“You have to hear her voice,” said Lapka, of her 15-year-old student. “It's such a mature voice.”
And if the judges at a national competition later this month have the same sort of opinion about the Hellgate High School student, then there's a good chance that Peragine will be crowned the winner.
Peragine, the daughter of Patricia and Jon Peragine, has been taking voice lessons since she was 9. And it was clear within a couple of years that her talent was extraordinary. So her original instructor sent Peragine to Lapka, who is capable of nurturing and steering such talent.
“Once I met Gina, everything changed,” Peragine said.
“When I first became her student, she told me I had developed a lot of bad habits,” she added. “So she pretty much fixed those.”
And it wasn't long after meeting her new teacher that Peragine gravitated to the classics - Handel, Mozart, challenging and demanding music that would test singers twice her age.
“I started giving her that stuff, and she just fell in love with it,” Lapka said. “I think she loves the challenge of it. She never shied away from languages or different repertoire. It's where she immediately wanted to go.”
What, no Britney Spears, no Christina Aguilera? None of it?
“I don't really enjoy pop music,” said Peragine. “I listened to it, but I didn't sing it.”
Peragine became not only fascinated with the classics, but of the time period from which it arose.
“Some of my favorite movies are along the lines of ‘Amadeus,' ” she said. “I don't know why. I just like a lot of the period stuff. When you sing it, it kind of brings you back into that time period.”
Lapka said her student has two things rare in a singer her age: a beautiful, natural vibrato, and a music maturity far beyond her years.
“She has a great voice, obviously, but she just has this musicianship that's part of her makeup,” she said. “She has that thing that you can't teach. She really gets it.”
Peragine, who also sings in the Hellgate choir the Chevaliers, plans to pursue music after high school, and is looking at music schools already - the Boston Conservatory, for instance, comes to mind.
“The bottom line,” she said, “is I want to sing at the Metropolitan Opera Company.”
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