Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022

PROFILE
The Marigold Music Program, summer 2021, left to right:
Manasvi Naik, Nailah Padilla, Ali Loisy, Charlotte Siegel (behind), Jadzia
Elrington (in front), Kevin Mulligan, Vera Sevelka and Spencer Persad
Charlotte Siegel
Transformative powers and watershed moments
DANIELLE SUM
VIVIEN FELLEGI
Nineteen-year-old opera student Charlotte Siegel is
getting frustrated as she sings an aria from Mozart’s
The Marriage of Figaro over and over again in a
cramped rehearsal studio at the University of Toronto. She
wants to impress her new teacher and is concentrating
hard on getting every element right. But the more she
tries, the more her body tenses and the notes get stuck in
her throat.
“[Singing] is not a gentle thing,” says her teacher, Frédérique Vézina.
“It’s like jumping off a cliff – you have to just let go.”
Siegel takes a deep breath. She turns off her brain and lets her
instincts take over. The song’s energy pumps from the ground to her
face; every part of her vibrates like a pitchfork.The pounding pulse of
the music takes over her being, annihilating her worries. The moment
shimmers. Times like these, when the “controlled scream” of opera
whisks her right out of herself, make all the effort worthwhile. “It’s
the most luxurious feeling in the world,” says the soprano.
Learning to immerse herself in the moment has benefitted Siegel
in both music and life. But it hasn’t been easy. Like many musicians,
Siegel tends towards perfectionism, over-analyzing situations and
undercutting actions.
Letting go is another of many life lessons that music and her
mentors have taught her: learning to communicate and collaborate
have bolstered her confidence both in singing and in general. “I question
who I would be if I hadn’t had those experiences,” says Siegel.
Regent Park School of Music
Siegel’s instruction in music began at Toronto’s Regent Park School
of Music (RPSM), [rpmusic.org] which offers highly subsidized music
lessons for children living in the mostly lower-income and racialized
communities of Regent Park and Jane-Finch. From the age of nine,
when she began studying voice, Siegel says, she was transfixed by the
transformative power of music. She could be upset or frustrated or
tired – but the moment she started singing everything else faded away.
Later, when her classically trained teacher introduced her to opera,
Siegel learned to absorb her character’s perspective into her own skin.
“I always try to imagine what the person I’m trying to portray was
going through in that moment, and breathe it in and fully become it,”
she says. These excursions into the minds of others have broadened
her vision. “Everyone wants to be transformed, to go outside of themselves,”
says Siegel.
As Siegel honed her voice at Regent Park School of Music, her
overall confidence bloomed in tandem. As a young child, Siegel says,
she was “bubbly but also self-contained. I lived in my own world
happily for a really long time,” she recalls. Music, where she could
comfortably express her feelings, drew her out of her shell. “That’s
helped me…communicate with people,” she says.
18 | February 2022 thewholenote.com