Originally published in Current, Sept. 16, 1996
By Karen Everhart Bedford

The Three Sopranos, an ensemble of young American opera singers handpicked by impresario Tibor Rudas, is coming to PBS in December. They'll follow by several weeks a fresh Three Tenors broadcast [story at right], scheduled by PBS for Oct. 26.

Divas in the making: Cassello, Esperian and Lawrence in L.A. (Photo: Lester Cohen, courtesy of Atlantic Records.)

Using the same basic formula of telecasts, recordings and concerts that propelled the already acclaimed tenors to previously unimaginable worldwide renown, Rudas hopes to catch a second bottle of lightning with three attractive and little-known sopranos.

"Again, I will be the bad boy to take them out of the small circle of opera and onto television and recording," Rudas told Current last week.

The sopranos--Kathleen Cassello, Kallen Esperian and Cynthia Lawrence--debuted as a threesome Sept. 5 [1996] in a specially created venue outside the Century Plaza Towers in Los Angeles. The performance was recorded for television, and will air on public TV during December pledge. Atlantic Records will release audio recordings just before airdate.

"We see it as a real top feature of our December drive," said Jim Scalem, PBS v.p. of fundraising programs. "It would be great if this is successful, then it might lead to more concerts with these women."

Attempts to create a female trio to duplicate the tenors' success have been made before, according to David Horn, director of music programming for WNET. "I can assure you that many proposals and phone calls have passed this desk." Artists' managers encountered "a lot of resistance" from divas who didn't want to be seen as copying the tenors, he said. "You have to be careful."

Horn noted that in all of these efforts he never heard the same two names suggested twice, reflecting the fact that, in terms of fame, there are few women who indisputably would be the most prima of donnas. "If you asked people in 1990 to name three tenors, you would have gotten pretty good consensus. If you ask them to name three sopranos, they'd have to think about it for a while. There's a lot of really good female singers."

The three young women anointed by Rudas are "good singers" and "relatively well known, but they're not anywhere near as famous as the three men," commented Patrick Smith, editor of Opera News.

All three sopranos have performed with Pavarotti, which is how Rudas discovered them.

"Being the promoter and producer of all the Pavarotti concerts around the world, I had the opportunity to use a number of sopranos to assist with arias with Pavarotti," said the Hungarian-born showman. "I used the concerts to select the three with the best voices, temperature, nature and looks."

Cassello, winner of the Pavarotti International Voice Competition, has been singing extensively in Europe for a dozen years. Esperian, noted for her singing of Verdi, according to her bio, has sung with Placido Domingo at the Met and with Pavarotti at La Scala (and on a public TV special from Memphis last Christmas). Lawrence, who is based at Chicago's Lyric Opera, won the International Mozart Vocal Competition in 1990 and has toured with Pavarotti.

"Really, the hardship was to find three operatic sopranos who also would be outstanding in singing modern American musical comedies and songs, as well as Latin songs--it had to be a combination," Rudas said. "To me, it doesn't matter how great of a soprano you are. If you are unable to satisfy the audience in one of these departments, the whole thing would fail."

Wayne Baruch, executive producer of the Three Sopranos concert, said the Three Tenors' repertoire of "user-friendly opera" plus lighter music contributed to their vast public appeal. He's counting on the sopranos' music and their personalities (they're "all spark plugs") to captivate audiences.

Rudas said he hopes the Three Sopranos will revive the public's now-faded fascination with operatic divas like Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, and Renata Tebaldi. He said he was unable to use more well-known sopranos "because they are not able to satisfy the general public with modern American song."

"If the Three Sopranos cause the people to fall in love with the soprano repertoire as they have with the tenor repertoire, then all the more power to them," said Martin Goldsmith, host of NPR's Performance Today. "Anything that gets people to [discover opera] is a good thing, and if Rudas makes a zillion dollars off of it, it doesn't bother me."

Rudas himself recognizes that the sopranos may not be an overnight smash. Age was one of the criteria he used to select the sopranos--none of them is older than 35. "To be able to bring them to the public all over the world, it might take years," he said. "I wanted to make sure they were the right age to be able to keep going with it."

"Anything that promotes people who are unknown is a good thing," said Smith of Opera News. "I'm glad he has not picked the three top sopranos of the day."

The sopranos make their European debut Oct. 20 at the London Palladium. Rudas plans a 40-concert world tour for 1997-98.

	To Current's home page
	Earlier news: The dramatic story from a PBS documentary became the basis of a new opera — that will appear on public TV.
	Later news: Tenors and more tenors remain stars of pledge drives, 2003.
	Outside link: Website of the Three Sopranos.

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