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By Robert Wilder Blue

Things are happening pretty fast these days for Anthony Dean Griffey. Less than five years ago he was unknown to most operagoers. But within a very short span of time he has triumphed at the Met as Sam in Susannah and in the title role of Peter Grimes, in San Francisco as Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire, and at Glimmerglass and New York City Opera as Lennie in Of Mice and Men. Those fortunate to have seen his performances have heard a clear-toned, beautifully expressive voice emanating from a performer who inhabits his roles in a completely natural and believable manner.

"I like to think of myself as a singer/actor. I can't just stand and sing. I love doing recitals and concerts also, but I am not a deadpan singer. Acting is a part of it. Patrick Stewart and Charles Nelson Reilly came to A Streetcar Named Desire and they both gave me wonderful compliments: they told me that if I ever wanted to act I should go to Hollywood. Well, I don't think I'm of that caliber but those were very nice compliments and I think they were very sincere. Patrick Stewart talked to me a long time about my acting style. I took acting classes at Juilliard but I guess it is natural for me to take it from a realistic emotional approach. I enjoy the acting aspect of opera. I think that what comes through in my performances is a certain honesty."

Mr. Griffey grew up in High Point, North Carolina, known as the furniture capital of the world. He started singing in church at the age of five. "Singing was my saving grace you could say. I was really very shy so it was an outlet for me; it provided an opportunity to be someone else. It still is somewhat like that for me.

"I had started playing the trombone in the sixth grade and played through junior high and high school. We weren't allowed to be in both the band and the chorus, but during my junior year I really wanted to sing so I sang in the show choir during my lunch period. I had auditioned for several things in the community theater but being a heavy person - I was both tall and heavy as a child - I never got into anything. It was kind of a select group of kids and my parents did not contribute to the theater. But I kept plugging along and didn't give up. I sang in the North Carolina Honors Choir and that really got me thinking about majoring in music in college. At that time I was active in my church and I thought my true calling was in church music, so I went to Wingate University in North Carolina and got my degree in church music. I planned to go to seminary to get a master's degree and become a minister of music.

But I really loved performing and I entered the National Association of Teachers of Singing voice competition and won. One of the judges was from the Eastman School of Music and suggested I audition for them. I didn't think I would get in, but I sent an audition tape and on the basis of that was selected to audition in person at a regional audition in Greensboro, N.C., and I got into the school. I had never even been to Eastman before I arrived for classes. It was a bit of a culture shock coming from a very small music school; there had been only fifteen or twenty music majors at Wingate. But Eastman was a great experience for me.

"Even though I really wanted to perform I still wasn't thinking in that direction. I was planning on finishing at Eastman and getting a teaching position at a small college. But I had met Rita Shane and she encouraged me to go to New York to pursue singing. I was hesitant because I didn't want to come to New York and flounder and wait tables. I was not that kind of bohemian person. I really needed to be settled in something. But I had always dreamed of going to Juilliard and so I came to New York to sing for Beverley Johnson and she told me I should come to New York and go through Juilliard for financial reasons so I didn't have to work. She had seen a lot of singers come to New York and try to work while they pursued studying and have a difficult time of it.

"During my first year with Ms. Johnson she really vocalized me to even out my voice and give me some technique. She was a very strong technician and musician. At the end of that first year she wanted me to sing for the Met Young Artists Program which really blew my mind. My background was mainly in recitals at that point; I had very limited stage experience. But I did it. I sang first for Gail Robinson, who was in charge of the program at that time, and then for the rest of the Met staff and for Maestro Levine also. They advised me to finish the degree at Juilliard and concentrate on operatic repertory. A year later I came back to the Met and did a stage audition. They liked the improvement and invited me into the program. It was a bit of a shock because it happened so quickly, but it was a very good experience for me.

"I spent three years there. The other singers in the program were very nurturing. Christine Goerke, Stephanie Blythe and Nathan Gunn were in the program at the same time and we were all very supportive of each other. The first year I think I was trying to fit into the mold of what everyone expected me to be. I was listening to all these recordings of great tenors and it just wasn't happening for me. I realized that I was trying to parrot what they were doing and it wasn't working technically. So I stopped all that and told myself that I had to be me. Ms. Johnson told me the same thing. She told me I had the type of voice they would either love or hate, which was a scary realization. But in my second and third years in the program I found my niche. It has never been easy for me to do this, but I can't be a clone of the great singers before me. All the great singers have a certain signature to their voice. A lot of times you'll hear ten young tenors and they will all sound kind of like Luciano [Pavarotti] or Plácido [Domingo]. With my voice, you can hear it is Anthony Dean Griffey. You may not like it - and that's fine - but it's my voice. I'm not trying to sound like someone else.

"I think I feel the pressure more now to be a 'traditional' tenor and I am venturing deeper into the standard repertory. But if I were to die tomorrow, I think my obituary would say that I left some kind of mark on American and contemporary opera. I don't want to sound haughty or big-headed, but I don't know if some of my contemporaries who are doing the standard repertory could say they have made an impact on the opera world. Some would argue that I need to be doing more bread-and-butter repertory to prove that I can do it. But my repertory choices have given me a wonderful place in the opera world and it was important for me to find that. I sang the Mahler 8th Symphony last June in San Francisco with Michael Tilson Thomas and it went really well. That part requires a very dramatic voice at times and a more lyric voice at others. Some dramatic tenors can't sing it and some lyric tenors can't sing it. But I found that it fit my voice very well. I have been offered some Wagner roles but I have turned them down. After I sang Peter Grimes at Glyndebourne I was asked to sing Tristan and quickly said 'No.' I love doing American and English opera and I enjoy doing new pieces. I don't like to be compared with people from the past. With A Streetcar Named Desire I didn't get that comparison and that was a very good launching for me."

It was as Mitch in the world premiere of Andre Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire (1998) and on the subsequent telecast that Mr. Griffey stepped into the international spotlight. Lotfi Mansouri, San Francisco's (then) General Director, had dreamed of having Tennessee William's play made into an opera and had approached many different composers and librettists over the years. He finally convinced Previn to have a go at it. Philip Littell wrote the libretto; Previn conducted the premiere with Patrick Summers taking over in subsequent performances; Colin Graham created the production; Renée Fleming was Blanche DuBois, Elizabeth Futral and Rodney Gilfry played Stella and Stanley Kowalski, and Judith Forst was their neighbor Eunice Hubbell. The opera was the object of loud and divided criticism (both before and after its premiere), but everyone seemed to agree that Griffey was perfect for the role of Mitch, and for many his performance stole the show from the headliners.

"Renée had recommended me to San Francisco. She was also a student of Beverley Johnson's. I was doing Susannah in Vancouver and I came down to San Francisco to sing an audition. But I was given a lot of heat because of my size. When San Francisco called to offer me the part they said that they wanted me to drop as much weight as I could and then [director] Colin Graham would decide between Jay Hunter Morris and me for the premiere. I really felt I had something to communicate and share with the audience and it crushed me so much when I got that call. I am much more than my weight. I have something to share. I can move and dance better than a lot of people on stage. It's not about my weight. If it were making me so that I couldn't move so that I had to be planted on stage, then I could understand. No one wants to be overweight. I have fought this battle all my life and I continue to do so. I think because of video and television singers are coming up against this more and more, as much with men as with women. I've been told I wouldn't be hired for certain roles. I know actors can drop weight for a role, but singers cannot drop 60 pounds in six months' time and still sing well.

"I took to Andre's music and to the character immediately. He definitely wanted me to do the premiere and I worked closely with him on the music. Colin Graham is a very visually oriented director. He didn't think I looked sexy or to his liking. Some directors are like that; they don't care so much about how you sing, they want you to look great on stage. I like Colin a lot and I addressed him on this issue and I won him over in the end. In the play it says Mitch is 6'1" and weighs 205 pounds or something like that, so we had to change the words in the opera.

"It was a really great experience for me, one of the highlights of my career so far. I love singing in San Francisco, it is one of my favorite places to sing. I think the world of Elizabeth Futral and Renée and Rodney and Judy Forst; we all worked so well together. I think that Streetcar may work better in a smaller space, though, where you can see the singers closer. A lot of the facial expressions get lost in a bigger theater. It worked very well on television and video. I will be doing a concert version in London with Andre, Renée and Rodney. Andre has made some changes since the premiere. When I did it in Pittsburgh he cut and condensed it a bit, to make it tighter. I think that if you have strong singer/actors it can work really well. I'm not patting myself on the back. I really believe in these pieces new pieces and I like doing them. I would love to see these pieces go into the standard repertory of the major opera houses. But with Streetcar you have to have a Blanche and Stella and Stanley who are good actors as well as good singers. It's not the sort of opera in which you can just stand and sing."

During the 1998-99 season Carlisle Floyd's two most popular operas, Susannah and Of Mice and Men, played prominently on Mr. Griffey's schedule. "To sing Susannah at the Met with Renée and having our teacher in the audience was really something for me, especially singing an opera that was so dear to my heart. Sam's aria ["It must make the good Lord sad"] was one of the first I ever learned and I think it is what got me into the Met program. It's such a little jewel of an aria and it has such an important message. I think the role can be tossed off and one can walk away from seeing the opera and forget about that character. But I really applied myself and tried to dig deep to think about where Sam was coming from and to make him more than just an alcoholic with no depth or no feelings. I tried not to make him so hard-nosed. He is really a depressed character in my opinion and he's full of emotions.

"I don't feel some of the singers I have seen do Sam have come from a real place; they have portrayed him as an angry alcoholic the entire evening and I don't really believe them. Sam has more dimensions than that. He is trying to be a father figure to Susannah. He has his fun side when he's square dancing with Susannah in the beginning. He is also sad at times, almost with a tear in his eye. But he has to be strong for her and he becomes extremely angry and upset when he hears what Olin Blitch did to her and he goes off to kill him. I've only done it twice - at Vancouver and at the Met - and I'll be doing it for my debut at Chicago Lyric next year.

"Susannah didn't work at the Met because the set was too small for the Met's stage. Personally I didn't like it at all. It looked like a high school production. It was built for another opera house and was kind of thrown together for the Met. I don't know if I should be saying that. But the critical reaction to those performances really hurt me because I love that opera. But I would go on the record as saying that the reason it didn't work was because of the set. The house didn't look real. It was a nice, yellow, picture-perfect house with a flower bed outside; it didn't look like they were poor at all. There should have been a new production made for the Met.

"I don't know why the Met hasn't done Of Mice and Men or Vanessa or any of the other great American operas. In the right production Of Mice and Men would fit at the Met; a barn is a big place after all. In the Bregenz production we had a big train so sure it could fit on the Met stage. James Levine said in his book that they had talked about doing Of Mice and Men. But City Opera is doing it again in two years and I'm scheduled to do it there again so that means that the Met would not want to do a new production.

"I think the Metropolitan Opera should lead the way in doing new American works. It's an American company. The problem is that the house is too big and things that work there are the big, sweeping operas not the pieces that are more about intimate drama. And many in the Met's audience are used to sitting back and not having to think or feel emotions. I think it's wonderful that they have commissioned American works and continue to do so. American opera houses must continue to do this for American opera to survive. I think it's important for American houses to remember they are American. We have a rich tradition of music and there are operas that deserve to be sung by the wonderful singer/actors we have. I still say there is this 'American snobbery' many have toward American opera/music. I have strong beliefs about that. I honestly believe that lots of people are dying to see the great American operas. There are people who have come to hear me who have not been to the opera a lot; their first experience is seeing an American opera and their response is, 'wow, I never thought opera was like this.' People who heard Streetcar who had never seen an opera before loved it because it was in English and they knew the story and they could understand it. I think these are great first operas for people to see and they can really bring new audiences to opera."

Carlisle Floyd's Of Mice and Men has enjoyed regular presentations around the U.S. since its premiere in 1970 but during the past few seasons it has caught the attention of the international opera circuit. Where Steinbeck's novel might seem stuck in a particular place and time, Floyd's opera has a universality and timeliness that places it squarely in the operatic repertory, along side the 20th century masterpieces of Leos Janacek, Alban Berg and Benjamin Britten. Mr. Griffey has made the role of Lennie his own and will perform it again in February at Houston Grand Opera. We asked him when he first became acquainted with the opera. "I had done a scene while at Eastman. George Darden, a coach at the Met, told me that one day I would sing the role of Lennie in Of Mice and Men, but he thought it was too heavy for the moment (just as they had thought the role of Peter Grimes was too heavy). But, I truly take everything from a lyric standpoint. Everything I sing - Peter Grimes, Das Lied von der Erde, the Mahler 8th, Britten's Serenade for Tenor and Horn and the War Requiem - has a heavy side and a lyric side.

Of Mice and Men has some very didactic, arching phrases, but it also has some very lyric, almost childlike moments. I got a call from Glimmerglass asking me to audition for it and I went back to George Darden, who had been a student of Carlisle Floyd, and he gave me the score and I learned the two arias. When I went to sing for Paul Kellogg [General Director of Glimmerglass and New York City Opera] I told him I would sing the two arias but I didn't have them memorized yet. I promised him that if he gave me the role I would be the best Lennie he would ever hire. Well, the audition went well and I got a call the next day that I had the role.

"Then I returned to the score to learn the role and discovered it really was a hellishly difficult score. At the end of the evening you are totally exhausted if you really thrust yourself into the role. I don't mean vocally because I think I sing it in a healthy way. My voice teacher always told me to make the audience feel the emotion but to be sure you aren't feeling it. So I have to be aware of standing back from that. Emotionally I am connected to the role but I don't let it get into my voice. I am connected from the moment I leave my dressing room until the end of the evening. I have my blinders and don't really venture out of that. I do that pretty much with everything I do."

Griffey's special affinity for the role of Lennie has its basis in personal experience. "I had worked five summers with special ed children and adults as a director of a camp in North Carolina, and I was a volunteer for the Special Olympics as well. I started out as a counselor at the camp and was assistant director the second year and later became director. Certainly I was a bit uncomfortable with the work in the beginning. Sometimes working with adults, you had to change their diapers and all that and that was a difficult. But I would never give up that experience. It was life and it taught me so much about the real world. I really had a lot of experience with special needs children, which gave me a lot of insight into the character of Lennie - it was a wonderful character study. We often shut them out and are really afraid to have hands-on experience. We look at them from a distance and are scared to be around them. I think it is so important to be around people like that. We can learn so much. They have so much to give and they need so much love in return - as we all do. That is what Lennie is so starved for. It was important for me to be almost in-your-face with that side of Lennie and make the others a bit uncomfortable.

"Now I have become known for the role but I still really haven't done that many performances - not as someone who has done fifty performances of Lucia or something. I love singing the role. I have done it four times now. It's an opera I think is really important for people to see. It has a deep message behind it and it stirs people. It makes the audience think. I am glad it is being done more. I am glad I am not available to do all of them too and they are having to hire other people, which is a good sign for the opera. The best thing anyone ever said to me was when I did it in San Diego. An elderly lady came back stage and said, 'where did they get this retarded boy who could sing so well?' And I took that as an honest compliment."

Are there traditional roles you would like to sing? "I would love to sing Tamino [in Mozart's The Magic Flute]. I think my Tamino would be more naturalistic. I know that many see Tamino as more contained or controlled, but I don't agree with that. At one point I was offered Tamino at Aspen and Peter Grimes at Tanglewood at the same time and I chose the Peter Grimes and that sort of launched my career. My voice teacher told me that I sang the Tamino beautifully but that the Peter Grimes was really exciting. I thought that emotionally I could really offer something in that role and I really wanted to sing it. Also, the Peter Grimes was with Seiji Ozawa and he was such a strong supporter of me early on. I enjoy the roles I do now, but I'm hoping that more of the 'bread-and-butter' roles come to me.

"But I enjoy doing American opera and will continue to do it. I would love to do more new and commissioned works. If you talk to composers who are writing new operas, please give them my name!"

Steinbeck links
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/steinbec/srchome.html
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Steinbeck/

Of Mice & Men (opera)
http://www.jdlh.palo-alto.ca.us/pr/micemen_floyd/

Of Mice & Men (novel)
http://www.isk-tv.no/~gmdata/teachers/english/novels/micemen/micemen.htm#introduction
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/helpsheets/steinbeck.html
http://www.englishresources.co.uk/ks4/fiction.html

A Streetcar Named Desire (opera)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/streetcar/

Andre Previn
http://www.sonyclassical.com/artists/previn/
http://www.annonline.com/interviews/960920/

Tennessee Williams & A Streetcar Named Desire (play & film)
http://www.tennesseewilliams.net/
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/williams_tennessee/
http://hipp.gator.net/scarplaywright.html
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc9.htm
http://www.filmsite.org/stre.html

Tennessee Williams & A Streetcar Named Desire (the streetcar)
http://bywater.org/strtcar.htm