At Home in the World

There is no hyphen in Measha Brueggergosman.
The world-famous soprano from Fredericton, N.B., has had her name plastered all over concert hall marquees, opera playbills and rave reviews for the past 10 years. So you may find it interesting to know that her last name is as unique as she is. When Measha Gosman married her high school sweetheart, Marcus Bruegger, they decided to combine their names. The conventional thing would have been to hyphenate them, separating the names in the middle with a loose hinge of punctuation. Instead they created a seamless new name, incorporating the old but emphasizing the connected whole of the new couple.

If that seems a rather romantic interpretation of a mundane spelling choice, speaking with Measha Brueggergosman about her music and her life confirms that this sense of seeking connections rather than distinctions is fundamental to everything she does.

The complete singer
Brueggergosman is passionate and opinionated when discussing her singing career. While her musical education and early successes have been solidly grounded in the world of opera, her 2007 album, Surprise, for the Deutsche Grammophon label, explored the cabaret of Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg, and the man she considers the greatest living composer, William Bolcom. But Brueggergosman doesn’t view this as a radical departure.

“[These composers] grew up with composers who wrote symphonies and concertos and operas, and they’re core classical composers,” she says. “So what we’ve attempted to do with Surprise is create an album that makes a comment — a classical music comment — on the style of cabaret.” The resulting recording shows off the singer’s strong, gorgeous voice and her flair for the dramatic.

Brueggergosman sees the melodrama of cabaret as another point of connection with the opera world. She also enjoys cabaret’s earthier, more ribald side. “In Schoenberg’s ‘Der genügsame Liebhaber,’ which [translates as] ‘The comfortable lover,’ she’s at home all the time, ‘Stroking her cat and looking at my bald head, and sometimes I put her cat on my bald head’ — it’s so not about a bald head and a cat,” she says with a laugh.

Brueggergosman’s sense of character and drama is at the core of how she approaches singing, whether as part of an opera production or a solo concert. “You have the full support of the cast when you’re in an opera...which I find comforting,” she says. “In a concert it’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s also a very intimate setting, like part of my living room... Because if you don’t have the costume or the set or really any kind of action, how you paint the words — or even how you stand on the stage — is the most important element in telling the story.”

You can take the soprano out of New Brunswick...
Brueggergosman treasures her Fredericton roots, where her family history goes back to the 1700s when her great-great-great-great-grandfather fled slavery in America. She learned a great deal about that history while participating in the CBC-TV show Who Do You Think You Are?, which aired in January

“For me it was like this confirmation of pride of place,” says Brueggergosman. “I had always felt very connected to the Maritimes, to Fredericton, to Canada. It was such a sweet affirmation that I was right to feel so at home. And right to miss it, and right not to feel as comfortable anywhere else as I did when I was in the Maritimes.”

Her musical education took her first to Toronto, where she completed a Bachelor of Music degree, and then to Germany, where she earned a Master’s degree. But she credits her early experiences in New Brunswick for her comfort and success in the world.

“I knew I wanted to expand my horizons, learn a new language, learn a new culture. It’s a huge reason why French immersion is such an important part of schooling, of early childhood education,” she says. “Because it’s not really about a different language, it’s about culture. And I think I wouldn’t have been nearly as open to other languages and other cultures if I didn’t already speak two languages.”

Fredericton is also where she met her Swiss husband, Marcus, a visiting exchange student. “I found him fascinating, not only because he was smoking hot,” she says laughing, “but because he lived in this country that spoke not two, but four official languages.”

World Traveller
These days, Brueggergosman can be spotted just about anywhere in the world, from performing a concert in the Canary Islands to filming a video in Africa. On the Internet she can be found at her own Measha.com and on a burgeoning number of fan sites. She has even been featured on a website that gushed over her trademark nimbus of hair, something she takes in stride with yet another laugh.

Still, she has begun to use the attention to further causes she believes in, from the World Wildlife Fund to the African Medical and Research Foundation, for which she has been a Goodwill Ambassador since her sister got her involved with the cause.

When Brueggergosman speaks about the suffering she has witnessed in Africa or her efforts to promote awareness of climate change, it’s easy to appreciate how, once again, she understands the fundamental connectedness of the world and its peoples. For someone who is fast becoming one of Canada’s most potent and popular global ambassadors, that’s a tremendously comforting thought. •