The quickly ascending, star mezzo-soprano was recently profiled by her alma mater's bimonthly publication and featured on its cover.
A Diva for the Modern Stage
Lisa Rogali arrived at Penn State as a first-generation college student with a powerful voice and no prior exposure to opera. Today, talent, dedication, and a deep emotional well from which to draw have made her one of the brightest young stars of the form.
By Savita Iyer
It is an assumption universally shared by everyone in her entourage, and one easy enough to imagine for anyone who hears her sing, that Lisa Marie Rogali is destined to perform on the world’s greatest stages—New York’s Metropolitan Opera, La Scala in Milan.
Since the fall of 2012—during her first semester at Penn State, when she auditioned for a workshop showcase of Mozart’s comic opera Così fan tutte—Rogali ’16 A&A has distinguished herself through the mastery of her craft. Reviewers have praised her expressive, versatile voice and described her powerful performance onstage as breathtaking, compelling. Over the years, Rogali has scooped up awards and accolades galore, aced multiple song competitions, and made her mark on more than one young artist program.
Last spring, the mezzo-soprano debuted at Carnegie Hall as the alto soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass. And in November, she stepped on stage at the Virginia Opera in Norfolk, Fairfax, and Richmond to play Carmen, one of the most iconic and coveted female roles in the operatic repertoire. This year, she’ll reprise that role at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee. She’ll play Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia in Florida’s Sarasota Opera, and she will perform the role of Paquette in the South Florida Symphony Orchestra’s concert production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.
These are tremendous accomplishments for a young artiste. But for Rogali, singing in august venues is less important than singing itself, less meaningful than enjoying every role, every piece of music, and every step of a career that—for a shy girl from a modest background growing up in the small northeast Pennsylvania town of Hawley—seemed far-fetched, if not impossible.
“I know everyone’s different, but I don’t really care about the prestige of where I sing,” she says. “I have so many friends who say things like, ‘If I don’t make it to the Met by 35, I’m going to quit.’ If for some reason I never make it to the Met, I’m going to be OK.”
Rogali’s goal, she says, “is for singing to be my main career, my main source of income. As long as I am able to financially support myself through my singing, I’ll be happy.”
It seems a plausible goal, particularly with Carmen under her belt. This is Rogali’s biggest role to date—and a part that seems perfectly suited to her in more ways than one. “She’s got the looks, she’s got that beautiful hair,” says her vocal coach, Nathalie Doucet.
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