Comments (0) |

Tenor says 'La Boheme' recording drew him to opera

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

Jeremy Cady was drawn into the world of opera through listening.

"There was a teacher I worked with who really took a lot of time to sit down with me and play me recordings," Cady says of his years at the University of Minnesota-Duluth in the early 1990s. "He talked to me about singers and opera and what it's like. It just really opened up this whole world of opera that I had really been unaware of in high school."e_SClBThere was one recording in particular that opened up Cady's world.

"It was a recording of Che Gelida Manina with Pavarotti," Cady says of the aria from Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème. "Then I started digging for other recordings because that recording made me curious about what else was out there.

"Pavarotti was the first tenor for me that really sparked my imagination and amazed me with the power of the human voice to just soar over the orchestra."

Since those early undergrad days, Cady has wrapped his voice and his mind around a lot of mainstays of the tenor repertoire, including Don José in Georges Bizet's Carmen and Alfredo in Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata, both for the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre.

This week, Cady, 34, finally gets to perform the aria that so inspired him, in UK Opera's production of Bohème. The tenor says it's his favorite opera.

"It is such an endearing and yet heart-wrenching story, and the music is absolutely exquisite," Cady said in a 2007 interview posted on the Cincinnati Opera's Web site. Bohème, he said, is "a real testament to Puccini's genius."

That appreciation, he says, has only deepened as he has immersed himself in the music, and more importantly, the words.

"We're digging into the score and finding those moments where the music is informing what your desires are in that scene and what is it that you want, where are you going, what are you saying," Cady says. "You want to make it enjoyable for the audience, where they forget what's outside for a while and come in and experience this other world."

Even if your world is primarily pop culture, Bohème should be somewhat familiar.

The 1896 opera was the inspiration for the Broadway blockbuster Rent, and its music has been featured in numerous venues, including the film Moonstruck. Director Baz Luhrmann brought the opera to Broadway in 2002. Opera America lists Bohème as the second most-performed opera in North America, behind Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

The Bohème story centers on a group of impoverished artists in Paris and the tragic love of Rodolfo and Mimi, who is dying of tuberculosis.

Just as in Butterfly, the characters all suffer to sumptuous music.

"Puccini is ingenious at orchestrating the motion of the characters, orchestrating the mood of the room," Cady says. "Everything that's going on with the characters is going on in the orchestra."

Cady, who grew up in North Branch, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul, first saw Bohème in a semi-staged version with Minnesota Orchestra. When he went to college, Cady had ambitions to be a Broadway and jazz singer, before the world of opera opened for him.

Initially, Cady overwhelmed himself trying to major in music performance and education. That led to burnout, and for a while he was out of school, saving some money and meeting and marrying his wife, Alison.

He went back to school at the University of Minnesota in 1998.

Auditioning for the Minnesota Opera's Young Artist Program, Cady was encouraged to contact University of Kentucky Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey.

"They sort of pushed me out of Minneapolis; they pushed me out of the nest," Cady says. "They saw potential in me that they knew needed to be grown up and cultivated, and they knew that wouldn't happen in Minneapolis, because I was too comfortable there."

Cady came to Lexington in 2000 and has since strung together numerous starring roles at UK and taken on teaching gigs at Centre College and Transylvania University. He also has performed with the Kentucky Opera in Louisville and Cincinnati Opera.

At UK, he is wrapping up work on his doctorate, which he expects to complete next fall. That has him looking at post-doctoral options, including teaching and performing, career paths that have to be considered in concert with his role as a father of three girls — Lillian, 4; Liana, 2; and Lydia, 1.

"It becomes a little more difficult with little ones," Cady says. "You can't go live that life of an artist in poverty in New York City."

But you can play it on stage. Cady finally gets to live that dream of playing the role he first heard and fell in love with more than a decade ago.

"In a way, it was at first intimidating, like, 'Oh, I'm finally playing this,'" Cady says. "But then those moments start to happen, and you realize, this is where it becomes mine, and that makes it so much more enjoyable. I'm realizing, I'm singing this role now."