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By Robert Wilder Blue

Dawn Upshaw

Mme. Nancy Storace Fischer would probably have been at a loss for words if asked about her commitment to new music. As the original Susanna in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro she knew only new music. In fact it would have been rare in the 18th and 19th centuries to call attention to a singer's commitment to new music; new music was about the only music performed. Yet such is the state of classical music and opera today (and the institutions dedicated to them) that American soprano Dawn Upshaw stands out for performing the music of her time. To be fair, while unique, she is not alone. Many singers of her generation find expressing the truths of the human condition today as important and fulfilling as retelling the great stories of the past. A typical year in the life of Dawn Upshaw (in this case December 1999 to December 2000) found her doing three challenging world premieres: John Harbison's The Great Gatsby at the Metropolitan Opera, Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin (Love From Afar) at the Salzburg Festival and John Adams's El Niño at the Châtelet Theater in Paris.

That Ms. Upshaw performs at a level of artistry surpassed by none and matched by few has made her a bit of an icon, a role model even. She has cultivated creative relationships with some of today's most interesting artists and manages to forge a career that accommodates all her interests: opera, song and popular music. Where did this artist's journey begin?

The Upshaw Family Singers

Dawn Upshaw was born in Nashville, Tennessee and raised in Park Forest, Illinois. As a child, she performed with her family, The Upshaw Family Singers. "My parents were very involved in the community andhttp://fatebydestiny.com neighborhood politics and the civil rights movement. They were also great lovers of music, and of course music with a message meant a lot to them. They had sung in small groups in college and my father played guitar. They had this idea of the four of us - the two of them, my sister and me - performing folk music for grade school children. We went to public schools and did these programs, which were partly interactive with the audience, but were primarily performances either by my sister and myself alone or all four of us. Most of the music came from the world of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and singers like that. In high school I took private voice lessons at the suggestion of my choral director, so I was singing a few art songs my junior and senior years, but I was not really involved in classical music until I went to college. I ended up bringing classical music into the house when I came home from college. My parents have been wonderfully open to my experiences and have allowed them to kind of melt into their own experiences."

Like many American singers, Ms. Upshaw didn't set out to be an opera singer. She discovered classical music as an undergraduate at Illinois Wesleyan University. "When I was looking at colleges I was interested in music theater programs at first but ultimately I decided to get a music degree and take acting classes on the side. I wanted to get really good musical training. Of course I had to take music history classes and I began hearing music I had never heard before. It opened up a whole new sound world to me and I wanted to get into it. I remember the first time I heard [Schubert's] Erlkönig I thought, 'Oh my God, I didn't know this kind of story-telling and expression were possible.' I had the same reaction when I heard George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children for the first time. So it wasn't as I though I decided I wasn't meant for the popular music or music theater worlds any longer; it was just opening another door that led to an extraordinary new room.

"I don't believe there was always this separation of popular versus classics. Am I wrong? Many, many older composers - Mozart and Beethoven and so on - had their own experiences with popular music; it was more a part of their background than we realize. Popular music often provided inspiration for classical composers. I think the separation between the two is more defined in this country because we don't have a classical tradition that everybody's grown up with as the Europeans have. So it's become more the elite - the cities that can afford to have a symphony and an opera company and the people who can afford to go to concerts - who are hearing classical music. We're not getting it in the schools and it's hardly even on the radio any more, so classical music is not the typical experience here. It becomes rarer and rarer for it to be passed down from generation to generation, so the separation between classical and popular music becomes greater and greater. The longer we continue having this gap the more that we'll all suffer for it."

The Great Gatsby

Mark Baker as Tom Buchanan, Susan Graham as Jordan Baker, Dawn Upshaw as Daisy Buchanan in the Metropolitan Opera's world premiere production of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby (1999). Photo by Winnie Klotz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera.

We asked Dawn if she had been immediately enthusiastic at the prospect of singing an opera based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby. "I found [the idea] intriguing. From my memories of having read the book in high school I thought it was an interesting idea, although I wondered how it would play out as an opera. I was only a little involved in the composition process with John, but certainly enough so that I became more and more excited as the work was being written. From the beginning, I felt that playing the role of Daisy was going to be a real challenge. Her personality seems pretty far from my own experience, yet I can imagine her experiences. I had seen the Robert Redford movie when it came out in the '70s, but I didn't want to see it again while I was working on the opera. I didn't want to see all the details, the interpretations, that might not seem quite as true to my own ideas or to my reading of the book. I wanted to keep it a purer experience. I enjoyed rereading the book (several times) in the process of preparing the part and I'm looking forward to doing it again.

"I think what I find most interesting in the character of Daisy (and challenging to portray at times) are the contradictions. She exudes a real flare for spontaneity, fun, flirting and risk-taking - but, at the same time, is quite cautious and even fearful. And then there is the sad fact that, though she is a very privileged woman who appears to 'have it all,' she of course ends up with nothing - perhaps it has always been a life lacking in true happiness or contentment - a life unknowingly in a constant search for more, never satisfied (this, of course, is not at all hard to find with people living today…). Yet, she is, I think, capable of giving and receiving true love with a pure heart, if she were brave enough to do so."

Do you like Daisy? "No, honestly, I don't like her very much and I suppose not liking the character can throw some curves into one's work. On the other hand, it really doesn't matter. It's not my place to judge her. I think I understand her and the decisions she makes, even though I may not like them. I think that's what is needed in preparing the part."

The characters are quite complicated compared with those in traditional opera. How do you bring forth Daisy's conflicts and desires, compared to a character such as Ilia in Idomeneo, for example. "Ilia can be pretty complicated, but I understand what you mean. How do you bring anything forth when you're working on a dramatic part of an opera character? It has to do with understanding the decisions your character makes, the progression of events and her reaction to everything that's going on. I think John has caught Daisy's rather complicated persona in the way he set the music, so that helps a great deal. Maybe you don't end up liking Daisy so much though. But I still want to live with her for awhile. I don't know if we'll end up thinking of Daisy as a great operatic heroine or character."

Are there any heroes or heroines here? "I think Gatsby is, in a sense. There's something about the loyalty and the intensity and the devotion we see from him and I think he ends up looking heroic in the end, in spite of all his faults."

Is this one of the great American operas we are all waiting for? "I don't like to ask that question. I don't really know what purpose there is in asking that. This piece hasn't lived long enough to know. It's very gratifying to sing. I've known John long enough and I feel he knows a lot about writing for voices. He writes beautiful lines that are great fun to sing. I guess I'm feeling like a sponge still at this point, absorbing as much as I can about the piece. The life of this piece has just begun and even though I've performed it I still don't feel I know it really well. I'm not so sure of absolutely everything I think about it. I'm still learning about it and the piece itself is evolving. My God, a piece grows and changes over time.

"You know, it got so much hype beforehand and I was sad about that. I wished it had just been let alone to live however it was going to live. I feel like everybody wanted so much to categorize it, to know exactly what to expect, and to make a decision about it right away. Did they like it or did they not like it? I would rather not think of it that way."

El Niño

John Adams' El Niño is a modern-day interpretation of the Christian Nativity. Adam's long-time collaborator Peter Sellars directed the world premiere production; Kent Nagano conducted and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Willard White also participated. After seeing it in San Francisco a month after the world premiere, we wondered if El Niño were really an opera disguised as an oratorio.

"Maybe it's an opera/oratorio. I'll leave it to Peter and John to label it. It's not an opera in the sense that there are characters that develop throughout the piece. But it tells a story and it certainly is dramatic. Whatever it is I think it's very effective. It was a phenomenal experience for me. There was something about the combination of John's music and the text that really struck a chord with my spirit. It's a piece that deals very directly with beliefs and the soul and spirit. It was less of an interpretive challenge than Daisy. There were fewer questions, fewer unknowns in my experience of connecting to the text. And it was also my first major collaboration with John and that was a great pleasure.

"Of course working with Peter Sellars is always a moving and often life-changing experience for me. Usually Peter knows the piece better than anybody else does in the room. He's incredibly musical. He approaches everything he does with such respect. Other people will say that's not true, 'I've seen his Mozart operas!' But I really believe he comes to his work with deep respect and a strong commitment to go in the direction he has chosen as honestly as possible. He comes very well prepared, but he is also open to working with the others who are involved. He truly believes in shaping pieces and interpreting roles based on where these people are at any given moment, what they're going through in life. He's interested in getting to know them. I never feel like Peter thinks anything is ever a finished product. It's a process that is always living and changing. That is the great joy about live performance - this capacity for spontaneity. Peter creates an environment that allows spontaneity and at the same time has enough definition to paint a clear picture of his vision. Perhaps some of the big gestures in Peter's work seem so abrupt to the public they can't allow themselves to see the finer or subtler elements within. They're shocked by something and then their vision is blocked. But, it's baffling to me why there is such strong resistance to his work. On the other hand, I think some of the greatest work in the arts has received very polar reactions. Maybe this is a good sign."

Hardly an interview or feature article about Dawn Upshaw fails to mention that she is a maverick in the music business. We asked her if she had planned that sort of career from the start. "To the contrary, I kind of let things unfold as they went along. Collaboration has always been important to me and finding collaborators I felt at home with, people I could be myself with, has been very important to me. Peter, for instance, has led me in one direction. My relationship with Nonesuch records has made it possible to go in different directions. Jimmy [James] Levine is completely different, but he's someone who has been a very important collaborator and mentor. This relationship has led me in a very different direction.

"My appreciation for Jan de Gaetani, my love for the kind of music-making that she did and the way that she spoke about music with me led me to think about music differently and to see my own place in the world of performing differently. That kind of led me down another path. And then my experience growing up with popular and folk music sends me in a different direction. Perhaps I have come across people along the way who would have liked me to have chosen fewer paths to investigate, but I never felt a lot of pressure about it. I remember singing for Alec Treuhaft and Joyce Arbib at CAMI (Columbia Artists Management, Inc.) to see if they would be interested in taking me on. We sat down together and I told them clearly the kinds of things I wanted to do. I'm not with CAMI any longer; both Alec and I are with IMG now. I don't think that's so much the case for a lot of young singers now though. I count my blessings because I think I did have pretty good idea about what I wanted to try to do. I knew I wanted to sing music by living composers and I wanted to sing more opera (at that time I didn't have much experience with opera) and I knew I wanted to do song recitals. That was probably at the top of the list. I'm not really conscious of forging any particular path, but I am conscious that I tried to take care of myself and my own interests and desires. At times I turned down things that others thought I should have taken - things that would have been more mainstream."

Are there other American opera roles you want to sing? "I actually was asked to do Pat Nixon but it didn't work out on my calendar. Having seen it on television and having seen bits of it in London recently when ENO did it recently, I'm not sure I'm right for that part. I've recorded an aria from Nixon in China I think it's fine to take arias out of these operas so the public can hear these pieces. One doesn't necessarily need to be able to do the entire role. I don't think that I would do Pat Nixon as well as some of my colleagues, just in terms of temperament onstage.

"I'm not really in a position to ask a company to mount an opera just because there's a role I want to do. Yes, sometimes my managers say to a company that I would like to do something if it is at all possible, but that's rare. I don't think there are roles in the operatic repertoire that I'm really yearning for that I'm not already doing."

Do you have a positive outlook for the future of American opera and classical music performance in general in the U.S.? "Oh, I think so. I don't even know really how to answer questions like that because I feel like I'm not able to see from up high enough, to observe the whole. I'm too much inside. But yes, I definitely think there's a place in a life for American opera. It will be interesting to see what happens next, for instance, with the record company situation and what we learn from that and how we respond to it. I think it was bound to happen and, in that sense, maybe it will be good for us to work through this and see what the other side is. Maybe it will lead to a more open and broader appreciation of all kinds of music and of live performances."

Dawn links
http://www.salonmag.com/bc/1999/03/30bc.html
http://www.princeton.edu/~alanho/Dawn/

More on F. Scott
http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fsfitzg.htm
http://members.aol.com/balm120623/page2/

Fitzgerald chat
http://www.killdevilhill.com/fitzgeraldchat/wwwboard.html

Gatsby, the Novel
http://gatsby.cjb.net/
http://www.geocities.com/andrew_dilling/
http://www.homework-online.com/tgg/index.asp
http://books.mirror.org/gb.fitzgerald-fscott.html

Gatsby, the Movies
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/1104/movies.html

Zelda, the Musical
http://www.zeldafitzgerald.com/default.asp

El Niño: The View from the Chorus
http://www.nehrlich.com/chorus/elnino.html

See also interviews with Jerry Hadley, John Harbison and Mark Lamos.