Salem native Audrey Luna (center) performs as Leticia Maynar in Thomas Adès’ “The Exterminating Angel.” (Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
Audrey Luna, the Salem-born soprano and Portland State University alumna known for stratospheric singing, including what is thought to be the highest note in Metropolitan Opera history, returns this week to sing in Portland for the first time in more than 12 years.
“I’m finally coming to Portland!” she says by phone from her Hawaii home. “I had to sing at the Met a dozen times” – 32 performances, actually – “before I get to sing in Portland.” She says she and Portland State University’s director of opera, Christine Meadows, “have been trying to get this happening for about five years.” Lance Inouye, artistic director and conductor of Portland Concert Opera, was another catalyst, and the result is four Portland events.
After singing in a sold-out Voce d’Amore fundraiser at Portland State, Luna coaches opera students in a master class that is free to the public on Saturday, Feb. 9, in Lincoln Hall.
On Sunday, Feb. 10, she sings a recital with Portland State assistant music professor Chuck Dillard at the piano. “I’ve gotten together a recital that I’ve been working on with a pianist here on Oahu. I start with Strauss: a few songs from the ‘Brentano Lieder,’ a few from ‘Mädchenblumen,’ a few other favorites, so it’s a mixture of my favorite Strauss songs. Then Debussy’s ‘Quatre Chansons de Jeunesse’ and Barber’s ‘Knoxville: Summer of 1915,’ ” which evokes a sultry evening to a text by 20th-century American author James Agee.
Finally, on Wednesday, Feb. 13, at Lewis & Clark College’s Agnes Flanagan Chapel, Luna sings with Inouye conducting Portland Concert Opera’s orchestra. “It’s an hour of arias, something for everyone,” she says, including “I Could Have Danced All Night” from the musical “My Fair Lady,” “Glitter and Be Gay” from Leonard Bernstein’s operetta “Candide” and Puccini’s classic “O mio babbino caro.”
Luna “can’t wait” to revisit Ruth Dobson, her voice teacher at Portland State. “We’ve kept pretty close. She traveled to hear me three times at the Met, including my debut in 2010.”
And she’s excited for this month’s DVD release of “The Exterminating Angel,” in which, as the opera singer Leticia, she sang Met-record A’s above high C. The DVD of the previous Thomas Adès opera, “The Tempest,” sporting her physically and vocally athletic Ariel, won a Grammy Award.
Luna is coming off two months at home: Does that mean score study or beach time? “A lot of it is studying scores on the beach. I’m always hiking, and bringing headphones and music along every time. I did a gala at Hawaii Opera, a recital here, a corporate event, teaching a little bit.” And she and husband Alex Johnson just bought a new house at Ewa Beach outside Honolulu.
From Portland, she flies to Vienna for a new role, Hermione in Manfred Trojahn’s “Orest,” which follows the haunted Orestes after he has killed his mother. A favorite role, Gepopo in Ligeti’s opera “Le Grand Macabre,” a satirical take on society’s response to the imminent end of the world, follows in Hamburg.
“Orest” begins where Strauss’s “Elektra” leaves off. “It literally starts with someone screaming,” Luna says. “Hermione’s music is a little more lyrical than Gepopo. It’s more like Leticia. It’s pretty high but doesn’t go above an E. I really am enjoying Gepopo. I’ve done Gepopo running around like a chicken with its head cut off. It’s challenging but super fun.”
And beach time has been spent on the title role of Berg’s “Lulu,” vocally and dramatically demanding in perhaps the most complex opera of all. “I know it’s inevitable, but no one’s asked me yet. It’s always good to have roles that are inevitable already prepared.”
Audrey Luna
Master class: 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 9, Lincoln Hall, 1620 S.W. Park Ave.
Recital: 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10, Lincoln Hall.
Concert: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 13, Lewis & Clark College, Agnes Flanagan Chapel, 0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road.