Emma Shapplin

hole atmosphere, ”recalls Emma. “I touched these great results for the first time and tried to perform in Italian, which seemed to be mysterious and romantic.” She also told Emma that it was a soprano coloratura. “The singing was still like playing with a toy for me. She found my voice and slowly began to take it out.

Emma took lessons with her for two years and was convinced that she had found her purpose in life. But she was also approaching an age when her parents were worried about her career prospects and her future. “They didn't think singing could be a good job, ” Emma recalls. “My father was a police officer and thought that maybe I should follow in his footsteps. My mother was a secretary and she thought it would be a good job for me. I understand why they wanted me to focus on my other research, singing is a validation of purpose in life. "

She continues to pay tribute to her early teacher, but has never seen her since. “I still feel guilty about breaking up, ” she explains. All great singers will tell you that the voice is a gift, and not being able to use this gift makes Emma feel empty. “I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I felt that I had done something wrong. I felt like a person in a confined space. If I don't sing, I will explode, ”she said.

The desire to sing did not leave her, and soon she reappeared in a completely different form when she joined a heavy metal band. “Some of the guys in my class were forming a rock band and they were actually looking for a male singer, ” Emma recalls. "They needed someone who could scream, so I said I could do it." Her offer was gratefully accepted, and for the next two years she gave up her operatic exercises and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day to give her voice a rougher, rocky tone.

However, due to the fact that she really enjoyed screaming, she began to skip music lessons in opera. One day a friend of her mother took a young rock singer to the play Don Juan by Mozart at the Paris Opera House. It was the first time she had ever seen an opera on stage and she was fascinated. “I thought when I heard something so beautiful that I had to die, ” she recalls. "We had seats on the balcony, and I remember that I wanted to jump off it and fly."

She started looking for a teacher again and entered a music school. However, she found the teaching style cold and formal, and soon went with a friend to New York. “While I was there, I sang some r & b compositions that have something to do with opera. R&B's music style is very down-to-earth and has greatly contributed to the way I approach singing today, ”she says.

When she eventually returned to France, she resumed singing lessons again. But now she decided she didn't want to go to the opera, especially after one teacher accused her of providing her with an arrangement of a famous aria. "It made me think that I should find my own way of expressing myself and use my voice to come up with something of my own."

A chance meeting at a party with French composer and pop star Jean-Patrick Capdwillel provided her with opportunities. They had met before, and so she dared to dare and asked him to write an album for her. “But I'm not Verdi, ” he told her. “And I'm not a real opera singer, so we have to do something together, ” she replied.

Her courage clearly impressed him and a week later, he called her and they started working together. “There was this beautiful moment when it was so obvious that it would work, ” says Emma. Indeed, it worked so well that in the end the Carmine M album