Opera Diva Worship w/ Ira Siff

In this episode, Laverne introduces us to her opera singing teacher of 25 years, the celebrated opera lecturer, Metropolitan Opera Broadcast co-host and retired diva, Ira Siff. Ira is the creator of La Gran Scena, the all-male cross-dressed opera troupe that performed internationally for over 20 years to much critical acclaim with a cult-like following. Ira was the prima donna of La Gran Scena as his diva alter ego, Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh. Vera was an amalgamation of the most famous opera stars of the 20th century. As Vera, Ira toed the line between spoof and adoring tribute with a thoughtfulness that earned La Gran Scena the praise and patronage of the very same opera stars Scena lovingly spoofed. Known for his lectures and the approachable manner in which he talks about opera, Ira breaks down opera history while telling stories of growing up as an “opera queen” in New York, and the insane fandom of diva worship. //

Glossary of Opera Terminology:

Aria: A self-contained piece for a singer, or “solo.” In opera, arias mostly appear during a pause in dramatic action when a character is reflecting on their emotions. // 

Bel Canto: An Italian vocal technique or “school” developed and popularized in the 18th and 19th centuries. It places emphasis on beauty of sound and brilliance of performance rather than dramatic expression and romantic emotion. // 

Coloratura: Elaborate ornamentation of a vocal melody, especially in operatic singing by a soprano. // 

Falsetto: A method of singing used by male singers, especially tenors, to sing notes higher than their normal range. // 

Forte: A musical direction that means “loud.” // 

Legato: (adj.) Smooth and flowing in manner, without breaks between notes. // 

Libretto: The text of an opera (or other vocal work). // 

Lucia: Short for “Lucia di Lammermoor,” a famous opera work by Gaetano Donezetti. //

Ornaments (ornamentation): Musical flourishes or embellishments (such as a trill or a slide) that are not essential to carry the overall line of the melody, but serve instead to decorate or “ornament” that line. // 

Pianissimo: A soft performance, played or sung quietly. // 

The Met: The Metropolitan Opera House in New York. //

Tosca: A famous opera by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. //

Traviata: Short for “La Traviata,” a famous opera by Giuseppe Verde. La Traviata also goes by the name “Camille” in English, which was the title of the book that inspired it. //  

Verismo: An operatic genre that attempts to portray the world with greater realism. It came about in the 19th century and often focuses on subject matter that was not previously fit for opera, such as the life of the poor. // 

Wagner/Wagnerian: Richard Wagner was one of the most famous Opera composers of all time. He lived during the 19th century. Notable operas include: Tristan und Isolde, Die Walküre, Lohengrin. //

Famous Opera Divas //

Joan Sutherland, active from 1947 - 1990. // 

Maria Callas, active from 1945 - 1965. //

Renata Scotto, active from 1952 - 2002. //

Leontyne Price, active from 1952 - 1997. //

Leonie Rysanek, active from 1959 - 1996. // 

Montserrat Caballé, active from 1956 - 2018. //

Please rate, review, subscribe and share The Laverne Cox Show with everyone you know. You can find Laverne on Instagram and Twitter @LaverneCox and on Facebook at @LaverneCoxForReal. //

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a production of shawond
Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. She hit
this partner when she gives up Rado the portrait Brandy
qu'st day, Margina, you know, but I did it Alla
Strand who has margin. We used to call that the

(00:22):
scotto me ow, kind of like Cuisoka cat the owing.
And she got it do to and she loved it
because well it was about her, and what Eva wouldn't
love something that's about them. Welcome to Laverne Cox Show.

(00:45):
I'm Laverne Cox. You've just heard the bella voce. The
beautiful voice of Virus if performing says alter Ego Madame
Vera Glupe Borshed, one of the founding members and the

(01:06):
primadonna of La Grande Shana Opera Company. For those of
you who may not be familiar with all the opera
terms we used, there is a glossary of opera terms
in our show notes. I was about ten years old

(01:28):
and I was watching PBS and they had announced that
Leontine Price was going to be on. I knew who
Leontine Price was because my mother gave me a black
history book when I was six years old, and I
used to stare at the photo of Leontine Price. She
was wearing a turban and she had these high cheek
bones and these very full lips. I thought she looked
like me, and I was just transfixed by this photo.

(01:51):
But I had never heard her sing. She's standing there
in this sort of militaristic stance, and she opens her
mouth and the most beautiful, awe inspiring sound comes out
of her, and it felt like this oval of earthy
vibration coming at me through the television. I just remember

(02:12):
shaking as I heard her sing, and I was hooked.
It was that moment in two watching PBS and Leontine
Price that made me a lifelong loan Prevan. Leontine Price

(02:40):
was a huge fan of Lagron Shana and referred to
Ira Siff as Madame Ira Siff found it in ninete
Lagron Shane I presented loving spooks of opera where all
the women's roles were performed by men and drag singing
an exquisite operettic falsetto. She's head of the company. La

(03:02):
Grande Shana is unbelievable. Ira Siff is one of the
greatest artists in the world. Though they are calculated to
be a spoof, they are the finest singers I have
ever heard. They have everything that is top drawer in
an opera ambiance. I just adore them. I met Ira
Siff for the first time in to study singing. Not

(03:25):
only did I want to sing opera, I had hoped
Ira could help me with a vocal transition, if you will,
from base baritone to soprano. If I ever have made
a beautiful operatic sound, it is likely because of Ira Siff.
He is an unparalleled performer and vocal artist. In the
year two thousand he began to direct operas. Mr Siff

(03:47):
writes for Opera News, is a weekly contributor for the
Metropolitan Opera Broadcast. Gives riveting lectures on opera for the
met Opera Guild, some of which are available in podcast form.
You must go check them out. I believe Ira Sif
to truly be a national treasure with exacting and uncompromising standards,

(04:08):
yet beautifully encouraging and supportive. Not a lot of people
have been in my life for over twenty five years.
I truly love Ira Sif. Likely in teen price, I
believe he is one of the greatest artists in the world.
Please enjoy my conversation with and celebration of Madame Ira Sif. Hello, Ira,

(04:44):
welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling to die?
I'm great, I'm happy to be with you. Vern of course,
I had to begin the podcast with the way La
Granjena performances often began with the righte of the Valkyries
from Wagner. How does it feel for you in sixty

(05:13):
years after this is your sixtieth anniversary, are going to opera?
How does it feel to hear that in this moment today? Well,
it's very nostalgic, of course, because it's about thirty years
since that particular performance. Although we sang Valkyrie I don't
know five hundred times during tours between eighty one and
two thousand and two. So when I hear it, it

(05:36):
really takes me back and I feel two things, of course,
and you will understand this, being the perfectionists that you are.
I think, Wow, that was exciting and fun, and then
I think, oh, I wish I'd done that no better.
M hmmm. Is there ever a moment when you can
listen to yourself and not have critique? I would say

(05:59):
no moments when I don't have critique, but in spite
of that, I can hear things that I actually approve of,
oddly things probably later in my singing career, where I
feel technically things were really in line, even though the
voice wasn't as fresh and easy as it had been.
But then I think, oh, there's some really serious mature

(06:21):
artistry going on here with the comedy, and that makes
me kind of happy. So I wanted to begin with
what inspired lacros Shana and your love for opera, And
I want to start um sixty years ago with that

(06:43):
iconic year that Lantine Price made her debut at the
Metropolitan Opera and an Australians upon her named Jones sutherlandand
also made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, and you
happened to be there for lah Stupendas debut New York City.
Can you tell us about how you found your way

(07:04):
to the opera in n when I was fifteen, And
it was very strange because I met this kid in
high school. It was what we would now call, I guess,
a nerd, but I found him endlessly amusing and very intelligent,
and his parents were into this thing called opera. I
knew nothing about it. My parents had taken me to
Broadway shows. I saw a lot of great you know,

(07:26):
my Fair Lady Gypsy, all these great musicals and plays
with original cast, but I've never been to the opera.
And his name was Robert, and Robert said, we'll come
over to my house and we'll go in my parents
finished basement, and we're going to listen to this new
recording that just came out of Luccia de l'amimore. I
had no idea what that was with Joan Sutherland, I

(07:47):
had no idea who that was. And I'll prepare you
with the libretto and then we'll go to the men
and we'll see it. So I heard this thing, and
I followed it with the words the Italian and the English,
and I was, you know, it was ice. Then I
went and we stood all the way up in the
family circle standing room, miles from the stage, and she

(08:08):
began to make that noise that she made in Nie.
It was something extraordinary. I'd never heard anything like it.
And by the end of the big mad scene that
climax is the opera for the title character, there was
something like twenty eight curtain calls. The place went berserk.

(08:29):
She was astonishing at that time, darting up and down
the stairs all over the stage while trilling and doing
this incredible virtuosic sinking. So I was. I was completely
blown away, and I left my poor friend Robert in
the dust and started going to the met in standing
room to three times a week, telling my parents I

(08:50):
was in school doing an art project, making up all
kinds of excuses. My father worked on the next block.
When he would pass by to go home to take
the subway to go to Brooke, where we lived, I
would duck down behind some mother standy so he wouldn't
see me. Why did you feel you had to lie
to your parents about going to the opera era? What
what was going on there? Well? It was. It was

(09:12):
kind of viewed as a kind of freaky thing, I think.
And also I think that I was supposed to be
doing things like homework, and for me, you know, this
turned out to be my homework. I was just preparing
to be a diva, but I didn't know it then,
you know. So there were knights they knew I was there,
and there were knights that they had no idea where
I was. M Joan is such an interesting diva because

(09:34):
she you know, she's Australian, and she began her career
when she when she got to cover Garden, she thought
she would be singing Bagnerian roles and that's what she
was sort of being groomed for until she met Richard Bonning,
who became her husband, and he had a different vision
for her. He thought that she could saying that bel
canto roles because she had a very big voice. And

(09:57):
then she discovered this this color a tour and this
flexibility and this agility and this and this beautiful upper
extension that is just insanely remarkable. I mean, you know
this better than me. What would you say about that?
But there are a couple of things. I think one
is that Richard had ears and he could tell that

(10:18):
there was a lot going on north of high Sea,
and he just tricked her into it. He would vocalize
her up without telling her how high they were going,
and take her to e flat when she thought it
was c It was very clever. But Jones's mother studied.
She studied with the student of Matilda Marchese Case was
the great voice teacher in Paris for years and years

(10:40):
decades between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and
so Joan just aped her mother and she learned how
to trill that incredible trill just sitting on her mother's knee,
you know, with the piano. So her technique was in
a way the most important part of it was self taught.
And then the exploitation of it, in a very posit
sort of sense, was Richard Richard bringing that out and

(11:04):
just defying all the powers that be had called and
Garden saying no, she should be singing children and aida,
you know. And finally they mounted that famous Luccia for her. Again.
That was her breakthrough, and that Luccia like sort of
broke the opera universe. Can we listen to a little
bit of that Luccia from Sutherland's debut season at the

(11:25):
matt m How do you feel listening to that now

(11:47):
and thinking about I mean, certainly there's a nostalgia for you,
but then the singing is just still still exquisite. How
does it feel listening to that now and then thinking
back to, you know, sixty years ago. Well, I feel
grateful that I were taken to that performance, but I
also feel this great thing that it isn't a nostalgia
fest that it really was that good. There's so much

(12:08):
documentation of her work and other people I worshiped call
Us and you know, others that shows us that, No,
it really was like that. It really was that exciting, virtuosic,
impressive and incredibly disciplined. Yes, for me, when I listened,
I mean, it's just so exquisite. I think the speed,
the agility, the trill is just insane. And no one

(12:33):
has ever trilled like that before I would, I would argue,
and since has trilled like Joan thrilled, especially in her heyday.
It's just so virtuosic, it's so thrilling, it's so exciting.
I just don't know how anyone could listen to it
and not just lose their minds. It's an extraordinary thing.

(12:56):
It's something that came from then that we don't really
have now. We don't hear people trilling that way any longer.
All of our case students could do it and suddenly
really had it to the very end, even when the
voice got older and other things weren't the same, that
remained the same. It's extraordinary, And you know, I I

(13:16):
don't want to be one of those people like back
in the day when singers did well, you know whatever.
But it's so fascinating to me that one of the
things that you said, I think U mini years ago
in a voice lesson we had that the style has
changed because there's no the maestro's that I'm conductors who
sort of groomed Diva's back then are you know? We

(13:37):
don't have those great conductors anymore, so, so much of
style has been lost. What I hear is I feel
like there's a lot of a lot of over darkening
that's happening, particularly with sopranos now, and I don't feel
like there's a lot of squealo is what I hear
when I see a lot of singers. Can you explain
what over darkening and squealo short for squeelan? D mean
sure was squeelo is is the frontal kind of in

(14:00):
a voice a bright sound ran then who that kind
of thing? And over darkening would have been the second
thing that I did. What would be the caricature opera
voice for somebody who doesn't like opera, it's very hooty,
dark kind of sound. I think part of it. There's
so many facets and layers to this one I think

(14:20):
is language that operas were performed in the languages of
the country, and the Italian language, like the Spanish language,
is extremely forward in placement, and that kind of production
has gone somewhat out of fashion, and the style has
changed since the I would say since the LP, since
the fifties and opera recordings, luxurious opera recordings in echo chambers.

(14:44):
It became more about the homogenized sound and the evenness
of the sound that the engineers were so proud of
that didn't really carry the excitement of what the voices
were like in the opera house. But even more than that,
Laverne composers were writing for the voice. They were writing
for the singers. And singers today because the art form

(15:04):
hasn't progressed very much in new works, singers today are
stuck singing stuff that was written for somebody else hundreds
of years ago and then trying to fit their work
into that framework. That's tricky, so I have to give
them credit for that extra struggle. Interesting, so much of

(15:25):
what I would I would argue faith propelled your career
as diva worship. Absolutely, these particular divas who inspired you
and kept you going to the opera, And you list
a few and after Sutherland, Leoni Wreathneck was the diva
who really captivated you. Can you talk about the first

(15:45):
time you saw rheas nick At at the Old matt Yes.
First time I saw her was oddly not a Wagnerian
or Strouds world, but it was des Temula and Hotelo,
and there have been death threats against her by fans
of I think Tibaldi and millan Of people were very
passionate in those days. Why were their death threats, Well,

(16:05):
can you can you give us? Yes? Because she had
what she was going through a bit of a vocal
crisis time, and she had the nerve, according to these people,
to sing, take up space, singing the roles of the
divas that they appreciated and thought, well, why would you
want to give her dist eminent when we have millan
Of or Tibaldi, So they actually threatened her life if

(16:29):
she went on. And the first time I saw her,
she was so intensely exciting. There were moments that the
audience burst into applause just because she was so exciting,
like their confrontation to it and the third act with
hotelaway he threw her to the ground and people went crazy.
But she made a curtain speech and she said, uh, please,

(16:50):
if you don't like me, don't come to see me,
but please don't threaten to kill me. And that was
my first experience, and I was hooked. I mean this
woman and she was what we used to call on
the standing room line demented, which in those days simply
meant someone so fearlessly abandoned when they sang that they

(17:11):
were lost in the role. And she had this upper
register the likes of which I've simply never heard in
my life, that was both rooted to let's say, her
toes or really her private parts, and yet sparkled as
if it was emanating from the chandelier of the house.
At the same time suspended no idea where it came from,

(17:33):
but it was a phenomenon. Oh my god, that's so fabulous.

(17:55):
It's really just what we were talking about when we're
talking about Wogner that there was. It's hard to tell
in them recording, but the always feels very big, but
it is soaring and it is that there's no weight
on it, but it's very dramatic at the same time,
it's very rare. I can't think of any singer and honestly,
who has that level of being a dramatic soprano, but
it's that floated and at the top of the range

(18:15):
only Nielsen. But it wasn't the same intended different pingy
and detached. This was somehow rooted yet suspended. It was
a real I was a mystery, and you would just
go and you would just wait. I mean everything she
did was exciting, but you would wait for those notes
because no one could sing like that. And that is

(18:36):
something I can say I have not heard since. For me,
it feels very bell conto. I think they're different bell
Conto schools and they're different schools of singing. It feels
very connected and feels very legato, but it is did
it's drama and it is for Ta, but it is floating.

(19:03):
The voice had so much human vulnerability that she broke
your heart night after night, and that's something you know,
you just went back for that kind of emotional draw,
that kind of emotional pull you would leave sweating and
in tears. Mm hmm. Thinking about these two divas that
we've talked about so far, what do you feel Is

(19:24):
there anything specifically in a in a Sutherland or reasoning
that you feel like you've you know, sort of brought
into vera. There was with Sutherland, I mean I began
singing in falsetto, you know, in my parents basement when
they weren't home, to her recording the art of the
Prima Donna sixteen arias and very telling in that giant, beautiful,

(19:46):
luxurious LP set. There was a booklet, no libretto, no
text to any of the sixteen arias, but each aria
was associated with the diva. Well. That certainly warps your
orientation about opera in a certain direct. So for me
it was all about divas and what you could do pyrotechnically,
and so with her it was more an influence of

(20:07):
the florid singing I did, and of my diva worship,
and also the phenomenon of like a prize fighter with lipstick,
I mean, vocal athlete. Reason it inspired me just as
on stage, I never held back and I never walked

(20:27):
through performance, and I never I wish I'd paced myself more.
I tried, but I would always end up carried away.
And the reason it was more inspiration that way. The voice.
I would refer to the voice in certain notes and
when we had crazy, crazy fan audiences before the aids
crisis decimated that they'd recognize it in the scream, you know.

(20:50):
But but for me, she was more in the inspiration
than a direct vocal thing. Sutherland, Kaba a Scotto particularly
were more direct voy since I drew on to make
the amalgam that it became Madame Zra. But reason it
was an inspiration of an artist who gave everything to
her art, everything amazing. I have to tell you that

(21:14):
I had Joan Sutherland's art of the Prima Donna that
I got from the Mobile County Public Library on cassette,
and that was my first Sutherland Nights. I've had to
be in middle school or something. I was absolutely obsessed.
It's time for a short break when we come back

(21:35):
more with our guest. Alrighty, then let's just dive right

(21:57):
back in m We have to get to the diva
who inspired so many people in the twentieth century and
you count her as one of your main inspirations, Maria Callas.
Can you tell us your relationship to Maria callis the
first time you heard her saying this is gonna be good. Well,

(22:22):
it's as saga because it began with a trip to
Corvette's department store. Didn't no longer exists in New York
City to buy Jones Lucia album for myself. I mean
Robert had it, but I didn't have it, and it
was sold out, and I was just crestfallen and I
was looking through the bins of LPs and there was

(22:43):
this picture of this woman, this head on an album
cover with kind of magic marker I make up, and
the most fantastically compelling thing I've ever seen, and it
said Lucia gi Lama Moore call Us and I thought, hmm,
And it was just the highlights album. I thought, I
didn't want to buy a complete thing because I know

(23:04):
really much about who this was. And I took it
home and it was the strangest voice I've ever heard
in my life. I thought, something is wrong with the turntable.
So I had my parents called the repairman. Seymour. The
repairman came to fix the turntable because the vibrato was
so slow in this voice, and I thought, there's something

(23:25):
wrong with this. And Seymour said, there's nothing wrong with
the turntable, there's something wrong with the soprano. So what
year call it was? This? Do you know? Fifty nine?
It was her second Luccia, And while she was recording
that Lucia by the way, in London, she went to
the dress rehearsal of Sutherland's debut Luccio and attended it.
So then I would just go back to this recording

(23:48):
for certain phrases over and over and over. I couldn't
stop listening to it, to the point that I wore
it out. So then I went to the Brooklyn Public Library.
Like you, that was the source. Puty have no budget,
that's where you went, and I found earlier Collas stuff.
I put it Tany from ninety three, La Trapianta from

(24:09):
fifty three, and I thought, holy crap, this voice is
something bizarre. It's no more beautiful than the other one,
maybe even less, but rock solid, virtuosic, heart stopping, lee exciting.
So I just started to take any allowance money I had,
any money I could find, arn beg any gift and

(24:31):
bought Collis recordings one after another. And that's all I
spent my money on through high school was Collis recordings,
and I was completely addicted. And then I was at
summer camp and there was a little feature in the
Times that said Maria Collis was coming back to the
med where she'd been fired seven years earlier. And so

(24:55):
my friend Lex, who was my upper friend at summer camp,
he phoned me in Brooklyn and he said, get into Manhattan.
I've got a number for you on the Collis Line.
And it was Friday, six days before the performance, and
I said why what? He said, Yeah, they're selling on Sunday.
I got on the line and I stood in the

(25:18):
street for three days. I slept in the street for
two nights, and on Sunday they sold standing room tickets
for the first performance. The second performance, I totally lucked out.
My mother belonged to some Jewish lady organization and somebody
there didn't want to go to the Collis Tusca on

(25:40):
their subscription because he didn't liked that lady. So this
lady sold my mother hard two tickets. So I got
to see both Collis Tuscas at the Met and thows
were her last performances at the Met, and six months
later she retired from opera. So I was really lucky.
And all I tell you about that night was that

(26:02):
watching Carlos san Tito Golby in the second act of
Tosca was like looking through a keyhole at real events
that were later made into an opera. It was that vivid.
She was known as as as a great actress. Now
you you spoke of rhisnic with this abandoned You know,

(26:22):
in terms of the drama of the opera, what would
you I mean, not to compare, but what was the
difference for you with between a Rhasonic and a Callus
in terms of just the drama that they would bring
to do something. I think it depended with Callis on
what the repertoire was. Because tuscas of it is more opera,
so so in other words, it's it's a realistic opera
and the young people. Forasma was about real people, and

(26:45):
opera before that was sort of more about like kings
and queens and it was it wasn't like about working
class real folks exactly. So Tosca is about a singer
and uh a chief of police who's who wants to
molest to her and her boyfriend who was an artist.
Collus was very naturalistic in Tusca and her I was

(27:05):
so lucky her acting worked on two levels. The first
night I was downstairs in the standing room, very close
to the stage, and I saw her eyes, her hands
every Nuance second performance. I was sitting in the family
circle in the seat that my mother bought, and I
saw the geography of her performance, like when her boyfriend
was dragged off stage to be tortured by the chief

(27:28):
of police, and she darts across the stage and bangs
on the door where he's being held. You saw the
streak of red velvet when she ran across the stage
and fell on the door. So it was it was
very thrilling. But make no mistake, Collus was a vocal
actress and that's why millions of people love her from
her recordings who never saw her live. It was she

(28:02):
was the complete artist, I think, the greatest complete singer
of that particular century. Amazing, and what is brilliant to
is thinking about the standing room mine and you and
other interviews you've talked about the young people that you
met on the line and the term the opera queens
that you met on the mind. You say you thaw

(28:23):
two men kissing for the first time on the standing
room line for the old met it was wild on
that line. I mean that line was an initiation for
you know, sort of by Mitza Boy from Brooklyn to
a Wonderful World. That I fit right into. But I
was so shy and reticent and kind of shocked by

(28:46):
it that I didn't immediately participate in it. But I
made friends on that line who were crazy like I was,
but so generous with what they offered in terms of
their knowledge and experience, And they would tell me what
to go see. They tell me, you have to see

(29:06):
millan of and Albanise now, because Being isn't going to
take them to Lincoln Center, so you better see them now.
They only have a few years left, you know. And
so I got to see a couple of generations of singers.
It was the end of an era for certain people
and the beginning for other people. Obviously there is a
whole generation of opera queens who we lost because of

(29:28):
the eight Crisis, but there was a there was a
certain kind of culture of the opera queen that that
feels like a bygone era. And and Awayne caston Bomb
in his book The Queen's Throat talks about the opera
queen is being sort of a pre Stone Wall kind
of thing. Obviously there's still opera queens, but it felt
like there was something very different, you know. I mean,
I can't imagine someone you know, sort of camping out

(29:49):
overnight for three days to get Oppertuclars now, you know.
And there were clubs to you know, Millan of Club
to Baldi Club. I mean, people gathered together on the
birthdays of the divas with them, brought them present, and
it was a whole thing. I wasn't too active in
that because I was just a little younger than those
people and very shy. But I know people now who

(30:13):
have tons of photos and early you know, eight millimeter
films of those gatherings. Incredible. There's a lot of sort
of acclimating into what it means to understand divas. And
there for the people who aren't opera fans out there,
who might you know, follow Mariah or Beyonce and the
fans are very hardcore, or Mickey Minaj fans are crazy,

(30:34):
or the you know, the bee Hive, it's like it's
it's a whole thing, but it is something that like
I know that they were older queer folks who were like, oh,
you must listen to this or you must listen to that,
And there's something that is sort of passed down that
that feels when I watch interviews of you and I
hear you talk about the folks that you met on
the standing room line at the men. I think that

(30:54):
there's something so beautiful about that because it it made
you who you are and also sort of laid the
ground where for something like Lagron Shano. Oh the lure,
you know, the the upper lure that these people passed
on to you, and they would invite you over to hear.
Everyone had big, real to real tape recorders with recordings
of pirate ID recordings of live performances, not studio recordings,

(31:17):
and you'd go, you'd stay someone's house two four o'clock
in the morning listening to Leoni seeing de Fraun a
shot and that the men hadn't even ever had yet,
you know, call us in Anna Boleno or Medeia or
you know. These were things we never heard. They weren't
put out commercially, and it was and people wanted to
watch you go crazy listening to this stuff. It was

(31:40):
a huge generous sharing thing, and I ended up doing
it with people when you know, I got a collection
of stuff. Yeah, and what a wonderful treasure. Those pirate
recordings are a lot of them are on YouTube now,
which is very exciting. Um, you know Leon Teen's debut,
the pirate recording of Black January or seven nine one

(32:01):
is on YouTube, and it's it's very different than any
note that she ever sang. Tempo was very fast, and
she sang a D instead of a sharp, and it
was really quite feeling and she holds it for like
four seconds and it's the excitement in the room is
really incredible. So those pirate recordings are just they're really

(32:29):
kind of everything. And then they were mostly gay men
who were obsessed with opera who were making me fire recordings.
Maybe there were some of you know, people who weren't
gay man you know, doing this, but you just know
it's true. Yeah, and it was oh god, they were
so crazy. There was one guy, Roger Franks, who put
out really I think only call us stuff and he

(32:51):
would release it sharp. He would release it intentionally sharp.
So the record was speeded up a little bit, just
a halftone, so that that meant that her vibrato would
be faster, so then knowing could criticize her for having
a wobble. So then you had to buy a turntable
that had speed control in order to play his pirate

(33:12):
recordings of College of course, of course you wanted them all,
but they played fast, so if you wanted to hear
them the correct speed, you simply got to turn table
that had variable pitch, which was slightly more expensive, but
you did it, and you know, so that's how obsessively
crazy they were going to fix the flaws of their
divas on these pirate recordings. There's a lot more divas

(33:35):
that I want to cover with you, but I want
to begin to transition into you as a as a
diva yourself. I was fascinated as I was prepping for this,
and I've known you for twenty five years, but I
didn't know that you would get together with some of
your friends who you wouldn't been on the standing room line,
and you were saying in falsetto and you would saying,
you know, sort of in in your late teens and
early twenties, and you said you had this beautiful like

(33:57):
extension up into you know, f above high Sea. And
then when you started to train as a singer in
nineteen seventy and make your debut as a tenor, eventually
you started studying with Randy Michaelson, who discouraged you from
musing falsetto. So you stopped musing falsetto for for really
a decade? Is that right? Yeah? No, unfortunately, it's right.

(34:18):
I mean he really helped my tenor voice, but that
was something that I think had no future. I think
I knew that, but I was kicking around. I never
had trouble finding shows to be in, but it was
finally not until an accident in nineteen eighty that I
wanted to take that to the stage, by which time

(34:39):
I've done a lot of performing, but never well. A
little bit of falsetto in my cabaret show imitations for
not a Scotto and a jazz singer called Betty Changes,
whom I invented, who scats, sang very high. She she
couldn't stop scatching. She had to be physically restrained from scatching.
But a fan, you know, aim to one of my

(35:00):
cabaret shows and and invited me to a soiree he
was doing. And I could tell from the names and
the invitation and everything that this was going to be
a drag sire. And his name was Mario Villanueva, and
his cousin Eduardo, the other diva, was going back to
the Dominican Republic back to med school. So Mario said,

(35:21):
would you like to do this with me? So I
thought it's now or never, because by then I was
at thirty five years old and the voice. I hadn't
worked the false set of voice in a long time
except in my cabaret show a little bit, but it
wasn't anything like what it had been. Decided to work
it back up. It took a long time and really

(35:43):
finagling technically and found a pianissimo, which saved me because
to sing softly and float tones seemed very virtuous I
but it was at the same time really arrest for me. Vocally.
I found it a good trill, you know, but it
was a lot of work to resurrect the voice. But
I knew I just had to do it. I just
knew this was going to be what I wanted to do.

(36:06):
Did you do it on your own? Because I know
you worked with Randy, but then Randy discouraged the fall
said no, I did it entirely on my own. I
stopped studying with Randy, but not out of any It
just happened, you know that I phased out into teaching myself,
but I know I developed the range entirely myself, and

(36:30):
it was really based on the technique I learned from Randy,
A bell counter technique I learned from Randy, which I
applied to it. But it was also a kinetic thing
I could always do when I was younger than I
just had to tap into the muscles. Wouldn't do everything
they did when I was sixteen or even twenty, but
because they don't, but they would do enough so that

(36:53):
I cranked it back up and could. The first thing
I ever sang in public was tourn does you know
in quest edge, which is a tough area. It's hilarious.
Like the first thing I ever sang in public within
questa regt in dote, which is an insanely difficult area.

(37:18):
That was the first thing you ever sang. I didn't
know that as a soprano. Yeah, as a soprano, Yes,
that's incredible. So you how long did you practice before
you could even have the stamina to saying that? Aria?
I mean, it's like a it's a beast of an aria.
It took him bout a year to get the voice
back up and to build the stamina in that register,

(37:39):
and it took a toll, I think, of course, on
my tenor voice, but I didn't really care. This is
really what I wanted to do. I wanted to sing
this music and play those characters. And I was so
lucky that I found stage directors, two stage director friends
of mine who understood something. I didn't know how to
do this, and they said, well, what you have to
do is you and Mario to be these fictitious divas,

(38:03):
and then depending on who these divas are, that's how
you play your opera roles as these divas. So it
was a triple layered show. There was me, and then
there was me as Vera, and then there was Vera
as Toronto or toss Core Lucci or Traviata or whatever
I did the way she would do it. What was
the hallmark of her artistic personality. Well, it was obviously

(38:26):
like reasoning, dedication, and dementia on stage, but it was
like Collas, discipline, like Sutherland, accuracy in coloratura. So all
of my training I didn't know was training from when
I was fifteen too, when I was thirty five, coalesced
into this creature and I had to learn that first
night that I sang in Presto Reja, the first line

(38:48):
I did with Slavic accent was Verist from the Ukraine.
So I topped some Milonov who has a Slavic accent
in Italian, and I saying in Covessa, Jack in Covessa
instead of in Quest with a Slavic accent. Then I
suddenly learned that I had to hold for laughs because
the audience knew what that was and that that was funny.

(39:11):
And so then I had to paste my way through
opera arias holding for laughs like a stand up comic,
which was very surprising but also delightful. And then you
get to rest a little bit too, and gave me
a nice rest. Well, I learned to milk for that.

(39:34):
I remember Martie Nixon phoned me once and said, don't
start playing it for laughs. The good thing about what
you do is that you don't seem to know it's funny.
And so she was right, because you could start to think,
if I do three takes, I can get six laughs
out of this moment. But then it just becomes stick

(39:56):
stick stick, and that you know, when you're parenting an
art form that's also tribute to an art form, the
last thing you want is to trash the art form.
So the quality has to match the art form, not
make fun of it. I think the beautiful thing is
And you've spoken often about how Charles let Lem's Theater
The Ridiculous inspired you to create these very loving spoofs

(40:19):
of opera. That it was not something that was ever
mean spirited, or we wouldn't trash divas even though they were.
There were moments where you know, we made fun of
but there was always the love there. Can you talk
a little bit about the intention? I guess I think
that Charles Laton was my main inspiration, absolutely, undoubtedly definitely.

(40:41):
When I saw him do Camille, I wanted to do Traviata.
And that was the first extended scene I did in
that show where I opened with tour Inductor. I did
the whole last act of Traviata. That's how the evening closed.
And I'll tell you when I had Sutherland in the
audience and Scotto and up purely Milo and Cheryl Millns

(41:04):
and Jimmy Levine, I was never as nervous as when
Charles Ludlam came to see us perform, and the Traviato
was in that program. Because this was the person I
learned what it was to walk the line between tribute
and spoof, between drama and comedy, to be able to

(41:27):
make an audience laugh and then cry. Charles Ludlam absolutely
was my inspiration from the get go. He wasn't a
singer at all. It had nothing to do with that.
It had to do with what he did and the
line that he walked and the way he walked that line.
In his Camille, there's a moment where he staggers across

(41:49):
the stage to a statue of the Virgin when he's
dying and goes, oh Mary when he arrives there, and
so you are. You're in tears because he's so frail.
And then he says that and the whole audience is
screaming with laughter. Fantastic. We have a little bit of
a clip. One of my favorite performances of yours is

(42:12):
your Violetta and Travellata and the Munich recording that we're
going to hear now, I think for us in nineteen
eighties s five or eighty seven Munich eighty five. Yeah,

(42:37):
but I'm utterly obsessed. I'm obsessed with your interpretation of Violetta.
That performance made me want to thing that aria. I
still haven't quite gotten it yet, Um there's something. So
it's obviously just so sublime what you do, but it's
also hilarious. You know, Violetta has tubercularists and she was dying.
She was she was a sex worker, and she's in
love with this man and so she's she's dying in

(42:59):
this area and it's so touching, but it's it's hilarious.
What do you when you hear this now in this moment?
What what do you? What do you think about your brilliance?
I think I like the London one better. But aside

(43:19):
from that, it's always that you always love this one.
But but why do you love the London one more?
The refinement in the singing? To me is this one's launcheer.
I was also sick in Munich, so that we were
on German television and I was sick. We never would
have known that you were sick, though you don't sound

(43:40):
sick in that recording. To me, there's just something. It
was just so funny. This Munich one was hilarious for me.
The timing of it, well, they were amazing. Also that
that audience was people in a sweltering tent. That's partly
how I got dehydrated and got sick because we did
at night after this was the last night, and they

(44:02):
gave so much to us back. I mean, they were
they were phenomenal. But I've got to say Peter Schlauser,
who was one of my stage directors we workshop this.
He had been in the actor's studio Traviata, and he
had this way of working that was so organic. So
for six months we worked the final act of Traviata,

(44:26):
starting realistically that I was a guy, I was fatally ill,
which in those days was beginning to happen, just beginning
to happen, and we had to work in this very
realistic way. And Peter came up with the idea of
a box of mementos that Violetta has when she's dying,
that she has kept keepsakes of her love affair with Alfredo.

(44:49):
So handcuffs an all day sucker. You guess what that was.
I have no idea, Oh, I have ideas. Well, yeah,
we all have ideas. And there was also a riding
crop and some and briefs, a pair of you know,
but but they were sweet nostalgic items and then hilarious
and each one more outrageous to start with a handkerchief

(45:11):
and then you know, and built to the underwear. I
never knew that you work shopped that through the actor
and actors studio process, which would be character private moments
and animal work sometimes and since memory and all of
that stuff, that you did that for your Violetta. Yeah, yeah,
I love it. What I got out of it also

(45:31):
was there are things in the phrasing just who she
really was. I got so deep into someone going through
that and who she really was. When I would get
to sing a line like when she's telling Alfredo to
marry someone else and you know, keep this keepsake portrait
of me and go marry a sweet young virgin, and
she sings sound apoty Gina. There there's the pure virgin

(45:58):
for you somewhere, and I would get to say, no,
bootyg because you put an edge on the word virtue,
because of course she's not. Yeah she's not. So we
dug so deep that it did actually affect the interpretation

(46:22):
of the Italian libretto as well as coloring the singing.
And I was not afraid, you know, to twist the voice,
or Peter even said to me once it doesn't have
to be ugly to be expressive, my dear, But I
wasn't afraid to twist the voice like that to make
a point that would be something funny in the middle
of when everybody's already in tears because she's dying. Oh

(46:50):
my god, it's so brilliant. I think, you know, you
got really incredible ves from so many different places, and
I called out a few of your reviews here. The
New York Times in nineteen seven wrote one need not
be a connoisseur of opera to enjoy the antique musical
comedy of La Grande Shanna Opera Company, the all male

(47:10):
operatic Troupe. At the same time, these artificial sopranos have
a surprising resilience and intensity. Along with abrasive color tour shrieking,
there are fleeting moments of genuine lyric beauty. The company's
understanding of operated conventions and the singer's allusions to more
than half a century of real divas gives the fun

(47:32):
historical dimension that will appeal especially to opera files. La
Grande Shanna Opera Company reminds us that beneath the pump
and magnificence of opera at its most serious and spectacular,
there runs a deep streak of silliness. What I love
about that review is that really echoes so much of

(47:53):
what we've been talking about. The education that you got
in the standing room line watching all of these productions
and the Old House, the New House in the sixties,
sort of the education you lot from the queens that
you met. There's such a depth of understanding that went
into what La gros Shana did. And I think it's
not a mistake that La gros Shana led you to

(48:13):
so many other aspects of working in the and quote
unquote the legitimate opera world. But what what would you
like to say to all of that? Yeah, no, that's
I always tell people. It was the most circuitous route
to the mainstream I could possibly think of two. You know,
spend all that time on the standing room line with

(48:33):
all these wonderful weirdos, including myself weird to be singing
falsetto when my friends lofts, you know, when I was
twenty one and uh, to be in all these off off, off,
off off appropriate shows in cambaret, and then to put
on address and sing turned ut and end up at

(48:55):
the met on the radio broadcasting from the met and
writing for OUP News and singing. I mean, one of
the most astonishing moments of the whole ground chain of
thing was in Berlin when the night that we opened
for the first time in Berlin, I sang the Madazine
from Luccia in that program, and this guy from the

(49:18):
theater came up to me and he said, you know
that you just sang the Madazine from Lucia on the
same stage where Collis sang the famous Berlin Lucia with Caryon. Well,
thank god I didn't know that before the show. But yes,
you know things like that where you think, how did
I end up getting here? I was given the middle

(49:39):
of the city in V spot and I thought, oh,
a Jewish drag queen being given the medal of the
city in V spot in Germany. You know, after performance,
I mean, these things that you kind of can't believe.
You just you know, you sort of not your head
and go what is this? Me? Is this really happening?

(50:00):
You know? After tiny break, we've got more for you.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first

(50:23):
of the very little bit Bored Domestic Lesson. We are
back picking up where we left of the taking of
photographs and strictly forbidden, unless, of course, they are extremely
flatter speaking, if you're a Lucia, that moment in the
Mad scenement, um oh, that section, that section is one

(50:54):
of my favorite moments in all of opera, that music,
and I fell in love with it. I happened to
be at a gran Shana performance and it's on YouTube
and there's a moment Lucia has has lost her mind.
This is the Mad scene. She has murdered her husband
on the day that they get married, and she had
she she breaks down and it's quite something. But in

(51:14):
lagron Shana's performance there you use a dumming that is
your your murdered husband. In that moment of that that
particular musical moment, you slow dance with the dumming yea,
and it is hilarious. But it is actually really sublime.

(51:37):
It's really one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
And I'm crazy, maybe, but it is so beautiful. Can
you talk a little bit about that? But there was
a logic to it. I mean, we thought, of course,
we thought it would be funny if she is forced
to marry a man she doesn't want to marry, so
she goes crazy and steps and but you never see that.
We thought it would be amusing if she brought the

(51:58):
dead body to the wedding party. So I had to
go to one of these adult stores in the West
Village in Manhattan and buy an inflatable doll, which we
then stuffed with fiber phil. At first we used to
blow it up and it kept deflating, so then we
stuffed with fiber fille, dressed it in a kill. Did
it deflated a performance or just in rehearsal was it

(52:21):
was slowly deflated during performances, So then we thought, oh,
we've got to stuff it and dressed it in a
night shirt and it killed because it was Scottish um.
But the thing is that in the plot, Lucia imagines
that she's marrying the guy she did love, the one
she wanted to marry. It gotta go, So that theme

(52:44):
is a recollection of their love duet from a previous act,
And when it came time to sing that theme, she
steeped in the fantasy that she's really marrying Edgardo, and
I thought, well, there's the body. At that point was
lying on the floor in front of me and I
just picked it up to just waltz with it while

(53:05):
I sang that, because that was like the height of
her fantasy of what she when crazy over being forced
into a forced marriage, which felt to me bizarre, grotesque,
and yet sweet at the same time. So I'm so
happy to hear that instruct here the same way I'm

(53:26):
I'm really obsessed with it. I rewatched it, and I
just love hearing the way you describe it, because there
is that that piece of the longing for Duardo with
it without the flute, and is that just piano in

(53:47):
your version. That was our first Lucci ever, that was
and uh, we didn't have a flutist, so we we
had a synthesizer that did flute. But the way that
the flute plays a melody and she sort of hears
it and it becomes the signifier of her insanity and

(54:07):
the voices that she's hearing, and it's just it's it's
really sublime. It was fun to do. But when you
hear the whole foot up the gout, of course you
know this. But I do. I drink from a cup
that says Joan, and then I do subsillance ornaments and
then I drink from when that says Maria, and I

(54:29):
do call us those ornaments. So the conescende went nuts
because they could recognize all of this and that was
always fun to do. It just was so great that
there was an audience alive at that point, so steeped
in this art form and culture in general that they
just got it on all the levels of the comedy,
the drama, the spoof, the tribute. Yes, speaking ornaments, there's

(54:52):
a beautiful a moment that that that you share it
with us that I would love to play. Now, your
musicianship is really wonderful. Oh can we talk about your penism?

(55:27):
Is that those uninitiated it's very soft singing, very quiet singing.
And was that something in that year that you you know, recreated,
you know, reconstituted your falsetto. Did that the peni semo
come right away? What was the evolution because there's a
lot of people don't have that now, we don't hear
a lot of this kind of singing anymore. When I
started to singing in head voice in Falsetto, it was

(55:49):
a very tight production to make the piano. I didn't
know what I was doing and it was very locked.
And then when I had to resurrect the falsetto voice
for grand China. I was acquainted by that time in
what marking was, marking being the technical term for singing
softly when you have to rehearse a lot and repeat
a lot of stuff. And so at some point I

(56:12):
was going up and I didn't want to go up
full voice, and I threw it into an isolated head tone,
leaving out the heft the bottom of the voice, and
I thought, oh, well, that feels like a freer way
to do something soft. So I started to work that,
and I found what I could do with it, what

(56:33):
I couldn't do with it. It got I think better
over the years that could end it to a high
a piano that you just played. I was sixty by
that time. I found a pocket I could feed breath
into a very high forringial point on the vocal cords,
which is a very slender point. So it produced a
very slender, shimmery sound. Uh. And it was a great

(56:53):
way to rest and at the same time impress people.
And I could hold a piano note for seconds if
i've you know, just to be silly, but at the
same time virtuosic, because you had to kind of mind
what was special about what you could do. I didn't

(57:16):
have very much vibrato when I started singing in falsetto,
much to my disappointment, and so I sounded more like
a Slavic sound where they they're more hard and straight toned,
the Russian kind of sound. Eastern European, really, so I
had to be Eastern European. Over the years, I tried
to make her sound warmer, to increase the vibrato and

(57:37):
to warm up the sound for expression and beauty, and
she morphed also from a matron lee character with body
pads when I first started to play her to someone
more slim and kind of well glamorous. Maybe it's an overstatement,
but glamorous esque so much. Um, oh my goodness. I

(58:14):
you know, I'm a student of the voice. And there's
the declining diva, right, It's really rare that a diva
doesn't have some sort of decline, right, And and the
vocal longevity is something that is a thing and that
some singers have the most singers don't have. If there
is a secret to vocal longevity, what would you think
that that might be. I think I could I could

(58:36):
definitely talk about what would cause vocal non longevity. The
vocal longevity is partly genetics, partly jeans and health and luck,
and then technique. And I think it's very important not
to oversing. I did. I had to. We had to
do five six shows a week of opera, which is ridiculous.

(58:58):
Just so folks know when the med and most opera
houses you'll singer will sing and then have two or
three days off after they sing, right, But for the
grand Sana and the way that you had to sort
of make money that you had to sing many back
to back shows touring the world, which is insane. Um, yeah,
blassid Do Domingo was on the Tonight Show talking to
Johnny Carson saying, oh, no, we no are sing more

(59:20):
than blind. So we to John you know so I
mean I thought, yeah, But a way to shrede your
voice is to overbook yourself, to fly too much, which
is is a problem these days. Singers used to have
to travel by train or by boat, so they had
these long enforced breaks. What is it about flying that

(59:40):
that is that can be bad and detrimental for the voice.
I think it's partly the de hydration and the dryness
in the air in the planes. I think the jet
lag time difference thing can be very fatiguing. And you
also have to be smart about what you sing in
shifts that you make, and so that's something you also

(01:00:01):
have to do. You have to program for your voice
for the time that it is, not for how it
was ten fifteen years ago. I've already tried that with video.
La Jamaal his big success at the med in the seventies.
He tried to do it in the nineties and and
and couldn't. Of course he couldn't. You know, singers are
driven by ambition now, I think more than ever social

(01:00:23):
media networking, driven to sing things that they really shouldn't sing.
And it's disrespectful for the work in a way, also
because you're doing an insufficient job and you're doing a
disservice to your instrument. Frankly um Scotto's debut season at
the at the Mata Blues. She sang Butterfly, I believe

(01:00:46):
with her debut, but she also was the program to sing.
I think Luccia and something else crazy Elia, Yeah, Luccia
and and Eliza two ton sties. Yeah. The debut Luccia
was daggering, was Abel conto artist in a Puccini opera,
so one you know, beautifully trained in one kind of field,

(01:01:10):
coming and bringing that to guts her bigger voiced role.
So we all felt, well, she can't possibly sing Lucia.
She's going to cancel it because you can't sing Butterfly
like that, and then seeing Luccia two weeks later, but
she did, and she sang Luccio with a different sound,
more head tones, lighter, more what we were just discussing
with piano, and it was fantastic because the orchestra is

(01:01:38):
much lighter in Luccia, and the acting was phenomenal. She
was a very cunning artist who made a huge career
with an not incredibly exceptional instrument and that I admire
more than anything. Anybody can be born with a pretty voice,
but to make your voice into something more than it

(01:01:59):
is through your artistry is incredible. And she created fantastic
illusions of sound that way and in theater that was
just phenomenal. It's important to note that of all the

(01:02:21):
diva's opera queens, have you know our number one diva?
And I think it's safe to say that we're not
a Scotto would be yours am, I what I think
that we're not to really is mine. I mean, there
are there are other people I have loved, like Sutherland
and Collus and reason Nick, but Scotto was We have

(01:02:42):
sort of a what's the word? You know? We love
each other. I love her. She loves me because she
knows that when I was Vera, I was partly her,
and that it was a tribute to her her work.
And what Scotto did was she illuminated roles for me.
I would see a role like Butterfly scene many times
like I've never seen it before. And that was her gift.

(01:03:04):
She made you feel like you were seeing an opera
for the first time when you've seen it many many times.
She illuminated parts of it that you never thought were
important before. And College said that ability to rend a.
Scotto was also a very huge fan of La Grande
Shana and and went to many performances. And there is
a brilliant story that I did not know about you

(01:03:26):
going to see Nada later in her career. Can you
please tell us this story? It is It's kind of
the like when of the high points of my entire life,
I saw Scotto. I don't know how many times, but
I never almost never talked to her. At a party.
I would talk to her, but I mean I really
was not close with her until she came and saw

(01:03:49):
my performance. And she was in very late career. It
was like two thousand one, I think, or two thousand two,
and she was singing a very unlikely role Clyte nest Or,
the evil mother in Strauss's Electra at Baltimore Opera and
it was a real late career diva star turn, you know.

(01:04:11):
So the whole thing was built around the fact that
they got Scotto in Baltimore and it was and she
was amazing, And afterwards I kind of cued up just
to go backstage because I've driven all the way down
to Baltimore to see her, just to say I was there.
And I thought, she's not going to remember me, because
you know, she saw me perform, but I looked like

(01:04:33):
Vera and I interviewed her for Opera News and we
talked on the phone, but you know, she won't remember me.
So I was online to see her and her son,
Felippo came out and he said, oh, are you here,
and I said, yeah, I just wanted to say hi
to her. You know, do you think she'll remember me,
and he said, he kidding me. Anyone who comes into
our house has to watch your video of Tasca. Just

(01:04:54):
wait here a moment, you know. So then he ushered
me in and in the perform and as Critemnestra, Renata
had worn this big red French twist wig, which was
exactly the same as the wig that I would wear
on stage as Matt and Vera. And I'm walking down

(01:05:15):
the hole to her dressing room and the door to
the dressing room opens and Renata comes out and she
points to me. She says, today I did you m hmm.
And it was just like you know, it was having
your the person whose work you worshiped more than anyone,
sort of I don't know, I can't even verbalize it.

(01:05:37):
It was affirmation of I get what you're about, you
get what I'm about, And it was an amazing thing.
There she was wearing that red wig and she would
look like you right. It was just I remember once
I was at I was at a master class she
gave for Cheryl Milne's Voice Foundation, and I had to

(01:05:59):
leave to go to Grand Shane to rehearsal, and she
said where are you going? And I said, I have
to leave. I have a rehearsal. She said, what do
you rehearsing? And I said, Traviata, the death scene. She said,
do me, do me, do me. So she had this
part and when she gives Alfred of the portrait BRANDI quest,
day Margina, you know, but I did it Alla Scott

(01:06:19):
Brand who as Dalli Margina. She freaked. I mean she
was laughing hysterically. We used to call that the Scotto meow,
kind of like quiz a cat mewing brandy, you know.
And she got it totally and she loved it because well,

(01:06:41):
it was about her, and what diva wouldn't love something
that's about them after they You have so many great
diva stories, but can you please as a Leontine Price,
M Leontine is my number one, the sort of first
black Prima Donna of opera. MS Price came to a
Grand Shana performance. Can you please tell the story when
she came back stage and that beautiful moment with Ms Price.

(01:07:03):
Oh God, but she was so wonderful and she was
such a great booster for the company. But this was
the first time she ever saw us, and they wanted
us to pose for pictures for I think it was newsweek,
And so we got the my small company of singers
together on stage with Leontine in her turb and her

(01:07:26):
pearls looking stunning. Of course, So we were standing there
and I had sung this the big second act of
poker scene from Lafontulaville West Puccini, which is very very
hard and has a big high C sharp that mostly
anybody who sings that role leaves out. But I had

(01:07:48):
sung it, and Liantine came and she said, I don't
know how you got through that fontula, because it had
given her a bit of a vocal crisis for a
little while when she sang it at the men, she said,
I just couldn't. I mean, I just it was just
too rough. Of course I did have to see sharp.

(01:08:09):
And then she hit the C sharp standing next to me,
and I thought I had died and got to heaven.
It was spun gold that just went like a laser
beam shimmering into the theater. That was just phenomenal. The
thought of it gives me goose bumps. Like Lantin Brice
standing next to you singing a C sharp just feels

(01:08:32):
like my idea of heaven. It just feels like I
just it's such a gorgeous thing. Well certainly it was mine. Yeah.
For you. Now, if you could talk to all of
the singers out there now, who are you know, working
opera singers or if any genre, I guess, what do
you want them to know? I mean, and no taste
have changed and it's it's a lost art. What would

(01:08:54):
you say to young singers out there now? I think
it's something that you referred to, and that's that the
line in a way has been broken. Try to discover
and call us always taught this. Try to discover the
line back to what you come from, and really try
to understand what's on the page that is there for

(01:09:18):
you to mind and to pull out, respected to death,
and then make it your own. Do not be afraid
to be vivid. Do not be straight jacketed into a
generic safe thing because you're trying to second guess what
people you're auditioning for are looking for. And try to
have integrity about the art form in terms of the score,

(01:09:45):
the libretto, the vocal value, and the characterization, because in
today's opera world, too often you're going to not get
that from stage director, because it's going to be about
the stage director's concept and you have to hold onto
your vocal personality, your artistry, your understanding of it, and

(01:10:07):
get through that experience. Go to YouTube and start looking
at things that begin with nineteen zero something recordings to
understand what you come from, no what your lineage is,
what you're part of, your part of this amazing tradition.
Learned about the tradition. Don't think you're better than the tradition.

(01:10:30):
Oh that's such a beautiful advice. And what I hope
people come away with today with our discussion is understanding
that if you give everything you've got to something that
you are very very serious and know everything about it,
that you can make something out of it. And you
have made a life in a career out of a

(01:10:51):
love for adepas, out of a love for opera, And
I just think that's the most beautiful thing ever. Wow. Well,
thank you, Laverne. I'm somebody who works so hard with
so much passion, and that's so important. It's crucial. We
really we mustn't become too sophisticated for things that we

(01:11:13):
don't see them with reverence and with passion and not
be embarrassed by passion. Yeah, I'd like to end the
podcast with the question that comes from my therapy, that
it's really about building resilience is the idea of both,

(01:11:34):
and even when something might be challenging in our lives,
there is something that helps us get through. And the
question is what else is true? So irac if madame iras,
if for you today, what else is true? I find
it to be, of course, a very challenging time that

(01:11:55):
we're living in now, and I feel I'm not sure
that this is an answer to that question, but an
extension of what we talked about today, that the love,
the passion, the devotion that one puts into something like
an art form to which one devotes one's life, that

(01:12:18):
that becomes an envelope that encompasses everything that you do,
that you approach everything with that passion, that love, that fears,
desire to communicate but also to receive communication, to understand
what other people are trying to tell you, how they feel,

(01:12:39):
what they think, who they are sharing in all possible directions,
and understanding in all possible directions. And then I think
people also really understand you if you can do that,
even people you don't like. Without the love. For what

(01:13:00):
we've been talking about today, I don't think I would
have understood what love is that can be brought and
extended to all situations. I don't know if that answers
the question even remotely, but it does. I'm actually in
tears right now because because that just made me think

(01:13:21):
about what happens with the diva on stage, the giving
and receiving of love. Right there are moments when I
know you've experienced this vere and I think probably as
a lecture as well, when the when the audience is
just enthralled and they love you so much because you've
given everything you've got and it's just this thing that
you just there's just not even worse for it. You

(01:13:42):
feel it, you know it, you see it, but you
sense it more than anything, and you sense it in
that one moment when you finish, before they start to
scream that you just feel this suspension and then it goes,
you know, and that is why you're really of all

(01:14:04):
the things you do, you're brilliant teacher. What you do
with the Metropologian Opera broadcast is you're giving that love
and when we feel it, and when I think about you,
I think about all those people that we lost. Um,
I mean there was this caliber of artists that we
had that we lost because of AIDS, and you are
that caliber of artists who survived. And it is such

(01:14:27):
a wonderful, wonderful gift to the world. Thank you for surviving.
Thank you for the love and for the the level
of excellence that you embody by example, everyone should be
studying that. I think, thank you, Irah, Well, thank you,
bless you, thank you. Yeah, yeah yeah, what a beautiful Aria.

(01:15:31):
To end with that, of course, is Dido's Lament from
Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. When I'm late in earth,
remember me, but oh forget my fate. I hope we
all will always remember Ira sif he and I share
this desire to be transformed by the operated voice, not

(01:15:56):
only as a listener, but as the artist, as the
singer become the diva. Ira has given me the gift
to be able to, on a good day croak out
some sound that feels transcendent, that feels good in my body,
and I'm so grateful to him for that. And then
the connection to to this bygone era of queer opera

(01:16:19):
culture that doesn't really exist anymore. Ira is a tribute
to those old divas a living tribute and a reminder
of what we can learn if we really truly understand
the past, have reverence for it, that that can take
us into the future with a sort of fortification, with

(01:16:39):
the grounding. For those of us who are artists, I
think you can make the artistic journey one that we
know we're not walking alone. Thank you for listening to

(01:17:12):
The Laverne Cox Show. Join me next week for my
conversation with award winning journalist, author, and producer Mary O'Hara.
She has written a powerful book called The Shame Game,
overturning the toxic poverty narrative for anyone who has struggled
with shame on any level. You won't want to miss it.

(01:17:33):
Please rate, review, subscribe, and share with everyone you know.
You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne
Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until
next time, stay in the lock. The Laverne Cox Show

(01:17:56):
is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
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