Fayola K J Fraser
Described by OperaWire as “one of the most exciting sopranos to catch onstage these days,” Jeanine De Bique has been making waves internationally as “animated, joyful, and technically flawless, a Trinidadian vocalist with the light, starry voice that soars before landing on audiences’ ears like a musical meteor shower.”
Born in San Fernando, De Bique and her family moved to St Augustine when she was 11 years old, and she attended St Joseph’s Convent, POS, crediting her time there as the catalyst to her singing career. Remembering her music teachers, who saw her talent early on and invited her to attend private voice lessons, she said that the confidence they inspired in her from a very early age propelled her towards honing and developing her voice.
Also, a talented pianist, De Bique did piano and voice examinations throughout her schooling and performed in music festival. After secondary school, De Bique took time off to try to decide on her career move while still doing her voice and piano lessons, recalling that “I was deciding what I wanted to be—either a lawyer, psychologist, translator, or computer analyst.
Eventually, encouraged by her colleagues and music teachers, she applied to schools abroad to pursue music. De Bique went to the Manhattan School of Music, where she pursued a degree in Classical Music Performance with Voice as her instrument of choice. “Singing is a triple threat,” she explains, accounting for why she chose voice over piano, “it’s singing, acting, language, a deeper concept than having the instrument do the work for you, because you are the instrument.”
Upon graduation from college in 2009, she was scouted by the Basel Theatre in Switzerland to perform with them. She remembers moving to Switzerland as “exciting, scary, and expensive,” and De Bique received a “baptism by fire,” learning on the job various techniques and concepts that were all very new to her despite her schooling.
As a Trinidadian and a black woman in the white-dominated sphere of classical music, De Bique has had to harness a variety of tools to keep herself steeled and focused. “I was a big fish in a small pond in T&T, then I was a small fish in a big pond during my university career, and beyond that, in the working world, I was a small fish in a massive ocean.”
She uses prayer, staying close to her family, and selectively deciding which battles are worth her energy as her main tools to cope. She encourages others facing the same situation to “keep close to those who value you and keep yourself protected.” As artists and performers, De Bique describes the vulnerability of “having my heart always open to the audience” and needing to strike the balance of self-care to protect herself mentally and spiritually as well.
Although people spend an evening at the opera enjoying themselves and the music, the hidden work that artistes like De Bique have to do in preparation to give people that night of enjoyment is immense. Describing the classical performing arts as a “sport” and her voice as her muscle, she insisted that she must keep physically fit and mentally strong to present herself in front of crowds of people constantly.
De Bique also takes voice, diction, and language coaching, has to translate texts to English to embody and emote accurately, and studies score, dynamics, and modulation. She explained that each performance is an accumulation of her mental and physical work in the lead-up. On the nights of performances, mental conditioning and quick decision-making come into play, describing the way that “if one note doesn’t come out right, I have to move past it almost immediately in my mind as I have 90 more minutes to sing.”
De Bique continues to climb to international acclaim, having performed at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam, the San Francisco Opera, London Symphony Orchestra, and her solo recital debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall. One of her career highlights has been performing title roles at both the Opera Bastille and the Palais Garnier in Paris, two world-class opera houses imbued with historical and cultural significance.
Another highlight of her career has been lending her voice in service of others through philanthropic work. She spends time each year with a semi-professional orchestra run by a doctor in St Gallen, Switzerland, where she performs free of charge for people to enjoy low-cost entertainment.
Widening the net of opportunity for classical music in T&T is very important to De Bique. “We need to broaden the spaces to allow people who want to excel in non-traditional crafts to do just that,” she says, insisting that there is not the same level of investment in the creative art forms in T&T as there is in sports, for example.
She accounts for the multifaceted nature of society and the deep roots we have in music and dance as a foundation for investment in the classical arts, because ultimately, “music is music.”
Ultimately, she wants to “not have to be so far from home to do my work,” meaning that there will hopefully soon be spaces and places in the region for the upliftment and survival of the classical arts.
Jeanine De Bique is a Trini woman blazing a trail in the classical music space throughout the US and Europe with her “radiant, free-floating timbre” (Opernwelt). After playing Cinderella at the Opera Bastille in Paris, she described the importance of being a figure for young women to see someone that looks like them on stage, saying that “when my profile gets bigger, I have even more of a duty and responsibility to be an example to others.” It is therefore not only her dazzling talent but her humble confidence and dedication to people and to the art form that keep her shining on stages worldwide.