Let’s Be Frank The Next ‘Million-Dollar Tenor’ Might Be Barritone Frank Hernandez, A Whitworth Grad Who Impresses Everyone - Including Pavarotti - With His Big Voice

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Frank Hernandez, 25, the Fourth Tenor.

Sounds far-fetched, but not as much as you might think.

Luciano Pavarotti of Three Tenors fame said the following about this 1993 Whitworth College graduate: “You will have an excellent career as a baritone; you can have a million-dollar career as a tenor.”

And that’s not the only thing Pavarotti said during Hernandez’s performance at the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition in Philadelphia in November. After Hernandez, a baritone, sang a tenor aria at Pavarotti’s request, the big guy said, “Did you know you just sang one of the most treacherous lines in all of tenor bel canto repertoire? And you sang it absolutely perfectly… . Every tenor in this whole building should listen to this singer and learn from this singer.”

“Frank was definitely one of the big stories of the competition,” said Jane Grey Nemeth, who runs the Pavarotti Competition.

Frank Hernandez’s voice has been heard loud and clear in international opera circles in the past year. Besides being one of the winners in the Pavarotti Competition, Hernandez has won several other major competitions, including the Puccini Foundation competition, which gave him a debut at Alice Tully Hall in the Lincoln Center. He is presently in the apprenticeship program at the Houston Grand Opera, famous for developing new stars.

Meanwhile, because of the Pavarotti Competition, he will probably sing Marcello to Pavarotti’s Rodolfo in “La Boheme” in Philadelphia sometime this year. Then comes a big summer adventure.

“We are in the process of arranging for a time for Frank to work with Maestro Pavarotti in Italy this summer,” said Nemeth.

And how did Hernandez respond to all of Pavarotti’s praise?

“I just said, ‘Huh?’ ” said Hernandez, who was back in Spokane over the holidays to do the Christmas Candlelight Concert at St. John’s Cathedral. “I didn’t know what to say. I was just stunned.”

This is all heady stuff for a kid who originally just wanted to play football.

Hernandez was born in Bellingham and grew up in the little farming town of Ferndale, in northwest Washington. He was known through his Ferndale High School days as a lineman, both on offense and defense, and he earned a football scholarship to Wenatchee Valley Community College (he still weighs in at 240 pounds on a 6-foot-2 frame).

However, he was not your typical blocking dummy, as evidenced by the nickname he had stenciled on the back of his football jersey: “Pavarotti.”

That’s because, as a junior in high school, Hernandez opened his mouth and experienced a life-changing moment.

At the time, he was a member of the high school choir, not so much because he chose to be in it but because back in eighth grade the band director wouldn’t let him play drums. So even though his musical tastes ran more to Van Halen, Boston and Rush, he was taking choir because it was “fun and easy.”

One day the choir director was getting frustrated with the choir’s sound. He asked them all to try to “sound like opera singers.”

“So, ha ha, funny Frank, he wants to sound like a big-time opera singer, so he lets one rip,” said Hernandez. “And I did. And this … big sound! … came out of me that I had never experienced.

“To this day, I have no idea what was going through my mind at the time, but it was something extraordinary enough to make me believe I could be an opera singer. I really had no foundation in opera. I had never been to one. I never even listened to classical music.

“But at that moment, it was this divine inspiration that just said, ‘You’re going to be an opera singer.”’

When his mother, Verona Hernandez, first heard that big voice at a choir performance soon afterward, she said, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to get that boy lessons.”

He took lessons from a former opera singer in Bellingham, but football remained his big passion. It was football that got him into Wenatchee Valley College on a half-scholarship.

Over in the music department, meanwhile, he was strictly a walk-on. He walked in one day and sang for the music director, who immediately gave him another half-scholarship.

He played football there for two years and then transferred to Whitworth College in Spokane, encouraged by vocal director Randi Von Ellefson, who had heard him sing in Wenatchee.

No more quarterback sacks for Hernandez; at Whitworth, his scholarship was strictly for music. He took lessons from faculty member Marjory Halvorson, and he was soon participating in almost all of the musical opportunities that Spokane had to offer.

Besides the Whitworth performing groups, he also sang with the Spokane Symphony and Uptown Opera, where he was in “The Marriage of Figaro,” “A Little Night Music,” “The Barber of Seville,” “The Magic Flute” and “Die Fledermaus.”

“The Uptown Opera was a really great thing for me to have in my young career, when I really didn’t have much stage experience,” said Hernandez. “It was a good place for me to grow up.”

In Spokane, he also had an ideal role model: Thomas Hampson.

Hampson, 40, also had developed as a singer in Spokane, and he now has the kind of international career that Hernandez aims for. Hampson sings the lead role in “Don Giovanni” at the Metropolitan Opera (the Met) in New York this week.

“I met him four years ago at Whitworth,” said Hernandez. “I skipped class to go to one of his rehearsals, and I told him what an inspiration he was to me, and he gave me a lesson.

“From that point on, it really inspired me to work extremely hard.”

In Spokane, Hernandez also met some music-loving benefactors who “believed in me enough to help me out financially.” Those benefactors paid the bulk of his tuition when he was accepted at the prestigious (and expensive) Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio after graduating from Whitworth.

“The only thing they ask in return is that I help somebody else out when I get established,” said Hernandez.

Since graduating from Oberlin in the spring, Hernandez has landed a spot in the Houston Grand Opera’s well-regarded apprenticeship program. For the rest of this season and the next, he will be living in Houston, taking language, movement and acting classes. And just last week he learned that he has been chosen to sing the lead baritone role of Marcello in the Houston Grand Opera’s main cast production of “La Boheme” later this month.

Meanwhile, his reputation as a budding star continues to grow. New York conductor John McGlinn, who has made recordings with Thomas Hampson, among many others, remembers that Hernandez came to him with the highest recommendations, and then exceeded them.

“When he was first brought to my attention, a colleague said to me, ‘Would you be interested in hearing the next Giuseppe de Luca (a legendary baritone)?”’ said McGlinn. “When I heard him sing, I just sat there and went … wow. He has a beautiful, free-rolling, wobble-free voice. Wobble-free is the most important element of that.”

McGlinn immediately booked him to sing in his production of Victor Herbert’s “Cyrano de Bergerac,” which will be presented as the grand reopening production in the Library of Congress’ restored performance hall.

McGlinn also was floored by the similarities in quality between Hernandez and Hampson.

“I don’t know what’s in the water up there in Spokane, but it must be good,” said McGlinn.

“It’s really funny that this little area has produced some fine opera singers,” said Hernandez. “Tom is from here, and Doug Johnson and Karen Beardsley. When I was in New York, I met Patrice Munsel, who is from here, and we got to reminiscing about Spokane.”

Something in the water might be one explanation. Another might be the influence of the late Sister Marietta Coyle, a voice teacher at Fort Wright College in Spokane who taught Hampson, Johnson and Beardsley, who now all have opera careers.

Hernandez is too young to have known her, but she taught Halvorson, who taught Hernandez. Hernandez calls Coyle “the common thread.”

The path to big-time opera stardom is treacherous. As with an athlete, much depends on the condition of fragile muscles and cartilage. McGlinn said the big challenge for Hernandez is to take care of his voice and resist the temptation to do too much too soon.

“When you are blessed with a voice as glorious as Frank’s, you think you are invulnerable,” said McGlinn. “But the world is littered with singers who at 35 are not singing anymore. They’re offered $10,000 to do Verdi’s high baritone arias, and in five or 10 years they’ve got a wobble big enough to drive a truck through.”

Hernandez, in particular, has a huge decision to make. Will he switch to tenor?

McGlinn said some famous tenors, including the legendary Italian Carlo Bergonzi, made the switch with great success. It’s hard to resist, especially when the world’s most famous tenor is booming out terms like “million-dollar career.”

But Hernandez still must do what’s best for his voice.

Hernandez is well aware of this, having had it drummed into him by Hampson when he met him again a few weeks ago in Houston.

“He said, ‘People are talking about you. Just keep your head on straight. The career will take care of itself. You just worry about singing well and staying healthy.”’

There’s nothing like a big disappointment to help you keep your head on straight, and Hernandez had one last spring.

“My Metropolitan Opera stage audition didn’t work out as well as I would have liked,” he said. “They called my agent afterward and said they couldn’t figure out what the big deal was about this new young baritone.”

In retrospect, Hernandez says that “it’s good that it didn’t come to fruition right now.”

“To be thrown on that stage at 25, when you’re not really at your artistic peak, can be really rough,” he said.

Yet he admits that playing the Met is one of his career goals.

“I want to sing in all of the great opera houses in the world, with all the great symphonies and with all the great conductors, he said. “I want to sing at the Met, La Scala (Milan), and Covent Garden (London) by the time I’m 35.

“I think I can do that. I’m a long way from 35.”

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