Speaker 1: Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a production of shawond
Speaker 1: Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. She hit
Speaker 1: this partner when she gives up Rado the portrait Brandy
Speaker 1: qu'st day, Margina, you know, but I did it Alla
Speaker 1: Strand who has margin. We used to call that the
Speaker 1: scotto me ow, kind of like Cuisoka cat the owing.
Speaker 1: And she got it do to and she loved it
Speaker 1: because well it was about her, and what Eva wouldn't
Speaker 1: love something that's about them. Welcome to Laverne Cox Show.
Speaker 1: I'm Laverne Cox. You've just heard the bella voce. The
Speaker 1: beautiful voice of Virus if performing says alter Ego Madame
Speaker 1: Vera Glupe Borshed, one of the founding members and the
Speaker 1: primadonna of La Grande Shana Opera Company. For those of
Speaker 1: you who may not be familiar with all the opera
Speaker 1: terms we used, there is a glossary of opera terms
Speaker 1: in our show notes. I was about ten years old
Speaker 1: and I was watching PBS and they had announced that
Speaker 1: Leontine Price was going to be on. I knew who
Speaker 1: Leontine Price was because my mother gave me a black
Speaker 1: history book when I was six years old, and I
Speaker 1: used to stare at the photo of Leontine Price. She
Speaker 1: was wearing a turban and she had these high cheek
Speaker 1: bones and these very full lips. I thought she looked
Speaker 1: like me, and I was just transfixed by this photo.
Speaker 1: But I had never heard her sing. She's standing there
Speaker 1: in this sort of militaristic stance, and she opens her
Speaker 1: mouth and the most beautiful, awe inspiring sound comes out
Speaker 1: of her, and it felt like this oval of earthy
Speaker 1: vibration coming at me through the television. I just remember
Speaker 1: shaking as I heard her sing, and I was hooked.
Speaker 1: It was that moment in two watching PBS and Leontine
Speaker 1: Price that made me a lifelong loan Prevan. Leontine Price
Speaker 1: was a huge fan of Lagron Shana and referred to
Speaker 1: Ira Siff as Madame Ira Siff found it in ninete
Speaker 1: Lagron Shane I presented loving spooks of opera where all
Speaker 1: the women's roles were performed by men and drag singing
Speaker 1: an exquisite operettic falsetto. She's head of the company. La
Speaker 1: Grande Shana is unbelievable. Ira Siff is one of the
Speaker 1: greatest artists in the world. Though they are calculated to
Speaker 1: be a spoof, they are the finest singers I have
Speaker 1: ever heard. They have everything that is top drawer in
Speaker 1: an opera ambiance. I just adore them. I met Ira
Speaker 1: Siff for the first time in to study singing. Not
Speaker 1: only did I want to sing opera, I had hoped
Speaker 1: Ira could help me with a vocal transition, if you will,
Speaker 1: from base baritone to soprano. If I ever have made
Speaker 1: a beautiful operatic sound, it is likely because of Ira Siff.
Speaker 1: He is an unparalleled performer and vocal artist. In the
Speaker 1: year two thousand he began to direct operas. Mr Siff
Speaker 1: writes for Opera News, is a weekly contributor for the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Opera Broadcast. Gives riveting lectures on opera for the
Speaker 1: met Opera Guild, some of which are available in podcast form.
Speaker 1: You must go check them out. I believe Ira Sif
Speaker 1: to truly be a national treasure with exacting and uncompromising standards,
Speaker 1: yet beautifully encouraging and supportive. Not a lot of people
Speaker 1: have been in my life for over twenty five years.
Speaker 1: I truly love Ira Sif. Likely in teen price, I
Speaker 1: believe he is one of the greatest artists in the world.
Speaker 1: Please enjoy my conversation with and celebration of Madame Ira Sif. Hello, Ira,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling to die?
Speaker 1: I'm great, I'm happy to be with you. Vern of course,
Speaker 1: I had to begin the podcast with the way La
Speaker 1: Granjena performances often began with the righte of the Valkyries
Speaker 1: from Wagner. How does it feel for you in sixty
Speaker 1: years after this is your sixtieth anniversary, are going to opera?
Speaker 1: How does it feel to hear that in this moment today? Well,
Speaker 1: it's very nostalgic, of course, because it's about thirty years
Speaker 1: since that particular performance. Although we sang Valkyrie I don't
Speaker 1: know five hundred times during tours between eighty one and
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. So when I hear it, it
Speaker 1: really takes me back and I feel two things, of course,
Speaker 1: and you will understand this, being the perfectionists that you are.
Speaker 1: I think, Wow, that was exciting and fun, and then
Speaker 1: I think, oh, I wish I'd done that no better.
Speaker 1: M hmmm. Is there ever a moment when you can
Speaker 1: listen to yourself and not have critique? I would say
Speaker 1: no moments when I don't have critique, but in spite
Speaker 1: of that, I can hear things that I actually approve of,
Speaker 1: oddly things probably later in my singing career, where I
Speaker 1: feel technically things were really in line, even though the
Speaker 1: voice wasn't as fresh and easy as it had been.
Speaker 1: But then I think, oh, there's some really serious mature
Speaker 1: artistry going on here with the comedy, and that makes
Speaker 1: me kind of happy. So I wanted to begin with
Speaker 1: what inspired lacros Shana and your love for opera, And
Speaker 1: I want to start um sixty years ago with that
Speaker 1: iconic year that Lantine Price made her debut at the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Opera and an Australians upon her named Jones sutherlandand
Speaker 1: also made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, and you
Speaker 1: happened to be there for lah Stupendas debut New York City.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about how you found your way
Speaker 1: to the opera in n when I was fifteen, And
Speaker 1: it was very strange because I met this kid in
Speaker 1: high school. It was what we would now call, I guess,
Speaker 1: a nerd, but I found him endlessly amusing and very intelligent,
Speaker 1: and his parents were into this thing called opera. I
Speaker 1: knew nothing about it. My parents had taken me to
Speaker 1: Broadway shows. I saw a lot of great you know,
Speaker 1: my Fair Lady Gypsy, all these great musicals and plays
Speaker 1: with original cast, but I've never been to the opera.
Speaker 1: And his name was Robert, and Robert said, we'll come
Speaker 1: over to my house and we'll go in my parents
Speaker 1: finished basement, and we're going to listen to this new
Speaker 1: recording that just came out of Luccia de l'amimore. I
Speaker 1: had no idea what that was with Joan Sutherland, I
Speaker 1: had no idea who that was. And I'll prepare you
Speaker 1: with the libretto and then we'll go to the men
Speaker 1: and we'll see it. So I heard this thing, and
Speaker 1: I followed it with the words the Italian and the English,
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, it was ice. Then I
Speaker 1: went and we stood all the way up in the
Speaker 1: family circle standing room, miles from the stage, and she
Speaker 1: began to make that noise that she made in Nie.
Speaker 1: It was something extraordinary. I'd never heard anything like it.
Speaker 1: And by the end of the big mad scene that
Speaker 1: climax is the opera for the title character, there was
Speaker 1: something like twenty eight curtain calls. The place went berserk.
Speaker 1: She was astonishing at that time, darting up and down
Speaker 1: the stairs all over the stage while trilling and doing
Speaker 1: this incredible virtuosic sinking. So I was. I was completely
Speaker 1: blown away, and I left my poor friend Robert in
Speaker 1: the dust and started going to the met in standing
Speaker 1: room to three times a week, telling my parents I
Speaker 1: was in school doing an art project, making up all
Speaker 1: kinds of excuses. My father worked on the next block.
Speaker 1: When he would pass by to go home to take
Speaker 1: the subway to go to Brooke, where we lived, I
Speaker 1: would duck down behind some mother standy so he wouldn't
Speaker 1: see me. Why did you feel you had to lie
Speaker 1: to your parents about going to the opera era? What
Speaker 1: what was going on there? Well? It was. It was
Speaker 1: kind of viewed as a kind of freaky thing, I think.
Speaker 1: And also I think that I was supposed to be
Speaker 1: doing things like homework, and for me, you know, this
Speaker 1: turned out to be my homework. I was just preparing
Speaker 1: to be a diva, but I didn't know it then,
Speaker 1: you know. So there were knights they knew I was there,
Speaker 1: and there were knights that they had no idea where
Speaker 1: I was. M Joan is such an interesting diva because
Speaker 1: she you know, she's Australian, and she began her career
Speaker 1: when she when she got to cover Garden, she thought
Speaker 1: she would be singing Bagnerian roles and that's what she
Speaker 1: was sort of being groomed for until she met Richard Bonning,
Speaker 1: who became her husband, and he had a different vision
Speaker 1: for her. He thought that she could saying that bel
Speaker 1: canto roles because she had a very big voice. And
Speaker 1: then she discovered this this color a tour and this
Speaker 1: flexibility and this agility and this and this beautiful upper
Speaker 1: extension that is just insanely remarkable. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: this better than me. What would you say about that?
Speaker 1: But there are a couple of things. I think one
Speaker 1: is that Richard had ears and he could tell that
Speaker 1: there was a lot going on north of high Sea,
Speaker 1: and he just tricked her into it. He would vocalize
Speaker 1: her up without telling her how high they were going,
Speaker 1: and take her to e flat when she thought it
Speaker 1: was c It was very clever. But Jones's mother studied.
Speaker 1: She studied with the student of Matilda Marchese Case was
Speaker 1: the great voice teacher in Paris for years and years
Speaker 1: decades between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and
Speaker 1: so Joan just aped her mother and she learned how
Speaker 1: to trill that incredible trill just sitting on her mother's knee,
Speaker 1: you know, with the piano. So her technique was in
Speaker 1: a way the most important part of it was self taught.
Speaker 1: And then the exploitation of it, in a very posit
Speaker 1: sort of sense, was Richard Richard bringing that out and
Speaker 1: just defying all the powers that be had called and
Speaker 1: Garden saying no, she should be singing children and aida,
Speaker 1: you know. And finally they mounted that famous Luccia for her. Again.
Speaker 1: That was her breakthrough, and that Luccia like sort of
Speaker 1: broke the opera universe. Can we listen to a little
Speaker 1: bit of that Luccia from Sutherland's debut season at the
Speaker 1: matt m How do you feel listening to that now
Speaker 1: and thinking about I mean, certainly there's a nostalgia for you,
Speaker 1: but then the singing is just still still exquisite. How
Speaker 1: does it feel listening to that now and then thinking
Speaker 1: back to, you know, sixty years ago. Well, I feel
Speaker 1: grateful that I were taken to that performance, but I
Speaker 1: also feel this great thing that it isn't a nostalgia
Speaker 1: fest that it really was that good. There's so much
Speaker 1: documentation of her work and other people I worshiped call
Speaker 1: Us and you know, others that shows us that, No,
Speaker 1: it really was like that. It really was that exciting, virtuosic,
Speaker 1: impressive and incredibly disciplined. Yes, for me, when I listened,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just so exquisite. I think the speed,
Speaker 1: the agility, the trill is just insane. And no one
Speaker 1: has ever trilled like that before I would, I would argue,
Speaker 1: and since has trilled like Joan thrilled, especially in her heyday.
Speaker 1: It's just so virtuosic, it's so thrilling, it's so exciting.
Speaker 1: I just don't know how anyone could listen to it
Speaker 1: and not just lose their minds. It's an extraordinary thing.
Speaker 1: It's something that came from then that we don't really
Speaker 1: have now. We don't hear people trilling that way any longer.
Speaker 1: All of our case students could do it and suddenly
Speaker 1: really had it to the very end, even when the
Speaker 1: voice got older and other things weren't the same, that
Speaker 1: remained the same. It's extraordinary, And you know, I I
Speaker 1: don't want to be one of those people like back
Speaker 1: in the day when singers did well, you know whatever.
Speaker 1: But it's so fascinating to me that one of the
Speaker 1: things that you said, I think U mini years ago
Speaker 1: in a voice lesson we had that the style has
Speaker 1: changed because there's no the maestro's that I'm conductors who
Speaker 1: sort of groomed Diva's back then are you know? We
Speaker 1: don't have those great conductors anymore, so, so much of
Speaker 1: style has been lost. What I hear is I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of a lot of over darkening
Speaker 1: that's happening, particularly with sopranos now, and I don't feel
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of squealo is what I hear
Speaker 1: when I see a lot of singers. Can you explain
Speaker 1: what over darkening and squealo short for squeelan? D mean
Speaker 1: sure was squeelo is is the frontal kind of in
Speaker 1: a voice a bright sound ran then who that kind
Speaker 1: of thing? And over darkening would have been the second
Speaker 1: thing that I did. What would be the caricature opera
Speaker 1: voice for somebody who doesn't like opera, it's very hooty,
Speaker 1: dark kind of sound. I think part of it. There's
Speaker 1: so many facets and layers to this one I think
Speaker 1: is language that operas were performed in the languages of
Speaker 1: the country, and the Italian language, like the Spanish language,
Speaker 1: is extremely forward in placement, and that kind of production
Speaker 1: has gone somewhat out of fashion, and the style has
Speaker 1: changed since the I would say since the LP, since
Speaker 1: the fifties and opera recordings, luxurious opera recordings in echo chambers.
Speaker 1: It became more about the homogenized sound and the evenness
Speaker 1: of the sound that the engineers were so proud of
Speaker 1: that didn't really carry the excitement of what the voices
Speaker 1: were like in the opera house. But even more than that,
Speaker 1: Laverne composers were writing for the voice. They were writing
Speaker 1: for the singers. And singers today because the art form
Speaker 1: hasn't progressed very much in new works, singers today are
Speaker 1: stuck singing stuff that was written for somebody else hundreds
Speaker 1: of years ago and then trying to fit their work
Speaker 1: into that framework. That's tricky, so I have to give
Speaker 1: them credit for that extra struggle. Interesting, so much of
Speaker 1: what I would I would argue faith propelled your career
Speaker 1: as diva worship. Absolutely, these particular divas who inspired you
Speaker 1: and kept you going to the opera, And you list
Speaker 1: a few and after Sutherland, Leoni Wreathneck was the diva
Speaker 1: who really captivated you. Can you talk about the first
Speaker 1: time you saw rheas nick At at the Old matt Yes.
Speaker 1: First time I saw her was oddly not a Wagnerian
Speaker 1: or Strouds world, but it was des Temula and Hotelo,
Speaker 1: and there have been death threats against her by fans
Speaker 1: of I think Tibaldi and millan Of people were very
Speaker 1: passionate in those days. Why were their death threats, Well,
Speaker 1: can you can you give us? Yes? Because she had
Speaker 1: what she was going through a bit of a vocal
Speaker 1: crisis time, and she had the nerve, according to these people,
Speaker 1: to sing, take up space, singing the roles of the
Speaker 1: divas that they appreciated and thought, well, why would you
Speaker 1: want to give her dist eminent when we have millan
Speaker 1: Of or Tibaldi, So they actually threatened her life if
Speaker 1: she went on. And the first time I saw her,
Speaker 1: she was so intensely exciting. There were moments that the
Speaker 1: audience burst into applause just because she was so exciting,
Speaker 1: like their confrontation to it and the third act with
Speaker 1: hotelaway he threw her to the ground and people went crazy.
Speaker 1: But she made a curtain speech and she said, uh, please,
Speaker 1: if you don't like me, don't come to see me,
Speaker 1: but please don't threaten to kill me. And that was
Speaker 1: my first experience, and I was hooked. I mean this
Speaker 1: woman and she was what we used to call on
Speaker 1: the standing room line demented, which in those days simply
Speaker 1: meant someone so fearlessly abandoned when they sang that they
Speaker 1: were lost in the role. And she had this upper
Speaker 1: register the likes of which I've simply never heard in
Speaker 1: my life, that was both rooted to let's say, her
Speaker 1: toes or really her private parts, and yet sparkled as
Speaker 1: if it was emanating from the chandelier of the house.
Speaker 1: At the same time suspended no idea where it came from,
Speaker 1: but it was a phenomenon. Oh my god, that's so fabulous.
Speaker 1: It's really just what we were talking about when we're
Speaker 1: talking about Wogner that there was. It's hard to tell
Speaker 1: in them recording, but the always feels very big, but
Speaker 1: it is soaring and it is that there's no weight
Speaker 1: on it, but it's very dramatic at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's very rare. I can't think of any singer and honestly,
Speaker 1: who has that level of being a dramatic soprano, but
Speaker 1: it's that floated and at the top of the range
Speaker 1: only Nielsen. But it wasn't the same intended different pingy
Speaker 1: and detached. This was somehow rooted yet suspended. It was
Speaker 1: a real I was a mystery, and you would just
Speaker 1: go and you would just wait. I mean everything she
Speaker 1: did was exciting, but you would wait for those notes
Speaker 1: because no one could sing like that. And that is
Speaker 1: something I can say I have not heard since. For me,
Speaker 1: it feels very bell conto. I think they're different bell
Speaker 1: Conto schools and they're different schools of singing. It feels
Speaker 1: very connected and feels very legato, but it is did
Speaker 1: it's drama and it is for Ta, but it is floating.
Speaker 1: The voice had so much human vulnerability that she broke
Speaker 1: your heart night after night, and that's something you know,
Speaker 1: you just went back for that kind of emotional draw,
Speaker 1: that kind of emotional pull you would leave sweating and
Speaker 1: in tears. Mm hmm. Thinking about these two divas that
Speaker 1: we've talked about so far, what do you feel Is
Speaker 1: there anything specifically in a in a Sutherland or reasoning
Speaker 1: that you feel like you've you know, sort of brought
Speaker 1: into vera. There was with Sutherland, I mean I began
Speaker 1: singing in falsetto, you know, in my parents basement when
Speaker 1: they weren't home, to her recording the art of the
Speaker 1: Prima Donna sixteen arias and very telling in that giant, beautiful,
Speaker 1: luxurious LP set. There was a booklet, no libretto, no
Speaker 1: text to any of the sixteen arias, but each aria
Speaker 1: was associated with the diva. Well. That certainly warps your
Speaker 1: orientation about opera in a certain direct. So for me
Speaker 1: it was all about divas and what you could do pyrotechnically,
Speaker 1: and so with her it was more an influence of
Speaker 1: the florid singing I did, and of my diva worship,
Speaker 1: and also the phenomenon of like a prize fighter with lipstick,
Speaker 1: I mean, vocal athlete. Reason it inspired me just as
Speaker 1: on stage, I never held back and I never walked
Speaker 1: through performance, and I never I wish I'd paced myself more.
Speaker 1: I tried, but I would always end up carried away.
Speaker 1: And the reason it was more inspiration that way. The voice.
Speaker 1: I would refer to the voice in certain notes and
Speaker 1: when we had crazy, crazy fan audiences before the aids
Speaker 1: crisis decimated that they'd recognize it in the scream, you know.
Speaker 1: But but for me, she was more in the inspiration
Speaker 1: than a direct vocal thing. Sutherland, Kaba a Scotto particularly
Speaker 1: were more direct voy since I drew on to make
Speaker 1: the amalgam that it became Madame Zra. But reason it
Speaker 1: was an inspiration of an artist who gave everything to
Speaker 1: her art, everything amazing. I have to tell you that
Speaker 1: I had Joan Sutherland's art of the Prima Donna that
Speaker 1: I got from the Mobile County Public Library on cassette,
Speaker 1: and that was my first Sutherland Nights. I've had to
Speaker 1: be in middle school or something. I was absolutely obsessed.
Speaker 1: It's time for a short break when we come back
Speaker 1: more with our guest. Alrighty, then let's just dive right
Speaker 1: back in m We have to get to the diva
Speaker 1: who inspired so many people in the twentieth century and
Speaker 1: you count her as one of your main inspirations, Maria Callas.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us your relationship to Maria callis the
Speaker 1: first time you heard her saying this is gonna be good. Well,
Speaker 1: it's as saga because it began with a trip to
Speaker 1: Corvette's department store. Didn't no longer exists in New York
Speaker 1: City to buy Jones Lucia album for myself. I mean
Speaker 1: Robert had it, but I didn't have it, and it
Speaker 1: was sold out, and I was just crestfallen and I
Speaker 1: was looking through the bins of LPs and there was
Speaker 1: this picture of this woman, this head on an album
Speaker 1: cover with kind of magic marker I make up, and
Speaker 1: the most fantastically compelling thing I've ever seen, and it
Speaker 1: said Lucia gi Lama Moore call Us and I thought, hmm,
Speaker 1: And it was just the highlights album. I thought, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to buy a complete thing because I know
Speaker 1: really much about who this was. And I took it
Speaker 1: home and it was the strangest voice I've ever heard
Speaker 1: in my life. I thought, something is wrong with the turntable.
Speaker 1: So I had my parents called the repairman. Seymour. The
Speaker 1: repairman came to fix the turntable because the vibrato was
Speaker 1: so slow in this voice, and I thought, there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with this. And Seymour said, there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: the turntable, there's something wrong with the soprano. So what
Speaker 1: year call it was? This? Do you know? Fifty nine?
Speaker 1: It was her second Luccia, And while she was recording
Speaker 1: that Lucia by the way, in London, she went to
Speaker 1: the dress rehearsal of Sutherland's debut Luccio and attended it.
Speaker 1: So then I would just go back to this recording
Speaker 1: for certain phrases over and over and over. I couldn't
Speaker 1: stop listening to it, to the point that I wore
Speaker 1: it out. So then I went to the Brooklyn Public Library.
Speaker 1: Like you, that was the source. Puty have no budget,
Speaker 1: that's where you went, and I found earlier Collas stuff.
Speaker 1: I put it Tany from ninety three, La Trapianta from
Speaker 1: fifty three, and I thought, holy crap, this voice is
Speaker 1: something bizarre. It's no more beautiful than the other one,
Speaker 1: maybe even less, but rock solid, virtuosic, heart stopping, lee exciting.
Speaker 1: So I just started to take any allowance money I had,
Speaker 1: any money I could find, arn beg any gift and
Speaker 1: bought Collis recordings one after another. And that's all I
Speaker 1: spent my money on through high school was Collis recordings,
Speaker 1: and I was completely addicted. And then I was at
Speaker 1: summer camp and there was a little feature in the
Speaker 1: Times that said Maria Collis was coming back to the
Speaker 1: med where she'd been fired seven years earlier. And so
Speaker 1: my friend Lex, who was my upper friend at summer camp,
Speaker 1: he phoned me in Brooklyn and he said, get into Manhattan.
Speaker 1: I've got a number for you on the Collis Line.
Speaker 1: And it was Friday, six days before the performance, and
Speaker 1: I said why what? He said, Yeah, they're selling on Sunday.
Speaker 1: I got on the line and I stood in the
Speaker 1: street for three days. I slept in the street for
Speaker 1: two nights, and on Sunday they sold standing room tickets
Speaker 1: for the first performance. The second performance, I totally lucked out.
Speaker 1: My mother belonged to some Jewish lady organization and somebody
Speaker 1: there didn't want to go to the Collis Tusca on
Speaker 1: their subscription because he didn't liked that lady. So this
Speaker 1: lady sold my mother hard two tickets. So I got
Speaker 1: to see both Collis Tuscas at the Met and thows
Speaker 1: were her last performances at the Met, and six months
Speaker 1: later she retired from opera. So I was really lucky.
Speaker 1: And all I tell you about that night was that
Speaker 1: watching Carlos san Tito Golby in the second act of
Speaker 1: Tosca was like looking through a keyhole at real events
Speaker 1: that were later made into an opera. It was that vivid.
Speaker 1: She was known as as as a great actress. Now
Speaker 1: you you spoke of rhisnic with this abandoned You know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the drama of the opera, what would
Speaker 1: you I mean, not to compare, but what was the
Speaker 1: difference for you with between a Rhasonic and a Callus
Speaker 1: in terms of just the drama that they would bring
Speaker 1: to do something. I think it depended with Callis on
Speaker 1: what the repertoire was. Because tuscas of it is more opera,
Speaker 1: so so in other words, it's it's a realistic opera
Speaker 1: and the young people. Forasma was about real people, and
Speaker 1: opera before that was sort of more about like kings
Speaker 1: and queens and it was it wasn't like about working
Speaker 1: class real folks exactly. So Tosca is about a singer
Speaker 1: and uh a chief of police who's who wants to
Speaker 1: molest to her and her boyfriend who was an artist.
Speaker 1: Collus was very naturalistic in Tusca and her I was
Speaker 1: so lucky her acting worked on two levels. The first
Speaker 1: night I was downstairs in the standing room, very close
Speaker 1: to the stage, and I saw her eyes, her hands
Speaker 1: every Nuance second performance. I was sitting in the family
Speaker 1: circle in the seat that my mother bought, and I
Speaker 1: saw the geography of her performance, like when her boyfriend
Speaker 1: was dragged off stage to be tortured by the chief
Speaker 1: of police, and she darts across the stage and bangs
Speaker 1: on the door where he's being held. You saw the
Speaker 1: streak of red velvet when she ran across the stage
Speaker 1: and fell on the door. So it was it was
Speaker 1: very thrilling. But make no mistake, Collus was a vocal
Speaker 1: actress and that's why millions of people love her from
Speaker 1: her recordings who never saw her live. It was she
Speaker 1: was the complete artist, I think, the greatest complete singer
Speaker 1: of that particular century. Amazing, and what is brilliant to
Speaker 1: is thinking about the standing room mine and you and
Speaker 1: other interviews you've talked about the young people that you
Speaker 1: met on the line and the term the opera queens
Speaker 1: that you met on the mind. You say you thaw
Speaker 1: two men kissing for the first time on the standing
Speaker 1: room line for the old met it was wild on
Speaker 1: that line. I mean that line was an initiation for
Speaker 1: you know, sort of by Mitza Boy from Brooklyn to
Speaker 1: a Wonderful World. That I fit right into. But I
Speaker 1: was so shy and reticent and kind of shocked by
Speaker 1: it that I didn't immediately participate in it. But I
Speaker 1: made friends on that line who were crazy like I was,
Speaker 1: but so generous with what they offered in terms of
Speaker 1: their knowledge and experience, And they would tell me what
Speaker 1: to go see. They tell me, you have to see
Speaker 1: millan of and Albanise now, because Being isn't going to
Speaker 1: take them to Lincoln Center, so you better see them now.
Speaker 1: They only have a few years left, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I got to see a couple of generations of singers.
Speaker 1: It was the end of an era for certain people
Speaker 1: and the beginning for other people. Obviously there is a
Speaker 1: whole generation of opera queens who we lost because of
Speaker 1: the eight Crisis, but there was a there was a
Speaker 1: certain kind of culture of the opera queen that that
Speaker 1: feels like a bygone era. And and Awayne caston Bomb
Speaker 1: in his book The Queen's Throat talks about the opera
Speaker 1: queen is being sort of a pre Stone Wall kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Obviously there's still opera queens, but it felt
Speaker 1: like there was something very different, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine someone you know, sort of camping out
Speaker 1: overnight for three days to get Oppertuclars now, you know.
Speaker 1: And there were clubs to you know, Millan of Club
Speaker 1: to Baldi Club. I mean, people gathered together on the
Speaker 1: birthdays of the divas with them, brought them present, and
Speaker 1: it was a whole thing. I wasn't too active in
Speaker 1: that because I was just a little younger than those
Speaker 1: people and very shy. But I know people now who
Speaker 1: have tons of photos and early you know, eight millimeter
Speaker 1: films of those gatherings. Incredible. There's a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of acclimating into what it means to understand divas. And
Speaker 1: there for the people who aren't opera fans out there,
Speaker 1: who might you know, follow Mariah or Beyonce and the
Speaker 1: fans are very hardcore, or Mickey Minaj fans are crazy,
Speaker 1: or the you know, the bee Hive, it's like it's
Speaker 1: it's a whole thing, but it is something that like
Speaker 1: I know that they were older queer folks who were like, oh,
Speaker 1: you must listen to this or you must listen to that,
Speaker 1: And there's something that is sort of passed down that
Speaker 1: that feels when I watch interviews of you and I
Speaker 1: hear you talk about the folks that you met on
Speaker 1: the standing room line at the men. I think that
Speaker 1: there's something so beautiful about that because it it made
Speaker 1: you who you are and also sort of laid the
Speaker 1: ground where for something like Lagron Shano. Oh the lure,
Speaker 1: you know, the the upper lure that these people passed
Speaker 1: on to you, and they would invite you over to hear.
Speaker 1: Everyone had big, real to real tape recorders with recordings
Speaker 1: of pirate ID recordings of live performances, not studio recordings,
Speaker 1: and you'd go, you'd stay someone's house two four o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning listening to Leoni seeing de Fraun a
Speaker 1: shot and that the men hadn't even ever had yet,
Speaker 1: you know, call us in Anna Boleno or Medeia or
Speaker 1: you know. These were things we never heard. They weren't
Speaker 1: put out commercially, and it was and people wanted to
Speaker 1: watch you go crazy listening to this stuff. It was
Speaker 1: a huge generous sharing thing, and I ended up doing
Speaker 1: it with people when you know, I got a collection
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, and what a wonderful treasure. Those pirate
Speaker 1: recordings are a lot of them are on YouTube now,
Speaker 1: which is very exciting. Um, you know Leon Teen's debut,
Speaker 1: the pirate recording of Black January or seven nine one
Speaker 1: is on YouTube, and it's it's very different than any
Speaker 1: note that she ever sang. Tempo was very fast, and
Speaker 1: she sang a D instead of a sharp, and it
Speaker 1: was really quite feeling and she holds it for like
Speaker 1: four seconds and it's the excitement in the room is
Speaker 1: really incredible. So those pirate recordings are just they're really
Speaker 1: kind of everything. And then they were mostly gay men
Speaker 1: who were obsessed with opera who were making me fire recordings.
Speaker 1: Maybe there were some of you know, people who weren't
Speaker 1: gay man you know, doing this, but you just know
Speaker 1: it's true. Yeah, and it was oh god, they were
Speaker 1: so crazy. There was one guy, Roger Franks, who put
Speaker 1: out really I think only call us stuff and he
Speaker 1: would release it sharp. He would release it intentionally sharp.
Speaker 1: So the record was speeded up a little bit, just
Speaker 1: a halftone, so that that meant that her vibrato would
Speaker 1: be faster, so then knowing could criticize her for having
Speaker 1: a wobble. So then you had to buy a turntable
Speaker 1: that had speed control in order to play his pirate
Speaker 1: recordings of College of course, of course you wanted them all,
Speaker 1: but they played fast, so if you wanted to hear
Speaker 1: them the correct speed, you simply got to turn table
Speaker 1: that had variable pitch, which was slightly more expensive, but
Speaker 1: you did it, and you know, so that's how obsessively
Speaker 1: crazy they were going to fix the flaws of their
Speaker 1: divas on these pirate recordings. There's a lot more divas
Speaker 1: that I want to cover with you, but I want
Speaker 1: to begin to transition into you as a as a
Speaker 1: diva yourself. I was fascinated as I was prepping for this,
Speaker 1: and I've known you for twenty five years, but I
Speaker 1: didn't know that you would get together with some of
Speaker 1: your friends who you wouldn't been on the standing room line,
Speaker 1: and you were saying in falsetto and you would saying,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of in in your late teens and
Speaker 1: early twenties, and you said you had this beautiful like
Speaker 1: extension up into you know, f above high Sea. And
Speaker 1: then when you started to train as a singer in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and make your debut as a tenor, eventually
Speaker 1: you started studying with Randy Michaelson, who discouraged you from
Speaker 1: musing falsetto. So you stopped musing falsetto for for really
Speaker 1: a decade? Is that right? Yeah? No, unfortunately, it's right.
Speaker 1: I mean he really helped my tenor voice, but that
Speaker 1: was something that I think had no future. I think
Speaker 1: I knew that, but I was kicking around. I never
Speaker 1: had trouble finding shows to be in, but it was
Speaker 1: finally not until an accident in nineteen eighty that I
Speaker 1: wanted to take that to the stage, by which time
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of performing, but never well. A
Speaker 1: little bit of falsetto in my cabaret show imitations for
Speaker 1: not a Scotto and a jazz singer called Betty Changes,
Speaker 1: whom I invented, who scats, sang very high. She she
Speaker 1: couldn't stop scatching. She had to be physically restrained from scatching.
Speaker 1: But a fan, you know, aim to one of my
Speaker 1: cabaret shows and and invited me to a soiree he
Speaker 1: was doing. And I could tell from the names and
Speaker 1: the invitation and everything that this was going to be
Speaker 1: a drag sire. And his name was Mario Villanueva, and
Speaker 1: his cousin Eduardo, the other diva, was going back to
Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic back to med school. So Mario said,
Speaker 1: would you like to do this with me? So I
Speaker 1: thought it's now or never, because by then I was
Speaker 1: at thirty five years old and the voice. I hadn't
Speaker 1: worked the false set of voice in a long time
Speaker 1: except in my cabaret show a little bit, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't anything like what it had been. Decided to work
Speaker 1: it back up. It took a long time and really
Speaker 1: finagling technically and found a pianissimo, which saved me because
Speaker 1: to sing softly and float tones seemed very virtuous I
Speaker 1: but it was at the same time really arrest for me. Vocally.
Speaker 1: I found it a good trill, you know, but it
Speaker 1: was a lot of work to resurrect the voice. But
Speaker 1: I knew I just had to do it. I just
Speaker 1: knew this was going to be what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Did you do it on your own? Because I know
Speaker 1: you worked with Randy, but then Randy discouraged the fall
Speaker 1: said no, I did it entirely on my own. I
Speaker 1: stopped studying with Randy, but not out of any It
Speaker 1: just happened, you know that I phased out into teaching myself,
Speaker 1: but I know I developed the range entirely myself, and
Speaker 1: it was really based on the technique I learned from Randy,
Speaker 1: A bell counter technique I learned from Randy, which I
Speaker 1: applied to it. But it was also a kinetic thing
Speaker 1: I could always do when I was younger than I
Speaker 1: just had to tap into the muscles. Wouldn't do everything
Speaker 1: they did when I was sixteen or even twenty, but
Speaker 1: because they don't, but they would do enough so that
Speaker 1: I cranked it back up and could. The first thing
Speaker 1: I ever sang in public was tourn does you know
Speaker 1: in quest edge, which is a tough area. It's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Like the first thing I ever sang in public within
Speaker 1: questa regt in dote, which is an insanely difficult area.
Speaker 1: That was the first thing you ever sang. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that as a soprano. Yeah, as a soprano, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's incredible. So you how long did you practice before
Speaker 1: you could even have the stamina to saying that? Aria?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like a it's a beast of an aria.
Speaker 1: It took him bout a year to get the voice
Speaker 1: back up and to build the stamina in that register,
Speaker 1: and it took a toll, I think, of course, on
Speaker 1: my tenor voice, but I didn't really care. This is
Speaker 1: really what I wanted to do. I wanted to sing
Speaker 1: this music and play those characters. And I was so
Speaker 1: lucky that I found stage directors, two stage director friends
Speaker 1: of mine who understood something. I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do this, and they said, well, what you have to
Speaker 1: do is you and Mario to be these fictitious divas,
Speaker 1: and then depending on who these divas are, that's how
Speaker 1: you play your opera roles as these divas. So it
Speaker 1: was a triple layered show. There was me, and then
Speaker 1: there was me as Vera, and then there was Vera
Speaker 1: as Toronto or toss Core Lucci or Traviata or whatever
Speaker 1: I did the way she would do it. What was
Speaker 1: the hallmark of her artistic personality. Well, it was obviously
Speaker 1: like reasoning, dedication, and dementia on stage, but it was
Speaker 1: like Collas, discipline, like Sutherland, accuracy in coloratura. So all
Speaker 1: of my training I didn't know was training from when
Speaker 1: I was fifteen too, when I was thirty five, coalesced
Speaker 1: into this creature and I had to learn that first
Speaker 1: night that I sang in Presto Reja, the first line
Speaker 1: I did with Slavic accent was Verist from the Ukraine.
Speaker 1: So I topped some Milonov who has a Slavic accent
Speaker 1: in Italian, and I saying in Covessa, Jack in Covessa
Speaker 1: instead of in Quest with a Slavic accent. Then I
Speaker 1: suddenly learned that I had to hold for laughs because
Speaker 1: the audience knew what that was and that that was funny.
Speaker 1: And so then I had to paste my way through
Speaker 1: opera arias holding for laughs like a stand up comic,
Speaker 1: which was very surprising but also delightful. And then you
Speaker 1: get to rest a little bit too, and gave me
Speaker 1: a nice rest. Well, I learned to milk for that.
Speaker 1: I remember Martie Nixon phoned me once and said, don't
Speaker 1: start playing it for laughs. The good thing about what
Speaker 1: you do is that you don't seem to know it's funny.
Speaker 1: And so she was right, because you could start to think,
Speaker 1: if I do three takes, I can get six laughs
Speaker 1: out of this moment. But then it just becomes stick
Speaker 1: stick stick, and that you know, when you're parenting an
Speaker 1: art form that's also tribute to an art form, the
Speaker 1: last thing you want is to trash the art form.
Speaker 1: So the quality has to match the art form, not
Speaker 1: make fun of it. I think the beautiful thing is
Speaker 1: And you've spoken often about how Charles let Lem's Theater
Speaker 1: The Ridiculous inspired you to create these very loving spoofs
Speaker 1: of opera. That it was not something that was ever
Speaker 1: mean spirited, or we wouldn't trash divas even though they were.
Speaker 1: There were moments where you know, we made fun of
Speaker 1: but there was always the love there. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the intention? I guess I think
Speaker 1: that Charles Laton was my main inspiration, absolutely, undoubtedly definitely.
Speaker 1: When I saw him do Camille, I wanted to do Traviata.
Speaker 1: And that was the first extended scene I did in
Speaker 1: that show where I opened with tour Inductor. I did
Speaker 1: the whole last act of Traviata. That's how the evening closed.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you when I had Sutherland in the
Speaker 1: audience and Scotto and up purely Milo and Cheryl Millns
Speaker 1: and Jimmy Levine, I was never as nervous as when
Speaker 1: Charles Ludlam came to see us perform, and the Traviato
Speaker 1: was in that program. Because this was the person I
Speaker 1: learned what it was to walk the line between tribute
Speaker 1: and spoof, between drama and comedy, to be able to
Speaker 1: make an audience laugh and then cry. Charles Ludlam absolutely
Speaker 1: was my inspiration from the get go. He wasn't a
Speaker 1: singer at all. It had nothing to do with that.
Speaker 1: It had to do with what he did and the
Speaker 1: line that he walked and the way he walked that line.
Speaker 1: In his Camille, there's a moment where he staggers across
Speaker 1: the stage to a statue of the Virgin when he's
Speaker 1: dying and goes, oh Mary when he arrives there, and
Speaker 1: so you are. You're in tears because he's so frail.
Speaker 1: And then he says that and the whole audience is
Speaker 1: screaming with laughter. Fantastic. We have a little bit of
Speaker 1: a clip. One of my favorite performances of yours is
Speaker 1: your Violetta and Travellata and the Munich recording that we're
Speaker 1: going to hear now, I think for us in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties s five or eighty seven Munich eighty five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm utterly obsessed. I'm obsessed with your interpretation of Violetta.
Speaker 1: That performance made me want to thing that aria. I
Speaker 1: still haven't quite gotten it yet, Um there's something. So
Speaker 1: it's obviously just so sublime what you do, but it's
Speaker 1: also hilarious. You know, Violetta has tubercularists and she was dying.
Speaker 1: She was she was a sex worker, and she's in
Speaker 1: love with this man and so she's she's dying in
Speaker 1: this area and it's so touching, but it's it's hilarious.
Speaker 1: What do you when you hear this now in this moment?
Speaker 1: What what do you? What do you think about your brilliance?
Speaker 1: I think I like the London one better. But aside
Speaker 1: from that, it's always that you always love this one.
Speaker 1: But but why do you love the London one more?
Speaker 1: The refinement in the singing? To me is this one's launcheer.
Speaker 1: I was also sick in Munich, so that we were
Speaker 1: on German television and I was sick. We never would
Speaker 1: have known that you were sick, though you don't sound
Speaker 1: sick in that recording. To me, there's just something. It
Speaker 1: was just so funny. This Munich one was hilarious for me.
Speaker 1: The timing of it, well, they were amazing. Also that
Speaker 1: that audience was people in a sweltering tent. That's partly
Speaker 1: how I got dehydrated and got sick because we did
Speaker 1: at night after this was the last night, and they
Speaker 1: gave so much to us back. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: they were phenomenal. But I've got to say Peter Schlauser,
Speaker 1: who was one of my stage directors we workshop this.
Speaker 1: He had been in the actor's studio Traviata, and he
Speaker 1: had this way of working that was so organic. So
Speaker 1: for six months we worked the final act of Traviata,
Speaker 1: starting realistically that I was a guy, I was fatally ill,
Speaker 1: which in those days was beginning to happen, just beginning
Speaker 1: to happen, and we had to work in this very
Speaker 1: realistic way. And Peter came up with the idea of
Speaker 1: a box of mementos that Violetta has when she's dying,
Speaker 1: that she has kept keepsakes of her love affair with Alfredo.
Speaker 1: So handcuffs an all day sucker. You guess what that was.
Speaker 1: I have no idea, Oh, I have ideas. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we all have ideas. And there was also a riding
Speaker 1: crop and some and briefs, a pair of you know,
Speaker 1: but but they were sweet nostalgic items and then hilarious
Speaker 1: and each one more outrageous to start with a handkerchief
Speaker 1: and then you know, and built to the underwear. I
Speaker 1: never knew that you work shopped that through the actor
Speaker 1: and actors studio process, which would be character private moments
Speaker 1: and animal work sometimes and since memory and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff, that you did that for your Violetta. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. What I got out of it also
Speaker 1: was there are things in the phrasing just who she
Speaker 1: really was. I got so deep into someone going through
Speaker 1: that and who she really was. When I would get
Speaker 1: to sing a line like when she's telling Alfredo to
Speaker 1: marry someone else and you know, keep this keepsake portrait
Speaker 1: of me and go marry a sweet young virgin, and
Speaker 1: she sings sound apoty Gina. There there's the pure virgin
Speaker 1: for you somewhere, and I would get to say, no,
Speaker 1: bootyg because you put an edge on the word virtue,
Speaker 1: because of course she's not. Yeah she's not. So we
Speaker 1: dug so deep that it did actually affect the interpretation
Speaker 1: of the Italian libretto as well as coloring the singing.
Speaker 1: And I was not afraid, you know, to twist the voice,
Speaker 1: or Peter even said to me once it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be ugly to be expressive, my dear, But I
Speaker 1: wasn't afraid to twist the voice like that to make
Speaker 1: a point that would be something funny in the middle
Speaker 1: of when everybody's already in tears because she's dying. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's so brilliant. I think, you know, you
Speaker 1: got really incredible ves from so many different places, and
Speaker 1: I called out a few of your reviews here. The
Speaker 1: New York Times in nineteen seven wrote one need not
Speaker 1: be a connoisseur of opera to enjoy the antique musical
Speaker 1: comedy of La Grande Shanna Opera Company, the all male
Speaker 1: operatic Troupe. At the same time, these artificial sopranos have
Speaker 1: a surprising resilience and intensity. Along with abrasive color tour shrieking,
Speaker 1: there are fleeting moments of genuine lyric beauty. The company's
Speaker 1: understanding of operated conventions and the singer's allusions to more
Speaker 1: than half a century of real divas gives the fun
Speaker 1: historical dimension that will appeal especially to opera files. La
Speaker 1: Grande Shanna Opera Company reminds us that beneath the pump
Speaker 1: and magnificence of opera at its most serious and spectacular,
Speaker 1: there runs a deep streak of silliness. What I love
Speaker 1: about that review is that really echoes so much of
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about. The education that you got
Speaker 1: in the standing room line watching all of these productions
Speaker 1: and the Old House, the New House in the sixties,
Speaker 1: sort of the education you lot from the queens that
Speaker 1: you met. There's such a depth of understanding that went
Speaker 1: into what La gros Shana did. And I think it's
Speaker 1: not a mistake that La gros Shana led you to
Speaker 1: so many other aspects of working in the and quote
Speaker 1: unquote the legitimate opera world. But what what would you
Speaker 1: like to say to all of that? Yeah, no, that's
Speaker 1: I always tell people. It was the most circuitous route
Speaker 1: to the mainstream I could possibly think of two. You know,
Speaker 1: spend all that time on the standing room line with
Speaker 1: all these wonderful weirdos, including myself weird to be singing
Speaker 1: falsetto when my friends lofts, you know, when I was
Speaker 1: twenty one and uh, to be in all these off off, off,
Speaker 1: off off appropriate shows in cambaret, and then to put
Speaker 1: on address and sing turned ut and end up at
Speaker 1: the met on the radio broadcasting from the met and
Speaker 1: writing for OUP News and singing. I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the most astonishing moments of the whole ground chain of
Speaker 1: thing was in Berlin when the night that we opened
Speaker 1: for the first time in Berlin, I sang the Madazine
Speaker 1: from Luccia in that program, and this guy from the
Speaker 1: theater came up to me and he said, you know
Speaker 1: that you just sang the Madazine from Lucia on the
Speaker 1: same stage where Collis sang the famous Berlin Lucia with Caryon. Well,
Speaker 1: thank god I didn't know that before the show. But yes,
Speaker 1: you know things like that where you think, how did
Speaker 1: I end up getting here? I was given the middle
Speaker 1: of the city in V spot and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: a Jewish drag queen being given the medal of the
Speaker 1: city in V spot in Germany. You know, after performance,
Speaker 1: I mean, these things that you kind of can't believe.
Speaker 1: You just you know, you sort of not your head
Speaker 1: and go what is this? Me? Is this really happening?
Speaker 1: You know? After tiny break, we've got more for you.
Speaker 1: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first
Speaker 1: of the very little bit Bored Domestic Lesson. We are
Speaker 1: back picking up where we left of the taking of
Speaker 1: photographs and strictly forbidden, unless, of course, they are extremely
Speaker 1: flatter speaking, if you're a Lucia, that moment in the
Speaker 1: Mad scenement, um oh, that section, that section is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite moments in all of opera, that music,
Speaker 1: and I fell in love with it. I happened to
Speaker 1: be at a gran Shana performance and it's on YouTube
Speaker 1: and there's a moment Lucia has has lost her mind.
Speaker 1: This is the Mad scene. She has murdered her husband
Speaker 1: on the day that they get married, and she had
Speaker 1: she she breaks down and it's quite something. But in
Speaker 1: lagron Shana's performance there you use a dumming that is
Speaker 1: your your murdered husband. In that moment of that that
Speaker 1: particular musical moment, you slow dance with the dumming yea,
Speaker 1: and it is hilarious. But it is actually really sublime.
Speaker 1: It's really one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: And I'm crazy, maybe, but it is so beautiful. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about that? But there was
Speaker 1: a logic to it. I mean, we thought, of course,
Speaker 1: we thought it would be funny if she is forced
Speaker 1: to marry a man she doesn't want to marry, so
Speaker 1: she goes crazy and steps and but you never see that.
Speaker 1: We thought it would be amusing if she brought the
Speaker 1: dead body to the wedding party. So I had to
Speaker 1: go to one of these adult stores in the West
Speaker 1: Village in Manhattan and buy an inflatable doll, which we
Speaker 1: then stuffed with fiber phil. At first we used to
Speaker 1: blow it up and it kept deflating, so then we
Speaker 1: stuffed with fiber fille, dressed it in a kill. Did
Speaker 1: it deflated a performance or just in rehearsal was it
Speaker 1: was slowly deflated during performances, So then we thought, oh,
Speaker 1: we've got to stuff it and dressed it in a
Speaker 1: night shirt and it killed because it was Scottish um.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that in the plot, Lucia imagines
Speaker 1: that she's marrying the guy she did love, the one
Speaker 1: she wanted to marry. It gotta go, So that theme
Speaker 1: is a recollection of their love duet from a previous act,
Speaker 1: And when it came time to sing that theme, she
Speaker 1: steeped in the fantasy that she's really marrying Edgardo, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, there's the body. At that point was
Speaker 1: lying on the floor in front of me and I
Speaker 1: just picked it up to just waltz with it while
Speaker 1: I sang that, because that was like the height of
Speaker 1: her fantasy of what she when crazy over being forced
Speaker 1: into a forced marriage, which felt to me bizarre, grotesque,
Speaker 1: and yet sweet at the same time. So I'm so
Speaker 1: happy to hear that instruct here the same way I'm
Speaker 1: I'm really obsessed with it. I rewatched it, and I
Speaker 1: just love hearing the way you describe it, because there
Speaker 1: is that that piece of the longing for Duardo with
Speaker 1: it without the flute, and is that just piano in
Speaker 1: your version. That was our first Lucci ever, that was
Speaker 1: and uh, we didn't have a flutist, so we we
Speaker 1: had a synthesizer that did flute. But the way that
Speaker 1: the flute plays a melody and she sort of hears
Speaker 1: it and it becomes the signifier of her insanity and
Speaker 1: the voices that she's hearing, and it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: really sublime. It was fun to do. But when you
Speaker 1: hear the whole foot up the gout, of course you
Speaker 1: know this. But I do. I drink from a cup
Speaker 1: that says Joan, and then I do subsillance ornaments and
Speaker 1: then I drink from when that says Maria, and I
Speaker 1: do call us those ornaments. So the conescende went nuts
Speaker 1: because they could recognize all of this and that was
Speaker 1: always fun to do. It just was so great that
Speaker 1: there was an audience alive at that point, so steeped
Speaker 1: in this art form and culture in general that they
Speaker 1: just got it on all the levels of the comedy,
Speaker 1: the drama, the spoof, the tribute. Yes, speaking ornaments, there's
Speaker 1: a beautiful a moment that that that you share it
Speaker 1: with us that I would love to play. Now, your
Speaker 1: musicianship is really wonderful. Oh can we talk about your penism?
Speaker 1: Is that those uninitiated it's very soft singing, very quiet singing.
Speaker 1: And was that something in that year that you you know, recreated,
Speaker 1: you know, reconstituted your falsetto. Did that the peni semo
Speaker 1: come right away? What was the evolution because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't have that now, we don't hear
Speaker 1: a lot of this kind of singing anymore. When I
Speaker 1: started to singing in head voice in Falsetto, it was
Speaker 1: a very tight production to make the piano. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was doing and it was very locked.
Speaker 1: And then when I had to resurrect the falsetto voice
Speaker 1: for grand China. I was acquainted by that time in
Speaker 1: what marking was, marking being the technical term for singing
Speaker 1: softly when you have to rehearse a lot and repeat
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. And so at some point I
Speaker 1: was going up and I didn't want to go up
Speaker 1: full voice, and I threw it into an isolated head tone,
Speaker 1: leaving out the heft the bottom of the voice, and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, well, that feels like a freer way
Speaker 1: to do something soft. So I started to work that,
Speaker 1: and I found what I could do with it, what
Speaker 1: I couldn't do with it. It got I think better
Speaker 1: over the years that could end it to a high
Speaker 1: a piano that you just played. I was sixty by
Speaker 1: that time. I found a pocket I could feed breath
Speaker 1: into a very high forringial point on the vocal cords,
Speaker 1: which is a very slender point. So it produced a
Speaker 1: very slender, shimmery sound. Uh. And it was a great
Speaker 1: way to rest and at the same time impress people.
Speaker 1: And I could hold a piano note for seconds if
Speaker 1: i've you know, just to be silly, but at the
Speaker 1: same time virtuosic, because you had to kind of mind
Speaker 1: what was special about what you could do. I didn't
Speaker 1: have very much vibrato when I started singing in falsetto,
Speaker 1: much to my disappointment, and so I sounded more like
Speaker 1: a Slavic sound where they they're more hard and straight toned,
Speaker 1: the Russian kind of sound. Eastern European, really, so I
Speaker 1: had to be Eastern European. Over the years, I tried
Speaker 1: to make her sound warmer, to increase the vibrato and
Speaker 1: to warm up the sound for expression and beauty, and
Speaker 1: she morphed also from a matron lee character with body
Speaker 1: pads when I first started to play her to someone
Speaker 1: more slim and kind of well glamorous. Maybe it's an overstatement,
Speaker 1: but glamorous esque so much. Um, oh my goodness. I
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a student of the voice. And there's
Speaker 1: the declining diva, right, It's really rare that a diva
Speaker 1: doesn't have some sort of decline, right, And and the
Speaker 1: vocal longevity is something that is a thing and that
Speaker 1: some singers have the most singers don't have. If there
Speaker 1: is a secret to vocal longevity, what would you think
Speaker 1: that that might be. I think I could I could
Speaker 1: definitely talk about what would cause vocal non longevity. The
Speaker 1: vocal longevity is partly genetics, partly jeans and health and luck,
Speaker 1: and then technique. And I think it's very important not
Speaker 1: to oversing. I did. I had to. We had to
Speaker 1: do five six shows a week of opera, which is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Just so folks know when the med and most opera
Speaker 1: houses you'll singer will sing and then have two or
Speaker 1: three days off after they sing, right, But for the
Speaker 1: grand Sana and the way that you had to sort
Speaker 1: of make money that you had to sing many back
Speaker 1: to back shows touring the world, which is insane. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: blassid Do Domingo was on the Tonight Show talking to
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson saying, oh, no, we no are sing more
Speaker 1: than blind. So we to John you know so I
Speaker 1: mean I thought, yeah, But a way to shrede your
Speaker 1: voice is to overbook yourself, to fly too much, which
Speaker 1: is is a problem these days. Singers used to have
Speaker 1: to travel by train or by boat, so they had
Speaker 1: these long enforced breaks. What is it about flying that
Speaker 1: that is that can be bad and detrimental for the voice.
Speaker 1: I think it's partly the de hydration and the dryness
Speaker 1: in the air in the planes. I think the jet
Speaker 1: lag time difference thing can be very fatiguing. And you
Speaker 1: also have to be smart about what you sing in
Speaker 1: shifts that you make, and so that's something you also
Speaker 1: have to do. You have to program for your voice
Speaker 1: for the time that it is, not for how it
Speaker 1: was ten fifteen years ago. I've already tried that with video.
Speaker 1: La Jamaal his big success at the med in the seventies.
Speaker 1: He tried to do it in the nineties and and
Speaker 1: and couldn't. Of course he couldn't. You know, singers are
Speaker 1: driven by ambition now, I think more than ever social
Speaker 1: media networking, driven to sing things that they really shouldn't sing.
Speaker 1: And it's disrespectful for the work in a way, also
Speaker 1: because you're doing an insufficient job and you're doing a
Speaker 1: disservice to your instrument. Frankly um Scotto's debut season at
Speaker 1: the at the Mata Blues. She sang Butterfly, I believe
Speaker 1: with her debut, but she also was the program to sing.
Speaker 1: I think Luccia and something else crazy Elia, Yeah, Luccia
Speaker 1: and and Eliza two ton sties. Yeah. The debut Luccia
Speaker 1: was daggering, was Abel conto artist in a Puccini opera,
Speaker 1: so one you know, beautifully trained in one kind of field,
Speaker 1: coming and bringing that to guts her bigger voiced role.
Speaker 1: So we all felt, well, she can't possibly sing Lucia.
Speaker 1: She's going to cancel it because you can't sing Butterfly
Speaker 1: like that, and then seeing Luccia two weeks later, but
Speaker 1: she did, and she sang Luccio with a different sound,
Speaker 1: more head tones, lighter, more what we were just discussing
Speaker 1: with piano, and it was fantastic because the orchestra is
Speaker 1: much lighter in Luccia, and the acting was phenomenal. She
Speaker 1: was a very cunning artist who made a huge career
Speaker 1: with an not incredibly exceptional instrument and that I admire
Speaker 1: more than anything. Anybody can be born with a pretty voice,
Speaker 1: but to make your voice into something more than it
Speaker 1: is through your artistry is incredible. And she created fantastic
Speaker 1: illusions of sound that way and in theater that was
Speaker 1: just phenomenal. It's important to note that of all the
Speaker 1: diva's opera queens, have you know our number one diva?
Speaker 1: And I think it's safe to say that we're not
Speaker 1: a Scotto would be yours am, I what I think
Speaker 1: that we're not to really is mine. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are there are other people I have loved, like Sutherland
Speaker 1: and Collus and reason Nick, but Scotto was We have
Speaker 1: sort of a what's the word? You know? We love
Speaker 1: each other. I love her. She loves me because she
Speaker 1: knows that when I was Vera, I was partly her,
Speaker 1: and that it was a tribute to her her work.
Speaker 1: And what Scotto did was she illuminated roles for me.
Speaker 1: I would see a role like Butterfly scene many times
Speaker 1: like I've never seen it before. And that was her gift.
Speaker 1: She made you feel like you were seeing an opera
Speaker 1: for the first time when you've seen it many many times.
Speaker 1: She illuminated parts of it that you never thought were
Speaker 1: important before. And College said that ability to rend a.
Speaker 1: Scotto was also a very huge fan of La Grande
Speaker 1: Shana and and went to many performances. And there is
Speaker 1: a brilliant story that I did not know about you
Speaker 1: going to see Nada later in her career. Can you
Speaker 1: please tell us this story? It is It's kind of
Speaker 1: the like when of the high points of my entire life,
Speaker 1: I saw Scotto. I don't know how many times, but
Speaker 1: I never almost never talked to her. At a party.
Speaker 1: I would talk to her, but I mean I really
Speaker 1: was not close with her until she came and saw
Speaker 1: my performance. And she was in very late career. It
Speaker 1: was like two thousand one, I think, or two thousand two,
Speaker 1: and she was singing a very unlikely role Clyte nest Or,
Speaker 1: the evil mother in Strauss's Electra at Baltimore Opera and
Speaker 1: it was a real late career diva star turn, you know.
Speaker 1: So the whole thing was built around the fact that
Speaker 1: they got Scotto in Baltimore and it was and she
Speaker 1: was amazing, And afterwards I kind of cued up just
Speaker 1: to go backstage because I've driven all the way down
Speaker 1: to Baltimore to see her, just to say I was there.
Speaker 1: And I thought, she's not going to remember me, because
Speaker 1: you know, she saw me perform, but I looked like
Speaker 1: Vera and I interviewed her for Opera News and we
Speaker 1: talked on the phone, but you know, she won't remember me.
Speaker 1: So I was online to see her and her son,
Speaker 1: Felippo came out and he said, oh, are you here,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, I just wanted to say hi
Speaker 1: to her. You know, do you think she'll remember me,
Speaker 1: and he said, he kidding me. Anyone who comes into
Speaker 1: our house has to watch your video of Tasca. Just
Speaker 1: wait here a moment, you know. So then he ushered
Speaker 1: me in and in the perform and as Critemnestra, Renata
Speaker 1: had worn this big red French twist wig, which was
Speaker 1: exactly the same as the wig that I would wear
Speaker 1: on stage as Matt and Vera. And I'm walking down
Speaker 1: the hole to her dressing room and the door to
Speaker 1: the dressing room opens and Renata comes out and she
Speaker 1: points to me. She says, today I did you m hmm.
Speaker 1: And it was just like you know, it was having
Speaker 1: your the person whose work you worshiped more than anyone,
Speaker 1: sort of I don't know, I can't even verbalize it.
Speaker 1: It was affirmation of I get what you're about, you
Speaker 1: get what I'm about, And it was an amazing thing.
Speaker 1: There she was wearing that red wig and she would
Speaker 1: look like you right. It was just I remember once
Speaker 1: I was at I was at a master class she
Speaker 1: gave for Cheryl Milne's Voice Foundation, and I had to
Speaker 1: leave to go to Grand Shane to rehearsal, and she
Speaker 1: said where are you going? And I said, I have
Speaker 1: to leave. I have a rehearsal. She said, what do
Speaker 1: you rehearsing? And I said, Traviata, the death scene. She said,
Speaker 1: do me, do me, do me. So she had this
Speaker 1: part and when she gives Alfred of the portrait BRANDI quest,
Speaker 1: day Margina, you know, but I did it Alla Scott
Speaker 1: Brand who as Dalli Margina. She freaked. I mean she
Speaker 1: was laughing hysterically. We used to call that the Scotto meow,
Speaker 1: kind of like quiz a cat mewing brandy, you know.
Speaker 1: And she got it totally and she loved it because well,
Speaker 1: it was about her, and what diva wouldn't love something
Speaker 1: that's about them after they You have so many great
Speaker 1: diva stories, but can you please as a Leontine Price,
Speaker 1: M Leontine is my number one, the sort of first
Speaker 1: black Prima Donna of opera. MS Price came to a
Speaker 1: Grand Shana performance. Can you please tell the story when
Speaker 1: she came back stage and that beautiful moment with Ms Price.
Speaker 1: Oh God, but she was so wonderful and she was
Speaker 1: such a great booster for the company. But this was
Speaker 1: the first time she ever saw us, and they wanted
Speaker 1: us to pose for pictures for I think it was newsweek,
Speaker 1: And so we got the my small company of singers
Speaker 1: together on stage with Leontine in her turb and her
Speaker 1: pearls looking stunning. Of course, So we were standing there
Speaker 1: and I had sung this the big second act of
Speaker 1: poker scene from Lafontulaville West Puccini, which is very very
Speaker 1: hard and has a big high C sharp that mostly
Speaker 1: anybody who sings that role leaves out. But I had
Speaker 1: sung it, and Liantine came and she said, I don't
Speaker 1: know how you got through that fontula, because it had
Speaker 1: given her a bit of a vocal crisis for a
Speaker 1: little while when she sang it at the men, she said,
Speaker 1: I just couldn't. I mean, I just it was just
Speaker 1: too rough. Of course I did have to see sharp.
Speaker 1: And then she hit the C sharp standing next to me,
Speaker 1: and I thought I had died and got to heaven.
Speaker 1: It was spun gold that just went like a laser
Speaker 1: beam shimmering into the theater. That was just phenomenal. The
Speaker 1: thought of it gives me goose bumps. Like Lantin Brice
Speaker 1: standing next to you singing a C sharp just feels
Speaker 1: like my idea of heaven. It just feels like I
Speaker 1: just it's such a gorgeous thing. Well certainly it was mine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For you. Now, if you could talk to all of
Speaker 1: the singers out there now, who are you know, working
Speaker 1: opera singers or if any genre, I guess, what do
Speaker 1: you want them to know? I mean, and no taste
Speaker 1: have changed and it's it's a lost art. What would
Speaker 1: you say to young singers out there now? I think
Speaker 1: it's something that you referred to, and that's that the
Speaker 1: line in a way has been broken. Try to discover
Speaker 1: and call us always taught this. Try to discover the
Speaker 1: line back to what you come from, and really try
Speaker 1: to understand what's on the page that is there for
Speaker 1: you to mind and to pull out, respected to death,
Speaker 1: and then make it your own. Do not be afraid
Speaker 1: to be vivid. Do not be straight jacketed into a
Speaker 1: generic safe thing because you're trying to second guess what
Speaker 1: people you're auditioning for are looking for. And try to
Speaker 1: have integrity about the art form in terms of the score,
Speaker 1: the libretto, the vocal value, and the characterization, because in
Speaker 1: today's opera world, too often you're going to not get
Speaker 1: that from stage director, because it's going to be about
Speaker 1: the stage director's concept and you have to hold onto
Speaker 1: your vocal personality, your artistry, your understanding of it, and
Speaker 1: get through that experience. Go to YouTube and start looking
Speaker 1: at things that begin with nineteen zero something recordings to
Speaker 1: understand what you come from, no what your lineage is,
Speaker 1: what you're part of, your part of this amazing tradition.
Speaker 1: Learned about the tradition. Don't think you're better than the tradition.
Speaker 1: Oh that's such a beautiful advice. And what I hope
Speaker 1: people come away with today with our discussion is understanding
Speaker 1: that if you give everything you've got to something that
Speaker 1: you are very very serious and know everything about it,
Speaker 1: that you can make something out of it. And you
Speaker 1: have made a life in a career out of a
Speaker 1: love for adepas, out of a love for opera, And
Speaker 1: I just think that's the most beautiful thing ever. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Laverne. I'm somebody who works so hard with
Speaker 1: so much passion, and that's so important. It's crucial. We
Speaker 1: really we mustn't become too sophisticated for things that we
Speaker 1: don't see them with reverence and with passion and not
Speaker 1: be embarrassed by passion. Yeah, I'd like to end the
Speaker 1: podcast with the question that comes from my therapy, that
Speaker 1: it's really about building resilience is the idea of both,
Speaker 1: and even when something might be challenging in our lives,
Speaker 1: there is something that helps us get through. And the
Speaker 1: question is what else is true? So irac if madame iras,
Speaker 1: if for you today, what else is true? I find
Speaker 1: it to be, of course, a very challenging time that
Speaker 1: we're living in now, and I feel I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that this is an answer to that question, but an
Speaker 1: extension of what we talked about today, that the love,
Speaker 1: the passion, the devotion that one puts into something like
Speaker 1: an art form to which one devotes one's life, that
Speaker 1: that becomes an envelope that encompasses everything that you do,
Speaker 1: that you approach everything with that passion, that love, that fears,
Speaker 1: desire to communicate but also to receive communication, to understand
Speaker 1: what other people are trying to tell you, how they feel,
Speaker 1: what they think, who they are sharing in all possible directions,
Speaker 1: and understanding in all possible directions. And then I think
Speaker 1: people also really understand you if you can do that,
Speaker 1: even people you don't like. Without the love. For what
Speaker 1: we've been talking about today, I don't think I would
Speaker 1: have understood what love is that can be brought and
Speaker 1: extended to all situations. I don't know if that answers
Speaker 1: the question even remotely, but it does. I'm actually in
Speaker 1: tears right now because because that just made me think
Speaker 1: about what happens with the diva on stage, the giving
Speaker 1: and receiving of love. Right there are moments when I
Speaker 1: know you've experienced this vere and I think probably as
Speaker 1: a lecture as well, when the when the audience is
Speaker 1: just enthralled and they love you so much because you've
Speaker 1: given everything you've got and it's just this thing that
Speaker 1: you just there's just not even worse for it. You
Speaker 1: feel it, you know it, you see it, but you
Speaker 1: sense it more than anything, and you sense it in
Speaker 1: that one moment when you finish, before they start to
Speaker 1: scream that you just feel this suspension and then it goes,
Speaker 1: you know, and that is why you're really of all
Speaker 1: the things you do, you're brilliant teacher. What you do
Speaker 1: with the Metropologian Opera broadcast is you're giving that love
Speaker 1: and when we feel it, and when I think about you,
Speaker 1: I think about all those people that we lost. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean there was this caliber of artists that we
Speaker 1: had that we lost because of AIDS, and you are
Speaker 1: that caliber of artists who survived. And it is such
Speaker 1: a wonderful, wonderful gift to the world. Thank you for surviving.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the love and for the the level
Speaker 1: of excellence that you embody by example, everyone should be
Speaker 1: studying that. I think, thank you, Irah, Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: bless you, thank you. Yeah, yeah yeah, what a beautiful Aria.
Speaker 1: To end with that, of course, is Dido's Lament from
Speaker 1: Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. When I'm late in earth,
Speaker 1: remember me, but oh forget my fate. I hope we
Speaker 1: all will always remember Ira sif he and I share
Speaker 1: this desire to be transformed by the operated voice, not
Speaker 1: only as a listener, but as the artist, as the
Speaker 1: singer become the diva. Ira has given me the gift
Speaker 1: to be able to, on a good day croak out
Speaker 1: some sound that feels transcendent, that feels good in my body,
Speaker 1: and I'm so grateful to him for that. And then
Speaker 1: the connection to to this bygone era of queer opera
Speaker 1: culture that doesn't really exist anymore. Ira is a tribute
Speaker 1: to those old divas a living tribute and a reminder
Speaker 1: of what we can learn if we really truly understand
Speaker 1: the past, have reverence for it, that that can take
Speaker 1: us into the future with a sort of fortification, with
Speaker 1: the grounding. For those of us who are artists, I
Speaker 1: think you can make the artistic journey one that we
Speaker 1: know we're not walking alone. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: The Laverne Cox Show. Join me next week for my
Speaker 1: conversation with award winning journalist, author, and producer Mary O'Hara.
Speaker 1: She has written a powerful book called The Shame Game,
Speaker 1: overturning the toxic poverty narrative for anyone who has struggled
Speaker 1: with shame on any level. You won't want to miss it.
Speaker 1: Please rate, review, subscribe, and share with everyone you know.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne
Speaker 1: Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until
Speaker 1: next time, stay in the lock. The Laverne Cox Show
Speaker 1: is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit
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