Apprentice singer hopes to come full-circle with Santa Fe Opera

When Lydia Grindatto’s mother took her to the Santa Fe Opera as an 8-year-old, she was asleep by intermission.

“To be honest with you, I thought opera was kind of boring,” the Albuquerque native said in a telephone interview from Santa Fe. “I liked pop music — Hannah Montana or everything from the Disney Channel.”

Now a newly-minted SFO apprentice singer and lyric soprano at 28, Grindatto grew up in Tijeras, where her mother, who had studied voice and opera in college, played piano. Opera was the soundtrack of Grindatto’s childhood. She accompanied her mother to the SFO every season.

“She said, how about you study classical music first, and then you can branch out into anything after that,” Grindatto said.

She studied voice privately while being homeschooled.

“I just had to sing,” she said. “I sang in a choir at a Catholic church. It came very gradually to me.

“When I was a senior in high school, I got into the Santa Fe Young Voices program,” she continued.

SFO Apprentice Singer associate director “Kathleen Clawson became my teacher.”

Her teachers encouraged her to go professional. But she encountered at least one major roadblock.

“Stage fright has always been a thing,” Grindatto said. “It used to affect me so strongly I would forget words. I’ve trained myself to perform even if I’m incredibly nervous on the inside. It’s kind of like training your nervous system.”

Grindatto majored in voice at the University of New Mexico, thinking she would become a voice teacher. Then she was cast in the university production of Johann Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus.” She studied more privately, then was accepted into the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia. She’s now in her second year.

In the Apprentice Singer concerts, slated for Sunday, Aug. 13 and 20, she will sing the role of the second sprite in Antonín Dvorák’s “Rusalka.” She also will be the understudy in the SFO production for soprano Ailyn Pérez in the opera’s title role.

“It really has been a dream,” Grindatto said. “It’s been one week. I got to really see what it feels like to sing on the Santa Fe Opera stage. I grew up seeing all the singers on that stage. It was larger than life.

“My dream is to sing leading roles anywhere in the world. I think I’ll be happy as long as I’m singing. My full circle moment is when I get to sing a leading role at the Santa Fe Opera.”

Grindatto is the daughter of Daniel and Jayne Neal of Tijeras.

Santa Fe’s singing and technical apprentice programs have launched numerous distinguished careers, including singers William Burden, Joyce DiDonato, Michael Fabiano, Brandon Jovanovich, Kate Lindsey, Samuel Ramey, Susanna Phillips, and technicians Ruth E. Carter, Alex Davila, B.R. Delaney, Jennifer Good, Rupert Hemmings, Aja Jackson and Jeffrey Mace, to name a few.