This post was updated May 28 at 8:46 p.m.

For one UCLA alumnus, resilience and rigorous training translate to vocal prowess.

Sarah Saturnino will be playing Maddalena in the Los Angeles Opera’s upcoming production of “Rigoletto,” which kicks off May 31. The 2016 music performance alumnus recently completed the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program with the LA Opera, which led her to this principal guest role. Saturnino said this is her ninth time doing a production of “Rigoletto,” but the story continues to get performed because the themes of the opera are always relevant.

“It’s about a duke who abuses his power and is a womanizer, and he gets away with whatever he wants because he’s the upper class,” Saturnino said. “So I think all of us can understand that absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Paul Hopper, the senior director of artistic planning for the LA Opera, said the tale of “Rigoletto” is one of the most frequently performed operas across the world. He said it follows the story of a court jester and his daughter, who ends up falling in love with the terrible duke, and the audience gets to witness how far the father is willing to go to save his daughter from the horrors in the world around her. There is considerable contemporary resonance for the political landscape throughout the world, he added, but the story as a whole is a chance for the audience to escape into a story for a couple of hours.

“I always think that opera is a chance to escape, even just momentarily, to escape their everyday life,” Hopper said. “At the end of the day, we’re playing make-believe and playing dress up, just on the largest of artistic scales.”

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Saturnino’s character, Maddalena, is a very sensual character who Hopper said uses her sensuality to seduce other characters. The whole point of “Rigoletto” is the power struggles between classes and sexes, Saturnino said, and Maddalena definitely knows how to play the game. She said it is always fun to play these types of characters, which are different than her actual personality and allow her to embrace a different perspective.

Saturnino said preparing for a role in opera is an intensive process. First, she said she translates the piece so she knows what she is singing about. Most operas are performed in a foreign language – including “Rigoletto,” which is performed in Italian – and Saturnino said she can speak three languages and sing in nine. After translating, she said she researches the tradition of the piece to understand the context of the time period, and then she can finally start to put her own spin on the character.

Despite the challenges, Saturnino said she loves opera because it combines different types of art such as dancing, singing and acting. It is also one of few art forms that does not use microphones, she added. Saturnino’s mother Sheryl Saturnino said her daughter began to show interest in the opera in high school, when she took her first voice lesson.

“At her first lesson, the voice teacher … said, ‘Wow, you’re going to make me famous,’” Sheryl Saturnino said. “At that lesson she sang her first Italian aria, and it just fit her like a glove.”

Sheryl Saturnino said Sarah Saturnino decided that opera was what she wanted to do with her life after that first lesson. Sarah Saturnino said she always had UCLA in the back of her mind because Sheryl Saturnino is a UCLA alumnus herself. After committing to a different school, Sarah Saturnino went to a competition in Chicago – where one of the judges, who was a UCLA voice faculty member, came up to her and said to call the registrar’s office and transfer in.

“I was like, ‘Oh, is this as a sophomore?’ She goes, ‘No, as a freshman, we’re bringing you in now,’” Sarah Saturnino said. “My mom and I were both like, ‘What’s happening right now?’”

No matter how she ended up at UCLA, Sarah Saturnino said her education as a Bruin gave her the needed foundation to get her to where she is today. She credits her success to the Socratic method in her voice classes, as well as the unrelated classes she had to take. She minored in music industry, where she said she took classes in music marketing and music law – which helped her negotiate her own contracts and market herself as a singer. She was two classes away from gaining a minor in classics, she added, which is important to understand the mythology and stories behind the operas she performs.

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After graduating from UCLA, Sarah Saturnino said she went on to complete her master’s at Yale University and recently completed the Young Artist Program with the LA Opera. Hopper runs this program and said it is an incredibly competitive program that attracts more than 800 applicants and accepts only eight to 12. In this program, students get voice lessons, acting lessons and career guidance while also receiving professional exposure to prepare them for the industry.

“There’s no one exact curriculum for every artist because we try to meet artists where they are when they come into the program and then cater exactly the training to fill in any deficiencies or weaknesses,” Hopper said.

Hopper said the LA Opera was so impressed by Sarah Saturnino that she signed a contract for “Rigoletto” before she graduated from the program. Despite her current success, Sarah Saturnino said there is always a level of hard work and resilience needed to be successful in the opera world. After graduating from Yale and spending a few summers abroad, she said work dried up, and she had a period of financial difficulty. She said a hardship in her job includes moving around a lot, having gone from Italy to Washington, D.C., to Louisiana and eventually back to LA. Every experience she has had, however, has led her to where she is today, she added.

“You’re always learning something new, whether it’s from colleagues or from production or a new piece of music,” Sarah Saturnino said. “If you can be open to that and receptive to that, you’re going to go a lot farther.”