Black tenors fight prejudice in quest for opera's leading roles

Black tenors fight prejudice
in quest for opera's leading roles

By Tim Smith
Operagoers see just about anything on stage these days: every imaginable (or unimaginable) costume, deftly crafted set designs that may or may not relate to the plot, nifty lighting tricks, video projections, the inevitable wave of dry-ice fog, occasional livestock.

But one sight remains exceedingly rare: a black tenor in a leading role from the standard repertoire.

That could be changing, though. Black tenors are becoming more and more visible and, in fact, five happen to be performing in the Baltimore-Washington area this week. Several have gained greater mainstream exposure through the popular Three Mo' Tenors group, which performs today at Coppin State University, and that increases the prospects of encountering them on opera-house stages.

Those prospects, however, may depend on removing lingering traces of racial prejudice.

"A black man being in a position of power, a leader - and in a romantic position - that's still not fully accepted," says Willie Anthony Waters, general and artistic director of Connecticut Opera, the first African-American to hold such a position with a major company.

And tenor roles are typically all about power or romance or both - from Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor and Alfredo in La Traviata to the title role in Faust and Cavaradossi in Tosca.

Not colorblind

"Opera is not completely colorblind," Waters says, "just like our society is not completely colorblind. But I'm slightly optimistic. There is some cause for hope."

A case in point is Lawrence Brownlee, who just made his debut at the eminent Vienna State Opera in Rossini's The Barber of Seville and gave a sensational Kennedy Center recital in January.

He will be featured in a lesser-known Rossini work, Tancredi, with Washington Concert Opera on Sunday and is scheduled to make his Metropolitan Opera debut next season in Barber. His first recital CD, featuring songs by Italian composers, was recently released to critical accolades.

"There is nothing that says Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville must be white," says Brownlee, referring to the opera's leading tenor role. "A lot of characters are not defined by a race."

And yet, some black tenors say that race can still be a factor in casting, particularly for romantic roles that would pair them with white women.

"The black male-white female thing is trotted out all the time," says Kenneth Gayle, who will be performing with Opera Vivente, a chamber-size Baltimore company, beginning this Friday.

"The frustrating thing is that there is no way to know definitively if that's behind it," he says. "It's unlikely that someone is going to say it to my face."

Gayle, a Seattle native who has done notable work in two Opera Vivente productions since 2003, is back to sing the role of the Duke - another of those powerful and romantic characters - in Verdi's Rigoletto for the first time.

After Gayle sang the title role in an Opera Vivente production of Massenet's Werther opposite a white mezzo-soprano, company director John Bowen heard from a potential ticket buyer concerned that there might be an interracial couple in the next production as well.

"I was amazed to get that call," Bowen says. "But it was definitely an isolated case."

Marvin Scott, one of the Three Mo' Tenors performing today at Coppin State, believes race can still figure into casting decisions.

"It's easier for some people to see African-Americans as the villain or more comic characters, for whatever reason," the New York native, 32, says.

One of Scott's Three Mo' Tenors colleagues, Kenneth Alston, has not experienced a color barrier personally, "but I do know it exists," he says. "There are some tenors I know who are fabulous and who should certainly be at the forefront of classical-music arts."

Although George Shirley broke the racial barrier for lead tenors at the Metropolitan Opera in the early 1960s and enjoyed a distinguished career there for 12 seasons, only Vinson Cole has enjoyed comparable success in that house since.

"Vinson told me, 'Look, you just have to knock on doors. Some will not open, so you just knock on different doors,' " Brownlee says.

"And George told me, 'Show your worthiness. If you aren't fully prepared, it's easy for them to say all African-American singers are unprepared. You've got to change every preconception and misconception.' "

One of those attitudes is that singers have to fit exactly the character described in a libretto.

Unlike in decades past, when the vocal quality mattered more than anything, singers' weight or height can be held against them today. "Most opera companies don't want to hire anyone who doesn't look the part," Waters says.

But a singer's color can enter into it, too. "There are still people who don't want to hire a black soprano to sing Mimi [in La Boheme] or Butterfly," Waters says.

Brownlee brings up one more problem for Americans trying to compete in an arena where most of the standard repertoire is not in English.

"A lot of American singers, not just African-Americans, don't have any background in languages," the tenor says. "I went to Europe to study Italian. That was an investment I made in my career so people would have less reason not to hire me."

The tenors performing in the area this week are not dwelling on obstacles. They're heartened by the way their careers are developing and the responses they receive to their singing.

Gayle, 37, toured with the Three Mo' Tenors for a couple of years. "I remember young African-Americans coming up to me after the show and telling me they were most moved by the opera part," he says. "They had known nothing about opera before, but they seemed to take pride in seeing young African-American men singing this music that was supposed to be closed to black tenors."

Finding opportunities

Since being launched by Marion J. Caffrey in 2000 specifically to counteract the lack of exposure for tenors of color, the Three Mo' Tenors road show has provided valuable experience for several classically trained singers.

Six tenors are regularly on the roster, alternating performances. All of them can handle the most unusual aspect of the act: performances of seven or eight genres each night, from opera to hip-hop.

"I saw the show on PBS and was floored to see three black guys singing all types of music and singing it well," says Scott. "I've been a fan ever since."

He describes the multiple assignments in a Three Mo' Tenors concert as "definitely a workout."

"I would never do something like that in one night ordinarily," Scott says. "And I never thought I would someday be in love with singing 'Minnie the Moocher.' It would have probably been the furthest thing from my mind."

Shifting vocal gears from Handel to Broadway and beyond was relatively easy for New York-born Alston, 28, who became one Mo' Tenor in December. "As a former member of the Morgan State University Choir, it's no problem," he says. "We were always switching between styles in the choir."

Scott notes a side benefit to the Three Mo' Tenors. "What's healthy about a show like ours is that it exposes people to opera who otherwise would not be exposed," he says.

Not all opera singers see the effect of the group as entirely positive. "I could do that show easily," Brownlee says, "because my background is in gospel. But I think the show helps and hurts African-American singers.

"You can be a great singer, but if you sing everything, people will discount the classical because the gospel is so good. You risk becoming a jack of all trades and master of none."

Brownlee, who started singing in his father's church choir in Youngstown, Ohio, resisted mastering his trade at first.

"A gentleman approached me and my father after a performance one time and said I had a voice for classical music," Brownlee, 33, says. "I said, 'Are you kidding? I don't even like this kind of music.' "

But eventually, Brownlee found himself on an operatic path that led toward the realm of bel canto, the 19th-century genre of Italian opera associated with Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, ideally suited to his light, bright tone and technical agility.

"When I finally got to studying it, I thought, wow, there is plenty of great stuff. And fewer singers can do this."

Brownlee, who made his professional debut in 2002, has sung in major theaters and with major orchestras (he made his Baltimore Symphony Orchestra debut in December in Handel's Messiah).

Alston, who sings as both a tenor and countertenor, is considering a diverse career goal: "To become the male Audra McDonald [the Tony Award-winning, classically trained singer], someone who is comfortable in the classical world and the Broadway world, someone who will have people saying, 'He really put his spin on that.' "

Gayle has decided to concentrate on operatic work, building on a resume that includes work with the Seattle Opera, Opera Idaho and other companies. He also has developed a one-man show that incorporates musical settings of poetry by Langston Hughes.

As for Scott, "I've always been a fan of doing lots of different things," he says. "But an opera singer is what I am."

The tenor has won several voice competitions and appeared in a concert version of Carmen Jones conducted by Placido Domingo at the Kennedy Center. He plans to concentrate mostly on bel canto repertoire, as well as some lyric roles in Verdi and Puccini operas.

Waters, who is also artistic adviser and conductor of Houston Ebony Opera, a company founded to develop black artists (Gayle among them), believes black tenors - and other singers of color - can be fully competitive.

"We just have to get more of them into apprentice programs and then move more of them into the mainstream," he says. "If more young African-American singers see ... more people like themselves up there on stage, they will feel more encouraged to pursue [a career]."

Brownlee's remarkable success - in the span of just four years - should serve as a particularly potent example.

"I'm very proud of who I am," the tenor says. "I want to be seen as a singer who just happens to be an African-American. And I just want to continue to improve and grow as an artist."

Posted: 3/29/06

Source: The Baltimore Sun

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