“Really good singers put their heart into it.  You can hear that,” said 14-year old Madeleine Rassaby of Bozeman, Montana when we spoke last year.  She’s a one of a kind teenager who loves opera the way most girls love horses or boy bands or shopping: passionately.  She speaks about opera with the same clarity and specificity, and wisdom beyond her tender years.  Luckily for her, Madeleine’s family is incredibly supportive of her love of opera.  “I know I wouldn’t get the opportunities I do if my family didn’t encourage me so much.  If schools and families encouraged kids to do it more, if it got as much attention as sports, for example, music would get more exposure.”  How right she is!

Madeleine first came into contact with opera at the young age of 9, when her parents took her to see Pirates of Penzance, a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.  “My parents were concerned that I’d be bored and restless,” she remembers, but they needn’t have worried.  Madeleine was enthralled, and bugged her parents to take her again.  One year later, she was excited to see The Mikado, and then, the following year, The Magic Flute. Her parents couldn’t have imagined that their daughter would sing the tunes in the car all the way home!  Madeleine really fell in love with opera, however, when she had the opportunity to take part in a production of Carmen at the Intermountain Opera Association in her home town.  “Watching it all come together was amazing,” she says.   “After that experience, I knew that was what I wanted to do as a job.”

Madeleine’s family all love and participate actively in music making: her older brother Louis plays the cello, her younger brother Daniel plays piano and percussion, and her father also plays the piano.  She was raised playing both the piano and the flute, but now concentrates on her voice and piano.  Her parents attend the symphony regularly, the local schools encourage music in many forms, and the Rassaby household is rarely quiet.

Being from a small town can certainly have its drawbacks in terms of the amount of culture available, but it also affords its citizens a very special opportunity to participate actively in the productions presented.  “Being a big fish in a small pond,” Madeleine notes, “means that you get to meet everyone and see how everything fits together.  It’s not just about watching the opera.”  In Bozeman, the opera company often invites the public school children to visit backstage before they open an opera.  They get to see the sets, costumes, and lights, and can even walk around onstage to get a feel for the size and complexity of putting together all the parts an opera.  “The sets are really cool,” says Madeleine.  Though the Intermountain Opera Association rents many of its sets, Madeleine notes that “it’s so amazing to see the empty stage coming to life.  I just think,” she adds giggling, “Wow, people from Bozeman helped make that?”

Her big-city experience came about just a few years ago when, on a whim, her father decided to send Madeleine and her mother to New York City.  “We don’t do things like that much in my family, and it was just such a thrilling experience.  I know I’ll never forget it,” she says.  They went to the Met twice, seeing productions of Don Giovanni and Rigoletto.  She proudly recounts how an elderly gentleman turned around to her in the intermission and, having noticed how well behaved and engrossed she was in the opera, commented: “Now I have hope for the future.”

Children and teens who like opera are few and far between, and Madeleine certainly knows she’s the odd one out in her circle of friends, but she doesn’t allow it to affect her or deter her from pursuing her opera activities vigorously.  “ My two best friends are pretty cool about it,” she says.  “One of them will come and see an opera, but the other one likes country music – which I really don’t.  Still we accept each other, and that is the sign of true friendship,” she finishes.  As I said, wise beyond her years.  On the other hand, some are disrespectful, telling her that opera is stupid and that “all they do is scream!”  Madeleine is a confident young woman, however, and certainly not the type of person who cares overly much what others think of her tastes.  “I’m confident in what I like, and they can’t shake that confidence.  Besides, it’s their loss,” she adds vehemently, “because opera rocks!”  I couldn’t have said it better.

Madeleine has taken voice lessons with Linda Curtis, the Artistic Director of the IOA, and who was also an opera singer.  “I’ve been working on the 24 Italian Songs and Arias,” she says, “specifically Per la Gloria, Amarilli, Pur di cesti, o boca bella, and Nel cor più non mi sento (she hums a few lines just to make sure I know the piece she's talking about!).  I like the last one especially best because it’s light and fluffy.”  Make no mistake, Madeleine fully realizes how difficult it would be to lead a life in the performing arts world, especially opera.  “You wouldn’t have as much of a social life,” she muses, “because you would have to take care of your voice, and all that.  But it’s still definitely my dream to be a successful opera singer.”  She concludes that thought with yet another pithy remark: “Music is a hard profession, but somebody’s got to do it.”

Since discovering opera four years ago, Madeleine has seen almost all the Met HD broadcasts that have been shown in her hometown cinema, and has something to say about each one.  A recent sojourn to the movies brought her to see Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.  The Cio-Cio San had a beautiful voice, she concedes, but she was still a bit disappointed.  First of all, she didn’t look the part – and by that I’m sure she didn’t mean that the singer did not look Asian.  “It’s a really hard role to portray,” says Madeleine, “and she wasn’t sweet or soft enough.”  That role, along with Musetta and Carmen – although she does make sure to point out that she knows Carmen is typically sung by a mezzo – are her dream roles although she’d like to play a lot of different roles.  Of Rossini’s La Cenerentola – which she pronounces flawlessly – she says that she missed the passion that’s so fundamental to good opera.  “When Cinderella was with the prince, they didn’t hold hands or look at each other very much,” she recalls.  And while of course we will never know whether this was a directorial mandate or a personal choice, it was an impressive detail to have picked up on.

You might think that a young person so obviously infatuated and in tune with opera would have a favorite singer, but Madeleine doesn’t.  “Each person has his or her own style,” she comments.  Still, she does single out Natalie Dessay as particularly remarkable, not only for her voice, but for her exquisite acting skills.  “She’s a very gentle person and the way she can just sing everything and make it seem so easy is amazing,”  Then she throws another curveball: “I was reading the New York Times the other day and in the article it said that she was a real role model because she doesn’t just ‘park and bark.’”  Anyone in the opera world knows that term, which denotes a singer who merely stands motionless on stage singing with little regard for movement or artistic interpretation.

Her mother and father wisely counsel her to have a back-up plan, just in case the opera career doesn’t pan out, but she’s still adamant that opera is her future.  “I’ll keep practicing and learning and doing operas.  Hopefully I’ll be the one at the top.”  In the words of that older gentleman, “Now I have hope for the future.”

The photograph shows Madeline alongside soprano Heather Buck in Opera Bozeman's production of Ballad of Baby Doe.