Can a diva recover her voice?: the struggle of an opera singer after her pregnancy

TBILISI, Georgia — Anita Rachvelishvili was pregnant when she began to lose her voice. It was mid-2021. She and her husband had been trying to conceive for years, and it seemed like a child would be a fairytale ending to being forced to slow down during the pandemic.

Rachvelishvili, the Georgian mezzo-soprano, had spent the previous decade touring the world, performing some of the opera's most difficult parts with a powerful combination of spacious sound and interpretive subtlety. In 2018, Riccardo Muti, the noted Verdi conductor, called her “undoubtedly the best Verdi mezzo-soprano on the planet today.” Peter Gelb, general director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, recently said: “She was the greatest dramatic mezzo-soprano in existence.”

Rachvelishvili sang Carmen, her breakout role of 2009, hundreds of times, and was scheduled to welcome 2024 as Bizet's classic antiheroine in the splashy premiere of a new production at the Met. Instead, she spent New Year's Eve in Tbilisi, trying to rebuild the foundations of her voice.

“It's a nightmare, a total nightmare,” he said.

Pregnancy is rarely easy for opera singers, who rely on a carefully calibrated physical apparatus to produce enormous waves of unamplified sound. Rachvelishvili, 39, hadn't felt all that well in the few appearances she made during her pregnancy — her voice, she said, sounded “raspy and strange” — but she assumed things would return to normal after giving birth.

She gave birth to her daughter, Lileana, in late November 2021, and something still felt different, although the lower register of her voice was, if anything, larger than before. She thought she could handle the role of Marfa in Mussorgsky's “Khovanshchina,” which she would rehearse in Paris a month later—months sooner than many singers return after giving birth.

“It was the worst decision of my life,” she said, sitting next to Otari Maisuradze, her husband, who became her vocal coach during her crisis. Rachvelishvili described how rushing back to the stage had helped trigger an agonizing dance of one step forward and two steps back.

A voice is an amalgamation of body and psyche—of tiny, vibrant vocal cords; muscles that support breathing; cavities through which sound resonates; and the self-confidence to deploy everything without fear. Problems are inevitable.

“Every singer goes through that fear of high notes or not really feeling comfortable with their voice,” Rachvelishvili said.

Although he came late to the opera, he had a natural talent. “I sang Carmen for so many years because I didn't have easy high notes,” she said. “I took the time to learn how to make those notes so the body knew what it was doing.” Those notes grew stronger and her future seemed limitless.

In the past, Rachvelishvili's muscular support had originated in the pelvis, but that was disrupted by pregnancy and childbirth. While searching for a new approach, his appearance in “Adriana Lecouvreur” at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in early 2022 was disastrous. The princess's high notes refused to come. At the premiere, she fled the theater before her final ovation. She canceled the rest of the performances.

A doctor saw inflammation in his vocal cords; It could have been allergies, reflux, a hormonal imbalance or laryngitis, or some combination of those factors. Unable to produce high notes or offer the elegant control of volume and texture for which she was admired, she began to lose faith in herself.

“I told my therapist that if it weren't for the baby I would commit suicide,” she recalled. “I have a baby to take care of.”

In early autumn 2022, she was able to sing the generally low Dalila in a credible manner in “Samson et Dalila” by Saint-Saëns in Naples. She came to the Met to sing “Aida” in December. Rachvelishvili thought the first presentation was acceptable, but the company disagreed.

“It was obvious that she was not the same singer — at least temporarily not the same singer — who had conquered our stage so brilliantly up to that point,” Gelb said, and decided to remove her from the next “Carmen” and a solo recital. .

Last year, he underwent minor surgeries for stomach problems and to lessen the effects of acid reflux, and another procedure to remove what he said was a small polyp on his vocal cords. Since then she has been home, in Tbilisi. Lileana, she said, “is worth everything. “It's even worth not singing again.”

But he still hopes he can have it both ways. Rachvelishvili and Maisuradze have been reviewing their instrument and technique, going through scores phrase by phrase and putting their different registers back together. Of his high record, he said last month: “Honestly, it's not as perfect as I would like or as I had it a few years ago. But it's much easier; there is”.

Muti was optimistic.

“He's young, so he'll be back. We are waiting with great enthusiasm,” she said.

By: ZACHARY WOOLFE