We were lucky to catch up with Michelle Świderska Law recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Michelle thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Simultaneously very early and very late. I think I knew really early on, say maybe 8 years old or so, that I wanted to spend my life performing; sharing stories, connecting with people via live performances, and exploring how other people think via different characters. I remember doing my first play in 1st grade and being cast as the Giantess in some grade school version of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” At the time, I was a bit insecure about my height, so I HATED it, ha! But the next class play I did, at the advanced age of 3rd grade, I got to play a lawyer and yell a lot. I was hooked. Maybe it was the yelling.

I spent the next 12 years alternating sports and theater throughout the school year. I was obsessed with Shakespeare and at one point, entertained the idea of pursuing that in college and professionally. When I was a sophomore in high school, my mom signed me up for singing lessons and I fell in love pretty instantly. Secretly, I knew I wanted to major in singing but I didn’t have the standard musical theater voice, so I didn’t know what I would do with it. People started telling me I had an operatic voice early on, but I didn’t have any frame of reference for what that meant. I didn’t grow up listening to opera, and being an opera singer didn’t sound “cool” to a 15-year-old in Southern California who wanted a Disney Princess sound. I spent the next 7 years mostly singing musical theater, with people in that world always asking me to make my sound lighter, to make it brighter, and to take out the vibrato. I used to spend an hour every day practicing singing as quietly as possible, with as little vibrato as possible.

I don’t think it really clicked until I went into a trial voice lesson in college and sang through an opera aria. After spending so long holding my voice back, it felt indescribably amazing to just let it out! It honestly felt like flying. When I realized I could make music with my whole body and voice, that was it. I realized I was going to spend my life doing this, although I still didn’t have any idea what that would look like.

Michelle, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m an operatic soprano, so I sing opera, art song, and classical concert music. I love it all so much. I love collaborating with other singers, instrumentalists, conductors, pianists, and composers. I’m pretty kinesthetic, so this way of being in my body, using my voice, searching for freedom while making this incredible art… There isn’t anything like it. Taking something off the page, bringing it to life, and putting it out into the world is incredibly special and a huge privilege. It’s just magic. Learning how to do this, getting fully into my body and using everything you are to make music, took me until now, it feels like. I’m still learning, actually, every day. I think originally I thought the learning would stop after conservatory, which was incorrect, to say the least.

In undergrad, I was nearly ready to graduate with a degree in Psychology, but I had been singing and performing the entire time. That was what I really lived for. For some reason, I couldn’t put the idea of majoring in Vocal Performance away. One day, a friend came over to my house and was supposed to be crying to me about her recent breakup but I ended up crying to her about wanting to major in music but thinking it was too late. She was like, “Why don’t you just do it? That seems like a perfectly Michelle thing to do.” I guess she was right! Over a decade later, I’ve got a Master of Music in Voice from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, and a B.A. in Music (Voice) from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.

I’ve ended up with an affinity for the repertoire of Wagner and Strauss, although Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, and Tchaikovsky have a special place in my heart. When people initially started telling me I should move into the Germanic repertoire, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I loved the Italian repertoire and had performed a lot of it. My dad lived in Italy for a while. As I mentioned, I started in theater, so I was really blown away by the combination of drama and vocal fireworks of operas like Lucia di Lammermoor, Anna Bolena, and La traviata initially. Watching recordings of those made me think, “Maybe opera really is something special.” Those bel canto works were what I’d originally seen myself doing for the bulk of my career. However, one of my hobbies is studying folklore, and when I realized how heavily folklore-inspired Wagner and Strauss are, I started getting into it pretty quickly.

Nowadays, that music feels like a more natural fit for my voice. It’s funny how that makes you feel like a better singer, a better artist, because what you have naturally just works. When the singing is comfortable, then you can work on being creative, on being interpretative. I’m so thankful for all of the amazing artists I’ve gotten to work and get to work with, and I want to always bring the best of what I can to the table, for my colleagues and audiences. Watching and listening to someone who is checked out or just worrying about their technique isn’t fun; watching someone who is fully engaged and fully present is incredible. For those fleeting moments, they come fully alive and so do you.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think being an artist is a tale of resilience, period. Honestly, I think anybody still working as an artist and/or performer, still putting their art out there, after the COVID pandemic is also a living testament to human resilience. With live performance particularly, we saw our entire industry shut down completely. Some of the greatest singers of our time were making videos on their iPhones of themselves singing in their bathrooms in front of their shower curtains. That was sort of simultaneously terrifying, humbling, and inspiring. The outlook on the performing arts was pretty grim at the time and I think a lot of us were asking ourselves if spending so much time, money, and emotion on this thing was really worth it. There are a lot of career paths that make more money with a lot less attrition involved. The training is expensive, finding and paying for your own travel and housing for gigs and auditions is expensive. There’s a lot of rejection and it’s hard not to take it personally when your instrument lives in your body. There’s no separation, physically. Cancelling due to illness means you don’t get paid. The list goes on. When I first started studying opera, the general message I kept getting from people was, “You can and should do this, but it’s going to be a very long road.”

It was a long road- I didn’t realize HOW long of a road it would be at the start of it, which is probably for the best, ha! I completed my undergraduate degree in Music at PLNU, where I had the joy and privilege of studying with John Craig Johnson, who was wonderful. That’s where I did my first opera, “The Merry Widow” in German. I sang in the opera chorus at San Diego Opera and then did their outreach program with the wonderful Nic Reveles. He had a huge impact on me and my singing. He told me early on, “Your voice is really distinct, which is such a good thing. Don’t ever let anyone take that from you, and a lot of conservatories might try. You don’t want to sound like everybody else. I should be able to turn on Classical radio and know it’s you right away.” But during a dress rehearsal, the head of San Diego Opera announced that the company would be closing, due to financial issues. This sent shock waves through the entire opera community and was often viewed as a sign of the times, spelling doom for opera in America in a post-2008 recession economy. A coach told me, “This is the worst time in the history of opera to be a singer.” Whether that was true is highly debatable, but it was terrifying.

I decided I’d better get out of San Diego, since we had no idea if there would be any opera left here. I moved to Chicago and studied with some wonderful people there. The ups and downs continued, as they do for all singers- I was rejected, I was accepted, I won, I lost, I felt encouraged, I felt discouraged. At the time, I had begun getting lots of different opinions about my voice and what I should do with it. Quite often, I would get told that I was *going* to be a dramatic soprano but that I wasn’t yet, which was stressful to me at the time. I felt like I wasn’t a “real” singer yet, a “real” anything yet. I would get told I should sing as a mezzo, a lyric soprano, a dramatic coloratura in the meantime. I spent years trying to make my voice what everybody else thought it should be, and maybe what I wished it would be: something everybody liked, something that didn’t stand out too much, something pretty and sweet. Honestly, I spent years in this place, confused and stuck in my head, with unaddressed sports injuries to add to the list. I didn’t feel at home in my body or with my voice- but I was committed to the journey and incurably curious.

A few years later, I did two seasons in San Diego Opera’s Apprentice Artist training program and had a wonderful experience with my colleagues and with Ines Irawati, who fostered this wonderful, open environment in the rehearsals and performances in that program. Ines loves chamber music, and she coaches from this perspective. It feels intimate, collaborative, and almost like play. Defining my voice stopped feeling so important and making things from a place of honesty started feeling more important. Ines and my wonderful voice teacher, Darrell Babidge, not only made me a better singer and musician but also helped me define what was important to me in my music. Wanting to continue on this trajectory, I ended up completing my Master’s in Vocal Performance at the Royal Northern College of Music in England toward the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Finishing graduate school in opera during a global pandemic was pretty bleak. I hadn’t been able to do so many of the things I’d wanted to do there, hadn’t been able to make so many of the connections I’d been aiming for due to the lockdowns and inability to travel. Like everyone else, I’d had performances and auditions cancelled, with no sign of them being rescheduled. I was questioning everything; “Why do I do this? What does it mean to me? Is all this effort worth it?” When multiple personal tragedies struck, I reached a low point. I was so overwhelmed and felt directionless. I tried walking away from music completely at one point. For a few weeks, I kept telling myself, “I’ll quit after I finish these upcoming performances.” That “resolution” made me feel less stressed for about a week before it hit me full force that that was the last thing on earth that I wanted. I realized that I was at a low point and going to have to make a lot of changes and give myself a lot of grace.

I took a short break. I started therapy. I started physical therapy. My husband and I moved to a new house and got a puppy and a kitten. I planted a little herb garden. I took a break from social media. I got diagnosed with ADHD and started treatment. I learned about how I learn. And then I started singing again. My body felt different, my voice felt different. I was excited and terrified to realize I had never felt so connected before. My teacher assigned me nearly all new arias, and I was shocked to discover how good they felt and how quickly I could learn when working WITH my voice, with my body, with my brain, instead of against it. My singing changed and my experience of singing changed, and I wouldn’t go back to the way it was for the world. It’s an exciting time- for the first time, everything feels aligned. Over a decade later, and I’m finally able to begin to create the way that I’d always wanted to. My advice to anybody starting on this path would be to commit to the journey, not the destination, and always remain curious. I think creativity is born from a heady mix of resilience, play, and curiosity.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Mental health resources! It isn’t that I couldn’t find them, but that I didn’t know how much I’d need them. A teacher once joked that all music majors should be assigned a therapist the second they declare their major. I couldn’t agree more! But it isn’t just about dealing with rejection or your childhood trauma, although those things are a must for anyone, really; it’s also about learning how you learn, dealing with performance anxiety, learning to perform at a high level under stress, having support for not compromising your values, and so much more.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.michelle-sl.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michellesthelaw
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4Koww_uHlqK3IYeG4SAxxQ

Image Credits
First headshot is by Peter Konerko