to put up or shut up,” she said. “At the premiere, I shook in my boots.”

It went well, however, and she said “ever since then, it’s been like I’m a big fish in a little pond.”

Indeed, her musical horizons have continued to broaden. She also has sung under Riccardo Muti (as a soloist in a Mozart Mass) and as one of the nine Valkyries in Wagner’s “Die Walkure,” conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli in Rome.

“That is what I mean by being on the bottom rung (of the career ladder),” she said. “But both have said that they liked me and want to use me again. Time will tell.”

But another hurdle lies ahead.

“It would be really nice to put one foot (professionally) in the U.S.,” she said. “That’s what I’m hoping to do.”

She has auditions scheduled in September in Houston, Chicago and, here at home, with Opera Pacific in Costa Mesa.

“It’s very hard to break into the States. I’ve never sung here professionally. . . . They don’t know me,” she said.

“I have done most of the roles I want to sing in my time,” she added. “I just have to keep perfecting them and hopefully sing them in large and larger houses or more important places, with more important conductors.”

Mezzo-soprano Diane Elias will sing works by Purcell, Schubert, Dvorak and other composers at 7 p.m. on Sunday at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church of Newport Beach, 600 St. Andrews Road. Willem Wentzel will be piano accompanist. Admission is free. Information: (714) 631-3821.