Singer Works on Success : Soprano Jennifer Smith Says Her Career Is Governed by a Plan

Kids get to hear the darndest things. A singer at a kids’ concert today may turn out to be a major opera star somewhere down the line. You never know.

Soprano Jennifer Smith, 27, of Tustin, who appears in a Pacific Symphony family concert Saturday, looks like a likely candidate for an impressive career.

She’s been winning prizes in regional competitions recently, and next season is slated to become a resident artist with the Los Angeles Music Center Opera. She will sing in three operas there.

She will also sing the plum solo role in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen in July at Hollywood Bowl.

Already she has had one of those legendary big breaks: She had to step in for an indisposed singer last April at LAMCO to sing the potentially treacherous role of Fiordiligi in Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte.”

No critic was on hand to record that moment, unfortunately, but Smith says it’s just as well. The role is among the most demanding in the supremely demanding Mozart repertory, and a singer can sail or sink badly in it. Not exactly what you want to make a debut in.

“Normally, when somebody is out like that, the general directors try to call all over the country to find someone who has done the role actually on stage,” Smith said Wednesday in a phone interview. “In this case, (LAMCO general director Peter Hemmings) trusted me to do it. That meant a lot to me.”

She added: “My career is not necessarily governed by a lot of human opinions, but rather, there is a plan. If I’m faithful and keep working, then things can open up.”

Smith grew up in Glendale as part of a “very musical family.” Her folks play the piano. Her two older sisters also sing. “We would all sing five-part harmony in the car,” she recalled. She turned to studying music only because, “I was so bad in a high school art class that I had to find another way to get the fine-art credit.”

She switched to chorus and found director Glenn Delange “a wonderful influence. He was good about teaching the basics of sight-reading and musicality and finding a sense of personal accomplishment through music.”

In 1982, she moved to Orange County to study singing at Chapman University, working with Janet Smith (no relation). She was beginning to “see the possibilities and challenges” in a solo career, she said, but also beginning to have some doubts about the future when she won third place in the 1990 Orange County district Metropolitan Opera auditions.

“That was a real surprise,” she remembered. “At that time I had pretty much thought I was going to look for other kinds of avenues for my work. I felt that I hadn’t been having much success in opera. I had been in the chorus at San Francisco Opera, but that was not what I wanted to keep on doing.”

Last year, however, she took first place in the local Met competition and later received a special $500 Encouragement Award at the next-step regional auditions in Los Angeles. (She was not selected to move on to the finals in New York, however.)

Smith describes her voice as a “lyric soprano” that is “not huge.”

“My gifts are not overwhelming to people who are looking to be blown out of the room,” she said. “But down the road, I hope I will have some artistry that I can be known for rather than for (having) an overwhelming instrument.”

She studies voice privately and also gives lessons to “a handful of students. It’s hard to schedule them around the Music Center when I am on contract,” she said.

In listening to other singers, Smith finds that “the ones that really mean the most to me are the people who are conscious of serving the music and serving soulful expression, rather than the diva persona. I’m really moved by people who sing for love of music, not love of self.”

She said she believes, in fact, in the idea of singing only “to glorify God.”

“That can sound Pollyannaish,” she said. “But that makes it easier if you lose a contest--because you still haven’t lost, as long as you’re doing it for the right reason. You can’t be kept from doing the right thing if you love your fellow man. That thought has kept me on track.”

Soprano Jennifer Smith will sing with the Pacific Symphony led by Daniel Hege on a Mervyn’s Musical Mornings Series concert on Saturday at 10 and 11:30 a.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $7 to $10. Information: (714) 556-2787.