FEATURE INTERVIEW, OPERA:
SUSAN GRAHAM comes to the COC from
Texas and the Met
20 SEPT/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

TORONTO - She is the toast of opera stages around the world, particularly beloved by audiences at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where she makes her professional home. She’s been named “America’s favourite mezzo” by Gramophone Magazine, and a Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur by the French government.

It goes without saying that one doesn’t achieve the kind of success in the opera world that mezzo soprano Susan Graham has achieved without taking it very, very seriously. So what proves most delightful in a brief phone conversation with the 51-year-old Graham, as she enjoys a romantic interlude in Los Angeles — “He’s not a singer,” is all she’ll say of the man in her life — is the fact that, while she takes her work seriously she doesn’t appear to take herself seriously at all.

That’s apparent pretty much from the get-go, as she sets out to explain just how a young New Mexico-born, Texas-raised piano student ended up rising like rich cream to the top of the opera world, earning her highest praise for her particular focus on works in the French classical canon. “I studied German,” she says of her high school days, adding with a laugh. “You think you know what you’re planning for.” Back then, mind you, Graham’s main focus was on the piano, with the vocal end of things playing a sort of second fiddle, you should pardon the expression.

“I had always been singing alongside of (the piano playing). I accompanied choirs and I was always the soprano section leader,” she recalls. And then The Sound of Music came along.

“I auditioned for the part of Maria, and I got it in my senior year of high school. I still have my script. Every time I go home to visit my mom, it is there in my closet.” And while few might have trouble connecting all the dots in a career that started with Rodgers and Hammerstein and led to Gluck and Mahler, they simply don’t understand life in smalltown Texas, Graham suspects.

“Where I come from, music theatre is as close to opera as you can get,” she says without apology. “The first opera I ever saw was a touring company that did Cosi fan tutte in my high school.” The opera that’s bringing Graham to Toronto, however, is more serious fare.

For her admittedly long-overdue debut with the Canadian Opera Company on Thursday night at the Four Seasons Centre, she’ll be revisiting a role in which she has earned great acclaim around the world, singing the title role in Christoph Willibald Gluck’s IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS. It’s a role to which Graham is drawn, she says, for its “great emotional palate.

“It’s one of those perfect combinations,” she says. “The music is so divinely expressive and it gives over to big, dramatic opportunities.There’s not a lot of joy in this opera. (Iphigenia’s) sorrow is great. Her longing is great.” All of which apparently adds to Graham’s enjoyment of the role. “If you don’t like the role, you only do it once,” she says. “I love this opera. I enjoy playing the depths of these traumatized characters. It’s a great opportunity to dig deep. It’s cheaper than an analyst’s couch, and a lot more fun.”

Besides, according to Graham, any singer would have to be crazy to pass up the opportunity to work with director Robert Carson, whose staging of ORFEO ED EURIDICE set the Toronto opera world on its ear last season.

“I’ve done Robert’s production more than any other ... I just adore him because he’s brilliant. He has a real talent for getting to the human essence of a scene, a character or an opera.” Graham sings the title role in IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS on Thursday, Sunday, Sept. 28 and Oct. 1, 4, 7 and 12, while Canadian soprano Katherine Whyte is slated to step into the role Oct. 15.