Soprano Cristina Nassif is a 20-something native of the Maryland suburbs. The daughter of an opera singer mother and a pianist father, Nassif received a music degree at the University of Maryland and got her start on the stage in the Virginia Opera Young Artist Program. Last season, she triumphed with Virginia Opera as Violetta in La Traviata, which brought her to the attention of the hungry eye of Plácido Domingo, ever watchful for new talent.
After a lauded second-cast appearance with Washington National Opera last season (as Vitellia in La Clemenza di Tito, replacing Tatiana Pavlovskaya), Nassif returned to Virginia Opera in a much-anticipated starring role as the title character in Bizet’s Carmen. After playing in two other halls in Virginia, according to the company’s itinerant tradition of spreading opera around the Commonwealth, the opera came to the George Mason University Center for the Arts last weekend, for two performances. I spoke on the phone with Cristina Nassif in Richmond, where she is preparing the final two performances of Carmen, at the Landmark Theater.
How long have you lived in Washington?
All my life. I was born at Andrews Air Force Base, because my father was a colonel in the Air Force. He met my mother while he was stationed in Spain. They had five children, and we eventually moved to the house where they live now, in Fort Washington, Md. It is very helpful to me to have such supportive parents. While I do the whole starving artist thing, I am living with them.
Some people think that classical music and opera are only for the over-70 crowd. What can you and other young classical performers do to change that perception?
Wednesday night, Virginia Opera gave an extra performance in Richmond, an event they called student night. Kids came from schools from all over Virginia to watch Carmen. We felt like rock stars, because here was this intense appreciation of opera from a group you would not think would like it. Schools here are doing great work to promote opera in that age group. Either the schools prepared these kids or it was just the effect of seeing young singers on the stage, people close to their age, giving everything they had.
