{"id":23803,"date":"2023-10-27T16:46:45","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T20:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=23803"},"modified":"2023-10-27T16:46:45","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T20:46:45","slug":"dirigo-diva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/dirigo-diva\/","title":{"rendered":"Dirigo Diva"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"position: relative; padding-top: max(60%,326px); height: 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe style=\"position: absolute; border: none; width: 100%; height: 100%; left: 0; right: 0; top: 0; bottom: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23eeeeee&amp;d=nov23_flipbook_single_pages&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=30&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" sandbox=\"allow-top-navigation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation allow-downloads allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-modals allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-forms\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p2\">Bangor born and bred soprano Ashley Emerson takes it from the top.<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p3\">Interview By Gwen Thompson<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><strong>What first drew you to opera?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">My chorus teacher at Bangor High School, George Redman, said to me, \u201cI bet if you took a classical voice lesson, you\u2019d really enjoy it.\u201d Five or six lessons were enough for me to decide to study opera at USM. The summer after my first year, I sang in the chorus of <em>Lucia di Lammermoor<\/em> with Opera Maine, and that sealed the deal for me. I got accepted into the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera a few years later.<\/p>\n<p><em><span class=\"s1\">Read the full story in the digital magazine above.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-23804\" src=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/DirigoDiva-1024x536-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"536\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/DirigoDiva-1024x536-1.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/DirigoDiva-1024x536-1-980x513.jpg 980w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/DirigoDiva-1024x536-1-480x251.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ashley Emerson after the Met.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1289],"class_list":["post-23803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-november-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23803"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23807,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23803\/revisions\/23807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}