Fiery performer poised for the big time

T.J. Medrek, The Boston Herald, Friday, April 23, 2004

"Lying next to her husband on the floor of their smoke-filled Dorchester apartment, Barbara Quintiliani gasped for air and prepared for the worst.

``The fire was over our heads, and my husband had his arm over me. We were saying, `I'll see you on the other side,' '' said Quintiliani, 27, recalling the fire that nearly ended her life four years ago.

When the firefighters arrived, one fireman - against orders, she later found out - risked his life to climb the fiery stairs to Quintiliani's apartment. ``He actually found me because he stepped on my foot and broke it,'' she said. A few days later she went to the fire station and personally thanked the man who risked his job and life to save theirs.

Her foot healed, and so did the damage to the lining of her nose and throat caused by smoke inhalation. A doctor told her it was as if she'd smoked five packs of cigarettes in an hour - not exactly the best medicine for a singer expected to sound better than Tom Waits. Now she's back in town to star in the title role of Verdi's ``Luisa Miller,'' presented by Opera Boston at the Cutler Majestic Theatre on April 30 and May 2.

Following a recent rehearsal, Quintiliani looked and acted more like a grad-student cousin from, perhaps, Seattle, than an opera star about to break into the big time. But this lack of airs speaks to Quintiliani's remarkable strength of character and purpose, qualities developed during what she describes as ``a pretty crazy childhood . . . a perfect making-of-an-artist sort of thing.''

Born in Quincy, she left Massachusetts at age 6 when her mother married a Navy man, which meant moving from place to place. Despite living in a home fueled by alcohol and marked by some pretty lean years - ``At one point we lived in a trailer with a hole in the floor where you could see the grass,'' she said - Quintiliani excelled at school but rarely gave music, let alone opera, a thought.

``I thought it was the funniest thing I ever heard in my life,'' she said of her first exposure to the full-voiced sound of classical singing. But as a junior in high school, she needed an arts credit to graduate. So, without a clue of her ability and having been told that ``anybody can be in the chorus,'' she signed up.

A year later she was on her way to start serious studies at New England Conservatory, and even before graduating in 1999 she was one of five top-prize winners in that winter's Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. (NEC classmate Jossie Perez, of Boston Lyric Opera's ``Carmen on the Common'' fame, was another winner that year.) If Quintiliani needed a sign that she was going in the right direction, that one was flashing neon:

``You go, soprano.''

Today, after completing apprentice programs in Santa Fe, Houston and Washington, D.C., Quintiliani's finding her niche as a dramatic coloratura soprano - one with a larger-than-usual voice plus more-than-usual flexibility.

She also knows that not every role she's offered is right for her, and she has the courage to turn down gigs such as a recent offer to sing Leonore in Beethoven's ``Fidelio'' she knows just aren't right.

``There's no way that I should be singing `Fidelio' now. It's just not my repertoire,'' she said. While she's wowed 'em at auditions with German arias, she doesn't feel German opera roles suit her lively temperament.

``The German sopranos sit on rocks and think about things,'' she said. ``The Italian ladies throw themselves out of windows. That's me!''

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