What would you do if you discovered that the girl who sat next to you in the high school choir now sings with the Met? For the Highland High School choirmates of Carla Rae Cook, that's exactly the case.
Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Cook didn't start out with an eye on an opera career. If anything, she said, she thought she'd be a concert pianist. At one point, the opera director at Boston University told her, "Oh Carla, 6-feet women just can't make it in opera, and your voice just doesn't work. It's much too big."
Cook spoke with the Deseret Morning News by phone from Logan, where she is rehearsing for her upcoming role in Utah Festival Opera's production of "The Crucible,"
Cook said the nudges of influential people around her in Utah made her realize that her destiny might be different. Now that she looks both backward and forward to success, she realizes that Ed Thompson, Maurice Abravanel and Blanche Christensen, among others, were right when they urged her to develop her voice.
It was Ardean Watts, she said, who suggested that she be involved in a production of Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" — her first time being involved with opera. "I'd heard opera, I'd heard it on the radio as a young child, but being a singer — are you kidding? Being an opera singer?
"That was not my impetus," she recalled.
One nudge at a time, and Cook soon found her feet firmly planted in the opera direction. She graduated from the University of Utah and went on to get her master's from Boston University.
"I accomplished a master's in one year . . . which I guess was a first," she laughed.
"I did that because I was trying to make it without spending too much money. That was all the money I had."
Cook's career quickly got into high gear. From there, she apprenticed with opera companies throughout the United States. Then she got into the competition circuit. Her first win was the Rotary International Vocal Competition. After that, she won the San Francisco Opera auditions — but she wasn't able to perform with the opera company because she had already signed a contract to do another role elsewhere. So she went back to San Francisco the next year and won the competition again.
From there, she won the Munich International Competition. "Then I decided to audition for the Met, and by jove, I won the Metropolitan Opera (auditions)." That win, she said, changed her life, because that is when her career really got started.
As her career picked up speed, and she got more and more offers from Europe, Cook realized that she needed to look at things more long term. "Carla Rae, they're going to use you up," a friend warned her. So she backed off a little, opting instead to settle in San Francisco, where she could be near the San Francisco Opera, do contract work and raise her three children.
It worked out well, she said, for balancing a career and family. There she was able to raise her children, all the time honing her talent. "Singing is like being an athlete," she said. "You have to keep at the horn. You can't just put it away for three to five years and expect it to be there when you come back."
Cook said the investment in her voice has paid off. She's back, and she's better than ever. Now based in the Washington, D.C., area, she is artistic director of opera at George Mason University.
"I feel like I'm just now entering my prime," she said. She's singing a lot of Wagner roles, something she feels was simply "meant to be," given her 6-foot stature and full voice. "It seems like wherever I go, I'm involved in their 'Ring,' " she said, citing as examples the San Francisco Opera, the Seattle Opera and the Metropolitan Opera.
"The thing about 'Rings,' " she added, "is once you get on the circuit, you just go all over the world singing 'Rings' — amongst other things, too.
"You shouldn't really even start (singing those roles) until your 40s and into your 50s and 60s — that's why they call us the Cadillacs of the opera world. Our voices are bigger and last a long time, as opposed to some singers that just burn themselves out." Cook is looking forward to fulfilling a lifelong dream, singing at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany.
"I want to sing at Bayreuth where Wagner himself developed his Operaspielhaus," she said. "My dream has always been to perfect my artistry enough that I could go and participate in this amazing summer festival."
Cook will be performing this summer in the Utah Festival Opera (her first time), singing the role of Elizabeth Proctor in "The Crucible." She's looking forward to participating this year, after a long association with UFO founder and general director Michael Ballam. In years past, she said, she has heard some of the Utah Festival Opera artists, and "I was always very impressed by the quality of his artists and the artistry."
E-mail: rcline@desnews.com