An internationally acclaimed mezzo soprano who grew up in Coquitlam will take the stage this week for a new "song drama."
Debi Wong, 27, will play the role of the wife of German Romantic composer Robert Schumann in a play titled Clara/Clara, the first production to hit Pyatt Hall in the new Vancouver Symphony Orchestra's School of Music.
Written and directed by Adrienne Paulson, Clara/Clara tells the tale of Clara Wieck, the young daughter of Schumann's piano teacher. The pair famously sue her father to marry but they get hitched in 1840 when she turns 21 and doesn't need her father's consent to wed.
Montreal soprano Emily Forsyth also plays Clara, but portrays her composer/pianist side.
"It's like her personality is split in two," explained Wong who said she doesn't typically act so, for this performance, "it requires a little more of me mentally and physically and vocally just to stay focused."
Wong, who attended Lord-Baden Powell, College Park and Parkland elementaries and Banting middle in the Coquitlam school district, is a graduate of the Langley Fine Arts School. She is also a UBC School of Music grad and, last year, finished her master's degree in voice at Yale.
Next month, she will move to Finland for a year to work on her doctorate, focusing on English Renaissance theatre and music, at the Sibelius Academy. And for the next three years, she said she'll likely be based in New York City with her fiancé, an American opera singer, returning to the Scandanavian country a few times a year to give lectures and shows.
Her recent performances include Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers with Alexander Weimann in the Early Music Vancouver Festival, Bach's St. John Passion with the Vancouver Bach Choir and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bruce Pullan, Beethoven's Mass in C-Major with Beverly Shangkuan and the Yale Repertory Chorus, and Messiah with William Boughton and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
Clara/Clara, which is staged by Port Coquitlam's Hersie Init, is the second song drama by Paulson; last year, she presented Savage Parade at the Waterfront.
Clara/Clara runs Aug. 18 to 20 at 8 p.m. Tickets at $30 are available at brownpapertickets.com or at the door on the night of the performance.
