Irish Soprano Brings Met to Life

DUBLIN-born mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon, or Pat as she's known to her close friends, is currently making her New York debut at Metropolitan Opera in Handel's masterpiece Giulio Cesare, came to prominence as a singer at an early age. Quickly establishing herself as a versatile operatic performer, her repertoire has won her lead roles at the grand opera houses of Paris, London, New York, Rome and elsewhere.

For Bardon, the first steps to a lifelong career in the arts were taken early on. "I was 12 when my music teacher at school told me one day, 'You know, you have this voice and you really should do something with it,'" she recalled during an interview with the Irish Voice.

She was still only a girl, but Bardon already she had the sense to take his advice. "The person I really wanted to be then was Aretha Franklin," laughs the woman whose voice can fill an auditorium as big as the Met's.

Like most Irish opera singers, Bardon did not grow up in an opera listening family. "I had no exposure as a child to classical music. I just didn't appreciate it and I wasn't given the opportunity to really until I met my singing mentor at school. With his encouragement I went to have my voice trained and I took it from there."

Bardon studied with the legendary Irish singing teacher and former singer Veronica Dunne. "She was a very well-known character in Ireland, as well as being a singing teacher she was a national celebrity really. The standard of the singers she taught was very good, considering the population of Ireland," she says.

"But it's easy to be a big fish in a small pond as you well know. It's when you start competing against the Brits and when you go further afield that the competition really begins."

When a young singer starts training for the opera the voice becomes very specific to opera singing, so the Aretha Franklin songbook was reluctantly taken off the menu.

"I found myself having early success when I was very young and that's the route I took," says Bardon. "But you don't just practice and end up at the Met. There's a long slow grind first."

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