‘Ariadne’ Soprano Warms Up to a Los Angeles ‘Vacation’

Soprano Gwendolyn Bradley, currently singing Zerbinetta in the Music Center Opera production of Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” at the Music Center, is thrilled to be spending the holidays with her family in Los Angeles.

“It is really a wonderful ‘vacation’ for me,” says Bradley, who has been a member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin since 1988. “For me, vacation is being in a warm climate because I love the warmth. Right now, it’s pretty brisk in Berlin.”

Because the South Carolina native spends the majority of her time on the road performing with major opera companies all over Europe and America, Bradley tries to keep her life as normal as possible “within the realms of reality. When you are traveling from one place to another, you do such things as take along pictures--things you can put in your apartment so it seems very much like home, or you stay in places where you can cook.”

Married and the mother of two young daughters, Bradley admits the life of an opera singer can be an exhausting one. “It is a lot of hard work. But another wonderful thing about doing a lot of traveling is you can meet different kinds of people and see the same people in different environments and realize how much we are all alike.”

The Music Center production of “Ariadne” marks the ninth time Bradley has performed Zerbinetta. Bradley was six months pregnant when she sang the part at the Metropolitan Opera.

“I find that it is different every time (I perform it),” she says. “I find that you get a different input from the director. I think in this production hopefully what the public will get a chance to see is a lot of realism.”

Though she sang from an early age, Bradley hadn’t planned on an opera career until she received a college music scholarship. “I wanted to be a pediatrician and go to Purdue University,” she laughs. “But I guess God had other plans.”