“I have had nights where I thought things couldn’t get worse,” says Wootten, the daughter of ordained Evangelical Covenant Church minister and U.S. Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Doug Wootten, who is stationed in Ramstein. A recent performance of Verdi’s opera “Otello” was a case in point. “Otello was sick, a supporting role was sick, and the rotating stage was going too fast to exit,” she recalls.
Wootten became a professional opera singer when she was 17 and signed a contract to perform in the chorus for the opera “The Bartered Bride” in Kaiserslautern, Germany. She has since performed in “Otello,” based on Shakespeare’s “Othello,” and is starting “Les Contes d’Hoffmann.”
Opera, Wootten says, is not nearly as stuffy as some might think. “In Germany, opera is not considered formal,” she explains. “You don’t have to get all dressed up to go to the opera. Some people come in jeans just like at the movie theater.”
Still, opera is a far cry from the country music Wootten thought she would like to sing when she attended college. Her teacher told her, “You know, your voice is built for classical music.”
Wootten has been singing since she was age five and has had special training since she was 13 and living in New Mexico at the White Sands Missile Range. She is now picking up a lot of professional experience, even if it doesn’t come with a lot of pay.
She is paid eight euros (about $10) per rehearsal, which can last up to four hours. She gets roughly 20 euros for each performance.
Performing opera also becomes a means of learning new languages. “Otello” is sung in German and “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” is in French. “I personally pick up languages fairly quickly anyway, but there is no special technique for learning something in another language,” Wootten says. “Repetition is the key to success. I listen to others around me. Especially for the German, it is good to hear the native speaker sing it.”
Wootten says she hopes to build a career singing in the opera. Otherwise, she plans to teach music.
As much as she enjoys opera, her tastes run the gamut from country superstars Shania Twain and Rascal Flatts to Christian bands Relient-K and the Newsboys. Not stuffy at all.
