Soprano Alicia Berneche will play one of the title roles in Hansel and Gretel, which Piedmont Opera will present beginning Friday at the Stevens Center. But you'd never know that from her cell phone. When it rang during a recent interview at a downtown coffee shop, it broadcast "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?"
"I love that song," Berneche said, basking in the peppy sounds of Jet, an Australian rock group. "It's great energy."
The call was from Ben Mueller, Berneche's husband, a computer programmer by day and a rock musician by night. It provided the perfect segue into a discussion of why Berneche believes she should play Gretel in Hansel and Gretel. The opera, based on the famous fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm, was written by Engelbert Humperdinck in the early 1890s and, in stylistic terms, is similar to the operas of Wagner.
"I'm very energetic," she said. "I'm a good choice to play an 8-year-old."
Berneche did nothing to contradict this assessment during the interview, often shaking her head vigorously and speaking rapidly on a variety of subjects. But she allowed that the demands of playing Gretel -- including summersaults, cartwheels and bare feet hitting a hard floor -- were beginning to take a toll on her 38-year-old body.
Berneche has needed to draw on her energy for other reasons as well. She, Mueller and Morgan Mueller, their 4-year-old son, have all left their Chicago-area home during the roughly three weeks needed to rehearse and perform Hansel and Gretel.
This arrangement is typical for Berneche, who resumed performing for opera companies in several states about a year and a half after Morgan was born. In each instance, she and her husband try to maintain the comforts of home, including renting a home with a full kitchen, so that Berneche, who loves to cook, can prepare meals for her family. Mueller works "remotely" from his computer during the day, while his son is in daycare.
Mueller said he likes discovering places, like Winston-Salem, that he never would have seen were it not for his wife's singing engagements. The downsides happen when it rains. "If we can't get out and explore, that can be a drag," he said. And often, Berneche's rehearsal schedule means that there's not a lot of time for socializing. "I can feel isolated," he said.
Berneche suggested that balancing motherhood with opera singing has had its challenges as well.
"It's tough," she said. "If you have more than one (child), forget it.… There is still a belief, in the opera world, that if a woman has a baby, she's not serious about singing. You have to fight your way back in."
Berneche said that she is still struggling with what to do about Morgan next year, when he is due to enter kindergarten. Should she homeschool him during spare moments on the road? Or should she enter him in a regular school at home, in which case father and son would be separated from her for several weeks at a time.
For now, though, Berneche is focusing on preparing another performance for Piedmont Opera, having appeared as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro last spring. She has praised Piedmont Opera in an audience-development video that the company will soon release. Berneche notes that many people who work for the company also work at UNC School of the Arts.
"So they have to be up to date on all the new advances of their craft," she said. "You're not going to find better artisans anywhere in the country."
KKeuffel@wsjournal.com
727-7337
Piedmont Opera will present Hansel and Gretel beginning Friday in the Stevens Center. Shows, in English, will be at 7 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. next Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Oct. 6. Tickets are $15-$70. Visit www.piedmontopera.org or call 724-3202.
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