Denyce Graves Says Goodbye to the Opera Stage After 40 Years - By Adam Nagourney
Denyce Graves Says Goodbye to the Opera Stage After 40 Years Graves, who gave her last performance on Saturday at the Met, talks about “Carmen,” the doctor who told her she would never sing again and the Kennedy Center.
Denyce Graves Says Goodbye to the Opera Stage After 40 Years - The New York Times
Denyce Graves made sure to stick a few tissues into a pocket of her costume for the Saturday matinee of the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess.” It was the 158th — and the final — time she would perform at the Metropolitan Opera. She was sure she was going to cry. “Denyce Graves,” said Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, in a simple introduction, as the curtain rose for the second act to show Graves surrounded by the opera’s cast. The applause, from the stage and from the packed hall, seemed as if it would never end. She pulled out those tissues “Peter, I knew I was going to cry,” she said, her voice quavering as she received a plaque commemorating her as one of “opera’s outstanding artists.” It was a career that almost didn’t happen. When Graves was 24, a doctor told her she wouldn’t sing again. It was just three years after she made her professional opera debut at the Tulsa Opera. She resigned herself to a life off the opera stage. “He discovered that I had a real imbalance in my thyroid that was creating some havoc,” Graves, 61, said in a lounge at the Metropolitan Opera recently, pulling down the top of her dress to show the still visible signs of an enlarged thyroid. “And he told me that I would not be able to have a career. ”The doctor was wrong. A year later, Graves, a mezzo-soprano, agreed to audition for the Houston Opera’s “Carmen,” and was cast as Mercedes. And for the next 38 years, she persevered through health challenges — the thyroid, a hemorrhaging vocal cord, goiters in the neck, cluster headaches — to become one of opera’s top singers.
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Graves said she had a few low-profile appearances left in her, but for now, she is moving to a life of directing and running the Denyce Graves Foundation, dedicated to social justice and the arts. We spoke twice; once a few weeks ago, and again, in her dressing room, after she stepped off the stage on Saturday. These are edited excerpts from those conversations.
After all that applause, I trust you’re not having second thoughts?
No! But I thought, I’m really, really retired from this now. That was so final. I am going to be directing and I love that. And I’m very excited not to have to worry about my voice.
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It sounds like you have spent a lot of you career tending to — and worrying about — your voice.
Everything you do impacts what happens with your voice, everything. Talking to you now. Being out in the cold. What I just ate — I just ate an orange, right? Like acid, like all of these different things impacts the quality of the instrument. Everybody knows what it feels like to have a really great voice lesson or to have a really good performance and we’re always sort of chasing that.
What made you decide the time had come to retire?
I’m in my 62nd year. And when this offer came to sing this Maria in “Porgy and Bess,” I thought, how perfect. The very first opera contract I got was for “Porgy and Bess.” That was with Ed Purrington at Tulsa Opera.
Can you talk about being asked to sing at the service commemorating 9/11 at the National Cathedral?
I didn’t really understand at the time the magnitude of what that service going to be. I looked down, and said, That looks like President Carter. And I said, Oh my God, is that President Bush? And that’s President Clinton. It changed everything for me after that. Laura Bush came to talk to me. She’s become a friend.
Some years ago you said that your interest in opera came after a class trip to the Kennedy Center.
That’s true.
Considering what’s going on there now, would you sing at the Kennedy Center now?
Well, I just did. We did “Porgy and Bess” there. In May of last year.
You were supposed to direct Scott Joplin’s “Treemonisha” there, but now that the Washington National Opera has pulled out of the Center, it is going to be performed at Lisner Auditorium. How do you feel about that?
I would have liked to have seen if there could have somehow been a way to make it work at the Kennedy Center for a number of reasons. I mean, things are going to be in an incredible chaotic state in terms of, you know, is there a costume department? What about the sets?
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But I know that they have every intention on going forward with everything. And I think there’s a tremendous amount of support in the community for them as well. I’m happy to see that.
Are you worried about the future of the Kennedy Center?
I am worried. It’s such a treasured and beloved place.
What do you think about artists who say they will no longer perform there?
There’s a part of me that understands that. On the other hand, I obviously grew up as a Black woman, before that a Black girl. And there were so many restricted doors for us coming up. And I had to learn to just soldier on, no matter the situation.
Whatever your conviction is, I see it a little bit as a luxury to be able to say, well, absolutely not: I’m not going to do that. But I admire people who take that kind of stance.
You have been best known as Carmen. “This is a problem for my career,” you once said. “I want people to come to the theater because I’m singing — not because it’s ‘Carmen.’”
I was at Covent Garden singing “Carmen” with Plácido Domingo. We were doing the opera inside, but they were showing it outside. After the opera was over, Plácido said, “Denyce, let’s go outside and thank everybody for watching the opera.” I came out, and people said “Carmen, Carmen, come sign my program and take a picture with me.” He came out. And they said, “Plácido, Plácido.”
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You have said that you didn’t want to be thought of as a Black opera singer.
If I walk through the door, that’s what you see: a Black woman. That is who I am, that is my container in this life at this time. My issue with it is that we don’t say the white soprano Erin Morley. You don’t say the white mezzo soprano Frederica von Stade.
How do you think about the allegations of sexual misconduct regarding Plácido Domingo and James Levine, both of whom you worked with?
I certainly don’t condone it. And I don’t excuse it either. And I know that we’re all flawed beings and that particular flaw doesn’t not equal the whole of who that individual was. It’s a big, terrible flaw, for sure. But it doesn’t take away from the beauty — what they are, what they gave, what they built at this opera house, around the world.
Were you shocked to learn this about them?
No. Not at all.
There’s concern about aging and declining audiences and a loss of passion for this art form. How do you think about the future of opera?
We saw something extraordinary happen after Covid, when for the first time in the history of the Metropolitan Opera the theater was shut down. I remember that we came back with the opening of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” [a new opera by Terence Blanchard], and people came out. And so I think that the opera administration was looking at that saying, “Oh my goodness, look at the appetite that people have for these new stories.”
You know, the ABCs, right? “Aida,” “Bohème” and “Carmen.” They aren’t going to go anywhere. And I love those operas. But at the same time, there’s a real hunger for new voices and new storytelling.
Adam Nagourney is the classical music and dance reporter for The Times.
Comments 12
Denise Graves gave one of the most incredible performances I've ever seen and heard when she sang Carmen in San Francsico in 1991. She had broken a bone in her foot during rehearsals, yet did the entire performance, most if not all bare-foot. You couldn't tell until she came out for her curtain call using crutches. Amazingly devoted artist! Many thanks!
Ms. Graves sang "Carmen" for the opening of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House here in Denver. It was a splendid occasion. My wife and I are grateful for that performance and wish Ms. Graves the very best going forward.
I can't say I'm pleased with her equivocation about the debasement of the Kennedy center. However there is no reason to denigrate her career as it ends. Moreover she enjoyed a long career as a significant opera singer, which is more than can be said about the mean commenters.
Bravissimo to an incredible singer and human being. Watched her 9/11 performance and at the memorial service for RBG.
I heard Beverly Sills, and also Franco Corelli sing their farewell recital's at Symphony Hall in Newark before NJPAC was built. They were umforgettable moments as well. And Jon Vickders sing his last PETER GRIMES at The Met. Like Ms Graves the audiences cheered for them too.
I thought “farewell tours” were really reserved for the great opera stars: (off the top of my head) Zinka Milanov, Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland, Pavarotti. Artists who simply said, that’s it, these are my final performances. But Ms. Graves was not a major opera star. She had a number of years as the go-to singer of Carmen. A few other roles tossed in, characters parts in later years, and outreach to music students in inner cities, probably her most important role. And she was hardly the first Black opera singer to break through prejudice. Artists like Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Simon Estes, Shirley Verrett, Grace Bumbry, Jessye Norman, were recognized as far greater artists, with worldwide recognition, who paved the way for younger minority artists. Ms. Graves simply wasn’t in that league. I don’t understand the hoopla.
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@David G In agreement. Don’t quite understand the hoopla either since she was never a major operatic star.
@David G And in her prime (about 20 years ago) she came to my college to give a master class for our aspiring voice majors. She was every bit the diva, and not at all in any good way...
@David G Other other circumstances I might agree, but today's circumstances are such that one has to be grateful that ANY opera star gets a piece like this. No, Denyce Graves wasn't Marilyn Horne, Giulietta Simionato or Dolora Zajick, but she was important to Opera for over a decade as arguably the world's leading Carmen, and since we never stop reading of scumbucket rock artists that burned themselves out through drugs some 50 years back but still warrant a Times obit, it might be remembered that great and longtime opera stars like Mario Sereni (500 performances over 29 seasons at the Met), Gianni Raimondi (Pavarotti's predecessor at the Met), Beatrice Uria-Monzon (maybe the leading French Carmen of the past 50 years) and Robert Massard (leading French dramatic baritone who recently died at 100) never even received an obituary in the august pages of The New York Times, so that this current honoring of Ms. Graves in two separate Times pieces, while it may be a bit questionable in light of those who retire and don't get so honored (Arroyo, Ramey and Milnes come immediately to mind) is still welcome. Maybe it's a new start for Times coverage of opera stars that aren't just hype pieces engineered by (in many cases) we all know who!
You really could have gone through this whole interview without gratuitously (is there any other word that fits?) bringing up the situation with James Levine and Placido Domingo (especially with Domingo, as the charges against him were nothing like those against Levine, and most people who care about this type of thing at all never thought of them in that light), since it must have then been at least uncomfortable for Ms. Graves to have to answer them and the interview should have been devoted totally to her. I thought she handled it well, but would have preferred not to do so at all, especially after her story of Domingo suggesting that they both go out to thank a street audience for coming to view a Royal Opera performance, which certainly goes far to show what kind of artist and human being he is. If you were expecting a parting shot, you didn't get it. As Music Director of the Met during her entire major star period there, Levine must surely have seemed like a mentor to Ms. Graves, and both his and Domingo's careers are of the type that dwarf those of lesser lights. Ms. Graves surely understood this when answering, and we will miss such common sense in the opera world.
posted by Pimp My Voice at 3:26 PM
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