CHEMICAL ENGINEER MAKES BEAUTIFUL MUSIC

ASEE Prism, Feb 2004

IMAGINE GETTING your undergraduate and master's degrees in chemical engineering, !'hen, having never seriously played the game before, deciding you'd rather be a pro baseball player. You then not only ace your farm-team tryout, yon actually make the big leagues a few years later. Sebastian Catana has accomplished the equivalent in the world of opera.

The 31-year-old baritone is currently under contract in his first season with the vaunted New York Metropolitan Opera. But it wasn't that long ago when the Romania-born singer was seriously pursuing a career in chemical engineering at the Carnegie - Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh. Cataua's parents were well-regarded opera singers in Romania whose careers were suppressed by the former communist government of Nicolae Ceausescu. Eventually, Catana and his mother emigrated to Michigan.

Catana, always good at math, earned a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan. Next came a stint at Carnegie-Mellon for his master's. While there, he was introduced to Claudia Pinza, the daughter of Italian opera legend Ezio Pinza. She soon became his mentor. Not long after, he enrolled in a voice program at Duquesne University. By then, he was years older than the other voice students.

Despite his love of engineering, he decided he loved music more, and began pursuing a singing career. To help make ends meet, he worked at Carnegie-Mellon's Colloids, Polymer, and Surfaces Lab. He praises the lab's director, Annette Jacobson, and its manager, Rosemary Frollini, for allowing him to work weekends and odd hours so he could take on singing roles. "It was the ideal job. They were both wonderful," he says.

Like pro athletes, professional opera singers must practice hard and often to keep in top shape. Summers are spent studying and preparing in Italy. Professional opera companies use rehearsals mainly for fine-tuning. The singers are meant to show up steeped in their roles and prepared to sing, Catana explains. Catana says his years in engineering gave him the necessary focus to succeed in opera. "Engineering taught me to be very disciplined." He says the math he learned in engineering comes in handy. "Music is math," Catana notes.

He made his professional debut in 2001 in a small role in Les Huguenots at Carnegie Hall in New York. This is Catana's first season with the Met, and he was given four roles. He's now been signed for two big and four or five secondary roles for next season, and will be doing the Marriage of Figaro in Baltimore in 2005.

He's confident of having a long career, but adds, "nothing is guaranteed in this world. One day you're up and one day you're down." Of course, in the unlikely event that Catana's operatic career ever hits a flat note, he's still got that master's in chemical engineering in his back pocket.