Kristin Allison Lewis

This operatic soprano hits it big singing Aida in Europe but stays grounded through her Arkansas foundation.

“It was really only when I was on the plane that it kind of hit me, and I began to cry:‘Oh my gosh, I’m on my way to La Scala! This is incredible!’” - Kristin Allison Lewis
“It was really only when I was on the plane that it kind of hit me, and I began to cry:‘Oh my gosh, I’m on my way to La Scala! This is incredible!’” - Kristin Allison Lewis

Kristin Lewis is already well beyond the cusp of becoming an international opera star.

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“I was encouraged and supported and surrounded by so much love and nurture that I never had a doubt that I could make it. I had fear, of course, but I never doubted that it could happen. And I wanted to create that for somebody else.” - Kristin Lewis

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Aida

The Little Rock native and University of Central Arkansas alumna has been taking Europe by storm in the signature title role of Giuseppe Verdi's tragic opera Aida. That's her singing opposite famed tenor Andrea Bocelli in a recently released Decca recording.

Kristin Allison Lewis

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Aug. 29, 1975, Little Rock

Favorite color: Most of my life, it was blue. Now I’m really drawn to purple.

Favorite food: In which country? At home in Arkansas, probably barbecue. In Europe, I tend to go for Italian. I like seafood, and Italians do that very well.

I absolutely will not eat: If there’s something I will not eat, I usually don’t eat it.

I like to wear dresses.

I would never wear jeans.

Guests at my fantasy dinner party: [Conductor] Zubin Mehta, Michelle Obama, Oprah, Martin Luther King Jr. I’d like [legendary soprano] Maria Callas, [conductor] James Levine. My mother. My voice teacher, Carol Byers.

Favorite role other than aida: Elizabeta, from [Giuseppe Verdi’s] Don Carlo. It’s my favorite opera of all time.

Role Idesperately want to sing: For a long time, I thought I wanted to sing [the title role] in Norma. But now I don’t think my life will be over if I don’t sing it.

If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s to be true to yourself.

People who knew me in high school thought I was quirky.

My parents would describe me as talented and beautiful.

I knew I was grown up after living in Europe. I moved there for a year and decided to stay.

Favorite operatic performers: Maria Callas, Leontyne Price

The best advice I ever received: Listen to the advice of others, but always be true to yourself.

One word to sum me up: grateful

And she's heading up the cast of a forthcoming six-city Aida tour with conductor Placido Domingo -- performing, not in opera houses, but in 50,000-seat soccer stadiums, where it's possible the "Triumphal March" could feature real elephants.

Lewis now lives in Vienna, not only Austria's capital but one of the cultural hubs of Europe. But she is resolute about keeping in touch with her birthplace and the church choir that gave her her start as a singer. She'll be back in Little Rock this week as the soprano soloist in Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and conductor Philip Mann, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at Robinson Center Performance Hall.

She also heads the nonprofit Kristin Lewis Foundation (kristinlewisfoundation.com), which she founded in 2014 to champion young singers and connect them with educational and professional experiences to refine their talents. She regularly sings for fundraising recitals, including one in December at Second Presbyterian Church.

She met her current voice teacher, Carol Byers, a dramatic soprano who has been living in Vienna for 30 years, while Lewis was earning a master of music degree at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She studied with Byers during school breaks, worked with the coaches at Vienna State Opera and entered competitions and did concerts to gain experience and exposure.

An agent friend of Byers heard Lewis singing in a concert and helped her land a role as Donna Elvira in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni with a small German company.

"By that point, I had built a real community [in Vienna]; my voice teacher was there, my coaches were there. I had a community of friends, and now I had an agent," Lewis says. "It seemed very hopeful and a very natural decision to just stay."

Over the last 12 years, she has built her career gradually, entering competitions, accepting auditions. A series of agents has gotten "bigger"; so have the opera houses. That took a while to register, she admits.

"I've been so focused on what I had to sing, because there's so much pressure involved, one has to be prepared, I'm always singing in a different language, everything is so subjective in the opera business," Lewis says. "There really isn't time to just look around and say, 'I'm singing at the Paris Opera now. My gosh!'

The first time she sang at Milan's La Scala, quite possibly the world's premier opera house, "I think I wrote home about that. But it was really only when I was on the plane that it kind of hit me, and I began to cry: 'Oh my gosh, I'm on my way to La Scala! This is incredible!'"

Would Lewis' career have been that much different if she had stayed in the United States?

"Who knows? It's very difficult to tell," she says. "Something instinctively told me not to stay in America," she says. "I felt like [Byers] was the next step; she was absolutely what I needed. I'm so happy that I chose that because it ultimately led to the career that I have now."

Singers in Europe are much more likely to be pigeonholed into a particular repertoire. Like other young singers, Lewis started off with Mozart, but she and her teacher discovered that if she sang Verdi in competitions, she could make it all the way to the finals -- and often win. Verdi soprano is a type of operatic voice with the limpidity and easy high notes of a lyric soprano, but can be pushed to achieve dramatic climaxes without strain.

"It has a lot to do with the timbre," she explains, "the darkness, the richness of your voice."

Having that "Verdi sound" has now put her in the company of operatic royalty, including Domingo, one of the original Three Tenors. And she has become a protege of conductor Zubin Mehta, former music director of the New York Philharmonic and music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, who conducted the Aida recording and who will be conducting those soccer-stadium performances in June in Hamburg, Germany; Basel, Switzerland; and Vienna, and in September in Frankfurt, Germany; and Paris.

The website for the tour (aida-domingo.com/en/aida-the-stadium-world-tour) describes a "spectacular, multimedia production" with a cast of more than 800. (It doesn't, however, mention elephants.)

"We'll be performing to crowds of 50,000, which I can't quite get my head around," Lewis says. There's a chance that the tour may expand to other venues, and possibly to the United States. "I've sung more than 200 performances of Aida, and while I value every production that I do, and I still love singing this role very much, it's interesting to do it in a completely different way," she says.

She's interested in doing more German repertoire and has stuck her toe in German water -- with the Mahler Second Symphony, which she first sang a couple of years ago in Athens with Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic. Late last year, also with Mehta and that orchestra, she sang Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs.

The soprano, a mezzo-soprano and a chorus show up, musically, only in the last part of the last movement of the 75-minute Mahler symphony. "It's probably six minutes of music, and the mezzo gets more music than I do, but it's beautiful, so I don't mind," Lewis says. "It's really an honor to do it here, and I'm really happy, not just to be singing at home and with this orchestra, but it's really a fantastic piece."

FOUNDING A FOUNDATION

Lewis' foundation blossomed from concept to fruition in less than a year. The idea came to her in the summer of 2014, during a visit to Little Rock. She met a neighbor's talented grandson who was headed to study voice at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

"He was so filled with passion about music and performing and told me in such detail about his intentions," Lewis recalls. "I [was] just impressed by how articulate and how passionate he was, and by the end of the conversation I was asking myself, 'How can I help him?'"

Turns out the young man didn't need much help -- he already had a full scholarship, plus grants that would fund summer school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. But her notion of helping budding artists stayed with her.

She decided to "talk to people that I love and trust about this idea." Second Presbyterian's choir was touring that summer in central Europe, including Austria, so she shared her idea with Barbara Hawes, now the foundation's vice president.

"I've known Kristin since she was a teenager," she says. "I remember she walked into the choir room one day, and said, 'I'm not a teenager any more!' She had turned 20."

The pair also got choir member Clementine Whitman involved and it took off from there.

"When Kristin was a student at UCA in the mid-'90s, she was invited to join our choir at Second Presbyterian Church as a section leader," Whitman recalls. "Everyone in the choir fell in love with [her] from the very beginning. Members of the choir have always supported her. Even after she moved to Austria, anytime Kristin would return to Little Rock, she would frequently come to Second Pres, put on a choir robe and sing Sunday services with us."

The foundation was incorporated in October 2014, with the first fundraising concert two months later. The first scholarships were awarded in the spring of 2015.

"It moved so quickly," Lewis says. "Every person I talked to was so supportive and on board. It turned from one scholarship to 'let's see how many scholarships we can give, and let's see what else we can do to help young singers.'"

She was firm about basing the foundation in Arkansas because she got her start here.

"I was encouraged and supported and surrounded by so much love and nurture that I never had a doubt that I could make it," Lewis says. "I had fear, of course, but I never doubted that it could happen. And I wanted to create that for somebody else."

The scholarships are open to any full-time American student and often come with performance opportunities, Lewis explains. "We're targeting [singers who are] in this space between being a student and being a professional, because it's in this space where you really have to navigate the way in which you'll go.

"What most young musicians need is financial support and resources."

The foundation alternates between providing a European experience or a place in a young-artist program. This year, a singer will get an intensive, one-week, all-expenses paid trip to Vienna for voice, diction, language and acting lessons and coachings at the Vienna State Opera.

Applicants send in audition tapes; 15 finalists participate. The next round is an audition before a panel of three judges, Lewis says. "[Afterward] they have coachings with the judges, feedback sessions in which they can discuss repertoire, technique, auditions.

"I choose judges who are directors of opera companies, coaches who have extensive experience in the opera world, voice teachers who have had careers in performance -- people who can really give them practical advice or knowledge based on years of experience. Or, frankly, people who have hiring power."

Lewis doesn't take part in the judging, but she meets with the finalists one-on-one so they can pick my brain and talk about the business, repertoire or their directions. "It's important to me that I really get to know them; I want to hear their stories and find out if there is a way I can help them.

"In the third and final round, all 15 sing again, in the form of a concert, and it's open to the public. Only five of the 15 get scholarships, but they're not walking away empty-handed. They get a chance to meet professionals in the field who can help them in some way," Lewis says.

THE UN-DIVA

Opera stars, and particularly sopranos, tend to be divas -- in fact, that's for whom the term was coined. But that's not true of Lewis, Hawes says.

"Martha Antolik [Lewis' voice teacher and mentor at UCA] and I call her the UN-diva," she adds. "Kristin has an amazing work ethic. Talent is one thing; there are lots of talented people out there. But she couples the work ethic with planning and she looks ahead -- 'Where can this go?' And that makes a huge difference."

"I remember the 'not so great moments' after graduate school when not much was happening and she was rethinking her commitment to a singing career," Antolik adds.

"I talked to her by phone from Knoxville for a long time right before she made the courageous leap of faith to move to Vienna. It was not easy; she lived as a poor student there for a couple of years while working with coaches and her teachers and entering European competitions. That turned out to be a good entry into the real singing world for her and led to her first real job, at the Semper Oper in Dresden."

Also most un-diva-esque, Hawes says: "This summer our choir was touring the U.K., and Kristin flew from Vienna to London just to be with us, because, she said, 'This is as close as I can get to be with my family right now.'"

Lewis' fundraising recitals for the foundation, including the one she did in Little Rock in December, are also "an opportunity for me to thank the people of Arkansas, the community of Little Rock and specifically this church for the support they've given me, that I'm appreciative of, and that I will never forget and always value.

"It's also an opportunity to promote the arts and remind the world of what Arkansas has to offer the opera High Profile on 02/19/2017

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