Ten Questions with Saira Frank

Ten Questions with...

Saira Frank, soprano
Kitty Hart in Dead Man Walking

1. My favorite thing about being a singer is:

Finishing an aria or song and seeing someone in the audience who connected with my performance.  I love to sing, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of performing, but the best performances are when I can feel an energy from the audience telling me that they appreciate my work.

2. The greatest challenge in being a singer is: 
To persevere.  It's a competitive field, and for every performance high we experience, there are equal disappointments.  Lucky for me, the thrill of preforming for an audience makes it easy to forget any rejection I may encounter along the way.

3. A live music performance I’ve attended that I will never forget is:Sweeny Todd at the Lyric Opera when I was a freshman in college.  We must have sung the "I feel you, Johanna" over and over for about 6 months after seeing it.

4. A few of my favorite films are: 
Stand By Me, Perfect Harmony, The Color Purple, and Goonies.  Apparently I haven't watched a movie since the '80s.

5. Three things I can’t live without are: 

My morning tea, my iPhone (sadly), and the incredible support system that is my family.

6. My number one hobby is: 

Cooking, baking...anything in the kitchen.

7. If you could perform with any singer, retired or deceased, who would it be?

I'd love to singer lieder with Fischer Dieskau.  I have a recording of him and Schwartzkopf singing Mahler - his voice is pudding, and they make it sound like so much fun!

8. If you weren’t a singer, what profession would you be in?
I'm pretty sure I'd be an environmental lawyer.

 9. What role do you wish you could sing that you could never sing because it’s the wrong voice type/gender?

Funny thing about being a soprano...I feel like I get all the best roles ;-) I tease, I tease.  I'd go for one of the big dramatic baritone roles, like Rigoletto.

10. Describe your favorite moment on stage. 

I love playing evil, so my favorite moment was probably playing Alcina in her spooky spell-casting scene.

Bonus: One question you wish someone would ask you (and the answer)

*Ring, ring*
Me: Hello?
The Met: Hello, this is the Metropolitan Opera, can you fill in for our soprano tonight?

Need I say more? ;-)

See Saira in Madison Opera's production of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking April 25 and 27 at Overture Hall. Tickets start at just $18!