Chamber Players Highlight Arias with Amante 

April Amante hasn’t had a whole lot of opportunities to sing in Santa Barbara since earning her Doctor of Musical Arts at UCSB in June 2023. There was the concert in May 2024, where the soprano returned to campus for the UCSB Opera Gala, directed by her mentor Isabel Bayrakdarian, the soprano who heads the school’s voice program. 

Amante performed in master classes on campus and sang a solo role in the Santa Barbara Choral Society’s Messiah, as well as a solo with the Adelfos Ensemblewhile still working toward her DMA. Soon she’ll be making her first appearance in town since performing in UCSB Opera’s English-language production of The Magic Flute, also helmed by Bayrakdarian. The Simi Valley-raised soprano will serve as the soloist centerpiece of the Santa Barbara Chamber Players’ winter concert, slated for February 1 at First United Methodist Church. 

Amante will sing a varied program that features Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne, the first section in the series of evocative French folk songs from the Auvergne region, and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables. Those pieces will bookend two of Puccini’s most famous and beloved arias in “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi, and “Quando m’en vo” from La bohème.

“Having earned a DMA, I am familiar with a lot of repertoire, but I don’t know that I had heard of the Canteloube pieces before,” Amante said. “But when I looked them up and started learning them, they fit like a glove. They’re folk songs that are a little bit flirtatious, talking about the shepherdess and where they should go to graze the flock. I’m excited to sing them.” 

Amante premiered Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice at Los Angeles Opera back in 2020 and recently made her Carnegie Hall debut as Mrs. Sinclair in Eric Whitacre’s The Gift of the Magi. When the producer of the community orchestra realized they wanted to expand the vocal part of the program – which also includes Emilie Mayer’s “Overture No. 2 in D Major” and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony under the baton of conductor Emmanuel Fratianni – Amante suggested the Puccini pieces.

“They’ve been part of my aria repertoire for many years and they’re both fun to act, even though they’re very different,” she said. “And ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ is such a classic for a soprano singer. I am thrilled for the chance to be able to perform them in front of an orchestra.” 

Tickets for the concert are $20 for general admission, free for students 18 and under. Visit https://sbchamberplayers.org.