When the operatic tenor trio Forte gives its first full-length orchestral concert in Mizner Park on March 15, it will be another milestone in a brief but blazing career for three young men thrown together for the reality show America’s Got Talent.
But for Fernando Varela, it also will be a return to the area where he first saw his future path while a member of Palm Beach Opera’s Young Artist program beginning in 2004.
“I was a resident artist and lived right there in Palm Beach for two years. The Palm Beach Opera program was a great program. They really paved the way for me as a professional,” said Varela, 33, speaking from his home near Orlando. The opera company experience brought him into contact with several voice teachers, and one of them gave him a useful piece of career advice.
“Toward the end I started doing more crossover, and my teacher said, ‘This is what you need to pursue,’ rather than a standard opera career,” Varela said.
And it’s proved to be a smart move. Varela, a native of Puerto Rico, is on the road much of the year singing in a variety of genres when he’s not teaming up with his Forte colleagues, Sean Panikkar and Josh Page. The story of their coming together has now entered reality TV lore: Varela saw New Yorker Page on a viral video, made contact with him online and the two decided to recruit a third tenor to pursue a spot on America’s Got Talent. Originally, that was a South Korean tenor named Hana Ryu, but visa problems forced him to drop out.
He was replaced by Panikkar, a Michigan operatic tenor of Sri Lankan descent, and TV audiences got to see the three men meeting for the first time and working to come up with an act. Forte competed last summer in the eighth season of America’s Got Talent, finishing in fourth place, but that was enough to get their career on the road. Their first disc, Forte, was released in November.
Varela said one of the best things about the group is its diversity of vocal talent.
“We’re all so different. We have completely different strengths. Sean is essentially a full-time opera singer, Josh is touring in a hard rock band with his brother, and I kind of cross a lot of genres of music,” he said. “I’m out here performing concerts full-time across the board, covering classic rock to Broadway, pop, classical and everything in between. So we each have our own distinct strengths.”
Panikkar, who has appeared in several Metropolitan Opera productions going back to 2007, was seen by local audiences last month as Macduff in Palm Beach Opera’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth, and is currently singing Rodolfo in a new production of Puccini’s La Bohème at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Varela said putting the group together in last-minute seat-of-the-pants fashion was actually a thrill.
“The thing about this is we all met just before ‘America’s Got Talent,’ and it’s all new for everybody. That’s what was so exciting about putting it together,” he said. “I found it to be an advantage. There was the newness of the group, and the excitement allowed us to show growth from the start through each week. We were able to blend a lot better as we went along and hone our sound as an ensemble.”
Varela, who moved to the Orlando area from Puerto Rico with his family at age 8, began working with Central Florida Lyric Opera as a high school senior, and later studied with the legendary Italian soprano Licia Albanese before going to Palm Beach Opera, where he worked with Cesar Ulloa. He has worked with the veteran producer David Foster, winning his “Born to Sing” contest and joining him in 2012 for an Asian tour of David Foster and Friends.
He has released three of his own albums, Dare to Live (2008), Prelude (2012) and Inspiration (also 2012), and has sung in more than 30 countries, making appearances with groups such as the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. He’s also pursued work closer to home. Since 2009, he’s been the music director and soloist at St. Paul Polish National Catholic Church, a small congregation in Belleview.
“That’s what I was doing for the last five years in between stints out on the road. My church family has been fully supportive and understanding as I’ve been on the road for the last year. I don’t get back there as often as I’d like to,” he said.
Varela said the music he selected for church services spanned a wide variety of genres, and he says there are similarities between doing that and choosing repertoire for Forte.
“There’s absolutely a parallel. The church told me to pray about it and let the (Holy) Spirit select the songs. Nothing was ever off-limits. We were able to do a lot of contemporary songs … it’s been great to be able to tinker for five years and try out different styles of music.”
For its concert at the Festival of the Arts Boca, Forte will appear with the orchestra of the University of Miami’s Henry Mancini Institute. On April 5, the group appears in Denver for the Central City Opera for the company’s Theatre of Dreams Gala, and on April 20 at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, for the Fort Worth Opera Festival.
Varela said the Boca concert, which concludes the festival, will include songs such as Somewhere and My Heart Will Go On, “kind of all the big moments we had on (‘America’s Got Talent’),” he said. “Obviously, we’ll do some additional material, and we’ll do one opera aria … We’ll definitely have a diverse program. We’ll go from pop to opera and everything in between.”
Given its operatic makeup, choosing songs for programs can be tricky.
“Some songs work better than others, and some just don’t work; they sound ridiculous. There are great songs that just won’t work operatically ,” he said. “But it’s fun to experiment, and explore different styles of music.”
The singers of Forte agree on the basic focus of exposing more people to classical music, even though their choice of songs is all over the musical map.
“I think our programs have something for everybody. You can’t gear it toward just one kind of person; it just won’t work,” Varela said. “Our mission is to attract new people to the art form, to get people who’ve never set foot in an opera house to enjoy classical singing. We can take a pop song and reimagine it in a classical way and people love it. They feel the emotions. They tell us, ‘I never listened to this kind of music before, but I loved it.’”
And America’s Got Talent was a great place to get that mission underway, he said.
“There aren’t that many places that will actually take a chance on classical singing and expose it to the masses,” he said. “People always ask me, ‘Would you do it again?’ and I say, unequivocally, yes. I would do this all over again in a heartbeat. It’s opened so many doors for me that have been shut for such a long time.”
Forte appears at 7:30 pm March 15 at the Mizner Park Amphitheatre during Festival of the Arts Boca. For more information, or to purchase tickets, call (561) 368-8445, toll-free at 866-571-ARTS, or visit www.festivaloftheartsboca.org