Wildcard Micaela !

In 2014 the entrepreneurial mezzo-soprano Mere Oliveira joined the conductor Juliana Christmann to found the Opera Studio do Vale, an unprecedented project on the Paraíba Valley (Countryside of São Paulo, Brazil) that aims at training new generations of singers, giving them the opportunity to study with great professionals in full activity and to gain experience on stage.

Thanks to her training in theater, Helene also directed operas and musicals, signing those works under the name of Marina Vaz. It was on her second production as director of the opera Carmen, years ago, that she met Mere Oliveira. The partnership between them goes back many years, making her a natural choice as be the person to take care of scenic part of the project.

Since the second half of 2014, Vaz gives the physical and scenic preparation classes for the students of the Opera Studio and also makes the stage direction of their productions. The first opera, released in December 2014, was also Carmen, and at the end of 2015 the next production will be Die Zauberflöte.

Recently, on last April, the University of Taubaté, Unitau, embraced the Opera Studio do Vale project. To celebrate this new partnership, the opera Carmen was reassembled in Taubaté at the Metrópole theater. The student who sang Micaela character in 2014, however, could not attend the performances, hence Helene, on a week, learned the role and left the backstage to return to her place of larger domain, the stage, brightening the production with her participation as the antagonist character of the opera.