Katerina Souvorova leaves her mark on D.C. music scene

By Steve Clapp

You could view Katerina Souvorova, founder and artistic director of the Bel Cantanti Opera company, as a trailing spouse who has followed her physicist husband from Minsk, capital of Belarus in the former Soviet Union, to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then to suburban Maryland. But that wouldn't do justice to a stunningly successful Russian immigrant who has left a lasting mark on the music scene in metropolitan Washington.

Dr. Souvorova's talents will be on display this fall when Bel Cantanti performs two short operas, Pagliacci by Leoncavallo and Gianni Schicchi by Puccini, at the Jewish Community Center in Rockville in six performances from September 24 to October 10. She will then join Thomas Beveridge, artistic director of the New Dominion Chorale, for a joint concert of opera selections October 24 at the Rachel Schlesinger Concert Hall in Alexandria, Va.

The daughter of engineers living in Moscow,Souvorova displayed perfect pitch as a child and was sent to music school at age five. "The government supports the arts in Russia, and a musical education is free," she notes. "It doesn't cost anything. It's a job like anything else, and you get a salary until you're 65. You don't have to make a choice between music and making money."

Souvorova was already an accomplished pianist and vocal coach in Minsk when her husband, Alexandre Souvorov, was offered a job at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. At the time she was teaching piano at the Conservatory of Belarus and coaching voice at the State Academy of the Bolshoi Opera, where she worked with internationally known conductors, producers and singers.

When the couple moved to Charlotte in 1996, Souvorova put her musical career on hold, but not for long. "I came to the United States without a work visa and didn't speak English," she says. "I went to Central Piedmont Community College to study the language, and in six months I started working as a vocal coach there and at Davidson College."

Taking as her model the thriving opera houses in Europe, Souvorova set her sights on creating a similar enterprise in Charlotte. "The opera house is a huge institution in Europe," she notes. "In the conservatories of Russia, young singers are mentored by the leading singers of the opera house. After graduation from the conservatory they go automatically to the stage of the opera house. Here, if you're not lucky, a young singer goes to wait on tables or whatever else he can do. I asked myself, 'What do I do here? How can I work?'"

She persuaded fellow music lovers in Charlotte to help her found the Central Piedmont Community College Opera Theater, and she served as its music director, recruiting local singers and performing two operas each year. As a piano soloist and collaborative artist, she also made numerous recordings that spanned a wide range of composers and national styles.

In 2000 Souvorova was uprooted for a second time. Her husband accepted a post working on the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. "Here again I was back to ground zero," she says.

Living with her husband and two children in Germantown, Souvorova had little trouble finding work in the Washington-Baltimore area. She joined the faculty of George Mason University as a vocal coach and currently serves as a vocal coach on the faculty of Catholic University. She also worked as an accompanist for the Baltimore Opera before its demise.

"The singers liked working with me at George Mason, and one day I asked myself, 'Why don't I do this on my own?' she recalls, describing her decision to found Bel Cantanti Opera in 2003. "I had a friend, Kathleen McGhee, who's a costume designer, and together we produced Amahl and the Night Visitor by Menotti. People loved it. This love encouraged us to keep going. Then there was the next production and the next production... In the Bel Cantanti, all the singers audition for me. The ones I cast work with me. It gives them experience and a niche to do their art. After the Baltimore Opera closed, there were few other opportunities for young singers. It's a very uncomfortable situation for musicians, singers especially. Bel Cantanti gives them a chance to be heard."

Bel Cantanti Opera company has marked its seventh anniversary, and Souvorova hopes it will continue to thrive. The company depends on ticket sales, grants and private donations. "Opera is a very expensive art," she says. "There are rehearsals, costumes, staging, working with singers, orchestra, artistic and technical staff. All this complexity makes it harder but more beautiful too. In this economy, it's hard to survive. We try to be frugal."

Tom O'Grady, a tenor in the New Dominion Chorale who serves as board president of Bel Cantanti Opera, describes Souvorova as a "remarkable combination of right brain and left brain strengths. She has superb organizational skills, unbelievable energy and discipline. She's not just a musician. On the set, she does painting and carpentry and stitches curtains. And then she mothers all these young singers!"