The Aspen Music Festival and School is a mecca for some of the biggest stars in classical music — as well as students who aspire to learn from the masters and reach the top of their fields as well.
Opera singer Maria Vasilevskaya was part of this summer’s student class, spending nearly two months studying every aspect of performance.
This was the soprano’s first summer with the festival, though she’s applied multiple times before. When the phone rang to tell her about an open slot, “I thought it was a spam call at first,” Vasilevskaya laughed during an interview on the school’s Bucksbaum campus earlier this month. (The campus doubles as the home for Aspen Country Day School during the academic year.)
It was an unexpected offer, Vasilevskaya admits, but also a welcome opportunity. She’s studied music for roughly the past two decades, first in her home country of Russia and then in the U.S., where she graduated with a master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
Now, she spends most of the year as an apprentice artist with the Palm Beach Opera in Florida. But given her upbringing in Siberia, she embraced the forests and woodsy wildlife of Aspen this summer — bear encounters included.
“This really reminds me of home,” she said.
Reporter Kaya Williams spoke to Vasilevskaya just after one of the singer’s final Aspen recitals earlier this month. You can listen to the audio postcard, which includes snippets of the performance, using the play button at the top of this story; the transcript is included below.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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Maria Vasilevskaya: I guess I started when I was very young. My parents are huge fans of opera and classical music. And they used to play it for me when I was a baby, like two, three years old. And I know that I tried to imitate the opera singing manner.
I guess my mom heard that and she's like, oof, I need to do something about that. And they put me in music school. They definitely heard that there's some kind of talent. And so I started quite early, like around six, seven years old. I went through choir, I did a lot of competitions, singing competitions, choir competitions, took piano for about 10 years.
And during my high school years, I thought that I wanted to do something else. So I kind of pivoted a little bit, tried thinking about what it would be like to be a lawyer or an architect. Something more substantial. But somehow, I just found myself back on that path and just realized that I just can't deny that I'm a performer and I'm a musician.
And even if I won't be singing one day, again, I think I still will be around this. It's just — something inside telling me that I have to do it, and I can't escape it.
I’ve known about this place for many, many years. Aspen Music Festival is a very well known festival and school program for musicians, especially due to its faculty and the people that work here, people that come to perform here.
What inspired me, I've applied a couple of times, actually. And haven't gotten in. Yeah, I’ve been waitlisted I think last year, and this year I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I had other plans. And I got a phone call two weeks prior to the start of the program.
I'm really glad that I took this opportunity and very — I feel very grateful and fortunate to be here around so many wonderful musicians in many, many different fields of music: composers, instrumentalists, even sound engineers. You know, getting to work with all these people, it's just, it's wonderful. It's such a great collaboration. It's very inspiring, and really gives hope for the future.
I just hear a lot of talk that classical music is dying. I don't want to believe it. But you know, then we read the news, budgets are being cut in certain theaters. It’s a little sad.
What I love about festivals like this, and summer programs like this, is you get to interact with patrons that support this art form. And I just feel incredibly grateful for them and their support and their strong faith that this should be alive and people need this art form.
It’s difficult, but there is talent and as long as there's talent, there should be a future of this art form. And so I think my goal is to find a way to prolong it. And I think this is why I have such a strong calling. And every time I try to look in a different direction, something, some kind of force from above, is telling me that, no, I should stick to that.
And we'll see what’s going to happen. But you can’t reject what you love. And I love music.
The Aspen Music Festival and School wrapped up its 2023 summer season on Aug. 20. Applications are already open for next year’s Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS programs; other programs for composition, conducting and instrumental performance open applications on Sept. 15. More information is available at aspenmusicfestival.com.
