{"id":3324,"date":"2016-05-19T18:12:32","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T22:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/?p=3324"},"modified":"2016-05-19T18:12:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T22:12:32","slug":"baker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/sp2016\/baker\/","title":{"rendered":"Felicia Baker &#8211; Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Felicia Baker<\/h1>\n<div class=\"profilepic\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1303\/Baker0.jpg\" alt=\"Felicia Baker\" width=\"213\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<ul class=\"wholist\">\n<li><strong>Hometown:<\/strong> East Providence, Rhode Island<\/li>\n<li><strong>Major:<\/strong> Music<\/li>\n<li><strong>Graduation Year:<\/strong> 2016<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Expect runs, trills and wide leaps from Felicia Baker when she graduates from the University of Rhode Island on Sunday, May 22. And she\u2019ll do it all with her voice.<\/p>\n<p>In front of thousands of URI graduates and their families, Felicia will deliver a power-packed operatic version of <em>God Bless America<\/em> and, last but not least, the URI Alma Mater.<\/p>\n<p>Listening in the audience, with smiles and moist eyes, will be her parents, Frank Baker, a science communications specialist at URI\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography, and Catherine Vieira-Baker, a contributing faculty member in the psychology department.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are proud and pleased,&#8221; says Frank. \u201cIt\u2019ll be moving for both of us. We\u2019ll see who tears up first.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Felicia saw a flier in the music department announcing auditions to sing at commencement and thought, \u201cWhy not?\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember going to my brother\u2019s commencement years ago and seeing student singers on stage and wanting to have the same opportunity,\u2019\u2019 says Felicia, 22, who is earning a bachelor\u2019s degree in music, with a focus on vocal performance. \u201cSo this is exciting.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Growing up in Virginia and East Providence, Felicia started singing and dancing as a little girl. She remembers taking her pre-school teacher\u2019s hands and twirling across the classroom. <\/p>\n<p>She debuted on stage in fourth grade during a performance with the Friends of St. Anne\u2019s Little Theater in Fall River, Mass., where she played a villager in \u201cFiddler on the Roof.\u2019\u2019 She was mesmerized.<\/p>\n<p>At St. Mary Academy Bay View in East Providence she continued to excel as a singer, actor and dancer. She was involved in 15 productions, including the school\u2019s acclaimed \u201cManhattan at the Bay\u2019\u2019 show.<\/p>\n<p>URI was her first choice, as was music, with a minor in philosophy and, eventually, German. She took vocal lessons, music theory and piano lessons, but her life changed when she went to the Bel Canto Summer Voice Program in Munich. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe opera was captivating,&#8221; she says. \u201cI went to six operas, and the one that really got me hooked was Verdi\u2019s Don Carlo. I could\u2019ve listened to it for an eternity.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Back home, she told her parents about her new career path.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was Broadway, Broadway, Broadway in our house and then, boom, your kid comes home from college and decides she wants to be an opera singer,\u2019\u2019 says Frank. \u201cAnd we\u2019re like, \u2018O.K.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her accomplishments are impressive. She worked with Opera Providence in its productions of L\u2019elisir d\u2019amore by Donizetti and La Traviata by Verdi. In her first complete operatic role, she starred as Adele in Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss with URI&#8217;s Opera Workshop. She also sang in a master class for opera singer Elizabeth Weigle at Brown University and for Metropolitan Opera House singer and Rhode Islander John Relyea at the Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School. She was coached by Bavarian opera singer Marita Knobel.<\/p>\n<p>The scholarships have been plentiful. She received the Sebastian P. and Marybelle Musco Scholarship for three years at URI. She also placed first in her division of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing Song and Aria competition in 2014 and 2016. In 2015, she won the James Ladewig Scholarship in music history. <\/p>\n<p>What does it take to be a great opera singer? Ambition, discipline, excellent technique and a passion for life, she says. Learning how to breathe is probably the most important skill. \u201cOpera is the unification of the human condition in a way that moves the souls of others,\u2019\u2019 she says. \u201cIt\u2019s timeless.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Her parents are fully supportive. Catherine spent many hours backstage during productions at Bay View and Little Theater helping with costumes and the many tasks necessary to put on a show. <\/p>\n<p>Last Christmas, Felicia and Frank went to New York City to see Les p\u00eacheurs de perles at the Metropolitan Opera House. They stayed in a hotel and ate in Chinese restaurants. Before the performance, they went on a backstage tour, even seeing the dressing room of world-famous soprano Diana Damrau, who is Felicia\u2019s idol. (Felicia is also a soprano.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe was over the moon,\u2019\u2019 says Frank. \u201cIt was so nice to share it all with her.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Felicia\u2019s dream? \u201cTo be a Bavarian Staatsopera singer.\u2019\u2019 That would be in Germany, and yes, she expects mom and dad to travel across the sea to hear her sing.<\/p>\n<p>Photo by Joe Giblin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Expect runs, trills and wide leaps from Felicia Baker when she graduates from the University of Rhode Island on Sunday, May 22. And she\u2019ll do it all with her voice. In front of thousands of URI graduates and their families, Felicia will deliver a power-packed operatic version of <em>God Bless America<\/em> and, last but not least, the URI Alma Mater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":727,"featured_media":3325,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sp2016"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/727"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}