Coach Bill Schuman expects protégé Golda Zahra to hold back nothing
By Linda Chase
World famous competitors hire special coaches to make sure they are ready for critical events. These experts concentrate on specific muscles that are vital for success.
Bill Schuman focuses on “two pieces of gristle in the throat.”
That’s how Schuman described vocal cords in a recent interview. For his young client, Golda Zahra, they aren’t for chatting on her phone or making Tik-Tok videos. She will need them to be flexible and powerful for her performance in Puccini’s Turandot in Disney Hall on Aug. 16.
Zahra is playing the role of Liu in a concert version of the opera being presented by Pacific Music Festival. The cast also features Nina Warren in the title role, Alfred Kim as Calaf and Andrew Potter as Timur, plus the Opera Chorus of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Dream Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Suk.
Schuman looks at Zahra’s voice as an instrument she plays, but which she can never put away. “She carries that Stradivarius around with her all day,” he said.
Nedra Zachary, who runs the prestigious Loren L. Zachary National Vocal Competition, introduced Zahra to Schuman, and he discovered, “Her voice was beautiful.”
But that’s just the beginning for an aspiring performer, according to Schuman, a vocal coach who’s worked with opera stars Marcello Giordani, Lisette Oropesa, Stephen Costello, Michael Fabiano and Angela Meade — and also with singers from the worlds of Broadway and pop music, such as Judy McLane, Anne Crumb, Michael Jackson and Michael Bolton.
Did Zahra have the three essential qualities that he knows are the keys to success — humility, discipline, and curiosity? “Not everyone has the openness to learn,” he noted. As he began to work with her, he found that Zahra was willing to put in the work and make the necessary sacrifices.
“Bill cleaned up the rough edges,” Zahra said in an interview. “He has the magic touch.”
Schuman’s approach asks the singer to seek out the emotion in music and make each aria unique. For Turandot, he’s preparing her for a role that requires fragility as well as vocal beauty. “She will be stunning as Liu,” he asserted.
The story of Turandot’s first performance is as dramatic as the opera itself. Puccini was interested in Asian motifs – one of his most famous operas is Madame Butterfly – and he chose a play with a Chinese setting by German writer Friedrich Schiller to set to music. “I have placed, in this opera, all my soul,” he told a friend, and then he died of throat cancer before he could finish it.
Another composer was hired to fill in the missing work, but on opening night at La Scala in 1926, conductor Arturo Toscanini dropped the baton in the final act and turned to the audience, announcing, “This is the end of the opera, because the Maestro died here.”
The version at Disney Hall will be minus elaborate opera sets and stage effects, but the unamplified singers will have the benefit of the venue’s world-renowned acoustics. Curved walls of vertical-grain Douglas fir and terraced vineyard-style seating create a space where someone sitting in the top row can hear a pin drop on stage.
It will be the third time Zahra has appeared at Disney Hall. In 2015, she sang there in the Spotlight Awards competition and became the youngest winner in the Classical Voice category. In 2024, she performed Liu there in a different production of Turandot.
Schuman supports Zahra’s goal of bringing new audiences to opera. “The music world has changed,” he asserts. “Opera needs to be made more accessible, especially for the younger generation.”
Recalling the great tenor Luciano Pavarotti being criticized for singing in different genres before wider audiences, Schuman notes that “he helped to increase the popularity of opera.” It was Pavarotti who popularized the aria “Nessun Dorma” (none shall sleep), which will be sung by Alfred Kim as Calaf in the third act.
Even though there isn’t a lot of action in a concert presentation of an opera, audiences can expect Zahra, who is a huge fan of horror films, to come up with something special when she sacrifices herself to love. It’s probably not exactly what Schuman has in mind when he tells his singers to “bring the drama.”
He has high hopes for his protégé. “She can go to the very top, if she wants it,” he said, because “that mystical thing that we call charisma: Golda has it.”
Linda Chase is a freelance writer based in Santa Barbara specializing in the arts, travel and lifestyle. This feature is produced by the Journalism Arts Initiative, which is underwritten by donations from arts organizations and others interested in supporting excellence in arts journalism.
“Turandot in Concert,” presented by Pacific Festival, Aug. 16 at 7 p.m. at Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. Ages 9 and older. Tickets, $33 to $105, including all fees, are available at www.TurandotConcert.com
