For voice coach to Wicked’s Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey, job doesn’t feel like work

‘A spiritual guru,’ Wicked’s Jonathan Bailey says. ‘The kindest man in the world,’ Grande says. Eric Vetro on being voice coach to the stars

Reading Time:5 minutes

Voice coach Eric Vetro is perhaps the leading vocal teacher and trainer of stage and screen stars, including several of the leads in the Wicked movie adaptation. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:15am, 1 Dec 2024Updated: 9:45am, 1 Dec 2024

A secret centre of the musical theatre universe lies almost 5,000 kilometres (3,000 miles) from Broadway in a modestly grand house in Toluca Lake, in the US city of Los Angeles.

Pop singer Ariana Grande, who plays Galinda in the film adaptation of Wicked, has spoken often and at length about how long and how rigorously she worked on raising her pitch and honing her voice before auditioning for her dream role – and the house’s owner, Eric Vetro, is the man who coached her.

Vetro is perhaps the leading vocal teacher and trainer of big names on stage and screen, including several of the leads in the Wicked adaptation.

He coached Jonathan Bailey for his role as Fiyero. He worked with Jeremy Allen White for his performance as Bruce Springsteen in the coming Deliver Me From Nowhere and Timothée Chalamet for Willy Wonka and the coming Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

Ariana Grande in a scene from Wicked. Photo: Universal Pictures via AP

He coached Renée Zellweger for her Oscar-winning performance as Judy Garland in Judy. And he worked with Lea Michele for Funny Girl, Austin Butler for Elvis, Josh Gad for The Book of Mormon and Frozen, Emily Blunt for Into the Woods and Mary Poppins Returns, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling for La La Land and Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy for The Little Mermaid.

The list goes on and on and on.