Rebecca Pedersen (Becca) from Bountiful, Utah, is an operatic star in her right. She studied Vocal Performance at Brigham Young University (BYU). Becoming a polished opera singer was not an easy feat for her being partially deaf. She has only 30 percent of her hearing in her left ear.
In a video interview, Becca remarked, “Darrell Babidge was the keystone in my becoming a singer. I knew nothing about opera. I knew nothing about singing. He took a “diamond in the rough.” A young singer needs to feel like they can conquer the world. And he made me feel that way. He made me feel like my voice was world-class and that it was special.”
In 2012, she was part of BYU’s opera Cosi fan Tutte as Fiordiligi. In January 2013, she was the youngest singer to audition for the Metropolitan Opera district auditions and won. Later that month she was selected to compete at the Rocky Mountain Regional Finals. Success continued to follow her, and she competed in four rounds, traveling to Denver and then New York for the semifinal and final rounds. Out of 1,800 participants, she was chosen as one of the six grand final winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, becoming one of the youngest winners (21-years-old) in the 60-year history of the competition. Before winning the competition she had only been singing for three years.
About her superb performance, the New York Times exclaimed that she was “a precociously polished 21-year-old soprano who sounded particularly alluring.” She also received praises from the Associate Press for her “polished technique and potent sound.” Deseret News reported, “Not only did Pedersen’s performance of “Pleurez, pleurez mes yeux” from Jules Massenet’s 1885 opera “Le Cid” award her a cash prize of $15,000, but she is [also] viewed as an investment to the Metropolitan Opera.”
In the video interview, she goes on to say, “I think for me, the thing that I struggle with the most, is as the overall the performer, just wanting to please everyone, and feeling like I am not good enough.” Becca is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and until her senior year in high school, the only choir that she participated in was her ward choir at Church. She had attended one voice lesson and decided she didn’t want to pursue it any further. In a March 2013 interview with the Deseret News she said, “I started singing my senior year of high school mainly because I had to take an art class. My choir teacher said, ‘You’ve got a good voice. You need to sing and think about taking voice lessons.’” It was not until her mother took her to a BYU concert to hear a famous soprano perform, that she gained an interest in singing.
The next day they went to the master class at BYU, and one year later she found herself in a voice lesson class. She commented, “My teacher at my first lesson said, ‘I think you have the kind of voice that could sing at the Met.’ I didn’t even know what the ‘Met’ was, so I went home and ‘Googled’ what it was and was like, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’” Realizing the possibilities her talents could afford her, she became determined to improve and teamed up BYU’s School of Music professor, Darrel Babidge to begin training her voice.
In 2014, Becca won the Licia-Albanese Puccini Vocal Competition in New York City. Her first place award included a cash prize and the opportunity to perform at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City. That same year, she performed as Rosalinde in BYU’s production of Die Fledermaus.
Becca has received offers from opera companies from all over the United States. She was the winner of the prestigious Utah Salute to Youth competition in both 2010 and 2012. As a freshman, she won both the BYU Singer of the Year Award and the Concerto Competition, soloing with the BYU Symphony Orchestra. She has also performed solo concerts with the Utah Symphony and has a close working relationship with the Utah Lyric Opera Company. She was accepted and is looking forward to attending school at Julliard.
Rebecca Pedersen comes from a family of ten siblings. Life has not always been easy for her. In the video interview, she recounts, “I had a rough childhood. My family was hit very hard by the recession. We lost our house and everything. And I didn’t have enough money to go to school, and I was a broken person. I was picking cherries at a cherry farm, and I turned to God and asked Him, ‘What will make me happy?’ And He told me that I needed to sing.” She told Deseret News, “”I always say it this way: I say, first God because He gave me the gift; then my mother because I wouldn’t be here without her and then Darrel Babidge because I wouldn’t have the technique and training without my teacher.”
