New Artist of the Month: Soprano Madeline Apple Healey

The voice seems to emanate from the venue itself. We are in the crypt underneath New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine; in the program’s first selection, Madeline Apple Healey sings Hildegarde von Bingen’s “O Vis Aeternitatis,” her ethereal soprano floating through the space as she makes her way from the vault’s recesses to the concert platform. Her singing, of a piece with the somber ecclesiastical surroundings, suggests unspoken spiritual underpinnings; her performance is so viscerally present that it erased the millennium gap between Von Bingen’s time and ours.

The October concert, part of the funerary-themed Death of Classical series, included five instrumentalists from Trinity Church Wall Street’s NOVUS ensemble. Healey was not only the featured soloist; in a way, she was the program’s raison d’être. “When the idea of the concert came up, I immediately said ‘Let me see if Madeline’s free,’” says Melissa Baker, Trinity’s director of artistic planning. “I knew we couldn’t program it until we knew we had her.”

The repertoire, chosen with Healey in mind, ranged from the 11th century to present day, with special attention to female composers: Von Bingen, Barbara Strozzi, Gelsey Bell, Caroline Shaw. The program came to a climax with Dido’s Lament, by Henry Purcell, an aria is usually assigned to singers with weightier instruments than Healey’s.

“Dido is not a role that I’d be singing in the traditional opera world—to them, I’m a Belinda,” she says. But her reading proved perfect for the space. She tailored her sound to the intimate surroundings. Nothing felt showy, but everything registered: the fleet ornamentation, the subtle shifts in vocal color—as if she was painting the great aria with the finest of brushes, revealing previously unseen beauties.

“I like repertoire that plays to my strengths,” Healey says. “I can bring a wide variety of vocal colors. The lower and middle parts of my range have a facility that’s unusual for a soprano with my sized voice. In Baroque music, a lighter lyric voice is not often asked to negotiate the first passaggio [the approach to chest voice] all that well. I didn’t like singing low before, but now it’s something I’m really excited about.”

The Ohio-born soprano nabbed her first professional gig while still in high school, when she sang as a treble with Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland-based period-instrument ensemble. She went on to Baldwin-Wallace College and Westminster Choir College. But her reemergence into the life of a professional singer was unsteady. For “four solid years” she applied to a number young artists programs, with no success. “My voice hadn’t entirely come in,” she says. “I had ideas of what I wanted to sound like, rather than allowing in the best possible version of what I could sound like.”

The enforced hiatus of the Covid pandemic gave Healey a chance to contemplate her vocal capabilities and artistic goals. “It was deeply sad, but it was also an opportunity to step back, reassess my priorities, and figure out what kind of music I was most interested in making. I now take Madeline-specific gigs, not just cases of ‘insert soprano here.’”

Healey performs at Trinity Church "Concerts at One" by Chamber QUEER in St. Paul’s Chapel.

Her affiliation with Trinity Wall Street dates back to 2016. She had recently moved to the city and was called in to work as a sub with its celebrated choir. “I showed up and sightread a concert,” she says. “I proved that I was pleasant, and that I could do the job, so they continued to call me.” The next year, the Trinity Choir offered her a regular position.

Today she sings in the choir at services and with NOVUS in outside engagements, including Beth Morrison’s annual PROTOTYPE opera festival. She frequently steps out for solo work such as Trinity’s annual Messiah. In a video from the 2022 run [see video], she manages the coloratura outer sections of “Rejoice greatly” with virtuoso aplomb, while finding an unforced soulfulness for the aria’s contemplative middle passage.

A voice of joy

“From the moment she opened her mouth to sing ‘Rejoice,’ it was joy,” says Baker. “I was in the booth doing the webcast, and I could see the joy wash over the audience’s faces.”

New music is an important focus for Healey’s work. You can see her in a 2022 performance, at Trinity’s St. Paul’s Chapel, of George Crumb’s American Songbook No 1, offering a delightfully off-kilter version of “Give Me That Old Time Religion”––a reading that honors both the song’s gospel roots and its jagged modernism––then returning as a disembodied voice, singing from the rear gallery, for an otherworldly “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

Healey also sings frequently outside of Trinity’s orbit. She has sung with ChamberQUEER TENET Vocal Artists, the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the New York-based groups Res Facta and Amor Artis, among many others. She was part of the ensemble when Ars Nova Copenhagen toured internationally with Huang Ruo’s Book of Mountains and Seas. And she is cofounder of Ampersand, a six-voice early-music ensemble based in Northern Vermont that performs a four-concert season.

She has sporadically appeared in opera; for instance, as Monteverdi’s Euridice in a 2023 production of Orfeo, with Rochester’s Pegasus Early Music. She expresses a desire to step up her operatic work, mentioning Mozart’s “ina” roles and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier as possibilities. But, when this reporter suggests that her career is already thoroughly calibrated to her artistic predilections, she agrees.

“I need to walk boldly to that truth,” says Healey. “I want to keep making cool sounds with cool people.”