Powerful voices draw her to opera
“I’m very outgoing. I’m a very extroverted person. So when it came time to choose electives in sixth grade, I wanted to be in something where there were a lot of people. I also wanted to take the elective that went to Splashtown. That elective was choir.
“I could sing along with the radio and not be off key. But it didn’t occur to me that I was a particularly good singer. Until my middle school choir director was like, ‘Hey, you’ve got a really good voice. This could be your ticket to college.’
“I don’t come from a musical family. One side is straight educators. The other side is more sciency-medical. So my singing made me feel really unique.
“The first opera I ever performed in was in college. I remember being in rehearsal with the principal characters. Hearing and feeling someone make a sound bigger than their body, bigger than a whole orchestra, was just incredible. The fact that all that sound and all that power came from a person who had no mic on — I couldn’t believe it. And I thought, I have to do that.
“I love the drama that comes with opera, as well as the heroic and just Herculean singing. The only thing that kind of gets in the way of people sometimes fully appreciating opera is that it’s in different languages. It helps if you’re able to read a little about the show beforehand. You get your own idea of what to expect. Then when you go into the theater and see what that company and that director and that lead singer bring to the story, it’s this whole other dimension. Like, wow, I didn’t know it could be like this. I just love it.”
— Julie Jackson
Julie recently won the Young Singers of Color Audition Video Scholarship sponsored by Opera Project Columbus. Her performance as Holly Hogrobrooks in “Unsung Activist” premiered on Oct. 1. It’s Opera in the Heights’ contribution to Decameron Opera Coalition’s digital opera shorts project, “Heroes.”
Hear samples of Julie’s singing.
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