Ailyn Pérez, a soprano from Mexican immigrants, amazes the world of opera

Madrid. Ailyn Pérez heard an opera aria for the first time when she was in high school and a teacher made available to her a recording of it. The traviata, performed by the legendary soprano Maria Callas. She was so moved that she decided that day that if she had to dedicate herself to music, which was her dream, she would do so to sing opera, a genre that had never been heard in her home and about which she knew nothing.

Her parents, immigrants of Mexican origin, both from a small town in Jalisco who decided to seek a better fortune in the United States, embarked with her on that dream, despite the fact that it required enormous economic and emotional efforts. Today, Ailyn Pérez’s voice surprises the world of opera with its texture, its interpretative strength, its emotional warmth and its admirable technical virtuosity.

The most recent role in the brilliant and dazzling career of Ailyn Pérez was that of Cio-Cio San, the protagonist of Madama Butterfly, that scorned lover who decides to commit suicide in the face of her husband’s cruel betrayal and who made the entire audience at the Teatro Real in Madrid rise in a resounding ovation, rarely heard with such aplomb and effusiveness. In an interview with The Day, Ailyn Pérez recounted her first steps in music, when all she wanted most was to be part of the school band and contribute her grain of sand with her simple recorder.

In those years, I did not even know that she had a prodigious voice, that she was capable of reaching musical notes impossible for ordinary people, and that she also possessed interpretative gifts that could make her what she is today: an admired soprano, who has achieved great success with the public and critics in the great centres of world opera, such as the Metropolitan in New York, La Scala in Milan, the Líceo in Barcelona and the Teatro Real in Madrid.

My parents met in Chicago, but they left their hometowns near Guadalajara for the United States. They met through friends at the factory where they worked. With great effort, they overcame life’s obstacles, always with the sole intention of offering us, their children, a better future.said Ailyn Pérez.

In the house where he spent the first years of his life, in the Mexican neighborhood of Chicago, he mostly listened to ranchera music, boleros, salsa or cumbia. “The first songs I remember singing were Eternal love, of Juan Gabriel, or If they let us, by José Alfredo Jiménez. I tell this to express how beautiful it feels to be here in Madrid, in this opera house and with all the history behind it, because all the children of immigrants are very attached to the culture of our country, that is, Mexico, and everything connects us, but above all the language,” he said.

When she received her first musical instruction, at the Chicago elementary school, Ailyn Pérez learned to play the recorder, an instrument that captivated her and that she could not stop playing. Even before going to sleep, she would spend hours and hours enjoying the sound of that instrument, with which she would play by ear the soundtracks of the most popular films of the time. Then I learned to play the cello; the teacher I had, from the age of 10 to 13, was very special to me, because he taught us classical repertoire for the first time and encouraged us to play in front of an audience and live that magical moment of creating music collectively, with more than 60 people sharing that dream.the soprano recalled.

It all started with Callas

When she started her secondary education, Ailyn Pérez was convinced that she wanted to dedicate herself to music and looked for scholarships and specialized schools that would allow her to continue developing her talent. In those years she did not even suspect that she had a voice that would make her an opera singer. “At 14, a teacher heard me in my first singing lesson, and without knowing how or why I was already able to see the score and sing and follow the lyrics of the song. He made me listen to the music and I was able to sing and follow the lyrics of the song. Oh my dear daddy, by Maestro Puccini, and I was deeply moved. Later I heard, in that same lesson, Maria Callas performing The Traviata and I felt a special connection that made me long with all my heart to one day become an opera singer,” he said.

That day he went to the library and took some records that his teacher had recommended, all operas, by Maria Callas, Victoria de los Ángeles or Renée Fleming. And so I was conquered by everything that there is in opera, the feeling, the poetry, the sound and all the emotion that overflows on stage, which is something unique, because each performance is an unrepeatable moment..

Ailyn Pérez, already a prestigious soprano, has played Violetta in The traviata, to Mimi in Bohemia, the leading role in Thais, by Massenet, and a role that has been fundamental in his career, Florence, of the Mexican opera Florence in the Amazon, by musician Daniel Catán, based on a libretto by Marcela Fuentes Beráin, which became the first Mexican opera sung in Spanish to premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He has also sung at the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin, the Hamburg State Opera, the Vienna State Opera and the Royal Opera House, among others.

With his character of Madama Butterfly, At the Teatro Real in Madrid, he received one of the most emotional ovations in recent years, with the entire audience standing for more than five minutes.

It is a dream to sing in Madrid, where I also share the same language and part of my culture, although I would also like to one day be able to sing in Mexico, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes or in Guadalajara, or wherever, but in my country..