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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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
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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 matt m How do you feel listening to that now 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, but it was a phenomenon. Oh my god, that's so fabulous. 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 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
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.
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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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
more with our guest. Alrighty, then let's just dive right 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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
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 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, 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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. 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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? You know? After tiny break, we've got more for you.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first 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 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 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. 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
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 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 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 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
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 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 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
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 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? 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
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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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
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 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 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 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. 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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. 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 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
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, 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. 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
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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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
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.
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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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. 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 is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.