Schaal is directing Highway 1, USA by William Grant Still for LA Opera. It is on a program of two one-act operas (the other being Zemlinsky’s The Dwarf). Opening night is Saturday, February 24th at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It will be performed through March 17th.

The opera tells the story of Bob (Norman Garrett) and Mary (Nicole Heaston). They have gone to incredible lengths to support Bob’s brother Nate (Chaz’men Williams-Ali). They hope that once he has finished his education he will move on with his life. Though Mary dislikes Nate, Bob is honoring a commitment he made to his mother on her deathbed. Nate doesn’t move on and complications ensue.

It is with the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar that many audiences became familiar with Shaal. Her direction of that opera, coupled with the music and libretto by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, catapulted the opera into the modern day repertoire.

Just before traveling to Los Angeles to commence rehearsals, I spoke with Schaal about Still’s opera and his optimistic view of the future; the question she’d most like to ask Still if given the chance and the importance of having stories from “people who have built worlds even when the world was against them.”

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: This work premiered in 1963, but remained relatively unperformed until Opera Theatre of Saint Louis did it in 2021. What do you think the two plus generations of opera goers who didn’t get a chance to see this opera missed out on?

I think we missed out on maintaining American lineage. I think this is an incredible work. Of course, Still’s symphonic works were celebrated. His operatic works weren’t as widely received. So I think we missed out not only on this piece, but on Still’s oeuvre, all of his operatic works. The idea that this was birthed in the 40s and then didn’t get its production until the 60s. So it really is, as you said, multiple generations who’ve lost this music. 

We probably don’t have to go too far out on a limb to speculate why, in 2021, an opera company decided to give new life to this opera. But I assume you can’t do it just because of socio-political issues. You have to do it because there’s something in it that warrants it as well. What do you think is at the core of this opera and the way William Grant Still tells this story that warrants continued interest in it?

I think like with so much of Still’s music, there’s really a sense that he is building a world. This music is him dreaming into existence the future. And quite frankly,the future of all of these works being in the world as well. He started writing it in a backdrop of war. That’s this moment. That’s the birth of American sitcom, which I very much think of as an American dreaming container – this home of our aspirational class stories.

The operatic canon also has lots of station in life tensions and class struggle as well. So I think these ideas sit well in this form. But I think touching this music now is an opportunity to also be in our own moment of a backdrop of war. Spending time with this music you can think about the kind of facade of the 50s, the kind of disjointedness of that world. What does it look like to hold the disjointedness of our world now? What are the ways that we resolve these fractures? I think this opera holds all of that.

It’s also a classic story about family dynamics. Particularly as it relates to Nate and his role in the story. The noise that surrounds family dynamics may change over decades, but the core of what family dynamics are really remain the same, don’t they?

One of the delights I have in this music is that I think there’s a dissonance between the words we receive on the page in the libretto and what we hear; the harmonic complexity of Nate’s music, the sweeping kind of mythological landscape that his music invokes. I think there’s a way to think about this character and think about all of these characters beyond a kind of moralism. The libretto, in some ways, is very straightforward. You could feel it like a morality play. You could feel it like a tight sitcom inside of a small apartment. But musically, there’s a complexity to all of the thought. I am very interested in what happens when we strip away the kind of moralistic lens and invite ourselves to really sit in the in the complexity of how we receive these characters in the music.

The opera runs an hour. There are two scenes in it. There’s not a lot of time for enormous exposition about backstory and the way the opera is constructed. Is a backstory important for you in approaching this particular story and the way you want to present it? 

In terms of backstory, I think that depends on the singers, and I cannot wait to be in the rehearsal room with them and to be building the frameworks that they need to hold the music and hold the story. But from my position, holding the stage, the frame for this investigation and this kind of moving beyond the moralism is Mary’s first music when she sings about the fox and the hair. Of course, she’s drawing on br’er rabbit and br’er fox, these African-American folklore kind of traditions of tricksters. These are stories that came across from Africa into America. So I’m very interested in that trickster lineage that this opera starts with. We actually do have a manifestation of the fox and hare on stage to keep reminding us of these other forces that are at play as we receive the story.

I read an interview that you did around the time of Omar where you talked about how great opera operates in many different languages and that it was your role to build a library through which a story will be told. What’s the library that Highway 1, USA requires from you?

So many. One of the conversations that I had early on with the production designer, Christopher Myers, was really thinking about this dark underbelly of these times that get presented so often in that plastic forward facing 50s container. So much was going on globally. We’ve been looking at various artists who think about disjointedness and rupture and wholeness in different ways. One of them is James Rosenquist and another is Alma Thomas. Very different ways of dealing with rupture and joint. But those are two artists who’ve been important to me in how do we explode this apartment and begin in the rupture and begin in the mythological landscape of these ideas.

I do not come to the opera for a kitchen sink with running water. I come for myth and violence and holiness and contradiction. So I wanted our stage to be able to hold and begin in that vastness and in the disjointed world before we find ourselves in the intimacy and in the healing and union of Mary and Bob.

William Grant Still did not put any specific mention of race into this work. In fact, Christian Mark Gibbs, who sang Nate at St. Louis, said Still wanted it to be done by various cultural groups. Do you share that opinion of Still’s intention for this work?

I hear him trying to dream this world. I think it’s a challenging dream. An un-raced fantasy is a challenging fantasy. It is as problematic as it is glorious. That is what I hear in the music. And I think he meant it. There’s lots of speculation. Was he saying that in order to protect the legacy of the work and pray that it would get produced, or was he saying it because he was dreaming this future? I would argue he was dreaming this future. This complex, magnificent and also a little problematic future of this un-raced possibility.

Do you feel like this is progress of performing works by Black composers, whether in the concert or the opera house, is going to be sustainable, or do you have fear that this is a response to a moment in time? 

I don’t know any way through this moment that is separated from the global processing of war that’s happening. That’s separated from the election year terror that we have nationally, or that’s separated from the immediate and existential crisis of a warming planet. I think through all of that we rely on our dreamers and the people who have built worlds when the world was against them. And who have left us these seeds and these scaffoldings. I think we need artists who are very skilled in that way. Often those are artists who’ve been excluded from the conversation.

Are there are there differences for you between lesser-known works and even world premieres that people have no awareness of whatsoever? 

Well we don’t get to hang out. It was nice to hang out with Michael and Rhiannon. As we got to work, there’s a richness to that. But I think in terms of the task as a director of holding all of the artists who hold this music and the, what shall we call it, the weight of the task, I think incomparable, but also of the same magnitude.

Since you could hang out with Rhiannon and Michael, if you could hang out with William Grant still, what would you most want to ask him about this opera? 

I would want to talk to him about the dream. I would want to talk to him about that fantasy that he is writing into that music of where we could all head. And I did do one thing he asked me not to do, which was put the gas station on stage. But I have done that because we need the mythological landscape of these ideas, and because I believe in my heart of hearts that he put that there because he didn’t want misery porn. He wanted the dignity and the beauty and the tenderness and the care and the exquisite attention to home craft in that apartment. So I would also just want to run that by him and give him my pitch for why it was important.

I read a conversation that you did with Alicia Hall Moran and two others with Kimberly Drew. You said in that conversation, “I am looking for an opera that tells glorious and horrific stories with grace, violence and beauty.” Moving forward, what are the stories you think that need to be told now and in the near future, whether they’re set in present day or not? 

So many things. I am interested in how we’re all processing war right now. I’ve been in the early phases of working on a piece that takes a text from Ocean Vuong, the mighty poet who thinks so beautifully about processing war. I’m curious about the parade of women, the kind of orgy of women dying of consumption in the canon and the hysteria of it all. So I’ve got some irons in the fire there. And then most of all, I’m always interested in the stories that talk about what happens in the in-between spaces, in the shadows we all cast on one another. I think the opera is the best place for asking all those questions. 

I’m hoping somebody does an opera about Flint, MI. That has everything in it. The fact that it’s still being neglected at this point…that is not the country I grew up in. It just continues, doesn’t it?

For the kind of violence and horror of of everyday life, the form has to be this big. It actually has to be this big. 

To watch the full interview with Kaneza Schaal, please go here.

Main Photo: Kaneza Schaal (Courtesy LA Opera)

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Playwright Nilo Cruz and composer Gabriela Lena Frank have collaborated so many times it would be easy to assume that their 2022 opera, El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego), would be their most recent work.

In reality it is the work that first brought them together more than a dozen years ago. El Ultimo Sueño had its world premiere last October at San Diego Opera. In June of this year it was performed at San Francisco Opera. This Saturday it will open at LA Opera where it runs through December 9th.

Cruz and Frank’s opera finds Frida Kahlo (Daniela Mack) having already passed away. Diego Rivera (Alfredo Daza) is on the cusp of passing away but wants his beloved Frida to come back from the underworld to help him in his transition to the afterlife. She’s very reluctant to do so given the pain he caused her in her life. The opera is set around Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead). Think of the opera as the Orpheus and Eurydice myth reversed with a healthy dash of the animated film Coco.

Cuban-born Cruz is best-known as a playwright. In 2003 he won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his play Anna in the Tropics. His other works include Dancing on Her Knees; Two Sisters and a Piano; Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams; Lorca in a Green Dress and A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. His collaborations with Frank include The Conquest Requiem and The Santos Oratorio and the text of orchestral songs, La Centinela y la paloma.

Earlier this week I spoke with Cruz who was at his home in Florida. During our conversation we talked about the challenges of breathing new life into Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera given how much has already been written about them; the new-found politics that are represented by a character they created for the opera and about the nature of art and creativity.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Is there a difference in the way Cuba, or Cubans in particular, feel about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo that maybe is different than how they are perceived in the States or elsewhere? 

It’s hard for me to know because I left Cuba when I was so young. I left when I was ten years old. But they’re great revolutionaries and they were socialists. A few writers in Cuba have written about them in the theater. I believe they’re embraced by by the island, by people on the island, of course. But who doesn’t love them? Who cares, you know, about their political affinities? They’re just people you want to love because of the art they produced and what they give to the world.

Underneath the acrimony and history that exists between Frida and Diego in the opera, this is truly a love story. What was key for you in realizing the best way to dramatize that love story?

I believe it was when I read that at the end of his life Diego Rivera requested his ashes to be reunited with Frida’s ashes. Talk about a great love story. He wants to be in the in afterworld with Frida. That was so touching when I read that I thought this needs to be a love story and it needs to be a love story in which the Day of the Dead is involved.

They were soulmates. They were kindred spirits. Even though they had relationships with other men and women, they really loved each other. They caused each other a lot of pain. Unfortunately other things happened along the way, but they should have been together from the beginning and to the end. But human beings are full of faults and this is what makes the story so compelling in many ways for an opera and for the theater.

What was most important to you and Gabriela to make this a different way of telling this story or revealing who these people were as you wanted to depict them?

When Gabriela approached me with the subject matter, I had a little bit of resistance at the beginning because there was so much out there about them. But when I sat down and listened to her music, she had a piece that had to do with The Day of the Dead. I said to her, let’s not write a biopic or a biographical opera about them. Let’s go in this direction because they both adored that holiday. I thought this is the way to enter this opera. When I was remembering Orpheus, the operas, and the beautiful myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, I thought let’s do something similar to that.

There have been countless Orpheus operas and most recently there’s Matthew Aucoin‘s opera, Eurydice, based on the play of the same name that looks at this story from her point of view. The musical Hadestown deals with that myth. Do you think we’re living in a time where we all clamor for really great love stories, even if they don’t end up together? 

I think that we have become so cynical that we need something else in order to believe in love again. That’s what we do in this opera. That’s what I’m always doing with my work. Whether the plays are political, there’s always a love story there in between the lines and the lives of the characters.

You’ve collaborated many times with Gabriela well before this particular opera. Of all the collaborations that you’ve done with her, what makes this particular work unique for you?

This is the work that brought us together. Unfortunately it took years for us to work on the opera. In the meantime, we started to work on other things and those projects became preparations for us to work on this large canvas. We were always dialoging, even we were doing other pieces together, about Frida and Diego. It allowed me to become a better librettist. It allowed Gabriela to explore her music and her talents as a composer. So I think we were always preparing for this.

At the time of the opera’s world premiere in San Diego, director Lorena Maza told KPBS that as a creative team you asked yourselves “what are Diego and Frida for us now.” Who are they for you today as opposed to maybe who they were before you started this project? 

Oh, they’re still the same for me. I feel enormous amount of love for the two of them. I think Frida and Diego don’t just belong to Mexico, they belong to the world. So for me nothing has changed. If anything it is more the responsibility of exposing them to more people, even though they don’t need that exposure. They were great artists who gave great treasures to the world. For me it was just honoring them, honoring their love for each other, honoring their beliefs in life and what they gave us in terms of their paintings. 

There’s only one true duet between the two of them in the opera. Was that an intentional part of the structure that this moment became so emotional that this was the only time where these two would sing together? 

We thought that politics would bring them together. Especially when they started to look at the world around them. That, in some ways, made them reflect on some of the things that they loved in life. They wanted the universe to change. They wanted things to change in Mexico and all over the world. That, of course, caused us to write a a duet. It’s really the moment in which they almost come close to each other, but somehow they don’t.

Do you think that passion was equal to the passion they had for each other?

I think that passion, their love for each other, art and politics were all intertwined when it came to Frida and Diego.

Tell me about the creation of the characters of Katrina (Ana María Martínez) and Leonardo (Key’mon W. Murrah)?

Katrina is the keeper of the dead. She’s the gatekeeper. She was very helpful to navigate between the two worlds. Then Leonardo, who possesses the male and the female in the way he presents himself in life, I thought would be very interesting to do. He’s an artist luring Frida back to the world. I didn’t think that Frida would come back to the world just because of her passion for Diego. I think it needed to be something more, and it had to do with her passion for art.

It’s a very consuming art form. I think that all artists are this way. It’s not the time that we spend working on our art, but all the time we spend away from it. We’re also thinking about it. For her, because she was such a passionate painter, I think there needed to be another artist to convince her to come back to the world. Of course, Katrina was sort of the antagonist in some ways because we needed an antagonist as well. These were the things that were circling me when I was writing the libretto.

When you started working on this opera you probably didn’t think that the idea of a drag character would become a political statement. But given everything that’s going on in the United States has Leonardo turned out to be a political character? And when something like that happens to a work that you’ve created, where it takes on a different meaning now than you intended, how does that land with you as an artist?

That’s the beauty of art: that it continues to grow throughout time. When we saw it in San Diego and later in San Francisco, I started to see that character in a different light. With everything that’s happened, what was happening, what is still happening, especially since I’m in Florida, I thought, how wonderful that we chose this character that not only has a role to play in this world of Frida and Diego, but also for our modern times as well. Being such a beautiful character, such a generous human being who is passionate about life and the world. Even though he’s probably, or they, I should say, gone through difficult times, there’s still this love for the world.

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine brought the interior and the exterior world of an artist’s life on stage beautifully in Sunday in the Park with George. John Logan did the same thing with Rothko in his play, Red. What are the inherent challenges for any writer who is also an artist to bring both an artist’s exterior and interior worlds to vibrant life on stage?

Sunday in the Park with George was very inspirational for me. If you think about it my source of inspiration’s really the paintings by both Frida and Diego. Usually those who write about artists, especially if you’re writing an opera or you’re writing a book – unless you’re writing a non-fiction book – I think one needs to tap not only into the the biography of the artist, but you also need to tap into your own imagination and your own take of what the role of the artist is in the world. I think art can save and I think art can offer possibilities.

Is it important for you to see yourself in the people that you’re writing about?

I think there’s always something of the personal in my work. There has to be somehow. I think plays are like children. They are pieces that we create, and, of course, they inherit some of our sensibilities. I don’t mind that at all.

There’s a real economy of words in your libretto. Late in the opera Diego sings “To paint is to remember” and Frida responds “To paint is to relieve the hurt.” How would you describe what the act of creation is for you?

I think it’s a struggle. It’s a struggle to find the word. Sometimes writing is about not finding the word, but what you encounter in between your search for the word. So it is a struggle. It’s almost nightmarish sometimes, too, because you ask more of yourself and the piece asks more of you. You don’t want to repeat yourself. And if you repeat yourself, you try to repeat yourself in a different way or with different colors. So I think the art form is very, very demanding. But more than anything, that it’s not to impose yourself on the piece, but to learn from the piece and what the piece is asking of you as an artist. To be in that state of mind and to be open to it.

Main Photo: Daniela Mack and Alfredo Daza in El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego by Gabriela Lena Frank and Nilo Cruz at LA Opera (Photo by Cory Weaver/Courtesy LA Opera)

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“Yes, 100%,” he told me last week as we discussed his LA Opera debut in the role of Don Basilio in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. The production opens this Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and runs through November 12th.

He continues, “I learned this very early in my career. I was 27 years old in Salzburg singing Masetto [in Don Giovanni]. And I thought, small role, I’m Italian, this is going to be a walk in the park. It turns out that between Nicholas Harnoncourt conducting and Martin Kušej director, I learned very quickly there is no such a thing as a small role. If you put enough effort, you can make something interesting in anything you sing. I’m very pleased that I had that chance, because it made the difference in my career right away.”

Don Basilio is not a large role at all. Certainly not for someone who has sung the title role of Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera. It wasn’t the size of the role that appealed to him.

“I like to choose roles that I think are interesting dramatically,” he said in a conversation last week. “In the buffa repertoire Basilio is one of the staples. When they asked me if I wanted to do it, I said immediately yes! It’s a fun role. [There’s] a great tradition of great singers singing this role. So I want to challenge myself and do it.”

At this point it would be good to point out that this is also the first time Pisaroni has sung this role. Though he’s no stranger to Rossini’s work as he counts Il Podestá in Gazza Ladra; Alidoro in La Cenerentola; Mahomet II in La Siege de Corinthe and Mustafá in L’Italiana in Algeri amongst the over thirty roles in his repertoire.

His approach to the mostly comedic role of a music teacher in The Barber of Seville to be a more of our time than might usually be seen.

“I can go 1950 Italian comedy. But I think in 2023 we can probably add another layer in trying to make it a bit more modern,” he revealed. “It’s a challenge. I come with a fresh approach and [am] trying to be as honest to the character that I can be. I have a great cast to work with here because a lot of them have done the role so many times: Isabel Leonard as Rosina and Josh Hopkins [as Figaro]. It’s my intent to try to make it a more sober and modern character.”

When asked if having something in common with his characters was essential, Pisaroni immediately said no.

“It’s called acting for a reason – because you act,” he said a bit surprised at the question. “It doesn’t have to be you. You just have to find the motivation to portray the action of the character. It’s not that because I play Don Giovanni I mistreat women or because I play Basilio I try to make a joke every time I say a phrase. You just have to do your job. One thing that I do is to find, in my life experience, something that I can use to either make a joke or convey something and sometimes it helps.”

Once reminded that there is a movement afoot to suggest that casting now should be based on lived-in experience, Pisaroni made the argument for allowing actors to do what they do.

“For me, the great thing about being an actor, it’s actually the opposite. Meaning I can try to play somebody that is completely different than me. Understanding this person makes me a better person because then in real life I can take that experience and say, Oh, you see, they went through this. So I will be even more kind and even more understanding in real life. If we go down that road it’ll never end. Then there is a sub category of subcategories and then your repertoire is going to become so small that then what? I can play only Italian roles because I am Italian? We need to give us credit to have sensitivity to be able to say something even about subjects that are so far away from us.”

What isn’t far away from Pisaroni is the presence of music teachers in his life. One particular instructor played a prominent role in his development as an opera singer.

“His name was Renato Sassola and he was a great tenor of Teatro Colón for 30 years. I met him by chance in Milano. It was a difficult period for me because I was in the conservatory singing a repertoire that was not really my repertoire. I felt I was not ready to sing the kind of stuff like Nabucco. Like Ferrando from Trovatore. I wasn’t happy and he really changed my perspective. He helped me really free my voice, free my technique and my relationship with music and how to produce it. I eventually moved to South America for six months to work with him. He really did make a big difference for me. He passed away some years ago, but he has a really special place in my heart.“

In The Barber of Seville Don Basilio has one very major aria: La Calunnia E’Un Venticello which is about how slander and rumor can have far too much power. In our world today, where anonymity and freedom to express yourself anywhere, anytime without major repercussions, Pisaroni finds the aria to be applicable to a multitude of people.

“Everybody has a telephone. I wish people were a little bit kinder to be honest with you. There are so many performances of great singers that nobody ever knew. They went to Bologna or Parma, it just was a relationship between the singer and the audience in that night. Now you can do a terrible concert in the middle of Brazil, in the Amazon, and everybody is going to know because somebody has a phone and recorded it. Which puts, I think, an incredible stress on performance today.”

Then there’s the subject of reviews with which Pisaroni has a very firm point-of-view.

“I think we need to be a bit more careful when we criticize things so harshly. I think for the young generation, there is only one way to protect yourself. Don’t read it. Because at the end of the day, even if it’s a bad review [from] the Los Angeles Times, it is one opinion of somebody that didn’t like you. Doesn’t mean that you are not worth it or that you should stop singing because one person doesn’t like it. Even people that I think are gods like Luciano Pavarotti got bad reviews. If he got bad reviews, Luca Pisaroni can be trashed. It is fine, because he was God for me.”

Not that it was always fine with Pisaroni.

“At the beginning of my career I would do Figaro and I would get 19 good reviews. But the only one I remember is the one that was a bad review. I don’t remember the good ones. Don’t read them and don’t be confronted. But doesn’t mean that you don’t have to have critical thinking. I think you need to be critical and you have to be brutally honest with yourself. And when you’re unhappy about something, work on it. Also you need to have a circle of people that are brutally honest with you who can say this is not good. You need to work on that or you didn’t sound very good, so that you can actually keep working on yourself and grow as an artist, as a singer, as a performer.” 

To see the full interview with Luca Pisaroni, please go here.

Main Photo: Luca Pisaroni in The Barber of Seville (Photo by Cory Weaver/Courtesy LA Opera)

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This is Willis-Sørensen’s third production of Otello. She has sung in a wide range of operas from Puccini to Wagner to Beethoven. She recorded the final aria from Otello for her album Rachel, which was released last year. Two months ago she released her second album, Strauss: Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss.

I recently spoke with Willis-Sørensen about Otello and her various experiences with it, the present-day resonance the opera has and the experience of performing Otello with a Black singer in the title role. What follows are excerpts from my conversation with Willis-Sørensen that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

How much does the philosophy expressed in Bird Set Free by Sia, where she says, “Sing for love, sing for me,” resonate with you as you’re preparing yourself before going on stage?

I love that song. My daughter actually showed it to me. It’s so beautiful. “I don’t care if I sing off key. I found myself and my melodies. I sing for love. I sing for me. I let it out like a bird set free.” That’s what it feels like to me when I’m singing. There’s this incredible freedom of expression. Everyone is sitting there looking at me and it’s like I’ve been given the platform to express myself. It’s just the most incredible feeling.

To me there’s something more valuable in expressing something honest than in doing it perfectly. I’ve been varying degrees of toxic perfectionist all my life. With singing the best performances I’ve ever given, I would never say they are the ones that were the most technically perfect. It’s more the ones where I accessed something very real and shared it with the audience. That’s where I feel the most rewarding fulfillment.

Can you tell when you’re in a good production versus when you’re in one that isn’t working as well?

Yes. I’ve been wrong a couple of times, to be fair. I mean, no one’s perfect! But generally when the story is discernible, it’s legible – so to speak from the audience perspective – it’s going to be a good production. If it is not, then it’s going to be a concert with some weird, confusing nonsense happening in front of the audience. Which is not my favorite, obviously, given that I described it that way. It’s hard. I don’t envy a director the task of trying to coordinate all of those multitudinous moving parts.

This is your third production of Otello. How much does a production itself influence your approach to the role?

I’m finding that each nuance that I learn from an old production sort of informs the next one. It’s only my third. But it seems if you are asked to look at something from a different perspective, potentially it enriches your viewpoint on the role. Then depending on the flexibility of the director or the amount of time, you can really hone something.

I think it’s never identical. There are no two performances that are identical. The first production was very traditional. I think making a role debut in a production like that is a gift because you’re just doing the show, you’re just telling the story as well as you can, which is always ideal for a role debut.

The second production that I did was very modern in Munich and the take on the character was so different. I find that the strength of presentation from the second has informed this third one significantly. This is more traditional, but I think that my telling from day one has become a lot stronger than it was previously. 

LA Opera conductor James Conlon is a passionate fan of Verdi’s. Are you that passionate about Verdi as well? 

Absolutely. I’m in a very fortunate position where I get to sing a wide variety of repertoire, probably wider than is normal to do you could argue. But Verdi is certainly, if not my absolute favorite, then somehow among the top two favorite composers to sing. It’s just written in such a grateful way and the characters are always really interesting to play. I just love it. It suits my throat. I find singing Verdi feels very physically satisfying. Very often you die in the end, which is nice in a weird way. I mean, it makes you really think about your own mortality to die on stage. It makes you more grateful to be alive, but also the act of doing this somehow…I don’t know. I almost recommend it as a therapy, enacting your own death physiologically and then trying to lie there. 

Let’s talk about Desdemona’s death. The audience is led to believe that Desdemona has been killed. Then she seems to come back to life to sing her final passage in the opera before she does die. How do you navigate something like that to make it the serious moment it needs to be?

She’s dead. She’s not dead. Wait, is she dead? I know it’s very strange. It’s not very logical. Maybe it wasn’t common knowledge that it takes 3 to 5 minutes to choke a person. But I think [Otello’s] just knocked her unconscious. Clearly something is physically wrong enough that ultimately she dies from it. But she comes two for a second after the fact.

After the physical struggle, I don’t want to think. I want it as absolutely clean as possible. So that’s what I’m trying to focus on during those moments. Then I just try to not breathe visibly for the rest of the show.

Sonya Yoncheva said in 2015 about this role, “Desdemona is a strong woman who knows exactly what she’s doing. The only thing that escapes her is the level of craziness attained by Otello. I personally think she’s very brave. Her greatest strength is her love for Otello. She defends her love, her man, to the very end.” History has not really viewed the character that way. She is viewed more as a tragic victim. Where do you find her?

I think she’s strong in that she marries Otello against her parents wishes. She’s somehow emotionally healthy enough to believe she didn’t have a poor relationship to her parents. She didn’t escape them to marry Otello. They didn’t want her to marry him. She was so in love that she made this decision to stand by him and run away with him. That represents some kind of chutzpah, right? Who does that? 

But her love for Otello is so big. His specificity, his difference from all the other men she’s interacting with, I think is part of what contributes to that. She is a tragic victim. I just don’t see her as weak because I think it’s too easy to say that only weak people become the victims of abuse. I don’t think in the real world that’s how that plays out. When your tenderness is taken advantage of by another person, in whatever way, that could basically happen to anyone. It takes so much to be able to stand up to an abuser if they are someone you love.

So I think it’s a very relevant story. We have to feel like it’s a terrible mistake, it’s a terrible misunderstanding, and that Otello has done something very wrong. 

I also think there’s something even more topical than that, which is the whole idea that lies take on a truth of their own. If you repeat something often enough, you get a huge percentage of people to believe you. Social media is a hotbed of complete and utter falsehoods. 

It’s enough just to have an accusation. That’s enough to ruin you. Just the accusation. There doesn’t have to be any proof. There doesn’t have to be any investigation as soon as an accusation is made. That is another part of the story that’s really relevant.

I have three little children: a nine-year-old daughter and twin sons who are almost eight. My son was saying to someone, “It’s okay if you like something and I like something different. We can both like different things and still be good friends.” We can have divergent opinions and not be accusing one another of stupidity. That’s a beautiful notion that I’m trying really hard to teach my children. I think that’s really missing in public discourse.

What was once acceptable in opera for this role is no longer acceptable. Your other Otellos were not Black performers/singers. Creatively does it make a difference to see Russell Thomas, a Black man as Otello, singing opposite you? Do you think it’s important that that continue to be what is done on opera stages?

I have loved working with all of the Otellos that I’ve worked with. They have been very impressive and interesting storytellers. I think that Russell also is an incredible storyteller. I think he has experience to access in order to tell this role in a different way based on being an actual Black man. So when he talks about being a Black man among white people – I think they water down for the supertitles – but it’s something that he is able to tell in an different way. He’s very passionate and he’s a wonderful colleague. Singing with him is a joy.

I’m not entitled to have an opinion on the controversy because I am a white woman. But I do think that what differentiates opera from other art forms is the singing. At any given time in the world there may be five men who can do the role of Otello. So to make their skin color be requisite, we will just never get to do the piece.

I think Aida is the same. There are actually a few really wonderful African-descent singers who could sing either really well and they should do it. For that reason, I’m nervous about undertaking that task myself, even though it’s been offered a couple of times, because I don’t want to be part of the controversy.

It just doesn’t have an easy answer. In the productions I’ve done where we altogether ignored it, it’s fine. We’re still telling a story about jealousy. It just becomes not an issue of race. So I guess you can see much more clearly the issue of the racial dynamic, if the tenor is actually Black. So I think that it’s worthwhile doing either way. But this does definitely make this particular production of Otello extra special. 

Verdi wrote in a letter he sent in 1871 to Giulio Ricordi, “I deny that either singers or conductors can create or work creatively. This, as I have always said, is a conception that leads to the abyss.” If you had the opportunity to either refute or concur with Verdi, what would you tell him?

I tend not to agree with that because, and I always say this, if there were only one right way of doing it, just record it and be done. But we do it again and again. The beauty of the live experience is one thing. But I think the diversity of experience with different casts, I felt that myself in different casts, every singer brings themselves into what they’re doing. I would argue you have to work creatively.

But on the other hand, maybe what he meant, which I do agree with, is that you follow what is written on the page and you will make magic. We don’t have to create magic. We get to make the magic that Verdi already wrote down on the page. I do think his articulations, the expressive markings, the tempi, the dynamics, there’s room, of course, for rubato, there’s room for naturalistic interpretation. But most of that information is already on the page. When you follow those guidelines in a naturalistic way, you tend to do better than if you go rogue and ignore them.

To see the full interview with Rachel Willis-Sørensen, please go here.

Main Photo: Russell Thomas and Rachel Willis-Sørensen in LA Opera’s “Otello” (Photo by Cory Weaver/Courtesy LA Opera)

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Kudisch has also spent considerable time in operas and shows that are more operatic in nature. He appeared in David Lang’s Anatomy Theater, Ricky Ian Gordon‘s Sycamore Trees and Michael John LaChiusa‘s See What I Want to See. This week he will return to the role of The Older Man in Emma O’Halloran and Mark O’Halloran‘s one-act opera Trade. LA Opera is presenting Trade along with the O’Halloran’s Mary Motorhead at REDCAT in Los Angeles from April 27th – April 30th.

In Trade, Kudisch’s character spends the opera with The Younger Man (Kyle Bielfield) who is a rent boy. Their intimacy is not physical, but rather emotional. Both characters pursue a naked honesty that has nothing to do with sex.

In early March I spoke with Kudisch about his passion for the kind of stories that are told on opera stages and how that work is different than what he does on Broadway. We also talk about the power of music when words fail and the self-imposed prisons we all put ourselves in…just like his character in Trade. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

You told Stage Buddy in 2017, that as a performer, “I’m not interested in adulation. I’m in it for the conversation. I say yes to projects where I can be there to see how the audience receives it.” What was it about the conversation that Trade offers that made you say yes even before it was completely written?

First of all, I love the music. I just liked what Emma was writing in terms of a sonic environment. From that, I knew that it was going to be an uneasy conversation on the course of the night. Even in the aria. The first thing that we did was we polished and recorded at least the older man’s aria. That happened during the pandemic.

I liked the idea of someone who lacks the skill set of expression. I think that in many ways it is metaphorical for where we are right now. There are a lot of people out there who lack the skill set to truly express themselves. But I think some of us are trying very hard to do so.

This is a man who seems to be stumbling towards honesty by the end of by the end of the piece, which sounds like an intriguing arc for any actor to play.

I like stuff that’s honest, right? Engaging to me is just being honest. Not apologizing. Not trying to put a bow on anything because that’s not on us – not in today’s world. More often than not, when things get musicalized, they get romanticized because obviously music is a heightened state. When words aren’t enough, that’s when music kicks in. But also it’s about the heart, the senses opening up, even in the hardest or most challenging conditions.

For this man, like for me, I just look for hope. I don’t need a happy ending. I don’t want a happy ending. I want hope. That’s the thing that I think is so cathartic about the piece. The older man, frankly the younger man, by opening themselves up, by even just acknowledging their situation and trying to talk about it, there’s hope for an actual conversation to go beyond where they are now. That’s real and that’s moving. Because you can actually believe that other people of that ilk might want to, or after this attempt, communicate beyond where they’ve been. It’s what we’ve got to do. 

I had an opportunity to speak to Mark and Emma prior to the world premiere of Trade at Prototype. Mark said that he believes that at the end of Trade the older man has hit bottom. Mark doesn’t know if he moves up from there or not. What are your thoughts about where he might go after this, or is that even important to you? 

It’s not important to me because I have to play the moment. I play the event and I play the event moment to moment to moment to moment. It is incredibly important to the audience. If we do our job right that will be the conversation over dinner and then over breakfast the next day and then over a cup of coffee three weeks later. My responsibility is not to that. That’s the audience’s responsibility. My responsibility is not to judge.

My last Broadway show before working on this opera [Girl From the North Country], was again with an Irish playwright/director: Conor McPherson. [I was] playing a man that was not dissimilar in terms of where he was in his life and the decisions that he was making. And I loved that. I love in Irish literature that there’s a real exploration of men in intense circumstance. I can only speak from the male point of view, I don’t know where he ends up. I mean, I have my ideas of what possibly happens. But for sure, it’s weird. He hits bottom. But in hitting bottom he is at his best now. 

And he’s found a moment of truth. 

100% He achieved what he set out to do. It may have not have gone the way that he wanted it to, clearly. But he actually achieved what he set out to do. And that to me is a lot. Again, this is a piece that’s maybe not meant to have completion for him, but who knows who’s sitting in the audience. 

It doesn’t even have a completion for Mark. He wrote the play he adapted for the libretto.

It’s a beautiful play and I always stayed focused on the play. What I love about the piece is that when Mark saw the opera, he saw a whole different play that he had never even realized before. Which was really sort of wonderful to see on his face when he saw it for the first time. 

I love the opera of it. We’re talking about modern opera which I am a huge fan of. The same way that when I first discovered musical theater, I feel the same way about modern opera right now. Frankly, it’s far more interesting to me than anything on Broadway, because it’s sort of like when I first got to New York and I was doing theater. That was what we were doing. It feels like opera’s picked up those reins and has taken the reins and is moving forward in that direction.

I’ve seen you in The Wild Party. I saw you in Thoroughly Modern Millie. I saw you in A Little Night Music. I saw you in Assassins. I saw you in 9 to 5. But the show I saw you in that seems to have as much to offer you as an actor in parallel to what you do in Anatomy Theater or in Trade is actually See What I Want to See.

I wish you would have seen Girl From the North Country, which was my last Broadway show by Conor, which is a spectacular piece of theater and truly a play with music as opposed to musical. You would never forget it once you’ve seen it.

I loved See What I Want To See. First of all, I have such a long relationship with Michael John LaChiusa. Also I did an incredible piece for him down in Washington and never got to New York called The Highest Yellow, which was about Vincent van Gough, which was also spectacular. Michael John writes music theater aria. I don’t know why he hasn’t written more opera. He should. I keep poking at him to do it. That’s my longest relationship in terms of working relationship. His writing is incredible.

See What I Want to See is incredible. There’s an aria that I sing called Central Park and it is an aria. It’s one of my favorite things that I’ve ever created. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of. It was a real collaboration with Michael John and I and it took a while to find it. But once we found it, there’s nothing else like it.

Do projects like Anatomy Theater and Trade challenge you vocally in different ways than other shows that you’ve done?

Yeah. I’m more interested in the intent. The truth is given where they both vocally sit, for me they’re not vocally taxing. It’s the intention that is the joy and the fun. I am classically a cavalier baritone. That is genuinely what I am. But for whatever the reason is, in most of the modern opera work that I do, I’m a bass baritone. That’s because, I guess, of the character or the intention of the character. So I’ve practiced my voice in that space. In some ways it becomes challenging because you almost have to re-register yourself. It’s hard to describe.

Because I work in so many different mediums and vernaculars of music, I have to keep my voice flexible. If I’m singing a pop score I place it in one place. If I’m singing a Broadway score, because it’s eight shows a week now, you cannot sing operatically eight shows a week. I don’t care who you are. So it has to be placed that way. If I’m singing something like Anatomy Theater or I’m singing something like Trade, then I have to place it here. I just have to constantly think because I have to keep flexible. 

In Anatomy Theatre there are moments where I wanted it to be nasal and shrill and harsh to play with the audience, to mess with them.

In an opera that’s already messing with the audience anyway.

I love it so much because it is a dangerous piece. I want us to do it again. I think we’ve gone through this period of time where it was just too sensitive. But I think we’re back at a period of time where I find it to be very necessary. But yeah, it’s subversive. Especially my character just beats you. Beats you with your own judgment.

In Trade it’s the opposite. We don’t come to you. You come to us. Trade is very much, even though it is an opera, it is very much a play, which I think is what is fascinating about the piece. It’s what I really love about the piece. It is not presentational. It is them reaching out, trying to communicate to the other. It thrashes at times and it’s super quiet at times. And again there are moments where I don’t want to sound pretty. It’s hard for this guy to say what he’s saying. If it was open and confident and beautiful the whole time that would be dishonest.

There are these brief phrases that each of these characters have. Then, particularly with the with the older man, all of a sudden he just spews his guts out. What Mark told me was that there’s a point where he these characters run out of words to say until it builds up and then suddenly everything comes to them. That’s got to be tremendous for you.

Oh, it is tremendous because it’s real. Look, acting is overrated. It just is. When I hear an actor say, “Oh, I pretend for a living,” it bothers me because I want to say, “Then you’re not a very good actor.” I don’t. I tell the truth. It’s not hard to tell the truth when what’s written on the page is truthful. And it’s also truthful, not just in its content, but in how the character sounds very much like that character. No one else should sound like that person. That’s when you know you’ve got something specific.

Sondheim said it all the time, and I think he stole it from Oscar Wilde, “The more specific you are, the more universal it becomes.” It’s a very specific play and because of that acting is not necessary. I just have to be with the character. Being a man of a certain age now, and having the amount of experience that I have in my life now, I don’t have to look far to relate to what the older man is going through. I just have to be in the play. With not only the play, but with the audience moment to moment to moment. That’s all we have to worry about. That’s all I have to think about.

Emma described the two pieces, Trade and Mary Motorhead, as being about people imprisoned in their own worlds. Characters like these prove endlessly fascinating for us as an audience. As somebody who gets to bring these stories and to characters to life, what is it about “people imprisoned in their own worlds” that is such a rich opportunity for you as an actor and compelling for you as a human being?

Because we are all people that are imprisoned. We are all people that are imprisoned in this novel of fiction that we write in our heads every day of our lives. There is not a soul walking the planet that has not formed some form of a cell or a box or a linear limitation of what the world is for them that they can, or allow themselves, to live in. Sometimes the cell is more literal than other times. That is why Mary Motorhead is so beautiful with ours.

Mary Motorhead is far more direct than our piece. You know, it’s a mono drama. Naomi just thrashes through that thing. It’s so fantastic. But interestingly, that is a character who is in prison and far freer human being than my character. [He’s] in his own prison, his own device of a prison. It’s a fascinating dichotomy. The two pieces could not be more polar opposite and yet more deeply connected. 

I say it all the time: technology constantly changes, constantly advances. The human condition remains the same. Will always remain the same. Always. We will never change as human beings. We will never evolve in my opinion. So the best thing we can do to connect is to merely acknowledge that is who and what we are. Acknowledge our flaws. Acknowledge our foibles. Acknowledge our limitations. Acknowledge the cells we create for each other. Only then is there a conversation about opening the door and letting ourselves out.

To see the full interview with Marc Kudisch, please go here.

Photo: Mark Kudisch (Courtesy LA Opera)

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Prima Facie – Golden Theatre – New York, NY

Jodie Comer stars in this play by Suzie Miller that is now playing on Broadway. Miller and Comer won Olivier Awards for Best New Play and Best Actress at this year’s Olivier Awards. Could Tony Awards all come their way?

For tickets and more information, please go here.

Good Night, Oscar – Belasco Theatre – New York, NY Sean Hayes stars in this play about Oscar Levant written by Doug Wright and directed by Lisa Peterson. The show originated in Chicago and received rave reviews for both the play and for Hayes.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

TRADE/Mary Motorhead – LA Opera at REDCAT – Los Angeles, CA – April 27^th – April 30^th

These two one-act operas by composer Emma O’Halloran and her librettist uncle, Mark O’Halloran, debuted at the Prototype Festival in New York earlier this year. Now they are in Los Angeles with original cast members Kyle Bielfield, Mark Kudisch and Naomi Louisa O’Connell in tow.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

Dee Dee Bridgewater & Bill Charlap – SFJAZZ – San Francisco April 27^th – April 30^th

Rarely have two artists so perfectly melded their talents the way jazz singer Bridgewater and pianist Charlap do in concert. I’ve seen them twice and would go again and again given the opportunity. You have the opportunity to hear how great this duo is even if you don’t live in San Francisco. Their performance on April 28^th will be streaming live at 7:30 PM PT (with an encore showing on April 29^th at 11 AM PT).  

For in-person tickets and more information, please go here. For streaming tickets and information, please go here.

Champion – Met Opera Live in HD – Cinemas Worldwide – April 29^th – 12:55 PM ET/9:55 AM PT

This Saturday the Metropolitan Opera will present Terence Blanchard’s first opera, Champion, in a live transmission from the Met in New York City. Ryan Speedo Green, Eric Owens, Latonia Moore, Stephanie Blythe, Paul Groves and Eric Greene star in this opera based on the true story of boxer Emile Griffith. The production is directed by James Robinson with choreography by Camille A. Brown (both of whom were involved in the world premiere of Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones.) Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts.

To find a theater near you, please go here.

Photo: Ryan Speedo Green in Champion (Photo by Ken Howard/Courtesy Met Opera)

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But her story begins in California. She was raised here and went to UCLA. Her education was financed by entering and winning several beauty pageants. Blue won the titles of Miss Hollywood in 2005 and Miss Southern California in 2006. She spent three years in the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program at LA Opera. From there the world welcomed her with rave reviews and this year Blue was named the winner of the Richard Tucker Award.

She is back in Southern California as the lead in the LA Opera production of Puccini’s Tosca. She appears with tenor Michael Fabiano (through December 4th) and Gregory Kunde (December 7th – 10th) as Tosca’s lover, Cavaradossi. Ryan McKinny sings Scarpia. This John Caird production, first seen in Houston in 2010, made its debut at LA opera in 2013.

Last week, after the dress rehearsal for Tosca, I spoke with Blue who was at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. She was being followed around by a documentary film crew from Germany.

Our conversation took place via Zoom. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Before we talk all things Tosca, I want to congratulate you on this week’s Grammy nomination for Fire Shut Up in My Bones. 

Thank you.

I saw the opera through Live in HD and found it incredibly powerful and incredibly moving. What made that opera special for you? 

I think for me it was the historical aspect of it. It was the first time that the Metropolitan Opera had done an opera written by a Black composer [Terence Blanchard]. Of course, coming back after COVID and having the opera be shut down for a whole year like that, I think all of those historical moments made it what it was for me. I just felt very blessed to be a part of it because it was such a moving moment in time for me. 

And a moving one for the audience as well. What challenges did composer Terence Blanchard give you that you feel are unique to the way he writes opera?

I think the biggest challenge for me was that on the first day of rehearsal he told all of us, “You guys are classical musicians, so I know that you’re going to do what is on the page, how it’s written.” And he said, “I want you to do what is on the page. But I also want you to go back to your roots.”

When he said that I thought about my dad and how I grew up. I did grow up singing opera and listening to classical music. But I also grew up in church, playing the bass guitar and listening to gospel, singing gospel, hearing my father sing gospel, having my father sing classical music as well.

He made basically a blueprint for all of us to follow. Then within that blueprint, he said, I want you to kind of come out of the confines of the blueprint and make it your own by being able to sing something like Peculiar Grace with more of an R&B gospel style. [That] was something that I never get to do in an opera. So it was a challenge in that we wanted to honor what Terence had written, but we also wanted to bring in our roots. So it was definitely a challenge to be able to put the two together, to give myself the freedom to do that in an opera on a stage like the Met. It was awesome.

Now let’s talk Tosca. If my research is correct, this production in Los Angeles is only the second time you’ve sung Tosca. Part of that was because you had two different productions canceled during the pandemic that you were scheduled to do. So after the disappointment that I’m assuming comes along with those cancelations, what does finally being able to revisit this role mean to you now?

First I want to say I wasn’t disappointed. I wasn’t. To be honest with you I felt like, and I still feel, that when something like what happened with COVID and all of those cancellations, what that afforded me was not just a break, but it also afforded me the time to sit back and think. Maybe this is not the right time to be singing these pieces back-to-back like that in one season. So I wasn’t so disappointed with it because I’m happy with how it is now. I have this production and then I do it again next summer.

I don’t believe in coincidences, so I think that was perfect. This production is very, very traditional. It’s so helpful to sing Tosca in such a way that allows for me to actually really invest in who the character is and really, I think, become Tosca. 

The first production you did would not be defined by anybody as a traditional production. Does this almost feels like this is your first, I don’t want to say conventional, but traditional Tosca anyway?

This is definitely my first conventional Tosca – you’re fine to say that it is. I’m happy to do it. For me the music has always had the same meaning. The singing has always been the same in terms of the challenges. It’s all the same music. Being able to express it in this way is something that I’m very thankful for. It’s a special time and it is the right time – that’s more important. 

What makes it the right time?

It’s just kind of like with COVID; if it wasn’t supposed to happen, it wouldn’t have. It’s the right time and everything is right. I’m at the right age for it. I feel right in my body about it. I’m back in Los Angeles where it couldn’t possibly be more comfortable to be singing this role. This is a role that comes with a lot of, for lack of a better word, a lot of stress. You have to be vocally prepared and ready, also dramatically prepared and ready. As my band Radiohead says, everything is in its right place.

If the schedule had happened as it was planned to this would be your fourth Tosca instead of your second. Is your approach to this opera any different today than it might have been had that schedule actually played out as as originally scheduled?

I think if it was my fourth Tosca production, I think maybe I would have been honestly less excited. I’m just being honest. I probably would have been less excited. Not less excited because of the opera or what have you. For example, I’ve done eight productions, I think, now of La Traviata and it’s not that I’m not excited by the opera. But at some point the artist grows out of something and you grow into something else.

I see myself having the opportunity to really grow into Tosca. The journey is really just starting and that’s good because it’s the right time for it to start. And I hope it’s the beginning of a very wonderful run of Toscas for years to come.

Let me ask you about that 2019 production in Provence that you did – the Christophe Honoré production. There was a new character introduced and you were wearing a hoodie. Not how I normally look at Tosca, but to each his own. What did you learn from that first experience that is informing what you’re doing as a singer, as an actor, in this one?

Flexibility. We have to be flexible as opera singers. It’s important to be able to sing, of course, that’s what our job is. What I really loved about Christophe was that his imagination was just all over the place. It was wild and it was everywhere. And what I loved about it was that he wanted us to go on that wonderful journey with him. Because of that I had to know the music really, really well. What I was saying and what I was singing did not go along with the dramaturgy. It didn’t go along with the staging. So I had to make sure that I knew my music well.

Then on top of that I had to take my imagination to another level of my Tosca being this student, learning from the prima donna who was played by Catherine Malfitano. So I enjoyed it because it stretched my imagination and it made me realize that I’m an opera singer. But I feel like I’m so much more than that because of that production and hopefully the flexibility and the the open-mindedness that I had to learn doing that production. I hope I bring that into this production, even though it is traditional. 

I looked at an interview that John Caird gave to the Los Angeles Times when this production was first performed at LA Opera. Caird said something that I thought was really interesting: that the opera could have benefited from a second female character. He then went on to say, “There are things that are not terribly well done, but you can’t worry too much about the infelicities and the dramaturgy. The music sorts out all the problems.” Do you agree with John Caird? Do you think that it’s a rocky dramaturgical piece of work, but that Puccini’s music compensates for that? 

I’m very fortunate because I have sung the opera with another soprano and not just any soprano, she’s a legendary Tosca. Who knows if sopranos really want to share the role of Tosca. But I think there would be something if there was another protagonist maybe in the show. But Puccini’s heart, everything about this man, every ounce of his being, comes out in the music. I don’t want to say it like this, but I don’t know how else to say it. Perhaps the drama doesn’t fail. Maybe that’s not the right word. But I’ll say this. The music is constantly going. It doesn’t ever really stop. So I’ll say that when the drama sort of slows down, that’s when the music kind of kicks in and keeps it going. So I would agree with him.

In 2019 you did an interview with with Gramilano and you mentioned that Violetta and Tosca were your favorite characters, your favorite roles and that Don Giovanni and Tosca were your favorite operas to watch. From a spectator’s point of view and being in your shoes, what makes Tosca so special for you to watch? 

I enjoy the drama. I enjoy the brass. I love the brass section of the orchestra. Actually I should have said my favorite opera is Turandot. I love the brass section. Puccini, Strauss, Wagner, they use the brass section like none other. And Terence Blanchard, too! I know that because I had to sing with them.

But I love the way he writes for the orchestra in Tosca. The singers just being able to, if I may say it this way, accommodate what he’s written. You can actually listen to the whole opera of Tosca – just the orchestra. Take out everything else: take out the voices, all of it, the choir, and you can listen to it and I imagine it would play the same. That’s why I said we’re there to accommodate. We’re there to almost, in a way, backup the orchestra. Maybe I’ve always felt that way about Tosca. I don’t know how correct that is to say as a singer, but that is my impression of the opera. 

I think for any soprano the shadow of Maria Callas is is unavoidable. In 2021, BBC’s music magazine, Classical Music, named Callas’s 1953 recording of Tosca as the finest recording ever. How long is her shadow and at what point do you think you and other sopranos are not going to have to face the the Callas of it all?

I can only say that I greatly admire her dedication, diligence and devotion to her craft. If it happens that she is the quintessential Tosca for the rest of humanity, then so be it. I’m happy to say that I’ve lived in her shadow. I don’t mind that. I can only say that I’m grateful that I’ve been able to sing the same music that she sings. I was singing, of course, with my voice and with my heart and my experience.

Tosca is one of the greatest opera roles ever. From my perspective any woman who can put herself into Tosca’s shoes, make it through the whole evening and come off stage with their head held high – you’ve done a great thing, regardless of who has the finest recording. In the moment that I’m singing Tosca and whoever else is singing Tosca, that’s our moment. And we honor Maria Callas. We thank her. I honor her and I thank her for the role that she’s played for us sopranos. But if it’s a shadow, I’ll stand in it.

I’m going to finish by asking you about something that Callas is quoted as having said. She said, “An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination. It becomes my life and stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.” Do you feel similarly to Maria Callas? 

I was a young artist here at Los Angeles Opera 15, 16 years ago. Going from being a young artist to singing such a role where I was a young artist – I’m where I want to be. I don’t know if I can, honestly say, “Oh, I have this great dream to sing Tosca here or there or wherever.” I just know that I’m grateful to sing it here.

I agree with her in that the opera starts way before the curtain goes up, because we have to be thinking about it all of the time. I’m constantly working on the music. I’m constantly studying and that will never change. I will be studying until, you know, God takes me out of here.

But I differ from from Ms. Callas in that the opera does stop, because it can’t be my whole life. I have a family. I have a husband. I have a stepson. I have people in my life. That curtain must go down so that I can be Angel. I’m not always Angel Blue singing.

As soon as we’re done with this Zoom and I leave this opera house, I’m going to go eat. I’m going to do my thing. And the curtain will definitely be down. It’ll be down good, too, you know? And it doesn’t come back up until I have to come back and do my job, if that makes sense. But I’m thankful for Tosca. It’s brought me back home. Literally all I can think about is that I’m home.

To see the full interview with Angel Blue, please go here.

Main Photo: Angel Blue (Photo by Dario Acosta/Courtesy Askonas Holt)

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McCorkle sings the title role of Omar Ibn Said, a 37-year-old scholar living in West Africa who was enslaved and sent to Charleston, South Carolina. 24 years later, in 1831, his autobiography was published detailing his life, his experiences and the challenges to his Muslim faith.

The same production is now playing at LA Opera through November 13th. Charles McNulty, writing in the Los Angeles Times, said of his performance, “Even when the libretto feels skeletal, McCorkle supplies an emotional heft. The meditative sincerity of the performance left me with my head bowed.”

It was that inner character and the contemplative nature of the character that I saw on opening night that prompted me to talk to McCorkle. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

On June 6th you posted a photo of yourself as Omar on your Instagram account and said, “I am Omar.” How do you personally relate to Omar Ibn Said? 

I’ve come to this story opera through, not necessarily the man, but the representation of the mother in the spiritual form in the opera. She’s basically the one who’s guided his footsteps, telling him that this is the path for you and you should tell your story. She’s looking over him.

My mother passed away right before my college auditions. In my heart I have a connection that way to this opera, feeling as if my mother is also guiding my footsteps in my career. Telling me which path to go. Glad you asked that question because I’ve never talked about it. 

How healing has it been for you to be doing this?

I’m glad that when my mother [in the opera] comes, I’m not singing because if she came while I was singing, I don’t know if I would be able to sing very well. But yeah, it’s very special.

How much did you know about Omar before this opera came your way? 

Nothing. Most of the people didn’t know anything, honestly. Luckily enough the Spoleto Festival put together a bunch of scholars and got them to do Zoom videos and Zoom calls together to converse about their knowledge. They made it completely open to the public for everybody else to look at.

The fact that they even went that extra mile to do that meant that I had less homework to do and I could focus more on the music itself. I think in a previous interview I said [the music] was easy. I think people misinterpreted what I was saying because it’s obviously not easy to sing, but the way it’s written is very well written for the voice. It’s well thought out for me.

Basically the first act is a gigantic warmup for the second act. My voice has a very large range, but most of the first act sits in more of a baritone range and it’s constantly just churning and churning and trading and warming up and pushing higher and higher and higher until I get to all of my high notes in the second act. It’s just written so very, very well.

You don’t often find somebody who is as contemplative a character in opera as Omar is. What are the challenges in getting out the whys of who he is in a story where he’s not always being very proactive. A lot of what is going on is internalized. How do you approach a character that is frankly, on a lot of levels, the antithesis of what a lot of opera characters are? 

For a lot of the role, you’re right. But there are certain moments in the show where you have to wear your heart on on its sleeve. You have to make big differences between these two energies in order to give the character more legs to stand on emotionally.

I myself am very contemplative about everything. I don’t necessarily wear my emotions on my sleeve, but when I’m on stage as an opera singer something just changes and I just become this extremely emotive person. I’m throwing my emotions everywhere all over the stage. So it’s nice to be able to bring these two parts of myself together as one person.

It requires me to acquire more stillness – physically and mentally – and trusting that. It doesn’t always have to be these gigantic gestures. It’s more how you say each and every word, because every word you say now becomes extremely important. The most important thing: it’s not about the colors you can really create with your voice, it’s the colors you can create in the words themselves.

In the score I heard homages to Porgy and Bess, just a little phrase here and there. You appeared in Porgy and Bess at the Met. There are many who call for works like that to be relegated to the dustbin of history because they weren’t written by people who had authentic experiences. What is your view on Porgy and Bess and its place in opera today?

It’s not really my place to say whether an opera should be designated to the trash bin or not. But without Porgy and Bess there would be no Omar. Things go out of vogue, you know? So eventually time will tell whether or not it can stand up to the test of time. But without Porgy and Bess there would be no Malcolm X. There would be no Fire Shut Up in My Bones. There would be none of these new pieces that are being created by composers who are minorities and from a minority’s viewpoint.

Are you optimistic that that that the success of something like Fire Shut Up in My Bones or the success of Omar will inspire other other artists of color to write for opera?

I hope so. Also just to bring to light to the works of all minorities who have written works already that have yet to become mainstream or to be seen by a vast majority of people.

I just went to a the African-American Art Song Alliance Convention at the University of Irvine. I came across works I never knew existed and by composers I had never heard of. I stayed for a couple of recitals and it was just beautiful music. How had I never heard of these people before? So it’s wonderful that we have these giant pillars such as Omar to help unearth the things that are even already there.

On your Facebook account on June 11th you posted, “I get to make music as my career. I mustn’t forget how special that is.” How often do you need to remind yourself how special that is?

I’ve done it my entire life. So it’s almost like drinking water, breathing air for me. It makes it easy to forget that this is special. Not many people get to have this type of experience in life. There’s just this certain aspect of life where if something feels special in that moment, but you have constant access to something that special, over time, it becomes something that you don’t really think about as much as special. What I’m doing in this art form as a classical musician is not something that people get to do very often. And it is very special. 

Karl Ernst, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was interviewed for Religion News in 2020 about Omar Said. He said of his writings, “We have to have a way of understanding how someone like him could have lived the life he did surrounded by people who couldn’t understand him at all.” How has your preparation and performance of Omar allowed you to understand him and how has this project allowed you to understand yourself better?

As an African-American, we tend to walk through life, and it’s been said before, but it’s true, having these two masks. One that we wear around black people and then one that we wear around everyone else. Omar and the way that he would write, it would be as if speaking to two different people at the same time. Leaving hints of Islamic literature inside of his writing that would inform those who are from that path, too. That’s how I come to think of it. It’s trying to walk the line. 

I guess it just made me realize that it’s not anything new, you know? It’s something that’s probably going to always be there; having to walk that line. To somehow remain true to yourself, but to still forge ahead and do the things you want to do.

Let’s take this conversation full circle. If your mother could be there to see you perform in this opera and see the relationship that Omar has with his mother, how do you think she’d respond? 

Oh, she’d be screaming “That’s my baby! That’s my baby!” She was someone who always fought for me, even when I didn’t really fight for myself sometimes. She always had my back. She was always in my corner. Even if I was wrong. She would love…I’m sure she does love this opera. She’s watching it right now. She’s in love with it. Yeah. She’s smiling for sure. 

Main Photo: Jamez McCorkle in Omar (Photo by Cory Weaver)

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She has already been making a name for herself leading orchestras and operas around the world. The headline of Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed’s review of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in August said, “Conductor Lina González-Granados makes a big splash in the big outdoors in her Bowl debut.”

Lucia is an incredible opera. It has some absolutely gorgeous music and offers any soprano who sings the title role an incredible range of music and an unparalleled mad scene. But it is also a problematic opera.

The opera, set in present-day middle America in this production, is a truly tragic love story. Lucia and Edgardo are secretly in love. They keep their love a secret. Her brother, Enrico, who considers Edgardo his enemy, keeps them from getting married by lying to Lucia about Edgardo having an affair with another woman. Enrico demands she marry Arturo so that Enrico might get out of a deep financial hole. So deep is her despair that she turns to murder and ultimately devolves into madness.

Is she the master of her own fate or slave to the demands of her brother who only wants what’s best for him? This was just one of the topics I discussed with González-Granados recently. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

This is the first Lucia you’ve conducted. What discoveries did you make in studying Donizetti’s music?

I think the biggest challenge for me was to reconcile how beautiful the music is with such a grim and dark fate to this woman who was already doomed from the very first two notes of the opening. One of the most fascinating facets of discovering that is how good the orchestration is. There are instruments that speak for Lucia; all of those little micro beats into her madness. Finding those and reconciling those were the fascinating journey I had with this. 

Simon Stone’s production uses video elements. Some of them are live, others were filmed in advance. Does the video element of it all require a different kind of collaboration so that the music is in sync with what the vision is?

That is actually a very interesting question because we had actually a couple of extra days of tech in order to make sense of the turnaround, the most complicated one with the camera and the turntable. I said, “Simon, if you need me to do something with my tempo or something like a pause that is necessary, just let me know.” He was like, “Absolutely not. The video, the turntables, everything should be in synch with the music and not the other way around.”

This role is so closely associated with Maria Callas, what conversations did you have with Amanda Woodbury and Liv Redpath who will both be performing the role at LA Opera?

I think has everything to do with maintaining healthy voices. That’s why, for example, I give both of them the full liberty to explore their ornaments. It’s all about what can they achieve with their beautiful voices. It’s technically so difficult that they can’t imitate anyone. They just have to own it bit by bit, note by note, in their bodies.

I attended Lucia with two women. Afterwards we discussed if in updating this opera to present day does this production overcome the misogyny that is part of this story or does it succumb to it? After all, women had far less agency when both Sir Walter Scott’s novel on which the opera was based and when Donizett’s opera had its world premiere in 1835.

That’s a very interesting point. And I don’t think there is a right answer to this. I do refuse to see Lucia as a victim of her own destiny. This modern take doesn’t re-victimize Lucia. Somehow the violence is justified the way that the end happens. The only thing that she could do was to kill Arturo. I’m not justifying that you should kill to get control of your own life. But she did take charge of it. I think it’s important to know. But I think it all depends of how you personally deal with those traumas and how you’re triggered.

I think the beauty of it is that these conversations are held and that women are thinking is this violence necessary? Do we need to reshape the conversations when we watch these kinds of operas? Lucia is not the only opera in which violence against women is the common thread. I mean Cavalleria, La Traviata, you name it, Carmen, oh my God. It comes from a cultural root of of observing these women. And I think it’s it’s worth having these conversations.

I honestly think that there is nothing more gaslighting than this opera. Even the orchestra speaks for her before she can speak, you know? And when she speaks, she sings. But at the end, everybody wants to take her voice and she just doesn’t let them. For me she’s a very strong woman. 

I absolutely agree that she’s a strong woman and she’s an anti-heroine. But if her brother hadn’t put her in that position in the first place she wouldn’t be there. He put his needs above her. 

Yeah. I also wonder how beautiful it would be to talk about these roles and the responsibility that is put on men’s shoulders to be a certain way. How can we reshape that? How can we have conversations about Enrico and also Edgardo treating her? How can we say that you don’t have to be responsible for your entire family’s trauma. Let’s also open the door to heal toxic masculinity. Both of them, I think, are equally important.

I want to ask you about Conductor’s Collective which you co-founded. The mission is “to create a community of potential leaders who are prepared to face the challenges of a rapidly evolving musical landscape.” What do you see as those main challenges of this landscape today? 

Well, the biggest one is audiences not coming back now that we overcame the pandemic and an extremely competitive a workforce that not necessarily is relying on good artistry. How do you prepare for that? How do you keep your values as a musician intact?

And racial reckoning. Really working on the spectrum of real diversity and inclusion where everybody has a stake in the conversation for real and try to see how everyone fits into that. For conductors, it’s a tricky spot to navigate. Especially because everyone thinks it’s all about having an Instagram with good followers. You get a manager and that’s what they are telling you. Put your calendar on Instagram! Do you have a website? Everybody’s going to look for you! All of these are things are true. Do they make you a musician? Absolutely not. Are you going to be fulfilled with that? Definitely not. It’s all about introducing people to the music.

What you would like your role to be for a young Colombian girl or a young Kenyan girl or somebody else around the world who never thought what you’ve achieved already was possible?

I’m just going to plagiarize something that a one of my very early mentors has said to all of us, which is [conductor] Marin Alsop. Marin says, “I had it so hard. My only dream is that you don’t have it as hard as I did.”

I might be the first Latina in a the LA Opera, but I’m not the first woman in this season conducting or I haven’t been the first woman conducting the orchestra. I went to L.A. to the Hollywood Bowl and it was like full of women. Susanna Mälkkii was the musical guest. It’s not a situation. Nobody feels threatened. Nobody feels that their core beliefs are absolutely faced with difference and you have to feel this rejection.

It’s already a difficult job. For me, it’s already difficult. We really need to have a vision, a philosophical view of the things and on top of that we have to have good ears and rehearse well. We shouldn’t be worried about other people’s feelings about us to make our work more difficult.

The remaining performances of Lucia at LA Opera are September 28th, October 2nd and October 9th.

Main Photo: Conductor Lina González-Granados in a rehearsal of Lucia di Lammermoor (Photo by Cory Weaver/Courtesy LA Opera)

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Moore is playing the title character in this Francesca Zambello production that is the first Aida to be performed at LA Opera in over 15 years. She’s very familiar with the part having first performed it in 2009. Moore made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the role in 2012 as a last-minute substitute for Violeta Urmana who was sick.

Since then, in addition to Aida, she’s regularly performed the role of Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly and was seen in the Met Opera productions of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Terence Blanchard‘s Fire Shut Up In My Bones. Italian operas are her passion, but as you’ll see from this interview, her jazz background earlier in her life has been the gift that keeps on giving.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation earlier this week that have been edited for length and clarity.

You’re 13 years into singing this part and 10 years after your Met debut as Aida. What’s your relationship to Verdi’s opera today?

When I first started doing the role, I didn’t know if that was really for me vocally. I thought my voice was a bit light for it. So as the years went on, I started getting more [performances] added. I was doing it all over the world. The more I did, the deeper I fell into the character. By about 2016 my voice caught up with where I should be vocally with the character.

Every time I do it I find something new. I tend to put my own stamp on it and try to break away from the traditional way of doing it and singing it and provide the audience with something they’re not used to hearing. I feel like such a staple like this is done mostly one way for so many years. Every time I go out on the stage, even within a production – even within one performance – I like to spice it up and do something that’s more Latonia.

What have you learned or discovered about the character in that time?

Aida, you really hear about who she really is and her struggle and things like that. But one thing that I’ve learned about a character like hers is she’s a lot more like her father than I ever thought. She’s very much an outsider. The more I delve into the text and the way I’m singing and the way I’m saying words, it’s becoming a lot more visceral than it ever was before. She’s the daughter of a warrior, she’s been trained to fight, she knows how to do it. She’s an animalistic person by nature, but has been forced to seem like something submissive. She actually is not and I think that I’ve embraced more of the power of a person like that. 

In previous interviews you’ve discussed your concern that you were only being cast in Aida because you are Black. Do you still feel that way?

I still believe that, especially initially, it was definitely the color of my skin, because vocally I was not right for Aida when I first started doing it. The people who hired me knew that, but they didn’t care because they wanted someone Black. I started to wrap my head around the fact that maybe I was being cast for Aida because I was appropriate for the role was four years after my Met debut. I was just like, you know what? I’m a pretty good Aida. This actually fits now, but it didn’t before. Maybe it took having a couple kids for my voice to settle into it a a little more and then make it a bit deeper of a sound for Aida.

Do I still think that people cast me because I’m Black? Yes. I think that’s why I’m here in L.A. I don’t think that it was only because I’m a good Aida. I think they wanted to cast a good Black Aida. And hopefully that’s what they got. But yes, that’s the factor here because I’m Black and I think that continues to be. I think that for many companies, especially in this climate, they’re just like we have to cast the Black Aida because, you know, we don’t want any pushback for it. You know, casting a white Aida right now in the climate here in America, it’s dicey.

Does that become limiting for you and the roles you can play?

This is where I’ve become a bit up in arms with the casting, because I see where they’re coming from. You know, it’s like they have to have a Black Aida. But does that mean that I can’t be Madame Butterfly anymore? That it has to be an Asian one? Because my whole reason for getting into the business was so I could be someone Japanese. I could be a Venetian. I played Leila in The Pearl Fishers, a Sri Lankan. That’s what I love about an art form like this that is so exotic and I can transform into anything. So when people are saying, yes, we should cast a Black Aida, you know, that doesn’t sit right with me because it feels like where I’m then limited.

The moment everyone is waiting for in Aida is o patria mia. What’s your approach before and during the singing of this aria?

Any soprano that sits there and says they’re not thinking about it; I think one of two things about that. Either one, they have done therapeutic things to change their mindset or two, they’re lying to try to convince themselves that it’s not torture. Every single soprano, and this is for everybody that’s about all these sopranos, we all know y’all are thinking about it, too. Surely Maria Callas, when she got there, started thinking and you can hear it. You can hear the people start thinking about it. You can’t completely throw caution to the wind because there’s a lot riding on it. What’s giving everybody so much anxiety about it is exactly what you said – the expectation. It’s that everybody’s waiting on you to stick the landing. To this day it will always terrify me. Always. I’m not going to sit here and pretend Oh, no, I’ve mastered it. No, no, no. I’m going to go to my grave having never mastered that part of it.

I do feel like one difference between the way I used to think about o patria mia and now. Now I’m not so focused on whether or not I stick the landing. Either it’s going to happen or it’s not, but I have to use this character to my advantage no matter what. A lot of times people are expecting it to sound like something off a recording that they heard. Can she do it like Leontyne Price? Can she do it like Zinka Milanov? I’m never going to be able to do it like them. However, you know what I am able to do that maybe not a lot of people are able to do is convince you that I am that person doing it. Even if I crash and burn and bust all over the high C it’ll still be Aida doing it, not Latonia. So that’s one thing that I had to retrain my brain about it. No matter what I end up doing, if she’s going to bust a note, she’s busting it because Aida wanted to.

How would you compare the joy that you get in singing a classic role like Aida or singing Madama Butterfly to the opportunity to sing new work like Fire Shut Up in My Bones?

I’ve always thought of myself as an Italian soprano, one that just focuses mostly on Italian opera. However, I have a big jazz background and I switched to opera while I was in college. But jazz is really my focus. I don’t particularly like singing in English, but what was so appealing about these works, like Fire Shut Up in My Bones and the upcoming Champion, is that they are jazz operas. And this goes for Porgy and Bess, too. It goes back to me saying that Leontyne was beamed down for the planet to sing Aida. That’s what she was here for. I feel like the reason I started in jazz and came into the opera the way I did was for the work that I’m doing right now on Fire Shut Up in My Bones and stuff like Porgy and Bess, Champion and whatever comes in that vein.

I love Italian opera. I’ll never give it up if I can help it. But some people fit right in the pocket of something. I’m the one that fits in the pocket of being the soprano in these Black jazz operas. I guess I find myself on the planet at the right place, right time. I feel like it’s what I was meant to do.

On your Instagram account earlier this year, you quoted Charles M. Blow’s memoir that served as the inspiration for Fire Shut Up in My Bones. You quoted, “I would have to learn to accept myself joyfully, fully as the amalgamation of both the gifts and the tragedies of fate as the person destiny had chosen me to be.” So today, Latonia, in 2022, who is the person destiny has chosen you to be? 

I’m a beautiful example of somebody that may be viewed as an underdog, but an example of somebody that no matter what you look like, no matter what you’ve gone through or what you said, you still persevere. I feel like I’m here to be an example to other people.

I hope that every other kid like me sees what I’m doing and knows that they can do it, too. I feel like my place in a business like this is to show you that what you look like as a person will never matter more than what it is you can create as an artist. I’m simply put here to create and make art for people, to encourage them, to hear them, to show them that they can do it. Yes, you can have children. Yes, you can go up there and you can look like anything and transform into something else. Yes, you can go up and help the youth and you can help them lift up into a great career.

I feel like I’m a very good example in this business of what perseverance can really get you. I’m the sort of person that is like if you streamline your energy toward what you want and you believe it with unwavering faith, you’re going to make your mark. Period. But it has to be unwavering faith. Be patient and don’t care how long it’s going to take. It’ll happen.

There are six performances of Aida at LA Opera from May 21st through June 12th

All photos of Latonia Moore in LA Opera’s production of Aida by Cory Weaver. (Courtesy LA Opera)

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