Rose-Antoinette Bellino is a Vocal Powerhouse

High school seniors looking ahead to college know the drill. Take the college entrance exam. Fill out the paperwork. Write the essay. Maybe go for an interview.

Rose-Antoinette Bellino knows the drill. She’s applied to 10 schools and passed the pre-screening in all 10.

Now she’s facing the next challenge:  live auditions.

She carries her instrument with her every day, close to her heart.

Rose hopes one day to become a professional opera singer. A career in opera is uncertain, but “you have to hope for the best,” she said.

“The Met(ropolitan Opera in New York) is always nice. That’s dreaming big,” she added.

As a step in that direction, Rose has sung in a number competitions and been recognized for her efforts.

She received a Merit Award this year in the Young Arts competition of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. That means she was in the top 5 percent of all applicants, she explained.

She also made it to the final round, as one of the top five finalists, in a Powers Music School competition. And she made the finals of a Boston Classical Singers competition.

The 17-year-old’s dream started early. Her paternal grandfather, Vincenzo, is an opera lover, Bellino explained Thursday morning, sitting in the kitchen of her Pento Road home. When she visited him in Sicily, she remembers that he would play opera records.

In her own home, when she was about 2, Rose would experiment with the sound of her own voice, according to her mother, Elizabeth. The acoustics in the dining room were ideal, Elizabeth continued; the room at the time was unfurnished.

“I ruined it by buying furniture,” she quipped.

But she knew, she said, that her daughter should be classically trained in music.

Rose joined a choir of the Treble Chorus of New England when she was 7. Even then, she said, her interest was opera.

She started piano lessons when she was 6. As a voice major, she must take piano lessons now.

She also learned to play the violin. When she started at the keyboard, she said she made a deal with her mother:  to switch to violin when she was 12. Why violin? “I’ve always has an obsession with it,” she said. She played violin in the New England Conservatory Youth Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 to 2010.

Elizabeth home-schooled Rose through freshman year of high school so “she could practice anytime.”

Rose attends Walnuthill School for the Arts in Natick. Her curriculum includes academics—she’s received recognition for her academic work—and music training, not just voice but also music history, diction and vocal exercises called solfege. She also takes private lessons, where she works on technique.

On Saturdays, she sings in two New England Conservatory choruses. One has about 80 members, she said. The other, which she joined by audition, has about 12 voices.

But unlike music students who lock themselves into practice rooms for hours a day, Rose said her teachers recommend no more than two hours of singing a day for her, at her age.

As for operatic role models, Rose loves Anna Netrebko and Diana Damrau both for their voices and  their “passionate understanding” of the music they sing.

One of her favorite roles, she said, is the Queen of the Night in the Magic Flute because it’s “so flashy.” She performed that role last year with the Young Opera Company of New England at the New England Conservatory.

She has sung with that opera company in a variety of roles, back to 2006 and in a number of choirs, with the New England Philharmonic and at Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall.

Her voice now is soprano coloratura, her mother said, but that could change as she matures.

This has been a particularly busy week for Rose. She auditioned at McGill University in Montreal on Monday, at Boston University’s School of Music on Friday. On Sunday she’ll audition at the New England Conservatory.

On Monday, she’s going to the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, both in New York City. Next month, she’s going to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Rose has learned to take the pressure of auditions in stride. At first, her knees would shake, she said, before she began to sing. Now, “I get pumped,” she said, transferring that nervous energy into performance energy.

After the auditions comes the waiting. Rose should hear back from the schools around April 1, her mother said.

“Rejection is hard,” said Elizabeth, even for parents. But look at New England Patriot Tom Brady, both daughter and mother pointed out. He was picked, they said, in the sixth draft round. And Wes Welker wasn’t even picked by draft, they noted.

Once the schools make their decision, it will be up to the Bellinos—parents Elizabeth and Joseph, and Rose—like many families of college students, to decide what they can afford, Elizabeth noted.

After a long day at school now—her days often extend to 6 or even 8 p.m., Rose likes to relax by playing computer games, “my guilty pleasure.” She also enjoys taking photographs.

Her iPod contains a random mix of popular music, from country to hip hop. On TV, she loves, “Glee.”

And, yes, she does sing in the shower—but voice exercises, not arias. The moisture helps warm up her vocal cords. Rose wasn’t up to singing Thursday; she was recovering from a cold and thinking ahead to the slew of auditions she had scheduled.

Rose has kept her grandfather in Italy up to date on her vocal progress. She sends him CDs of operas. Now the voice on the recordings is hers.