Arts & Events

Soprano Alaine Rodin, Berkeley native, a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory and the Juilliard School, has made an international career for herself as an opera singer. 

She has sung on Broadway opposite Patti LuPone’s Maria Callas in Master Class, garnering praise from the New York Times for singing Verdi’s aria, “Vieni t’affretta,” from Macbeth in Terence McNally’s play. 

This Sunday, she returns home for a solo recital, “Music’s In The Air,” 2 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center on College Avenue. The program includes selections from Dvorak, Verdi, Rachmaninoff and Puccini. 

The recital will be Rodin’s first formal performance in Berkeley since she left for Juilliard. 

“I’m excited about it,” she said. “It’s nice to sing in your hometown, to stand up and sing beautiful music. Choosing music for a recital setting is the only time I can say I’m going to sing this, just because it’s pretty and I like it. The Rachmaninoff, for instance, isn’t heavy or deep, just gorgeous.” 

Rodin, a ballet dancer “from three years old to 18,” came late to singing as a college student, “but dancing to great music gave my ear firm grounding.” The stint in the featured role opposite LuPone was “the most fun I ever had on stage. I went from Chicago Lyric Opera’s young artist program to doing eight shows a week in New York, singing that big fat mama of an aria in every one.” 

“Rodin’s lush soprano,” critic Kitty Montgomery wrote of her Tosca performance at the Bellayre Music Festival. “Her vocally glorious rendition of Verdi’s defiant ‘Vissi d’arte’ aria is sung as a calm and lovely prayer.”