Waller named executive director of Connecticut Lyric Opera
The company also has been working with the Holguin Lyric Theater in Cuba to bring Cuban artists to the United States in a collaboration that includes the Connecticut College Music Department.
“Unfortunately, that got a little bit delayed due to the diplomatic difficulties between our two countries, but we are not losing hope,” Waller said.
Another project in April will feature Connecticut Lyric Opera performing “The Emperor of Atlantic” by Viktor Ullman in Israel with the Tel-Aviv Chamber Orchestra and locally with its own ensemble tentatively scheduled in March, thanks to the support of the Garde and local Jewish federations. Several performances in Israel in conjunction with Holocaust Remembrance Day will note that the opera was written during World War II at a Nazi concentration camp.
Separately, Waller has begun to branch out from performing exclusively with Connecticut Lyric Opera, earlier this year performing the part of Desdemona in Puccini’s “Otello” with the ProLyric de Medellin in Colombia.
The whirl of activity doesn’t seem to faze Waller, daughter of two physicists and granddaughter of Jonas Svedas, perhaps the most famous Lithuanian composer of his generation and founder of Lietuva, a Lithuanian song and dance ensemble that still travels the world today.
Her grandmother, Zofia Wernicka, was a prima ballerina for the Warsaw Ballet until the German army invaded Poland, Waller said.
“I heard music all the time,” she recalled of her childhood.
Eventually, she joined a girls’ choir and became a soloist, spending her young life listening to records and going to the theater every week. “I couldn’t see myself as anything else but a singer,” she said.
An only child, she eventually a ruptured spleen. Seventeen hours and three hospitals later, the correct diagnosis was finally made, but by then she had lost so much blood, three to four liters, that she needed fresh units to replace it (otherwise her body would have rejected the transfusion).
“Lucky for me, my uncle was a deputy defense minister of Lithuania at that time and he was able, on a moment’s notice, to organize and send to the hospital soldiers from the Iron Wolf Brigade with my blood type,” she recalled. “My friends, my professors, my family — everyone was donating their blood. ... If not for my mom and my husband John I would not be here today.”
But the outfall of the drastic measures required to bring Waller back to life led to a myriad of health issues that continued for a decade.
Finally feeling healthy, she has tried to make up for lost time, fighting through shyness to reconnect with the musical career she had put on hold for so long. She believes her near-death experience has refocused her energy. “When people make excuses, that doesn’t really enter my mind,” she said with an accent still tinged by her Lithuanian roots.
Her focus today is on building a broader audience for opera. And that means trying to reach out to younger audiences at local schools who don’t see opera as cool, partly because they’ve never experienced a live performance.
Waller is also reaching out in other ways, planning to offer house parties for those who want to hold fundraisers for Connecticut Lyric Opera. But she said such events, usually involving 30 to 50 people, are more about spreading the word about opera than about raising funds.
Acknowledging an aging audience for opera locally, she wants to find converts and spread the word on social media and elsewhere, especially after the company’s performance last spring of “Tosca” at the Garde attracted just under 250 people.
“Opera is a really accessible art,” she said. “It’s a wonderful art form, with visual sets, acting, singing and orchestral music.”
Opera, Waller noted, is a different kind of singing, but when kids hear it live, they are very impressed with the ability of singers to project their voices.
“They are completely mesmerized,” she said. “‘How do you sing so loud? How do you sing so high?’ they ask. They’re used to processed sound. We don’t have amplifiers.”
The human voice heard live, she said, evokes emotions not available to those who count on amplification, which naturally distorts sound.
“Live music doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to mean something,” Waller said. “It’s better to sing a meaningful note than a beautiful note.”