Lani Stait
When Lani Stait walks into the bustling Cafecito restaurant, she spots familiar smiling faces calling out to her. Surprised, she happily approaches them and asks how they are. For several minutes, they discuss what is going on in their school lives and private lives. She talks with excitement in her voice, a smile on her face and enthusiasm glowing from her light brown eyes.
Stait says she strives to lead a stress-free life to help with her performance. Whether it's making sure she stays healthy, doing cross-stitch or as simple as not taking public transportation to the opera house. She carries herself with confidence as if she had no worries.
The 26-year-old, born in Annandale, Virginia, is a soprano opera singer who lives in Chicago and is a first-year young artist with Chicago Opera Theater. Stait grew up with music all of her life. Her mother sang at their church, and Stait would sing with her sister all the time. Singing is something she has always wanted to do and has worked hard at.
"I'm an artist. This is the art form I am committing my life to, and I am pursuing it as hard as I can."
-Lani Stait
Stait created her own student-run opera company called New Roots Opera.
She is inspired by many opera singers but says her biggest idol is Renee Fleming because she has brought much to the art form through her work and outreach.
Stait has won awards including the First United Methodist Church of Birmingham Young Artist Competition, as well as the Birmingham Musicale’s Charlotte Ruppel Memorial Voice Award Scholarship Competition. She was assistant director
for the production of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.”
Recently, she performed with the Apollo Chorus of Chicago in the opera “The Perfect American” in April. The opera, by Philip Glass, is based on the book by Peter Stephan Jungk. She is an understudy for the role of Diane Disney Miller.
Stait says she would not have had this opportunity without the help of her first voice teacher, Dorothy Kingston, who helped her apply to music school. "She was really supportive in a lot of ways," says Stait. Kingston guided Stait through the music-school application process, a crazy, scary time because she was young. Kingston, who started working with Stait in 2007, says Stait had the whole package: beauty and a lovely voice.
"She is focused and has a very fiery personality,” Kingston says. “She was fun, and I knew she was going to
build a career." Kingston taught Stait various operatic styles ranging from the 16th through the 18th century.
Stait did not join a choir group until college. At the University of Michigan, she was part of a choir with Grammy Award-winning choral conductor Jerry Blackstone. The choir toured Australia and New Zealand. The rare nice days of Chicago's winter months remind her time spent abroad and the beautiful weather and scenery she enjoyed.
"My fiancé and I were walking toward the lake, and it was exactly how it was in Australia and New Zealand every day," Stait recalled.
She performed in “The Love Potion” last September at the Music Box Theater, an obscure opera translated into English. It happens to be her fiancé, Joe Duran’s, favorite show. "I actually really liked the music, and she was the lead, so I got to see her in a bunch of scenes," Duran says. The two met in college during their freshman year.
“She has a lot of technique and style, she’s an understated actress.”
-Joe Duran, fiancé
Stait's move to Chicago with her fiancé from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in September 2015 wasn't an easy experience due to her work life. She was unhappy working two jobs hardly anyone likes– babysitting and retail.
"I was so depressed that first year in Chicago, we decided to make a big leap and to push ourselves out there to move to a big city,” Stait says. “It was really hard, and it was lonely; I wasn't doing what I wanted to do."
Thankfully during that time, she started voice lessons with Judith Haddon, the head of the voice department at Roosevelt University. Stait says it wasn’t until then that she started to enjoy her time in the city. As one could imagine, it was a relief when she discovered she had been accepted into the Chicago Opera Theater program.
Her eyes beamed with happiness when she recalled being accepted into that program. "It was so nice to feel like you’re back in some kind of groove," Stait says.
Headshot courtesy of Edda Pacifico
Performance photography by Marissa Duignan
By James Tinsley
Edited by Gracie Morales
Pursuing Passion and Perfect Pitch: Fiery Soprano Lights Up the Stage