Prada, Roberta

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Prada, Roberta

PERSONAL:

Born in the United States; daughter of Israel and Teddy Josephs; divorced; children: Francesca, John. Education: Graduated from Wellesley College, Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and other institutions. Hobbies and other interests: Collecting prints and mid-century modern furniture.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Vox Mentor, 343 E. 30th St., Ste. 12M, New York, NY 10016.

CAREER:

Professional opera singer (contralto), performing throughout North and South America, Europe, and the United Kingdom; Vox Mentor, New York, NY, president, vocal coach and trainer using the Tomatis method, and publisher; Vocal Images (Internet magazine), owner, writer, and translator. Also videographer and editor.

MEMBER:

American Guild of Musical Artists, National Association of Teachers of Singing, Wellesley College Alumnae Association, International Listening Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Barrington Prize in Music; William Matteus Sullivan grant.

WRITINGS:

(Translator and editor, with Francis Keeping and Pierre Sollier) A.A. Tomatis, The Ear and the Voice, Scarecrow Press (Lanham, MD), 2004.

(Editor, with Francis Keeping, and translator) J. Faure, The Voice and Singing, Vox Mentor (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Roberta Prada told CA: "I am not what I call ‘a natural’ writer. It is the compelling nature of the information, which I believe to be of great value for the English-speaking public, that caused me to begin this journey. I have translated two books from French and rewritten them extensively. I also did fact-checking. Dr. Tomatis's book needed that. Anatomy, physiology and other topics were checked with a doctor, a Tomatis practitioner, an ear, nose, and throat specialist, an occupational therapist, and one chapter by one of Caruso's biographers. I threw out a good bit of material that was erroneous, corrected redundancy, and threw out excessively provocative statements, all the while preserving the tone of the original. I wrote about six drafts, and the final work was four years in the making! The Faure book is a bit more modern in tone, but preserves faithfully the original, which was a delightful gem as originally written in 1886. It took two drafts or so and two years to produce. Francis Keeping's work on the music files is a major contribution of this book, and the bulk of its pages.

"I am intuitive by nature, and the writing of nonfiction is very challenging to me. My aim is to make complex material easy to read. I presuppose an audience that is intelligent but new to the material.

"I do not write easily. My high school and prep school English teachers, Anna Shaughnessy and Dorothy Peckham, trained me rigorously in writing. The material itself teaches me. The process of translating is challenging because we do not always think along parallel tracks in different languages, so the translation process brings not only new ideas, but new ways of thinking.

"The need to bring evidence of important ideas concerning what music means to our health, creativity, and the development of society inspires me to continue bringing this information to the public. This is difficult work, and I do it because of a sense of mission, rather than for any intrinsic pleasure."