For soprano Ailyn Perez, new opera roles and new marriage

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Perez is currently starring at the Metropolitan Opera as Tatiana, the shy country girl who is smitten at first sight of the haughty title character in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” — only to be promptly rebuffed. It was the first time I didn’t interrupt him.” The audience cheers after he got down one knee drowned out her response, but Perez said, “I just screamed YES! She’s moving outside her comfort zone, exploring roles that call for more vocal heft than the ones with which she’s been identified, like Mimi in Puccini’s “La Boheme,” Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata” or the title character in Massenet’s Manon.” “I think I’ve always known that the great lyric repertory would be my center,” she said. I felt it might be on the early side of right.” Tatiana, which she’s also singing for the first time, is, like Tosca, what critic Zachary Woolfe in The New York Times called a “heavier sing than the lyric roles… for which she has been best known at the Met.” But he added, “her urgency and commitment to the text helped compensate for any lack of plushness.” The next new Puccini role she plans is the title character of “Madama Butterfly,” and she’d also like to sing his “Suor Angelica,” which Schuman said for her “would be like putting on the perfect glove.” Next season at the Met she’ll reprise her Alicia in Verdi’s “Falstaff,” and debut yet another new role, Blanche, in Poulenc’s “Dialogues des Carmelites.” It’s a part that has special meaning to her since it was created by Virginia Zeani, who taught her while she was at Indiana.