Active Voice
A day in the life of opera singer Natalie Lewis ’21
If you’ve heard the old joke, you know that the way to get to Carnegie Hall is “practice, practice, practice.” It’s been only a few short years since Natalie Lewis ’21 earned her bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from UMass Amherst, but she’s already made it onto that hallowed stage—and she’s still going.
After graduating from UMass, the mezzo-soprano earned a master’s degree (on a full scholarship) from Juilliard. She won first place in the 2023 Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers, was one of six winners of the 2023 Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, and, of course, made her debut at Carnegie Hall. Today, her heavy rehearsal schedule continues with the renowned Bavarian State Opera in Munich. She works Monday through Saturday and sometimes Sunday as well, and can go from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. with barely any breaks.
Lewis was always interested in drama and grew up around music, mostly gospel. “My mother wouldn’t allow us to listen to anything except religious music,” she says, “but gospel music is very dramatic and performative. It’s all about good singing as well as good storytelling.” In high school, her interests led her to musical theater, which is what she thought she would do after graduating. But exposure to a classical-leaning musical—Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella—introduced her to a new way of singing, and when she saw her first opera, she thought, “Okay, this is musical theater times a hundred. It’s everything I love about musical theater, just amplified.”
What’s it really like to be an opera singer? Here’s a peek into a day in the life of this busy young talent.
8 a.m. Wake up
“If I’m really honest, my alarm is set for 8:30,” says Lewis, “and I wake up anywhere between 6:30 and 8 first. But then I’m definitely trying to get out of bed between 8 and 8:30.” She takes a quick shower and gets ready to go, sometimes doing some basic warmups like light lip trills to start getting her voice ready for the day.
9:30 a.m. Arrive at opera house
The proper singing starts at the opera house as Lewis warms up. She sings scales to wake up her voice and make sure she’s enunciating clearly. She may also sing part of a song or aria that isn’t part of the night’s performance to get herself in the mindset of operatic singing. Then, she sings excerpts of what she’ll be performing that night to make sure she’s ready. “For example, last week I was performing Mary in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer,” she says. “This is a relatively low role, so I decided to sing ‘Weiche, Wotan, Weiche’ from Wagner’s Das Rheingold, which has a similar range. It’s also the same composer and language, and I’ll be singing it later this season, so it made for the perfect warmup aria.”
“Something I’ve been doing a lot recently is some yoga stretches and trying to warm up my body,” she adds. “My body definitely needs to be just as warmed up as my voice is. And sometimes, if my body’s warmed up, my voice follows suit.”
10 a.m. Rehearsal
From 10 a.m. to around 1 p.m., Lewis rehearses with her fellow performers. She might also have individual coaching with one of the music staff to help her prepare for a role. The company puts on over 30 shows each season, with around three playing in any given week. For new shows, there’s a six-week process of music and staging rehearsals, but for shows they’ve put on before (roughly 80 percent, she estimates), rehearsals take place over about a week.
“Last week I was performing in two operas, Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer and Leoš Janáček’s Kát’a Kabanová, as well as rehearsing an opera—our premiere of Matsukaze by Toshio Hosokawa,” she says.
In addition to rehearsing, Lewis sometimes has costume fittings, wig fittings, or makeup tests during this time. With all the existing shows that cycle through during the season, costumes are often reused. “It’s very interesting going in and seeing which part of this costume that they made for this one specific person will fit me,” she says. “Some parts will fit, and some parts won’t.”
As one of the few Black women in the opera house, Lewis finds that it can take some adjustments to make the costumes work for her, particularly in the hair and makeup department. “The team has done a good job updating their makeup techniques for performers with dark skin,” she says, though she often has to take the lead in styling her own hair. For example, she’s had to add braids or extensions when her hair needs to be in a ponytail or bun, which can sometimes cause tension with the hair team. “They would’ve preferred for me to have left it in its natural state, not understanding that what I did was going to make their job and mine a lot easier, which it a thousand percent did.”
1 p.m. Lunch
Lewis typically dines at the opera house canteen, often with other people from the studio. “I’ve definitely become a very big fan of German food,” she says, noting the Bayerische (Bavarian) Supper—a creamy broth with chopped beef and a lot of pepper—as a particular favorite.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, the studio offers German language classes during this time. “Last year and this year, no one in the opera studio is actually German,” says Lewis. “We’re all from somewhere else, so the German class comes in handy.” While she describes her fluency level as “the bare minimum,” she does say, “I can get through my doctor’s appointment now. And I feel like because I can confidently explain how I feel physically, I’ve done something.”
2 p.m. Back to the studio
Some days, Lewis has more staging rehearsals until the evening. On other days, there are different training opportunities. “As a member of the studio, I do get to perform and participate in all of the main stage productions,” she says, “but on top of that, I’m also getting voice lessons, and we have auditions and dramatic coaching as well.” Some of the voice teachers also provide physical training in movement therapy modalities such as the Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method. “They can help align my body and my breathing and my physicality.”
4 p.m. Call time
Lewis’s arrival time for a performance can be as early as 4 p.m. or as late as 7 or 7:30 p.m. if her character doesn’t show up until later in the production. “By then I’m fairly warmed up,” she says, “but I’ll usually get to my dressing room and sing a bit from that night’s opera, and then make sure I’m prepared for the makeup and hair process and all of those things.”
7 p.m. Showtime!
As a younger member of the studio, Lewis tends to play a lot of smaller roles. “Especially as a mezzo-soprano, I play a lot of maids, sisters, best friends, nurses.” Her biggest role so far was in a Russian opera by Tchaikovsky called The Queen of Spades. “I play the governess of the main character in that one. I have this whole song where I’m reprimanding her about her bad behavior, which is literally all the roles that I do,” she says with a laugh. “All we [mezzos] do is we come in and we tell the soprano how they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing and how they should take our advice, but we never get listened to.”
“This season I have slightly larger roles,” she adds, “but they’re still maids and servants. I just get to sing more.” Among her roles this season are Mary in Der fliegende Holländer and Erda in Das Rheingold. Lewis says there are plenty of lead roles for mezzos, so there’s room for her to grow into bigger roles as her career progresses. “I would love to sing Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde by Wagner, Santuzza from Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, or Leonora from Donizetti’s La favorita, to name a few.”
In addition to her parts in the operas, she sings in exclusive concerts for opera subscribers. “It’s usually my favorite part about any performance that I do,” she says.
11 p.m.: Quitting time
Lewis usually stays for the curtain call and, after taking her bow, gets out of her costume and makeup, which generally takes around half an hour. “The costume team always helps with getting in and out of costumes and handles all costume care,” she says. “They usually want to get everyone out of costume as quickly as possible so they can begin the washing and dry cleaning that evening!”
After the show, Lewis and her colleagues often go out together to a bar or restaurant near the opera house. “There’s a place called Brenner Grill that we go to very often to relax.” With their busy schedule, it’s hard for the performers to get out and see much of the city, so these post-show dinners or drinks are a nice way to get a taste (pun intended) of Munich. As one might expect, they do talk a lot about opera, but Lewis says, “If we can help it, we will talk about things that aren’t opera-related,” such as relationships, family, and mental health.
1:30 a.m.: Winding down
Though Lewis sometimes gets home as early as 9:30 p.m., there are days when she doesn’t get home until after midnight. She does her skin care routine along with aftercare for her voice, cooling down as an athlete would after a workout. Steam treatment and some of the same exercises she does as warmups help make sure her voice is “settled after all of the singing and the talking after the performance.” Then it’s time to pamper herself after her long day. She likes to wind down by reading something escapist (Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is her current pick) or watching an episode of TV (she especially enjoys anime, detective shows, and sci-fi). “There’s usually a delicious treat involved somewhere in there,” she says. “If my boyfriend is there, which he often is, he’s made some tea or something. He might read something to me. I really just like to be able to go home and do as little as possible.” After all, tomorrow is another busy day.
Hear Lewis sing “O mio Fernando” from Donizetti’s La favorita:
