Please imagine an opera singer. Let me guess: big lady, big voice, long braids, hat with horns.
Probably the last thing you’d expect from the powerhouse performer is that she is running back to her dressing room during intermission and jumping on the phone just to hear her two-year-old’s voice … but that’s just part of striking a balance for the modern-day opera star with a toddler at home (and no braids in sight).
Born in Lebanon to Armenian parents and raised in Canada, soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian never really intended to have a music career — unless getting your biomedical engineering degree seems like the fast track to fame and fortune as a singer.
“I was taking singing lessons as a way to blow off steam from the pressure of engineering,” Isabel says as she chats with me over the phone from her home in Toronto. “At the same time, I wanted to sing better in church.”
After earning her degree, Bayrakdarian started entering competitions and winning, first local, then regional and culminating with a win at the Metropolitan Opera competition. The next thing she knew, she was being offered roles onstage.
When I ask her what a typical day in her life is like, she laughs: “I’m very happy to say I never have a typical day.” And that has held true — even after giving birth to her son Ari. Just two years on the planet and Ari’s travel log makes me jealous. He’s spent months in Japan, Spain, Italy and France and has made “countless” trips to the States.
“I was travelling in the States just before the presidential election. When someone asked me, “Does your son always travel with you?” I said, “He has more stamps in his passport than Sarah Palin.”
Which of course left me wondering: how does a person keep up with the demands of travel, rehearsals, performing and raising a child?
“Good child care!” She laughs. In fact, Bayrakdarian’s mother travels everywhere with her and her son.“ When you’re with your mom, you feel like not only is she taking care of your son, but you also.… There’s a wonderful sense that everything’s going to be OK.”
Ari’s routine, as unusual as it is, may in fact create continuity — Bayrakdarian’s mother still prepares the same meals for her grandson that she prepared for her daughter, when she was a girl, no matter where they are in the world.
It may all sound very idyllic, but Bayrakdarian admits the reality of having a child is very different from how she imagined it would be. But through trial and error she’s reached a very good place, both personally and professionally.
“I’m able to put on my hat as an opera singer and be very comfortable with that … and then, when I take it off and become the mom, I’m also very happy and comfortable. One doesn’t bleed into the other any more.”
And who wants to be typical anyway?
