Francesca Chiejina: the radiant soprano who wants opera for all
Francesca Chiejina began her year as a ghost, ended it as an enchantress, and took in a goddess, a princess, a pauper and an acclaimed Proms appearance along the way. Covid might have meant an enforced pause for many musicians, but it certainly doesn’t seem to have derailed this radiant and versatile soprano. “Yeah,” she smiles, “I’ve had a crazy year.”
The Nigerian/American singer, 30, has been based in London since 2014, studying at Guildhall and then winning a place on the Royal Opera House’s prestigious Jette Parker Young Artists programme. We talk over Zoom as she’s in Nigeria for her first visit in more than three years. “It’s lovely to be here,” she says. “Being on the same soil where I was born. I’ve been reflecting a lot, reremembering and rediscovering who I was, who I am and who I want to be.”
Who she is and who she wanted to be was never a singer, let alone a soprano. As a girl in Lagos, there were piano and violin lessons and her talent was evident. Her family moved to Michigan in the US when she was 10 (“I remember carrying my violin as my hand luggage!”) and in public schools she enjoyed free music lessons, and was part of orchestras and choirs. “I’d get solos here and there, and my teachers would tell me my voice was good,” she says. Still, she began studying to be a doctor, and a very different career looked set.
“I never thought I’d sing for a living, but this tiny seed in me kept growing until when I was about 20 it just exploded.”
Her parents were took some convincing. There were tears, she says. “They thought I was ruining my life, that I should at least finish my medical training, but I think it was when I got into the Jette Parker programme that they finally accepted I wasn’t making a huge mistake.”
And the soprano bit? As a teenager she sang alto, the lowest female voice, in choirs, and she began her musical training as a mezzo. “I had never really stretched my voice,” she says. “And, sopranos had this reputation for being really hard to please, difficult girls who like to be the centre of attention, and I thought: that’s not me. I’m a mezzo, personality-wise!” But her teacher had a hunch and encouraged her to explore her range, and Chiejina’s voice blossomed.
“For a long time, and even a little bit still today, I was a reluctant soprano,” she laughs. “But I’m slowly learning to be a better one – in terms of standing up for myself. It’s a lot of pressure to be the tenor or the soprano, you have to learn how to say no a lot.”
Not that “no” has been her watchword this last year. “Obviously I don’t want to tire myself out but I figured if I say yes to lots of opportunities I will be able to discover what I like, and what is challenging in a good – and bad – way, and where my real strengths are. I see it as taking in data. It’s really fun to
stretch my voice while I’m young and to have the freedom to experiment.”
Her voice suggests she will particularly excel in Verdi and Puccini – and she’s currently learning La bohème’s Mimi for an English Touring Opera production in spring 2022, but in Handel’s Amadigi as enchantress Melissa (also for ETO) she was hailed as “exceptional”; as the soloist in Berg’s Seven Early Songs at the Proms with
John Wilson’s Vertigo orchestra her voice “glinted with beauty”, and as Britten’s Miss Jessel in Turn of the Screw – a filmed production from OperaGlass Works – she was hugely impressive: “Her luscious voice heavy with illicit experience and knowledge.”
Beyond the bohème, future plans include Strauss’s Four Last Songs at Cadogan Hall, and she reveals she’d love to do more of Puccini’s famous heroines – Aida or Madama Butterfly’s Cio-Ciosan. “I really want to sing the hell out of these parts. That’s the thrill of these roles. The music is so exciting!”
She points out that her musical training in the US at public schools was provided free by the state, and – had she grown up in the UK where similar opportunities are desperately limited – she is unlikely to have been able to develop into the musician she is today. “Music needs to be accessible to all from a really early age. Everyone needs the opportunity to discover it. You can’t just force people as adults to go to stuff that they don’t know or care about.”
Did she ever feel that she didn’t fit the overwhelmingly white world of classical music?
“No one ever made me feel that, at least not to my face,” she says, “but in my classes I just got used to the fact that there were only ever one or two people of colour. I got kind of numb to being the token black face, and chose not to focus on it too much as it can be an incredibly lonely existence. Instead I focused on wanting to excel and simply being really really good at what I do.”
On those latter points there is no doubt.
I got kind of numb to being the token black face, and chose not to focus on it too much