 Priti
Gandhi’s parents must have had a “moment” when
they realized just how apt a name they had chosen for their oldest
child.
The Sanskrit name Priti, meaning “unconditional love,” achieved
a whole new level of meaning when their daughter informed them
near the end of college that she would like to become an opera
singer. It was certainly not what her traditional Indian parents
had expected she would choose as her career.
Although Gandhi spent her first two years at UCSD studying broadcast
journalism, she readily admits that she had no idea what she wanted
to do with her life. Then, in her senior year, she opened the lid
to the music box. In an attempt to escape the monotony of paper
writing she began taking voice lessons, proving to college students
everywhere that procrastination really does work.
“
When my voice teacher first told me I had an operatic voice, I
laughed at her—I thought it was insane!” Gandhi declares
with wide eyes, as if a tiny part of her may still not believe
it. But her teacher handed her an aria and urged her to try it. “It
was as if a light had turned on inside my chest,” she says. “I
never knew I could feel that way.”
Although opera may have been love at first sight-reading for
Gandhi, her parents did not initially swoon over the new tryst.
Natives
of Bombay, they had moved Priti and her two younger siblings
to Encinitas when she was three. The fear of losing their own
culture
in the melting pot was a legitimate concern for them, she recalls,
and opera was certainly not part of their culture. After all,
she asks, “How many Indian opera singers are there in the country,
honestly? Maybe four!” But for Gandhi, who considers her
traditional spiritual practices to be an integral part of her success,
the only “loss” she endured was her inhibition. “Growing
up, people always told me ‘don’t talk so loud.’ Maybe
it’s no wonder I wanted to be a singer so I could get up
there and express myself!” And that is exactly what she did, with zero experience and uninhibited
curiosity. “I walked into the career center on campus and
said ‘Hi, my name is Priti Gandhi and I’m thinking
about becoming an opera singer, but I’m not really sure what’s
involved.’” Needless to say, neither were they. Not having received a surplus of such inquiries, the career center
promptly directed Gandhi to Ian Campbell, the general director
of the San Diego Opera. The result was that Gandhi got a job working
at the San Diego Opera’s ticketing office, and started hanging
out backstage at rehearsals while she continued with her voice
lessons. Although she did not have the formal, conservatory education of
many aspiring singers, Gandhi’s early experience in San Diego
gave her a unique, practical edge. “I learned about the business
side as well as the artistic side,” she says. “And
I am so blessed to have had that.” After two years at the
opera house she became part of the chorus as well as the young
artist’s program, and then finally Campbell hired her for
her first, main stage role and adopted her as an artist. Gandhi’s first major break came in 1999, when she performed
Tisbe in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella) at Lyric Opera
Cleveland. She says she remembers being very nervous, mostly because
she had no idea what to expect. She was overwhelmed by the amount
of music she had to master in a short period of time, and unnerved
by the sheer number of singers surrounding her amid long and sometimes
tedious rehearsals. Yet throughout all the confusion she remained immensely excited. “I
was like, they pay me to sing?” The folks at the career center
must have forgotten to mention that.
Though she still calls San Diego her professional home, Gandhi,
now 33, has performed nationally and worldwide with such noteworthy
companies as Seattle Opera, Austin Lyric Opera and Teatro Carlo
Felice in Genova. She’s also received numerous awards, as
well as critical acclaim praising her as the next exceptional new
voice on the opera circuit. One of her favorite performance venues on that circuit is the impressive
new Dayton Opera in Ohio with its magnificent acoustics. She also
loves the smaller European houses, especially the Estates Theater
in Prague and Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris. They tend
to be smaller, and therefore acoustically superior, so they are
healthier for a performer’s voice. “When you’re singing in the bigger houses you have to make sure you’re
making healthy choices and singing the right repertoire,” she says. In
Gandhi’s case, this means sticking to her mezzo-soprano roots (the voice
type below a soprano and above a contralto). The Rossini coloratura, in particular,
is a specialty of Gandhi’s. “It was a dream come true,” she
says of her first title role in Rossini’s La Cenerentola at Lyric Opera
San Diego in 2006, “because I was singing something that was so vocally
right for me.”
Besides singing healthfully, Gandhi had to change her lifestyle,
trading in late nights in smoky rooms for a good science-fiction
book and a full eight
hours of sleep. But it was a difficult adjustment. “There are days I
wish I could take this voice box out and leave it at home so I could go enjoy
myself,” she says. “But I constantly have to think about those
things and it makes me the most boring person ever!”
Gandhi, who now lives in Santa Monica, balances a very non-boring schedule
of voice lessons, auditions and performances, not to mention yoga classes.
She is a certified yoga instructor who spends much of her time teaching opera
apprentices what she believes to be an indispensable spiritual tool for wiping
away what she calls the mud of life—all the pressures that inhibit people
in creative fields. “Plus,” she adds with a smile, “I seem
to be pretty good at it. I guess it’s another happy accident in my life.” She
also stays balanced by maintaining a network of friends and family and kicking
back with two or three nights of salsa dancing a week.
Since graduating from UCSD, Gandhi has returned to the La Jolla Symphony Chorus
as a soloist, and she’s also sung with faculty members like Carol Plantamora
and Philip Larson. “If you would have asked me back then if
I would be working with them in the future I would have laughed!” she
says. Most recently, Gandhi has performed as Varvara in Leos Janacek’s opera
Kat’a Kabanova, as Silvia in Mozart’s Ascanio In Alba in Mexico
City, and with the Tulsa Opera in Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince.
For current and future UCSD students pursuing a career in the arts,
Gandhi imparts some well-considered advice. “Don’t be afraid. Even if
you don’t feel like you know everything, a little naiveté is good.
It keeps you positive; it keeps your eyes wide open.”
Anna Ritner is a freelance writer living in the Sacramento area. |
