- Viola kind of suits my personality, because of its supporting role.

You know, I like to kind of lift people up, and enhance the overall quality of the music.

(soft music) (singing in foreign language) (soft music) - [Dalia] People's voices do change for so many different reasons.

It's your body, so, it's kind of a different type of instrument where every day, your instrument changes a bit.

- [Narrator] In partnership with the Curtis Institute of Music, WHYY presents the following program.

♪ I know a place where no one's lost ♪ ♪ I know a place where no one cries ♪ ♪ Crying at all is not allowed ♪ ♪ Not in my castle on a cloud ♪ - I started voice lessons when I was about 12 and I initially started with old musical theater repertoire.

So I think saying Bernstein and Oscar Hammerstein, people who composed in probably the 40s and 50s.

And that was kind of also an era of legit singing, what they call, which is where people sing in the classical tradition, but they sing musicals.

So after that, I started to transition into more classical repertoire.

My teacher at the time told me that we could see me doing that, and that my voice kind of was able to use this for Brado.

That was kind of rare for the age I was at that time.

(soft music) (singing in foreign language) Two factors really that inspired me were A, my parents, and B, my voice teacher.

It was definitely them, because I didn't have the confidence to really be sure.

I thought there was a lot of risk going into music.

And I didn't know that that risk would have a reward, and that insecurity was not very attractive to me.

So it was really their support, and the fact that they believed in me that that finally convinced me to just go for music, and do what I really love doing.

(soft music) That piece is a one act opera, in which this blind princess who was being hidden from the world, sort of like a Rapunzel by her father.

She doesn't know she's blind, and she lives her life happily listening to the birds, sitting in the garden.

But one day, a prince comes along outside her gate, and asks her for, I believe it was a red rose, and she gave him a white rose.

And he said, no, I'd like a red rose.

And she gave him another white rose.

And he was, he says, oh, you're blind.

You must be blind.

And she doesn't know what blind means, but she starts to realize, and this is sort of the aria where she realizes that something is missing.

She doesn't have this sense, she's missing her sight.

And this aria's a culmination of all of that, that feeling and sadness from having missed so much of life.

But at the end of the opera, the king actually ends up finding her a doctor, and the doctor gives her sight, and she lives happily ever after with the prince, and everything's good.

(soft music) (singing in foreign language) (soft music) (singing in foreign language) (soft music) (singing in foreign language) - Arnold Bax was a composer born in South London in the late 19th century, and he studied at the Royal Academy of Music.

And this piece was dedicated to the great violist, Lionel Tertis.

And so this piece was inspired by his time in Ireland.

So you can hear the kind of lush pasture world serene quality.

It's very picturesque, and green hills, and it's beautiful.

(soft music) (eerie music) (soft music) (soft music) - At Curtis, was really my first time collaborating with instruments that weren't just the piano.

- This little known trio of Three Songs by British composer Frank Bridge for Medium Voice, Viola, and Piano was first performed in London in 1908 with Bridge himself on the piano.

He was a prodigious student who studied viola, composition, and piano at the Royal College of Music.

Because of his extensive knowledge of the viola, e was able to extract the rich sonorities from the instrument in all of his compositions.

Often serving as a replacement conductor, he frequently felt alienated from the London music scene.

He was saddened by London's indifference toward his music.

Aside from composition and performance, Bridge is known for being the mentor and teacher of Benjamin Britten.

He was supported by the powerful American patron of the arts, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge.

And Bridge was the only artist that she sponsored on an annual basis.

- The poetry for Bridge's Three Songs for Medium Voice, Viola, and Piano is made up of fragments from passages written by three different poets.

The first piece, Far Far From Each Other is an excerpt taken from Matthew Arnold's poem, Parting.

In the original poem, the narrator is a man who alternates between the states of confusion and certainty.

The stanzas alternate between tumult and stability, where he seems to find love, but is haunted by his past experiences that ultimately prevent him from achieving happiness.

In the end, he is unable to overcome his trauma, and resorts to living in solitude, the only fitting solution.

(soft music) ♪ Far far from each other ♪ ♪ Our spirits have grown ♪ ♪ And what heart knows another ♪ ♪ Ah who knows his own ♪ (soft music) ♪ Blow ye winds, lift me with you ♪ ♪ I come to the wild ♪ (soft music) ♪ Fold closely, O nature ♪ ♪ Thine arms round thy child ♪ (soft music) ♪ Ah calm me, restore me ♪ ♪ And dry up my tears ♪ ♪ On thy high mountain platforms ♪ ♪ Where morn first appears ♪ ♪ Where morn ♪ ♪ First ♪ ♪ Appears ♪ (soft music) The second piece, Where Is It That Our Soul Doth Go, is translated from the last stanza of Heinrich Heine's Clarisse.

The existential poetry begs an answer to the age old question of what happens after one dies.

The impetuous nature of the piece suggests a person who cannot come to terms with the impending reality.

He repeats the question numerous times, simply an echo that will never respond, but only reflect back to the source.

The ending for us imitates the sound of a slowing heartbeat, and signifies the character coming to accept the reality that no one will ever give him an answer to this question.

(soft music) ♪ One thing I'd know ♪ ♪ When we have perished ♪ ♪ Where is it that our soul doth go ♪ ♪ Where, where is the fire that is extinguished ♪ ♪ Where is the wind ♪ ♪ Where is the wind but now did blow ♪ ♪ Where is it ♪ ♪ Where is it ♪ ♪ Where is it that our soul doth go ♪ ♪ When we have perished ♪ (soft music) - The third piece, titled Music, When Soft Voices Die, comes from a poem by Percy Shelley that was published after his death.

The opening poetry speaks of memories from times long past.

Second stanza returns to the present, where those memories are simply just that, things that once were, and now are not.

(soft music) ♪ Music when soft voices die ♪ ♪ Vibrates in the memory ♪ ♪ Odours, when sweet violets sicken ♪ ♪ Live within the sense they quicken ♪ (soft music) ♪ Rose leaves when the rose is dead ♪ ♪ Are heaped for the beloved's bed ♪ ♪ And so my thoughts when thou art gone ♪ ♪ Love itself shall slumber on ♪ ♪ Love itself shall slumber on ♪ (soft music) I prefer theatrical productions.

I think they are more interesting, because you don't have to be yourself.

You can be someone else, and of course, add your own kind of taste to it.

But you get to be someone else, and you get to fall into their mindset, and live their life for a little bit.

Hannah Kline and I performed Aprite, presto, aprite, which is a scene out of Le Nozze di Figaro and Mozart.

I was Susanna, and she played the role Cherubino.

Cherubino is supposed to be at boot camp.

He's supposed to be in the military, because he's a troublemaker around the house.

He's a young teenage boy, and instead, he's hidden in the castle still against the wishes of the Count.

And the Countess and Susanna are in her room, and Cherubino is there too, and they're dressing him up just for fun, but then the Count comes, and they hide Cherubino.

They lock the closet door, and the Countess acts suspiciously.

So the Count starts to suspect something.

Now, Susanna in the meantime had also hidden, so the Count wouldn't see her.

So what happens is the Count takes the Countess, and they go to get the key to the closet.

And she goes with him, so that she can't open the door by herself, and free Cherubino, the person who isn't supposed to be there, and who would be in trouble if found out.

So while they're gone, Susanna opens the door to the closet, and helps Cherubino escape, but they can't figure out how to escape, because they are on the second or third floor of the building.

And the only option really, because the other door is locked, the bedroom, is to jump out of the window.

So Cherubino jumps out of the window, and he runs away, and everything is good.

And after this scene, what happens is that the Count and the Countess come back, and they unlock the closet door, and Susanna has taken the place of Cherubino.

(soft music) (singing in foreign language) (soft music) (singing in foreign language) (drifty music)