Operatic trio to perform Sunday at Fairleigh Dickinson

Along with her many accomplishments in such roles as Mimi, Countess Almaviva, Juliette and Marguerite, soprano Ashley Kerr can include square dance teacher.

She was singing the title role in Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah,” a quintessentially American opera, in Tel Aviv, Israel with an international ensemble in 2013.

“I had to basically teach everybody the square dance because I was the only one who had done it before,” Kerr said. “So I was square dancing with a girl from Switzerland and an Israeli girl. It’s such an American dance. They actually picked it up much faster than the Americans.”

Kerr won’t be square dancing Sunday at Opera at Florham’s “That’s Amore,” but she will sing “Trees in the Mountains” from “Susannah.” She’ll be joined in the recital at Fairleigh Dickinson University by tenor Hak Soo Kim and bass-baritone Matthew Burns, who will also sing an aria from “Susannah.”

“Susannah” is based on one of the stories of the Apocrypha, but was transplanted to Appalachia by Floyd, who wrote the libretto. It tells of a young girl who is robbed of her innocence by malicious villagers and a venal preacher.

Kerr learned that the production of “Susannah,” by the International Vocal Arts Institute, was having trouble finding a singer for the title role. Kerr volunteered to audition and won the part.

She had a big advantage in that she’s from North Carolina and a Southern accent comes naturally to her, although it’s no longer apparent in her conversational voice.

“If you look at the score, it’s written in dialect,” Kerr said. “I don’t speak with much of an accent anymore. It comes out when I’m speaking to family. But that dialect is my native dialect, so it’s really natural and comfortable for me to sing with it.”

Kerr is also familiar with the culture and the setting of “Susannah.” The archetypal characters in the opera resemble people she knew.

The composer was present at rehearsals and the performances, a big advantage for the singers who were able to take advantage of his insight.

“There’s so many times I wish that I could ask Verdi what he was thinking when he wrote something,” Kerr said.

But Kerr does work with many living composers and performs new works, including Jorge Martin’s “Before Night Falls,” Stephen Schwartz’s “Séance on a Wet Afternoon,” Persis Parshall Vehar’s “Eleanor Roosevelt,” Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” and Mark Adamo’s “Little Women.”

“I do really enjoy singing modern pieces,” Kerr said. “And I think a large part of the reason I gravitate to it is because there’s not a lot of performance history around these things and you really get to create it from scratch.”

As a high school student, Kerr was headed into the world of musical theater. But she acquired a voice teacher who was “old school” in Kerr’s words and was given some opera arias to sing.

“How cool it was to make those sounds with my voice and my body without any amplification,” Kerr said.

Then she went to see Verdi’s “Rigoletto” with her mother and the transition was complete. To this day she remains passionate about the unamplified voice.

“Auto-Tune is horrible,” Kerr said. “It fools everyone into expecting some kind of perfection … It just takes the humanity out of it. I would much rather hear an imperfect sound that’s sung with passion and meaning than a perfect sound that was made with a machine.”

Opera at Florham guests will hear all the passion Kerr can pour into arias such as the “Song to the Moon” from Dvorak’s “Rusalka” and “Depuis le jour” from Charpentier’s “Louise.” She’ll team with Burns for a duet from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and with Kim for the heartbreaking duet from the finale of Verdi’s “La Traviata.”

The three singers were still trying to decide what trio they would sing to end the first half of the program – either the final trio from Gounod’s “Faust” or the trio from Verdi’s “I Lombardi.” Both are brilliant show stoppers.

Kim is a Korean-American tenor who graduated from the Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program at Los Angeles Opera. He has sung Count Almaviva in “The Barber of Seville” and the Duke in “Rigoletto,” but also performed in such comparative rarities as Rossini’s “Il Viaggio a Reims” and Verdi’s “Un Giorno di Regno.”

Sunday he’ll sing arias from Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutti” and Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore.” He’ll sing with Burns in the Act IV duet from Puccini’s “La Boheme.”

Burns has appeared in leading bass roles in “The Barber of Seville,” “Don Giovanni” and “I Puritani.” He’ll sing “La Calunnia” from “The Barber of Seville” and “Non piu andrai” from “The Marriage of Figaro” as well as offering up a little Gilbert and Sullivan.

The three singers should send the audience home happy by finishing with Richard Rodgers’ “With a Song in My Heart.”

OPERA AT FLORHAM

WHAT: “That’s Amore”

WHEN: 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 25

WHERE: Lenfell Hall, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 285 Madison Ave., Madison

TICKETS: $35; $30 for seniors; $10 for students

INFO: 973-443-8620; operaatflorham.org