Creators, Makers, & Doers: Cecilia Violetta López
Posted on 8/27/24 by Brooke Burton
Interview by Brooke Burton © Boise City Department of Arts & History, Edited by HJ Moon & Brooke Burton
Photography by Brooke Burton and Wytske van Keulen
Pictured with Archives: Stacey Trenteseaux, Cecilia Violetta López, Leslie Sellers Garrett, Fernando Menendez, Vicki Kreimeyer
Pictured in Rehearsal: Ben Gulley (Roméo), Michele Detwiler (Gertrude), Cecilia Violetta López (Juliette), Andy Anderson (Conductor), Adelmo Guidarelli (Comte Capulet), Jason Detwiler (Mercutio), Cornelia Lotito (Stéphano)
Opera Idaho is celebrating their 50th Anniversary! We are so happy to honor them and to accept the incredible donation of their records to the Boise City Archives. Thank you Opera Idaho! We had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with lifelong Idahoan, Artistic Advisor, and soprano Cecilia Violetta López before rehearsal for Roméo et Juliette in which she plays Juliette. Cecilia is a true Idaho gem who shares her story with a deep vulnerability and honesty; and we are so grateful. As a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Mexico under the Reagan administration, her journey to the stage was unconventional and not without painful sacrifice. For Cecilia, there could be no other way. She says, “Opera chose me.”
What’s a day in your life?
This season I’ve been very fortunate to be employed, and given a lot of opportunities to learn and debut opera roles. To get those roles in my body and my brain, my day consists of waking up, checking emails (because I have five different accounts), and then learning the music. I sit down with the score and write out some counting in my music. If it’s in a different language, I go through and translate it word for word. I’m the person who has to clap out a rhythm to make sure I’m saying a word appropriately or on the right beats. It’s a process. It takes a lot of time to get a new role into one’s body.
Before coming [to Boise] to sing in Roméo et Juliette, I was in Orlando, Florida, debuting a mammoth of a role, the title role in an opera called Frida, about Frida Kahlo. With that role—there is just no rest. I start [on stage] at the beginning and I don’t go back to my dressing room until intermission. Then in Act II, I’m on stage the entire time. It took a lot out of me physically, emotionally, mentally. While I was on contract for [Frida], I would wake up in the morning and study Juliette to be prepared for Opera Idaho. 
You fly all over the U.S for roles! Just for me, travel tips?
Learn which shoes to pack that match more than one outfit. [Laughter.] One time, I was working a contract with Virginia Opera, and my agent got me released to fly to New York for rehearsals, then he got the Met to release me back to Virginia for my performances there. What I didn’t know was that it was going to be snowing in one city and practically summer in the other. So, really, make sure your shoes match the season.
Or seasons, in your case. And of course you come back to Idaho for family and for your role as Artistic Advisor. Did viewing the Opera Idaho archives stir up some memories?
Yes. Opera Idaho is the first professional opera company I ever auditioned for. Opera Idaho has helped me find my voice, in a way. Going through the archives brought a sense of the bigger, overall picture to me. Being a part of the organization administratively and artistically, the archives made me realize how tightly knit the opera family is in Boise, and how deep the roots of the organization really are. It’s an honor to be a part of that history, now.
You were born in Rupert, Idaho. You are one of Idaho’s claims to fame!
That’s what I’ve been told. It’s funny because, I mean, I come from very humble beginnings. My parents were in search of the American dream. They’re both from Mexico, from Michoacan. They came to the States as undocumented immigrants, and thanks to the Reagan Amnesty they became naturalized resident aliens.
Our life in Rupert was to work out on the farm. My dad got a job working on a farm, and my mom was not the type of person to just sit there and wait and be a stay‑at‑home mom and wife. She was out in the field as well. She would take us to work out in the field in the summers, when my older brother and I weren’t in school. That was the Idaho way for us, you know. It was just hard work.
How did that shape you as a person?
I think it definitely set the structure of my foundation when it comes to work ethic. Whenever I share the story—that I am a daughter of immigrants, I worked out in the fields—people look at me like I’m from a different planet. But it instilled in me that go‑getter attitude, of wanting to roll up your sleeves. You want me to learn the role in Czech? Okay, I can do it. I came from working out in the fields, whether it was cold or hot, rain or dirt in your eyes, whatever. And I don’t take the credit. It was my parents that really set examples of what it is to work hard for what you want. I owe it to—I call it the “Idaho way”—it’s what we do. It’s just a lot of hard work. And I’ve been fortunate to meet a lot of Idahoans that have that.
I do wonder, though, if younger generations, because of technology, feel differently?
Definitely generational. I didn’t want to say that, but…
I’ll say it [laughter]. I think it is because of technology that some types of work, of labor, have changed.
I get asked to be a keynote speaker at different events, different conferences. There was one time I will never forget. I was speaking to a group of migrant students from the Magic Valley, in Pocatello, Idaho. The teacher who set up the keynote speaking engagement was my former Math teacher from East Minico Junior High. The funny bit to the story was, I’m introducing myself, like, yeah, I’m an opera singer. And they’re looking at me like, “What, what do you mean? Why are you even here?” And I said, “Honestly, because I was once like you. My parents brought us up here. I grew up with nothing. I grew up working in the fields.” They were like, “Well, we don’t work in the fields anymore.”
Their experience of labor is not the same as your experience. They’re detached from it.
It’s very different, for sure. My parents still live in Rupert—she [my mom] owns a restaurant now, and whenever I’m there helping, we go shopping for groceries to stock up the restaurant. And we say, “Remember when we worked this field, remember when we were in that field? And now they’re all empty, [but] they’re still growing crops.”
The people just aren’t there.
The people aren’t there. Where are the people? I mean, there’s a lot of people during potato harvest because we need those truck drivers, and whatnot, and the women on the belts to clear off all the rocks when the potatoes go into the cellars. But it’s very different.
Do you lecture your son about what it takes to grow something?
Oh, yes, to this day. My experience as a mother is, I think, very unique as well. I lost custody of my son when I first started this career because I was told that opera singing wasn’t a real career, that it was a hobby and that I was not going to be able to provide for my child. Since then, I took it upon myself to prove everyone wrong. Every job I got reaffirmed everything my parents taught us. Focus, focus, focus, and everything worked for will pay off in the end. 
My relationship with my son is very close; we’ve never lost that. Every opportunity that I would get to see him, I would take. Every time we would go to my mom’s house, it was, come on, let’s wash dishes in the restaurant, or let’s go out to the fields where you can see the potato cellars that your grandma worked in. I’ve been trying to put that example at the forefront so he can take it with him. Now he’s in college studying cello performance because he wants to play in the pit for his mom. He’s a double major in chemistry. He’s very smart.
But this career hasn’t been easy for me. When I say that I’ve sacrificed a lot, it’s not a matter of time or a matter of just energy—I lost custody of something, a part of me. I had my parents to wipe away the tears and to say you come from a family of strong people and warriors and people who just kept working, kept working. And it’s okay to keep focused. And you’ll see— you’ll see that things will pay off in the end.
My son lives in Albuquerque with me. So I’m happy, but it hasn’t been easy. That’s another reason why this career, opera, means so much to me. I really gave up a lot. And I’m still here, 14 years later as a professional opera singer. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. [Laughter.]
So, literally, an authority over you said that you couldn’t be an opera singer and a mother?
Yes. I felt this overwhelming feeling of defeat, of being lost. That was when I shaved my head. [Laughter.] They say women cut their hair when they’re going through something emotional. That’s when I got my mohawk. I wanted to go and attack the world, just “Arrgh,” rage and to show everyone that the judge was wrong.
None of this is in your bio.
No, it’s not. Social media—everything online—people tend to react to the happy stuff, the façades. Nothing can [appear] to be going wrong. I share openly, but it’s not something I put on my website. Do you know what I mean?
Yes, “Fueled by the passion to prove a certain judge wrong,” isn’t something you put in a bio. Although it does have a certain ring to it. [Laughter.] Are your performances fueled by that experience?
Yes. It’s hard to explain. I have a lot of young singers ask me—or even, my very first mentor, Irene Dalis at Opera San Jose—I will start with this little side—it will connect, I promise.
Irene Dalis took me into her office when I was a new soprano. I’m thinking, oh, my gosh, I just started, I’m fired already. My colleagues were, “If you ever go into an interview with Ms. Dalis, it’s probably not good.” She’s a mezzo soprano, had a gigantic career in Europe, and was based in California. I thought for sure this was the end of my career. [Laughter.] She smoked like a dragon. She goes, “Cecilia, where did you go to school?” Well, I went to school at UNLV in Las Vegas, Nevada. “What kind of theater program do they have there?” They have a theater program, but the opera curriculum didn’t have any of the theater courses. “So where did you learn to be such a great actress?” And I said, just super honest, what you see is what you get with me. I grew up watching a lot of telenovelas with my mom, so I think that probably has a lot to do with it.
Fast‑forward to present day. I take from my own experiences, and I apply that to the music to tell these stories and have the music come to life. That’s what a lot of younger singers ask me: “What do you think about when you’re on stage and trying to tell the story and [also] thinking about all the things we have to do as musicians, as singers?” I’m like, just have it come from your heart, have it come from something real. This is a competitive world that we’re a part of, and to be able to shine brighter than all your colleagues, you need to let yourself become vulnerable to be able to tell the story.
So you tap into your life; the love, the passion, the revenge?
The revenge, yes. [Laughter.] There’s definitely a lot of emotions with every role. Every emotion is tied to something personal for me.
Could you ever imagine yourself in a different career?
I get asked frequently if I chose opera or if opera chose me. Sitting down and seeing little bits and pieces of my life and how they all come together, I feel like I was predestined to become an opera singer. Opera chose me. It isn’t something I grew up doing. My musical upbringing was mariachi music, old‑school traditional ranchera music. I saw my first opera singer on Sesame Street when I was a kid, Beverly Sills, an American soprano. She had a great career. I learned to speak English by watching Sesame Street.
There you go. Thank you Oscar the Grouch!
Yes. [Laughter.] Big Bird, Mr. Snuffleupagus. This career has been the one thing, something tangible, that I needed in dark moments of my life. When I was losing custody of my son, I was in rehearsal for an opera called Madame Butterfly, and in the end Butterfly gives up her boy…to live with their father. And I just remember—it was cathartic, therapeutic. It was the music, the score. It felt like my life was being told. I don’t think I would choose to be something else.
I do have other passions. I’m a big nerd. I love chemistry, I love science. But at the end of the day, opera keeps on calling me back.
Well, one thing I heard you say, and I’m going to kind of rephrase, is that in your darkest moments, you clung to opera as something solid. Is that because you feel it is your destiny?
I feel strongly that this has been decided for me. It goes deeper than that. My mom instilled in me a love of music. When I was a rebellious teenager, she would resort to song. If she couldn’t get something through my thick head, she would shake me and say, “No, Cecilia,” and then she would tear up and start singing a song. It was so poignant and real. She does this to this day.
She sings to you?
She sings to me. For us, it’s been a form of communication, with something as simple as mariachi music and the very traditional songs she grew up listening to and passed down to me. This opera repertoire is taking that and amplifying it. For me, it’s very visceral. It’s something I can’t explain, because I feel like people will look at me like I’m crazy if I try to give this explanation. Like, no, no, no, they’re not just notes on a page, it’s—for me it’s something deep, deep, deep. It’s a form of communication that I feel is not appreciated anymore.
What are the stereotypes that you run into when you tell people you’re an opera singer?
On planes, if I’m studying the score, I get the very basic question, oh, so you’re an opera singer, but you don’t look like an opera singer. You need to be like an extra 300 pounds. There’s a body stereotype. Or they say, my favorite opera is Phantom of the Opera. I’m like, well, that’s not an opera. [Laughter.]
I’ve never even really thought about that. It’s a musical.
It’s really cute. I’m like, well, they’re trying. I don’t want to crush their dreams.
I’ve never found this to be a problem, but people ask me, do I find the opera industry to be only for the elite? I’m like, no, no, no. It’s something that I will tell people until I go to the next life—opera is for everyone. Opera is inclusive. It is an artform for the people; all people. Early in my career, I had a mentor share a quote by Lotte Lehman with me. I’ll paraphrase, but it read, “I am an artist, nothing but an artist. I know the miraculous power of music to unite people, to lift them above themselves, to let them forget their shabby disputes. In the presence of art there are no enemies, no borders, no political parties. There are only human beings who suffer, and look for the light.” 
The stories that we tell on stage are universal and contain topics that were relevant when the operas were composed and are still relevant today. I’ll go one step further and add that a director once told me that her father told her he would go to the opera to have his own life story told back to him. Operas are stories of love, everyday life, family disputes, comedies, heart break, laughter, sacrifice, very real human experiences told with music. Opera is for everyone.
I often use myself as an example to prove that: I’m a daughter of Mexican immigrant parents. I worked on a farm. I sang mariachi music. Nothing in my life growing up pointed to me having a career as an opera singer, yet here I am. I perform opera, and I am an opera-goer. In the same breath, as artists, we don’t care what color of skin or socioeconomic backgrounds audiences come from. We just wish to share the fruits of our labor with audiences. We want audiences to breathe with us, cry with us, laugh with us, to be there with us as the story unfolds on stage.
Going back to storytelling, the mariachi songs and telenovela? The plots repeat themselves over and over?
Oh, one hundred percent. It has common themes. It’s love, unrequited love, tragedy, a love triangle. Somebody loves this person, and this person is not interested.
And you—at the urging of a mentor, I think—Tony Zancanella—you put together an autobiographical recital?
It’s basically me telling my story but with music. I start from the beginning, there’s a portion of the program with a trio of mariachi singers, and I—it’s a nod, it’s an homage to my mother. I programmed songs she used to sing to me or that she taught me.
How did it come about?
Tony Zancanella is the executive director of Opera Southwest, which is an opera company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is my home now. He said, look, you do all this recital work. Why don’t you do a recital that tells your story with music, and we’ll give you a platform to share it. And I did. It’s a program I curated; it has a combination of mariachi and classical tunes I grew up with, music that shaped my journey, my life. From where I started in the fields of Idaho to how I became an opera singer. In between each set, I speak to each piece and there’s a series of pictures, a slide show that also connects every piece with actual moments of my life. It’s very special to me.
Do you feel like you’re about to level up in your career? What is next?
You know what, that is a good question. I’m always grateful for all of the work because it keeps a roof over my head. I can pay college tuition, now, for my son.
That’s a huge accomplishment.
I know. But I dream—my mom always says, “When are you going to perform in Mexico?” I never have, so I don’t know if that would be considered leveling up.
I’ve performed internationally. I have these goals that I want to achieve; I feel like I’ve been putting checkmarks in every box, but there are still more that I want to check off. One of them would be the famous Teatro alla Scala in Italy, or the big opera houses in Vienna and Paris. But… my mom—my mom’s request is Mexico City, Palacio de Bellas Artes. That’s the next level.
That reminds me of a question, you might have some thoughts about the controversy at the border with the building of a partial wall and immigration regulations. Do you have anything you want to share about that?
Yeah, my family and I do talk about it. Both my mom and dad will be the first ones to say it’s very different now than what it used to be back in the day. My mom, very openly, shares a story of when she crossed over illegally with my older brother and I, and she got caught by the border patrol. The border patrol put us in a cell, in a jail cell—me and my mom—even though I was an American citizen, because I was born in the US, and—
This was coming back?
Coming back after being in Mexico. My older brother has very light skin; he has green eyes. The border patrol agent was never mean to my mom, but he was convinced my brother wasn’t my mom’s son. So he sat him in a chair outside the jail cell and was feeding him a bag of Cheetos, because we were all hungry.
So the border patrol thought your brother was a U.S. citizen that was not legally your mother’s son, because he looked white?
Correct. Yes, yes. My mom says the border patrol, after a few hours, let us go. And then my mom rolled up her sleeves again and came back in search of the American dream. And we crossed.
But it was very different back then. It’s very sad to see the immigration situation now. I remember when I was—I was like five, I was translating for my parents in the office in Idaho Falls, not knowing how to read, but speaking to this person my parents were trying to fill out all the paperwork for—during the amnesty of the Reagan Administration. For them, that was leveling up. It’s not lost on them—they have their own hardships, and they are forever grateful. But it’s definitely different, what’s happening now. I feel like what was happening in the ’80s, according to my parents, is multiplied by a thousand, now.
It would be a mistake for me to say that your parents’ journey was easier, but it was certainly different from the challenges people trying to cross the border face today.
They have stories of survival but nothing like what current people [have] who are trying to cross over. It’s definitely a different struggle. And how do you address all of that?
It’s very complicated. Cecilia, you’ve been so open and vulnerable, thank you. Thinking of your son, who is 18, if you could go back in time to and whisper some advice to your eighteen-year-old self, what would you say?
Oh, my gosh, if I could go back in time, I would whisper to myself a couple of things. To listen to Mom. And to never give up no matter how many times people tell me that I can’t do something. Just keep going.
Boise, Idaho
August 30, 2024
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Creators, Makers, & Doers highlights the lives and work of Boise artists and creative individuals. Selected profiles focus on individuals whose work has been supported by the Boise City Dept. of Arts & History. The views are those of the individuals.