It took some searching, but from an interview by SpotGroningen and an old Instagram post shows that Laetitia Gerards lives with master pianist Thomas Beijer. And that is quite unique, because there are not many of them in the Netherlands.
Text continues below the Instagram post.
Private
It is not known exactly how long the two have been together. Like Laetitia, Thomas keeps his private life fairly to himself. Is that just as convenient, if you have something like Who is the mole? must keep secret. We do know that they worked together on the musical work A lock without a key. Thomas composed it, Laetitia sang. What Laetitia does not keep secret about is how much she wanted to participate in WIDM: here you can read all about it.
bride for sale
That work came about after Laetitia had to postpone the singing role of her life in 2020 due to corona. She would sing the lead role in Bride for sale!, an opera by the National Travel Opera. “I already got to sing some lead roles, but Marshenka was really the leading role. Since last year I have been preparing hard to get that role, but two days before the premiere we heard that it was cancelled,” Laetitia told AVROTROS about this. The premiere is now scheduled for May 2022.
Passion
In that interview she also told that she has been involved with music, playing instruments and singing since childhood. She started playing the cello at the age of five. As an adolescent she studied cello at the Young Musicians Academy in Tilburg and devoted herself to chamber music. But at the age of nineteen she still registered at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, in order to graduate summa cum laude in opera singing in 2016.
Train
Yet Laetitia is far from finished learning: “We singers have our most important muscles in our throats, and you also have to keep training your diaphragm and condition. I am working intensively to improve my technique. That the resonance is better, and that I can get over an orchestra of eighty men without a microphone. And I’m working on my breath support so I can sing a long line without feeling exhausted at the end. Singers are never done learning.”
Source: Instagram, AVROTROS, SpotGroningen
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