Veronica Villarroel Has the Voice, Lady Luck Supplies the Rest

Chilean soprano Veronica Villarroel’s rags-to-rising stardom story sounds almost like the plot of an opera. Born to a dirt-poor family in Santiago, she worked as a street vendor before being taken under the wing of one of opera’s great divas. Now an up-and-coming star herself, Villarroel makes her Los Angeles Music Center Opera debut as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata,” opening Thursday.

“I was raised in a good and beautiful way,” says Villarroel, one of seven children of an artist mother and a salesman father. “We were a happy family with a lot of economic problems.”

Villarroel initially prepared to work in advertising. Then, when her father suffered a heart attack and the family needed money, she had to turn to selling medical chemicals in the streets. On a lark, Villarroel tried out for and got a job in the chorus of a zarzuela (musical theater) production. From there, she made the leap to opera.

“1985 was the first time I heard opera,” Villarroel says. “I went in (to an opera audition in Santiago) and sang zarzuelas, because that was what I knew. They told me that I had this voice, and that even though they knew that I didn’t know anything about music, they would give me a part.”

Lady luck came again to Villarroel in the person of famed soprano Renata Scotto. After sharing the stage with Villarroel in a Chilean production of “La Boheme,” Scotto brought the apprentice singer to the United States in 1986. She arranged a Juilliard scholarship for Villarroel and even lent the younger soprano her Manhattan apartment.

“I owe her everything,” says Villarroel. “I had no money, no English. I couldn’t believe that a person like her would believe in a person like me.”

Scotto wasn’t the only one to believe in Villarroel. Juilliard accepted the soprano despite her lack of formal education, on the basis of an audition alone. Voice teacher Ellen Faull and such high-profile artists as Placido Domingo have also helped.

“Everything was like an accident,” Villarroel says. “I never expected to become an opera singer. And I never expected to come to the United States.”