\n<\/p>\n
ROMANIW GREW UP<\/strong> near Swansea, Wales, and was raised by her mother, a police officer working on domestic violence cases, and her grandparents. Nobody in her family was especially musical, but there was something operatic about her Ukrainian grandfather, a confident, eccentric character who would break into song regularly while walking down the street.<\/p>\n She moved to London to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama without having ever seen an opera. (Verdi\u2019s \u201cFalstaff,\u201d her first, was a fun introduction. \u201cThen I saw \u2018Capriccio,\u2019\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cI still can\u2019t get into it.\u201d) In just her second year of college, Romaniw represented Wales in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, next to singers with contracts at La Scala, the Bolshoi Theater and the Metropolitan Opera.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I had was fearlessness,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I was very, very gullible.\u201d<\/p>\n Romaniw was surprised, then, when she felt fear. While in Houston, on the Young Artist program there, sudden lucidity onstage led to major performance anxiety, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can put yourself in some really crippling positions where you inhibit yourself, because you\u2019re too obsessed with wanting everything to be perfect,\u201d she said. This anxiety, added to the feeling of \u201ctoo many cooks\u201d involved with her technique, had her returning to Britain feeling like \u201ca nervous wreck.\u201d It took six months to get psychologically ready to take any singing advice again.<\/p>\n