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In the spring of 2005, fresh out of school, she competed in the Connecticut Opera Guild’s annual vocal competition and won the “Ilene D. Kaplan Award” for her efforts. Maestro Waters was an adjudicator who took notice of this promising young mezzo’s voice. Shortly after the competition she received an invitation to be part of the company’s resident artist program – an offer she quickly accepted.

If she thought she’d have time to relax and get to know the company first, that wasn’t to be. She started working immediately. “It’s funny,” she recalled, “because the first week of my contract I was working on some children’s operas we would be doing, and the second week I went straight into main stage rehearsals.” It wasn’t a big role, she said “but it was my first time working with a professional opera company, so I was really excited to be part of the production. The role was Inez in “Il Trovatore” – you know, the maid. Maid or not, it was her first offer; her first role; her first main stage debut. “I looked at the score and said, yeah.” She was in Austria that summer and working with coaches, she said, who gave her some added tips on how best to sing the role. It was a start.

Since then she’s done what all young singers do, worked with her voice coach to develop the voice that is best suited for now. She sang Mercedes in “Carmen,” Hansel in “Hansel & Gretel,” Zulma in “L’Italiana in Algeri,” and covered as Siebel in “Faust.” And then there is the work of learning the trouser parts that usually call for the mezzo touch, and the long list of recital performances to hone one’s skill in front of an audience, mostly church performances. She’s learning fast. But even at this stage in her career, she knows that where her voice is today, and the roles she sings today, is not where she will be five years from now, nor will today’s voice likely be the voice she has then. So you see, she explains, it’s not that she wouldn’t prefer to sing Carmen today; it’s just that things aren’t lined up vocally that way – not yet.

We talked about these and other things when I touched bases with her recently in the lobby of the Colonnade Hotel in Boston, not too long after she performed her arias at Jordan Hall in February. We talked about her voice and the long road ahead. She was elegant and radiated the kind of youthful energy and healthy glow that is so infectious with young singers. She came to Boston to compete as a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Company’s National Council Competition, New England.

She didn’t win the Met’s competition, she said, not showing any disappointment, but stressed, rather, how thrilled she was to have been one of the fourteen finalists, from over ninety singers who competed earlier in January. “I was happy to be there,” she explained, “and happy to sing. I felt like I did my best.” For Ziegler, it’s nice to win, but it’s not just winning, nor is it the money, “it’s about the honor of being able to say I did it. That’s what I can take home from this, what I can learn from this. I was a finalist in a competition that has the name Metropolitan Opera Company attached to it, and it’s wonderful.”

Even though she's young, just starting out in her own career, she had some pretty solid advice to give others right behind her: take it easy and allow the voice to mature naturally. And she practices what she preaches, too. She’s content to pass on Carmen, she said, because her voice isn’t ready for it – yet. “Get technique under your belt,” she said, and follow wherever your voice leads. “It’s something a lot of young singers struggle with," she added, referring to the impulse some have to push their voices beyond limits they're ready to handle.

“Fortunately for Meredith,” said her vocal teacher Constance Rock, assistant professor of voice at the University of Connecticut, “she began learning healthy vocal technique at age 17, before any damaging habits could settle in.” Rock says that a good vocal technique “will enable Meredith to sing with ease . . . for years to come.”

As for the “years to come,” Ziegler is philosophical and seems willing to wait for the success she hopes is just around the corner. Why rush into something one's voice isn't ready to handle? It's a realistic approach. The

question for singers, she said, is: "What can I sing and represent myself well as today, and how is that going to be different from what I sing and how I represent myself, in five years?” This is what a young singer has to figure out first, she explained. In her case, form follows practice, and getting the right vocal technique down for the roles she is capable of today is an absolute necessity, and is certainly more important than worrying about where she will be years from now. Without this, she stated, "there is no career and no longevity in the career.”

Knowing these basics is what opens doors to greater possibilities, and people in the business who are interested in new talent, will and do take notice when they hear someone who has a lock on technique. She offers as an example a conversation she had with a couple judges at dinner immediately following the competition. “Speaking with some of the judges today [at the Met finals] they said: ‘You’re voice is lined up top-to-bottom. There are no holes; everything makes sense.’” Her teacher agreed: “Meredith has studied with me for ten years,” she explained, and has a good shot at a long career in opera because “she is able to sing an elegant legato line as well as a fluid coloratura, and she is able to sing musically and expressively.”

But even if you're a good singer with a solid vocal technique, if you want to move ahead, you have to get noticed, and getting noticed is what competitions are all about. “There are other conductors from other opera companies that are out there,” and they’re all scouting new talent. It’s not only a smart way to view competition, but it doesn’t hurt that she’s philosophical about not winning. It’s imprtant to keep things in perspective. Her view is the view expressed by far more experienced singers: “Don’t get discouraged, because it can be very discouraging," she said, "You have to audition for many, many companies that are out there to get one that’s even possibly interested. I don’t know what the percentage is,” she added, “but I would guess that maybe ninety-percent of auditions don’t work out. You just have to make sacrifices to make your career grow. It’s a critical time,” just starting out.

And so it is. Just before concludjing, I asked about the sacrifices a married singer has to make. Are she and her husband ready to make those sacrifices? Ziegler explained that they have talked about her career and the possible sacrifices they’ll have to make down the road, including travel abroad for extended periods. They have agreed, she said, to handle these kind of decisions jointly. “My decision is not really my decision,” she said, emphasizing the word 'my'. ' “It’s our decision," she said, emphasizing the word 'our'. "And we’ve made that very clear, my husband and I. We never set parameters where we say ‘you can’t go away for this long,’ we just kind of take it as it comes. As opportunities arise, we pray about them and we see if this is something God wants me to do, or would it be too straining on our marriage.” Her faith, she says, is what “helps carry me through times of doubt and struggle.”

“At my age, “ she concluded, “I feel that . . . I really need to put a lot of energy in this to pick up some momentum and maybe gain an agent and get a little bit of attention. So, when I’m a little older I can be a little choosier about going or not going away, or something like that.”

With the help of mentors, teachers, her “wonderful, caring husband and loving family”, and two close friends, also singers with international careers, whom she describes as mentors, Meredith Ziegler says the future doesn’t frighten her at all. “I’m seriously thinking about doing a European competition tour next year,” she said, when her current contract with Connecticut Opera ends in May.

When asked what she would do if Connecticut Opera renewed her contract, she shrugged and smiled warmly and added, “We’ll see what happens.”