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denycegraves.com
The 21st Century Diva

By Robert Wilder Blue

Denyce Graves

Washington, D.C. is two cities. There’s the well known one of American mythology (Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Richard Nixon, The West Wing, the war on terrorism) where our nation’s governing bodies do their sometimes noble work and there’s the other those in the governing class would prefer we didn’t see – the mostly poor, depressed, crime-ridden Washington known to the majority of its full-time residents. Denyce Graves grew up in the latter place. Her mother raised the three Graves children alone and was determined to keep them out of trouble. She balanced strict discipline with armloads of love and taught them lessons of dignity and hard work. A 1995 People feature reported that Mrs. Graves “forbade popular music and certain TV shows that she considered demeaning to African-Americans.”

Denyce’s voice rang out in school and in the local Baptist church and was recognized early as distinctive. A teacher gave her a recording that included Marilyn Horne’s rendition of Santuzza’s aria from Cavalleria Rusticana, which Denyce wore out playing repeatedly and which sparked the desire to become a singer. She attended Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory and was a member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio. It was there that she sang her first Carmen, the role that opened the door for her to the world’s most famous opera houses. In a little more a decade she has become one of opera’s most glamorous divas and is coming close to being a household name owing to her television appearances after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

When USOPERAWEB decided to take on the subject of race in opera, Denyce was one of the first people we thought of and one of the first to agree to participate. It took little coaxing to get her to open up on the subject of race and discrimination, but it is not a position of bitterness she speaks from. “I make a conscious choice to have a positive and healthy attitude. There are a lot of people controlling the whole thing and making the decisions. If you want to talk about racism, of course it exists in the world, because people are human beings. ‘Racist’ is a difficult word for me, but I think we all have prejudices. I had a photo shoot recently and the makeup artist was talking about my husband and said to me, ‘You know, he’s so Jewish.’ I asked her what she meant. ‘Well you know how Jewish guys are….’ And I said, ‘I don’t know and I’m serious. I want to know what that means for you.’ She said, ‘He’s very sensitive, you know how Jewish guys are.’ And I said, “I don’t know, I can’t tell a Jewish person from anybody else.’ When a Jewish person walks in the room, you don’t know because he or she is still Caucasian. When I walk through the door, I’m a black woman; there’s no mistake about that. That’s the first thing you see; that’s who I am.

“When I did my debut with Philadelphia Opera Company I remember speaking with the conductor who was telling me how it was he decided to choose me for the engagement. He told me they got a call from someone in the business – very powerful, who shall remain nameless – who said, ‘If you don’t have a problem with black artists, you might want to hear Denyce Graves.’ I remember being so shocked by that statement and thinking, ‘Oh, that’s what you guys talk about. If you don’t have a problem with it, here’s someone you may want to consider.’ He told me this over dinner in passing without giving it any thought, any attention to that detail as I just did and I thought, gee, they must talk about this all the time; there must be this sort of openness.

“But I really am of the belief system that you work as hard as you can and make it impossible for them to say no. I had an experience some years ago where I was supposed to do a Giulietta in The Tales of Hoffmann but hadn’t received the contract yet. I spoke to my manager who told me there were ‘some problems.’ The conductor wanted me but the designer didn’t want a black Giulietta. I told him, ‘Just get the contract. Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay.’ I arrived at that engagement and I was so nervous. The night before the director was supposed to arrive, I couldn’t sleep. My stomach was in knots because I knew he didn’t want me there. I got up early the next morning and put on my prettiest dress and did my hair and made sure I looked hot. I arrived at the theater and warmed up because I wanted to sing every rehearsal in full voice; I just didn’t want there to be any excuses.

“Well, he didn’t even shake my hand at the first rehearsal. He wouldn’t acknowledge me and it was very clear to me how he felt. Every day I would show up for the rehearsal dressed well, vocally warmed up, ready to tackle what was in front of us, always asking his opinion about things and even showing up at rehearsals where I wasn’t called, to show this man I was invested in this project. And slowly one day he started to turn his head in my direction. I would ask him if we could work on my scene and what I could do to make it better. I was always requiring his attention. Finally, he started to smile at me and he started to touch me a little bit and say, ‘Denyce, that was great today.’

Denyce Graves as Nicklausse in The Tales of Hoffmann. Photo by Carol Pratt for The Washington Opera.

“At the end of that engagement there was a rumor going around that we were having an affair! [She laughs.] It was not true, but I was so proud of that whole experience, because it was not through anger or protesting or jumping up and down and screaming that a change was brought about. It was through showing this person that even though I wasn’t the picture he had in mind when he was sitting in his studio designing his show, it could turn out to be much more than he imagined. At the end, he offered me another engagement, which I wasn’t able to accept. But I thought, ‘Denyce, now you did something important.’ Because whether it was racism or not on his part – I don’t know, I don’t know his heart – when he was designing his production, I don’t think a black face came into his mind. It could have been as innocent as that. But the music and the work ethic transcended color and I think that’s what the theater is all about.

“When singers are hired for engagements we also have expectations. If you’re going to do a new production of Samson and Dalilah and you arrive to see that you’ve got a four-foot-eleven, 300-pound Samson, that doesn’t exactly go with your ideas for the production. And so everybody has preconceived ideas about what they want their production to be.

“I’ve had some general directors speak with me very candidly about what they envision for their productions. One very well known person at an international house whom we all know – I don’t know why I try to protect them when they don’t have the same consideration… Well, anyway, I don’t care – it was Ioan Hollaender at the Vienna Staatsoper. I went there to sing Carmen and we had a huge success. He invited me to lunch the next day and I was so thrilled about this. ‘Look at me, I’m this little gal from southeast Washington and here I am in Vienna going to lunch with Herr Maestro Hollaender from the Staatsoper!’ Well, at one point he thanked me and said they would love to have me there again as Carmen. And I said, ‘Well, I sing other things besides Carmen.’ He responded that there were a lot of things they would never consider me for, such as Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, because it would be completely unbelievable to have a black Dorabella if you’re supposed to be the sister of Fiordiligi. And I said, ‘Fiordiligi could be adopted.’ I mean, I tried to make light of the situation. I understood what he was saying, but I just tried to turn the situation into a positive one for myself and to hold my own ground next to this man. But he said there were a lot of people that wouldn’t accept it. I told him, ‘It’s your opera house and you certainly have the right to do whatever you want to do, but you’re telling people what to accept.’ I don’t ever want to be in a position where I have to defend my blackness. I am who I am and I’m as committed and as passionate as anybody is in this business. My career is riding on my talent and passion and investment in myself as an artist. The audience is sophisticated and I think they come to the theatre because they enjoy that art form. I know it’s an issue for some people, but it’s certainly not an issue for me.

“I’m so careful when I speak about this because I don’t want it to come from a perspective of negativity or any position of lacking or ‘less than.’ It was important for me to say that to him. ‘In my world, through my lens, you’re the odd one. You are as foreign to me as I am to you. I’m here as an artist.’ Period.

“I always say that someone can open the door, but it’s your job to make sure you stay in the room. Once an opportunity is presented, the responsibility is yours. I can only speak from my own experience; everybody’s path is different. I recognize that there are stages even before that one and that’s where perhaps a lot of the African-American men are still waiting to be heard or waiting to get representation. I’ve spoken with some managers very frankly who have said they cannot sell a black tenor. I’m sure that’s very real, I’m sure that someone who is absolutely inside of the business and speaking with the powers-that-be on a daily basis is privy to much more information than we are.

There are lots of wonderful African-American singers we will never hear of and so perhaps we’ll never know some of the greatest voices.

“A friend of mine, an African-American tenor with a beautiful voice, would have a whole different take on all of this. He’s very angry and has felt wronged because he is so in love with music making and with opera and classical music, and has spent his life and money developing his art and has never been given an opportunity. So that’s been very difficult, because he is as committed to it as anybody. I say to him all the time, ‘Sweetheart, if you want to sing, there’s nobody preventing you from singing. If you want to have an international career and make lots of money, that’s another agenda. But if you want to sing, because it does your soul good or because that’s what you have to do, you can do it. There’s no one stopping you from doing that. When we were students in college, we used to hold recitals at our house for our friends. We used to light a couple of candles, put them around and sing through our recital repertoire. There’s nothing stopping you from doing that. But I understand what I’m saying. He says, ‘Yeah, Denyce, that’s easy for you to say as you stand from your position.’ But I wasn’t always here; I struggled like everybody else did and I still struggle. The stakes are higher and the risk is greater now. No, my experience wasn’t yours, but it was real, it was lived, it was felt just as much as anyone else’s has been. Warehousing the anger only hurts me.

“Another friend who is an African-American tenor in his 40s was at an audition recently and when they asked for the sixth aria he said to them, ‘I’m more than happy to sing another aria for you, but if you haven’t seen anything you need in the first five arias, I don’t know whether this sixth aria is going to give you what you want.

“So, when you speak about race, things are not as they used to be. Racism exists – that’s for sure – but it’s not as blatant. It’s very subtle. It’s not spoken of by the people within the industry. It may just be a silent awareness. I appreciated Hollaender; I liked him and even respected him for what he said. At least I knew who I was dealing with. It wasn’t someone in a suit who smiles at you but you don’t know what he’s saying behind your back. Incidentally, just a little addendum to that, I was called years later to do Dorabella at the Staatsoper. I sent a telegram saying that I would so love to do it but I was not able to. I don’t know if he remembered that conversation we had, but I thought it was funny.

“I think a lot of people don’t want to deal with racism because this business is relying on the generous donations of patrons and benefactors. If Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So are giving a couple of million dollars to the Met, they want to have a say in the production and who sings in it. I sit on the Board of Directors for the Wolf Trap Opera Company and Festival and I hear some of the things people who are making large donations want. If they’re giving millions of dollars, they want to see this or that certain person. The opera companies have to look at who’s giving the money and who’s buying the tickets. I’m not trying to defend them; I’m just saying that I give them the benefit of the doubt that it could be more complicated than it seems. At the same time, the art has to come first.

“There are some people who still feel uncomfortable seeing a black man make love to a white woman on the stage. Let’s just tell the truth. I know that as a black woman I’m less of a threat. I can be the exotic one. I saw on the television one of those Intimate Portraits of the supermodel Tyra Banks. She was talking about the resistance she had in that world, even from some of the black models. Naomi Campbell was making such a big success and Tyra came along and was a threat to her. I understand that as well. But that’s all just residue – the result of slavery. Everybody wants to feel valuable and be important and finally one person arrives and God knows what it took to get to that point and then here comes someone else threatening that. But people deal with that on all levels. Look at what actresses face. You finally get offered a choice part and then behind you are two hundred more beautiful, younger actresses that the producers can choose from. I think everybody’s dealing with some type of prejudice – you’re too short, you’re not thin enough, whatever. I don’t think anybody walks through the life experience unscathed. We’re all dealing with our own issues and our own problems.

“People see something different and it doesn’t quite feel right. How can there be a black Romeo? It feels unnatural, because the whole of our lives, a million times a day, we’ve been told that this is how it’s supposed to be. So many of the interviews refer to me as ‘the African-American mezzo-soprano.’ That’s who they see. You never hear them say ‘the Caucasian mezzo-soprano.’ If you asked someone to describe who God is they’ll describe a white person. How many beautiful love stories have you seen on television or in movies with African-American people? Of course black people fall in love like everybody else does but that’s not the picture you see. We’re talking about conditioning.

“That’s why The Cosby Show was so revolutionary, because finally they showed a beautiful black family where the father wasn’t gone or on drugs, which is the picture we have all come to expect. A girlfriend said to me once, ‘You know, Denyce, I’m sorry, but if I’m walking outside at night and I see a group of black guys coming, I’m going to cross the street.’ And I said ‘I’m gonna cross the street, too.’ What’s so dangerous is that the conditioning has not just happened to white people; it’s happened to all of us. We’ve all been brought up with these same images from every possible medium: television, radio, movies, billboards. Who’s Santa Claus? When we started throwing Christmas at our house I wanted to hire a Santa Claus to come and I insisted on a black Santa Claus because I didn’t want my nieces and nephews to think that good things only came from the white people. It’s important that they see that.

“I took my niece shopping the other day and she wanted a Barbie doll, but she wanted the white one, not the black one. I said, ‘Sweetheart, but she’s beautiful, look at her.’ And she said, ‘No, I want this one.’ Why is that? Because we have been conditioned to believe that one is better than the other and whether people choose to acknowledge that or not, that’s true. We all hold some belief of that and you have to work really hard to go against that.

“I’m not proud to say this, but I’ll say it to you, anyhow. I considered for a long time having my nose changed, having plastic surgery. I saw pictures and I thought my nose was too broad. Why? Because I’d adopted the belief that something was wrong with this nose. It had to look another way in order to be beautiful. I had accepted that conditioning. Through the whole of my life, that picture has been in front of me that this is what I have to aspire to and somehow I looked at myself with self-hatred. We start these assaults on ourselves in the mirror – everybody does. My tush is too large and I need to do this and I need to do that, because we have adopted these ideas.

“I got trapped one time in Vienna with no makeup. Can I tell you what that was like? Just try to go into a store and just get blush or foundation. Forget it. And pantyhose – what’s ‘nude?’ What’s ‘flesh tone?’ Whose flesh? The world was not set up with any consideration for us, not in America or in Europe. When they do tests on shampoo whose hair are they talking about? ‘It’ll make it silky.’ They’re not talking about my hair.

“So when you spend a lifetime having to know that, you adjust. I was talking to a girlfriend of mine in the business who is a lesbian. I find this sometimes with homosexuals, they say they understand so well what it’s like to be black because they’re discriminated against too. I said to her, ‘Honey, when you walk into a room, nobody knows you’re a lesbian. I know what you’re saying and I appreciate where you’re coming from, but nobody knows that.’ And she said, ‘But people stare at me and I’m just so tired of it. Don’t you get tired of that?’ I said, ‘I actually like it.’ I’ve learned to like being looked at. Yeah, they stare. When I’m in Europe walking down the street, everybody’s looking at me. When I go through passport control, they stop me every time and let my husband go on. ‘Why are you here? What are you doing here?’ I tell them I’m an opera singer. This one guy started laughing and said, ‘That’s a good one. I never heard that one before.’ He said to me, ‘Name three operas.’ I said, ‘Darling, if I named three operas, you wouldn’t know them.’ Name three operas and then I can come into the country? I’ve learned to go with it and even to enjoy it. That’s why I loved when RuPaul went dressed in full drag down the middle of Main Avenue in Forsythe County. Okay, he had the National Guard with him. [She laughs.] Whatever.

“My husband tells me not to take on the sorrows of the world, it’ll only make me wretched. So I do what I can do from my perspective. I insist that they give tickets to inner city and underprivileged kids for all of my concerts and if they don’t do it I buy the tickets myself. And I don’t say that to impress you. I say that because it impresses me, because I know who I am, I know where I came from and I know it is not available to everybody for a number of reasons. I know that I am an inspiration to young black people just because I’m black and doing something that’s not hip-hop or R&B or what they expected. I recognize the responsibility in that.”

We asked Denyce if she had seen Carmen: A Hip Hopera on MTV. “Of course I saw it. Everybody I know left me messages and people sent me tapes. I had a friend that was a writer on that. He called me some years ago and told me he was working on it with Robert Townsend and wanted to talk to me about it. I told him he should probably get the novel. He said, ‘The novel? There’s a book?’ Yeah, I watched it. What do you want me say? It was what it was. It was different. I told myself not to be critical, just to watch it. I’m not sure that it advanced the industry or brought any awareness to people. I would hope that it did on some level. But I’m biased; I want everybody to know about this incredible art form because I adore it and I think it’s misunderstood and underexposed. But I thought it was cute. It got great reviews and it was so well received and so original. On some level, I was proud. It proves what a masterpiece it is because it has been done in every single medium: the play, the book, the opera, ballet, flamenco, the ice skating version, the hip-hop version. But I didn’t love it.

“It’s the same thing when some of these big sensations came along like Bocelli and the little girl, Charlotte Church, and now this guy Russell Watson. People say it’s great for the whole of the industry. I don’t think so, if they’re not presenting a true picture of what it is. The Three Tenors was great for the industry because that brought real legitimate singers into everybody’s home.”

Many black singers have avoided performing Porgy and Bess for fear of being type-cast. (Leontyne Price once said that when the boat left Catfish Row she never looked back.) Others have complained of the limitations of being seen only as the Ethiopian slave Aïda, the predator Dalila or the oversexed cigarette girl Carmen. Ms. Graves has performed Carmen probably more than any other singer working today. “I remember once I was on a flight with Simon Estes going to do an engagement and we were talking about the business. At the time I was in the throes of lots of Carmen invitations and he said, ‘Well, Denyce, yeah, they’ll let you do Carmen.’ I remember being really shocked by that statement. I could feel the bitterness in it. I’d never thought of that before and I was sorry that he mentioned it, because I didn’t see it that way. But a lot of times people speak from their own wounds and experiences. I was so happy to be working and to be in a position where things were really happening that I didn’t want to hear, ‘yeah, well, they’ll allow you to do this.’ Since that time, I’ve heard that quite a lot. It’s legitimate. Some of those artists came along at a very different climate, but it’s just not a part of my reality. I choose for it not to be. I could look at many things and say, oh, this is unfair, or whatever. Come on, I just want to have a great life and enjoy living.

“I’m grateful and happy that I’m at the stage in my career where I’m having the opportunity to do a lot of my dream roles: Leonora in Favorita , Nicklausse in Hoffmann, and Périchole and Judith in Bluebeard’s Castle. I feel that whatever happens for me is supposed to happen. I really see it all from a point of gratitude. I’ve not felt trapped by Carmen or Dalilah. Carmen is one of the choice mezzo roles and there’s not a mezzo around that hasn’t wished to portray that character. It’s one of the great saucy, sassy women and it’s a terrific opera! People are going to come to Carmen no matter who’s singing it because they know the story and love the melodies. I feel fortunate to sing such a great role.

“You know, Leontyne Price came along at a very different time and had so much in front of her – death threats and all kinds of crazy things. Marian Anderson was 60-something when she made her Met debut. She was already internationally known. And even before her, there was Sissieretta Jones and all those others who had concert careers long before Marian Anderson, but who were not allowed to have operatic careers. I treasure the women who came before me. I’ve sat in some of their homes and told them I loved them and thanked them just for being who they were. I didn’t require anything else from them. They did what they wanted to do, what they were driven to do, and that encouraged me just by knowing that they were there.”

What’s Denyce’s prognosis for the future? “This is such a high-risk business. We’re darting all over the place from engagement to engagement and I’m convinced they pay you for what that costs you – your body and your mind. One day you’re in South America and the next you’re in Alaska and you’re trying to keep your instrument healthy under all of those crazy conditions. That’s what the challenge is, that’s what technique is all about, that’s what all those years in the conservatory are preparing you for – this lifestyle that is ahead of you.

“There’s no one – and I say it all the time – there’s no one in this business who doesn’t deserve to be here. This is not something that anybody can just do. It takes years of training and discipline. This is not like Hollywood, where you can be beautiful and a size two and get breast implants and sculpt yourself to fit somebody’s idea. You have to have talent and ability. I’m really celebrating being here and I refuse to see it any other way. I’m coming from a real place of gratitude that I’m able to live out what has been a dream of mine. I refuse to make it ugly or dirty by saying, oh, yeah, well, they’ll allow me to be that. I can’t do that.

“I’m still going to live my life and I’m still going to sing, whether they hire me to do it or not, because that’s what I’m supposed to do. That’s the thing that makes me feel closest to God. It’s the time that I feel the most whole, when I have the most love in my heart. Whether or not they extend an invitation to me is not going to affect how I live my life. I’m grateful to be able to do it and to be in this position. I know that this opportunity is not afforded to everyone.”