Rosenthal: "I Got This"

At the Pittsburgh Opera this month, with little notice, Edgemont's Rosenthal was asked to sing two roles in one performance.

Luck, they say, is the residue of hard work.  Or it's all about being in the right place at the right time, because of passion, preparation and confidence.

Take Claudia Rosenthal '08 '14MM, for example. A recent example.  Rosenthal, an Edgemont native, studied music and opera at Yale and has won prizes to identify promising young performers, including competitions sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera.  She is currently a Resident Artist at the Pittsburgh Opera.

One afternoon in mid-October, she had a scheduled small part (Annina) in the company's La Traviata production.  On the morning of the performance, the performer for the lead role Violetta was unable to sing because of a bout with laryngitis.  The opera's directors decided to come up with a plan.  They asked Rosenthal to sing both her role and the lead role. 

During the performance, Rosenthal stood on the side of the stage and sang both parts, while other performers acted the parts and lip-synced what Rosenthal sang. (The audience was aware and could see Rosenthal.) By the end of the performance, Rosenthal, by some estimates, had sung about two-thirds of the entire performance. 

Local media didn't miss the feat.  "I was having conversations with myself," Rosenthal told the Pitts Post-Gazette, "because Violetta and Annina have conversations."

One audience member said of Rosenthal's two-part role, "Opera can be very tradition-bound, so when something shakes it up a little bit, I think that's all to the good."

Before she approached the stage to begin the performance, Rosenthal looked into a mirror and said she told herself, "You got this."