By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
April Yeager found her voice at Bowling Green State University.
She was studying piano when she decided to switch to the vocal arts studying with, among others, Janelle Celaire, the graduate student who helped her make the transition, and Ann Corrigan.
“I felt I had more control with my voice than with the piano,” Yeager said.
In the years since, through career changes and health issues, the 2002 BGSU graduate has maintained her love for music.
“It’s just something I love deeply, and I feel if I didn’t my soul would die a little bit,” she said during a holiday visit to Bowling Green where she grew up.
Now living in Reston, Virginia, she works in the legal profession.
She continues to sing in opera productions with several companies, as well as in other choral situations.
In December that included being in the chorus that backed up crossover classical super star Andrea Bocelli for his performance in Capital One Arena.
Yeager said she knew the venue from seeing performances by Shakira and the Trans Siberian Orchestra, as well as watching the Washington Capitals hockey team. “It was cool. I was out there on the actual stage.”
Yeager said she landed the gig through the Facebook group DC-Area Classical Singers Network. The rehearsals had started, but more singers were needed. Though a soprano, Yeager hired on as an alto. She only had three or four rehearsals with the chorale group contracted for the job. But much of the material was familiar including “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s “Turandot” and “Ave Maria.” The music somewhat easier than she performs in other situations, she said.
Yeager remembered it was a long day with a 3 p.m. call for a 7:30 show. That meant she was headed home at 10:30 p.m.
“The concert itself seemed to go by so fast,” she said.
They didn’t see Bocelli until he made his entrance on stage, and Yeager said she spent the concert with a view of the back of his head.
“It was pretty cool singing backup for one of the premier artists of our time.” But given the arena’s acoustics, “it was hard to hear him,” Yeager said. “You really had to watch the conductor’s baton to know where we were.”
Yeager did her first operas at BGSU under the direction of Eugene Dybdahl. She recalls performing in “The Marriage of Figaro” and “The Mikado.”
After graduation, she held a number of jobs, including working for an obstetrics and gynecology practice, the Humane Society, and the Starbucks in Kroger.
She also continued to perform in choruses with the Toledo Opera.
Frustrated with her job prospects in Northwest Ohio, she moved to Washington D.C. in 2008 with the intention of becoming a veterinarian’s assistant. She soon was disenchanted with that, and found work in a law office, a field she’s stuck with mostly in the intervening years.
Yeager joined the Loudoun Lyric Opera in Virginia. In 2013 after a break because of vocal issues caused by acid reflux, she resumed performing with Opera Camerata of Washington.
The company specializes in presenting scaled-down productions of operas in intimate spaces, mostly embassies, “so there’s a lot of diplomats and foreign dignitaries in the audience.”
The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia saw her in a performance of “Tosca” in the Colombian embassy. Yeager said she got to “rub elbows” with the justice after the production.
And Scalia’s Supreme Court colleague and fellow opera lover Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in the audience for “The Barber of Seville.”
Yeager has been with Opera Camerata long enough that in 2019 she sang “La Traviata” for the second time with them. Their repertoire consists of the standards, she said.
She also performs at galas and with the Maryland Lyric Opera.
The Facebook group has helped her find other gigs, including at area churches. She’s even gotten a chance to appear on stage at Wolf Trap, albeit in a non-singing role.
Aside from covering for the role of Frasquita in a production of “Carmen,” Yeager sings in the chorus. Singing solo now seems “daunting,” though when it comes time for the show she does sometimes wish she had a solo.
While she expects her performance schedule will slow down as she takes a paralegal course, Yeager has no intention of setting aside singing.
“I’m always anxious for the next project.”
