Amna Nawaz:
After more than four decades on the world’s top opera stages, acclaimed mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves took her final bow recently and is now devoting herself to teaching the next generation.
Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown joined Graves in the days leading up to her farewell for our arts and culture series, Canvas.
Jeffrey Brown:
In opera, Denyce Graves says there’s enormous focus on how to make it, but not so much on how or when to leave it.
Denyce Graves, Opera Singer:
With all of the preparation and with all of our attention sort of centered around, what does it take to actually get into the world’s greatest opera house, what does that require?
Jeffrey Brown:
Right.
Denyce Graves:
And then, when you’re there, when is it time, after you have done that — if you’re lucky, when is it time to sort of bow out gracefully?
Jeffrey Brown:
There’s not a lot of guidance for that.
Denyce Graves:
Nope, not at all.
Jeffrey Brown:
Now she’s done just that with a final series of performances in George Gershwin’s classic “Porgy and Bess,” reprising a role in a production first presented in 2019 at The Metropolitan Opera, one of the grandest stages of all.
(Singing)
Jeffrey Brown:
It was a supporting, not starring role. And that, she told us with a laugh in The Met’s renowned hall just days before her final time on stage, came with implications behind the scenes.
Denyce Graves:
When I started here, I had the first dressing room, right?
Jeffrey Brown:
Yes.
Denyce Graves:
And now it’s the last one. It’s the last one. There’s nothing else after it.
(Laughter)
Jeffrey Brown:
That’s a sign.
Denyce Graves:
The next thing is out of the door. There’s no other dressing room after that one. Like, it’s the end of the line.
Jeffrey Brown:
So it’s time.
Denyce Graves:
It’s time. It’s time.
Jeffrey Brown:
And, at 61, she’s doing it on her terms, publicly announced in a recent New York Times essay. And it’s not about dressing rooms, of course, as much as the extraordinary physical and emotional demands of her profession.
Denyce Graves:
This is very unnatural what it is that we do and the amount of discipline, the amount of training, the amount of sacrifice that it takes. It’s one that asks for your entire being. Everything that you do affects what happens, because you are the instrument.
Jeffrey Brown:
Perhaps her best known role was the fiery, sensual Carmen in Georges Bizet’s opera.
But she told us of being a shy and awkward child growing up in what she calls humble surroundings in Washington, D.C. among her guardian angels, Judith Grove Allen, a music teacher she first met in grade school, who taught and then encouraged her to attend Washington’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts. The two remain in regular contact to this day.
Among her role models, legendary soprano Leontyne Price, whom Graves first encountered in high school listening to recordings.
Denyce Graves:
And I discovered this art form and I said, what is this? I’d never heard anything like that before. I saw this woman who looked like me, and I said, what is this? And I said that’s what I want to do. I want to do whatever it is that she’s doing.
Jeffrey Brown:
So then, to make it, it must require drive, ambition.
Denyce Graves:
Oh, you better believe it.
Jeffrey Brown:
And do those come with doubts and anxieties and fears all along the way?
Denyce Graves:
Sure. A fire has to be ignited inside of you somewhere and you have to believe that you have something unusual to offer.
Jeffrey Brown:
In the New York Times piece you wrote announcing the retirement, you said that, as a Black woman, you write of the difficulties “of pursuing life in a culture that often seemed foreign to me or that saw me as foreign to it.”
Denyce Graves:
Absolutely.
I remember looking once at a production photo of myself on the stage with my colleagues and how different I was from everyone else, and some directors who would say to me: “There’s no way you’re going to be believable in this character.”
Jeffrey Brown:
As a white European character?
Denyce Graves:
I mean, I had — I can say these things now, I guess, maybe, maybe. But I had the director at the Vienna Staatsoper, one of the world’s greatest opera houses, said to me: “There’s no way that I would hire you for like 99 percent of the roles here, because you just would not be believable.”
And we were talking about Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte,” in which I would sing the role of Dorabella. He said: “Nobody would believe you as a sister.”
And I said: “Well, I could be adopted or she could be adopted.”
Jeffrey Brown:
Graves says the world of opera has changed a lot in terms of the stories being told and greater representation on stage. And that’s been part of her work with her foundation, to which she will now devote much of her time, and focus on training and mentoring a new generation of singers, including at historic Black colleges and universities.
Another focus, helping to preserve history as an advocate for the restoration of the former National Negro Opera House in Pittsburgh once home to an organization started by singer Mary Cardwell Dawson, who, feeling shut out of most opera companies, decided to start her own.
Denyce Graves:
I was so moved by her and her story and by the fact that I didn’t learn about her. She’s a great, great hidden figure who really changed in the shape of the landscape of this profession.
Woman:
In the very best sense of the word, you are one of our divas.
Denyce Graves:
Oh!
Woman:
Yes.
Jeffrey Brown:
Graves is leaving behind legions of colleagues, including in The Met’s costume and wig shop, but looks forward to continuing to coach singers and a new pursuit, direct operas.
But, on January 24, it was time for a final performance as a singer and on-stage celebration.
Denyce Graves:
I’m incredibly grateful and feel incredibly fulfilled. I did many of the roles that I wanted to do. And when I look around me on the stage, I see another generation.
Jeffrey Brown:
Days before, though, she had told us of one demand following years of self-discipline to protect her voice and body.
Denyce Graves:
After I finish that performance, somebody better hand me a dirty martini. That’s what I’m looking forward to.
(Laughter)
Jeffrey Brown:
That will really be the end.
Denyce Graves:
That will really be the end. You’re right.
(Singing)
Jeffrey Brown:
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
