For opera baritone Roberto Perlas Gómez, time is money. As he enters his sixties in age, demand for his services continues to rise. He will be joining three other soloists in two performances with The Verdi Chorus on November 18th and 19th, 2023 at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica.

The weekend concerts offer something for every ear, whether a virgin or vintage opera fan. All will sample from sequences from Verdi’s Nabucco, Don Carlo, La Traviata, Saint Saëns’ Samson and Delilah, and Mascagni’s Cavelleria Rusticana.

This profile will make Gómez a familiar presence on stage. For starters, he immigrated at age 5 with his late parents, Francisco and Herminia Gómez, MD, from Santa Rosa, Laguna in 1967 to Oxnard, California. He now lives in Torrance.

In a career that began with a BA in Music from California State University Northridge, he has performed more than 120 operatic roles.

“Like in all Filipino families, my mom and dad were singers,” Gómez remembers. “Dad was a huge fan of opera. He played recordings of (Enrico) Caruso and Richard Tucker around the house.”

Birders call the bird that turned them on to bird watching their “spark bird.” The opera equivalent to a spark bird filled the airwaves during his senior year of high school. “I listened to a Met broadcast of Luciano Pavarotti singing “Cielo e Mar” from La Gioconda and was hooked.”

Alternating Between Traditional and Contemporary Frequencies

His favorite traditional opera is Barber of Seville (Il Barbiere di Siviglia) by Gioacchino Rossini.

He says a majority of this performances have been traditional operas, which predate the 20th Century, but about 40 of the operas have been contemporary, particularly those staged in his current home, the Long Beach Opera. The modern role closest to his heart was Zhou Enlai in Nixon in China.

“Dramatic interpretation is different from a traditional opera when you’re portraying a real character from history. You’re expected to have a connection with him (Premier Zhou Enlai),” he explains. “Everything is different, from the Communist uniform to the actual feelings. You have to understand the gravitas of the person in history. I have to understand things Zhou Enlai had to do in real life. It is so different from portraying a character in a comedy like Barber of Seville.”

Mga Huling Araw is the Tagalog title of the opera by Felipe Padilla de León. The title more commonly referenced in Latin is Noli me tangere (“touch me not”), the classic novel by Jose Rizal. Gómez performed the role of Elias in Tagalog at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Of the Filipino opera, he says, “It’s the standard for all operas in the Philippines. It incorporates lots of Western styles and melodies. This opera shows what it felt like to be Filipino in two different eras. The novel was written in the late Nineteenth Century while the opera was written in 1953, and it brings the flavor of the time and culture. Something might start as a traditional aria, then morph into something that’s traditionally Filipino.”

This and the many other operas on his resume have built his reputation as dependable and versatile. Ultimately, his voice is the principal magnet for work. “It helps that my voice becomes lower as I age,” says the low baritone singer. “Low bass is the number one voice type because it’s the rarest and therefore the most desirable.”

It’s a Man’s World

As often as he’s been the only Filipino in the cast, he says has never experienced racial discrimination. “Males can reinvent themselves for different stages of their lives. You have roles you can play when you’re twenty. When they go away, more dramatic roles come your way in the middle years of your career. When you get older and your voice gets lower, you discover that the great composers have written many traditional roles for fatherly types.”

He started his career as a lyric baritone. “Now that I’m older, I’m what Germans call a Heldenbaritone.

“Women are the ones in opera who face discrimination as they age. There are roles in traditional operas for more stages of a man’s life than for a female singer’s life. The more dramatic roles for women go to young sopranos because they demand high voices. Around age 35, her voice is no longer spright to play the ingenue you see in many traditional operas.”

Gómez reiterates, “I’ve never felt out of place as a Filipino in opera. The only time I feel funny is when I’m in a tall cast. I’m 5 feet 5 singing beside some female sopranos who are six feet tall.” But fear not, he finds, “It’s a problem a clever director can solve with heels or some other remedy.”

Hard on the Heart and Pocketbook

Opera singers are some of the leading proponents of diaphragmatic breathing. Tapping into the extra lung capacity nearly killed Gómez. Twelve years ago, he had heart surgery for a ruptured valve. “Basically, when you’re singing opera, you’re holding your entire musculature in a tight position. The wear and tear of constant compression eventually caused my valve to rupture.” He learned that “singing opera can be dangerous to your heart.”

When young Fil-Ams ask him about an opera career, he cautions them against taking on large student loans to earn a music degree. “You have to realize that the entire opera industry does only $1 billion max in business annually. There just aren’t many financial opportunities in opera in comparison to the other arts. Your chances of paying off a large debt by singing opera is small.” He endorses the affordable education offered by public universities. “Many singers in major opera houses were trained at state universities.”

Gómez has few worries about the hour past twilight when his opera career ends. He has been investing in the stock market since childhood and now spends much of his days swing trading. Having an extra revenue stream can enable young voices to follow their bliss. Inevitably, he says, “You do opera because you love it.”