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An American Baritone: Julian Patrick Keeps on Singing

By Robert Wilder Blue

Baritone Julian Patrick has been on the stage for more than fifty years in musical theater and opera. Like many American singers of his generation, he was a member of the New York City Opera Company (NYCO) during a period in which they performed American operas regularly, both premieres and revivals. USOperaWeb caught up with Mr. Patrick while he was rehearsing the Speaker in The Magic Flute for NYCO and, of course, we asked him to begin at the beginning.

"I was born in Meridian, Mississippi in 1927. My family loved music, although there was no great talent on either my mother's or father's side. They always exposed me to music though and when I was five my mother pushed me to take piano lessons. Later I was part of the Apollo Boys Choir based in Birmingham, Alabama and that really got the ball rolling for me. I sang in high school quite a lot. Then I went into the Navy and was doing work singing with Special Services on the West Coast. When I got out of the service I told my mom and dad I didn't want to be a doctor, as they had wanted, and asked to go to the Cincinnati Conservatory to study music. I never looked back. Singing was my passion.

"I worked with Boris Goldovsky during the summers of 1949 and 1950, and did some work with the Cincinnati Symphony and at the Brevard Festival in North Carolina. My debut in opera was as Papa Germont [in La Traviata] in Mobile, Alabama in 1950. I was too young, but the woman who ran the company was intent on giving opportunities to young singers. Since I was from Mississippi she had more of an affinity for me I suppose. Later on when I was singing the role quite a bit, I looked back on that and I thought, my god, I had the gall of youth. It really isn't a role for youngsters.

"I went to Boston to work on my master's degree with Boris Goldovsky but was drafted back into the service for Korea in 1951, which brought me to New York City where I was the singer with the first Army band. While I was in the service I would appear at the door of the Metropolitan Opera and they would let me into standing room for free as a courtesy to the uniform. I got to see a lot of opera - two or three times a week - and decided I really wasn't ready for the opera stage. I loved popular music and shows, so when I got out of the service I began auditioning for Broadway shows. I also did night club work in the Village and in Palm Beach and Boca Raton, Florida. In 1954 I got my first Broadway show, The Golden Apple [by Jerome Moross, composer of the opera Sorry Wrong Number (1977), and John LaTouche] at the Phoenix Theater. I did the small role of Achilles and understudied Ulysses.

"I managed to earn a living singing during that period. I did a lot of industrial shows for companies like the Ford Motor Company and Chevrolet. I was doing background work on recordings and I also sang at Trinity Episcopal Church. I was in the original companies of Ziegfield Follies (which folded before it got to New York), Once Upon a Mattress, Bells Are Ringing, and Fiorello. That period was when I got my 'stage legs' and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I am returning to musical theater somewhat now. I played Benjamin Franklin last year in 1776 in Seattle and this spring I'm going to sing Tony in Most Happy Fella.

"All during this time I was studying and I finally returned to opera in the mid-'60s. I was part of the Metropolitan Opera National Company for the two years it was in existence. It was a wonderful group of American artists and we sang all over the country. I did Marcello in La Bohème, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Figaro in The Barber of Seville, the Count in The Marriage of Figaro, Escamillo in Carmen, among other things. Then I joined the New York City Opera just when it moved to its home at Lincoln Center."

One of Mr. Patrick's first assignments at NYCO was the company premiere of Douglas Moore's Carrie Nation (1966), which was also recorded. "I haven't sung the opera since; in fact, I don't know if anyone has produced it since. That was the first time I worked with director Frank Corsaro. Beverly Woolf was wonderful as Carrie. For the recording, we went right into a studio after a performance and recorded it. I've done loads of world premieres, many things that have been forgotten totally. One of the more interesting was Nine Rivers From Jordan by Hugo Weisgall. Hugo was a wonderful sort of curmudgeon (isn't that what Bob Orth called him?). He liked my work in that so much he set some Elizabethan songs for me, for baritone and chamber ensemble, which I recorded. I did several productions of [Leonard] Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti as well as the recording. I did Prospero in The Tempest by Lee Hoiby in Dallas a few years ago which is a wonderful piece.

"I worked with Dominick Argento on two operas - the world premiere of Casanova's Homecoming, which I think is a great piece, and The Dream of Valentino, which didn't have a great success but has some wonderful music in it. I find the fact that his works have not come into the repertory is such a shame. Carlisle Floyd's pieces didn't really come into the repertory until recently. He is only now really getting his due, which he should have had thirty years ago. When Carlisle rewrote The Passion of Jonathan Wade I sang the role of Judge Townsend in Houston, Miami, San Diego and Seattle. The ideas in that opera are wonderful and Carlisle's melodies and harmonic structure and orchestration are so much better than the original version. It's really a grand opera, although I think it still needs to be cut a bit."

Patrick as George and Carol Bayard as Curley's wife in Seattle Opera's 1970 world premiere presentation of Carlisle Floyd's Of Mice and Men. Photo by Des Gates, courtesy of Seattle Opera.

Perhaps the greatest American opera Mr. Patrick has been associated with is Carlisle Floyd's Of Mice and Men, based on the Steinbeck novel. He originated the role of George (Seattle, 1970) and performed it extensively in the United States and Europe. Recently, he has returned to the opera in the role of Candy. "Of Mice and Men was commissioned by Kurt Herbert Adler for San Francisco Opera and was finished in 1967 I believe. Adler heard it, decided he didn't like it and didn't want it after all. Julius Rudel at NYCO listened to it and didn't want it either; perhaps it was because he had done so many American pieces and they were going out of fashion and getting bad press. So the opera went begging until Glynn Ross in Seattle picked it up.

"I auditioned for Carlisle in early fall 1969 and was chosen for the role of George. It was written originally for Norman Triegle, but I think he felt it was too high. Frank Corsaro directed that first production and I learned so much from him. We had a wonderful conductor, Tony [Anton] Coppola; Carol Bayard was Curly's Wife, Bob Molson was Lenny and Archie Drake, who is still living in Seattle, was Candy. We had a great, great success with the piece.

"Before we started rehearsals in Seattle, Elaine Bonazzi had been hired to sing the role of a madam in a whorehouse scene, but Frank persuaded Carlisle to cut it because he felt it stopped the action. Unfortunately Elaine's role was cut too. I still have the original score with that scene in it. One of the arias George sings originally took place in that scene but was moved to the bunkhouse where I think it is more effective. Of course I had to ask Carlisle for a few changes. Norman Triegle was a bass and I am a baritone and my voice was never as heavy as his. Carlisle had written climaxes in places that would have worked for Norman but which weren't right for me. So he added some high notes to the piece which appear in the score now as alternate notes.

"I didn't have any special attachment to the Steinbeck novel. I knew of it of course - it was required reading in English classes - and I had seen the movie with Lon Chaney and Burgess Meredith. But I basically developed my character from the libretto and from my work with Frank on the play. George was the heaviest and most dramatic role I had done up to that point. I matured dramatically as a human being and as an opera performer during the process of rehearsals and performances and really stepped into another phase in my career. To try to talk about the emotional content of something like that without actually experiencing it is difficult. Invariably, I would manage to hold myself together emotionally until Lenny was shot and I didn't have to sing anymore. After that, I was a basket case. If anyone even said anything to me after a performance often I could hardly speak to him or her; I would burst into tears. I did the opera a lot, in Cincinnati, Tallahassee, Houston and San Diego and then in Amsterdam in two different seasons in the late '70s."

Recently Mr. Patrick performed Candy at the Bregenz Festival. That production (by Francesca Zambello) along with most of the cast members (Gordon Hawkins as George, Anthony Dean Griffey as Lenny, with Patrick Summers conducting), will appear in Houston in February. "I was very excited to return to the piece. I love the opera no matter what role I do and I still find that emotional punch there. Of course I would love to be singing George still, but there is always going to be some young buck coming along to do it. It was [director] Rhoda Levine's idea for me to do Candy. We are long-time friends and I had done George with her twice before. When New York City Opera wanted to do the opera she called and asked me to do Candy. The NYCO production was very well thought-out. Rhoda knows and loves the piece and has all the moments organized so that they have a strong sense of character between all the different people in the piece. She is very concerned with the original intent of the play and tries to lend herself to that aspect of it.

"Francesca is accustomed to doing things on a grander scale I think. She tends to look outside the box and pays attention to the characters' actions and relationships and their emotional involvement in the story. Her eye sees lots of little things she finds important that she likes to enlarge upon. I was not always convinced, but in the long run I think it was persuasive. The character she encouraged me to create as Candy in her production in Bregenz had a much greater impact on the story. Francesca and Marie-Jeanne Lecca, the designer, came up with a set design that emphasized the great expanse of the California desert, the big ranches, the atmosphere, the heat from the sun. The piece takes on a larger scope in that environment. She moved the time period to the 1950s, which I wasn't terribly happy with, but it seemed to work for the audience. It didn't disturb the story at all if you want to get right down to it. The plight of migrant workers in the West is still the same as it was when Of Mice and Men was written.

"The production was a huge success in Bregenz - way beyond my imagination, especially for an Austrian audience. They went crazy for it. Gordon Hawkins played George and he and I had long talks about the role and about the emotional impact it had on the performer. I like him so much. He was such a generous colleague and a wonderful singer. He experienced the same sort of emotions as I did in the role. It is such a powerful piece. Carlisle is of course primarily an opera composer, but if you listen to his operas, the orchestral work is some of most exciting music I've heard. There are moments in Of Mice and Men that are extraordinary and quite beautiful and very moving."

We asked Mr. Patrick if, given his experience singing American operas, he cared to comment on the constant negative criticism leveled against new American operas and the disdain many in the musical establishment still hold toward them.

"My mind is flooded with a million different things. If a composer writes something that is melodically and harmonically accessible and is dramatically compelling it's very likely the critics won't like it. They are somehow wedded to pieces that are outrageously difficult to play and listen to because they think it is the 'future' of music. I think that the return to melody, however derivative it seems, is most welcome. You may say, 'oh it sounds like Puccini.' Well, thank God. That's wonderful. Carlisle has his own voice. Dominic Argento has his own voice. Philip Glass has his own voice, even though I'm not a big fan of it. I think that returning to singable lines and to pieces that are dramatically convincing is the right step. There are so many wonderful new pieces now. The greatest of them take compelling stories and set them to music that enhances them and connects to the audience. Honestly, I think American opera is alive and well and kicking and advancing. What more can I say?"

Mr. Patrick currently divides his time between performing and teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle.