Race & Talent in Opera Casting

Note to opera impresarios, artistic and stage directors: People of color can have mediocre and/or badly-trained voices too… And that’s a perfectly valid reason to not hire them.

I recently attended a performance of La Traviata at a small regional opera company. I knew/knew of some members of the cast, and was happy for a chance to cheer them on at a live performance. It was a low-budget production in a small theater, but with a decent set and costumes. The performance had a lovely leading lady: a bit short of high voice, but a pitch-dominant sound and an expressive, committed singer. The tenor was a little hollered and over-muscular of tone, with less-than-ideal wigging and make-up, but a capable performer nonetheless. Then there was the baritone… a nice guy, I’m told, but in this production he was plainly over-parted vocally and under-skilled dramatically. His Act II scene with Violetta could have been done via split-screen video, there was so little dramatic energy and connection between them. He also had the worst costume and hair of anyone on the stage, looking like a slightly unkempt used bookstore owner who had wandered into the opera. Vocally he simply wasn’t up to singing Verdi, neither in quality of instrument nor in musical and dramatic expression.

Somewhat shocked about this disparity of casting, I spoke with a member of the opera company’s staff who informed me off-the-record that a donor had insisted on THIS baritone being cast… the money would only be given if HE performed the role. The major reason given for this stipulation: He’s an African-American singer, and the donor wanted to see him as Germont.

What a lovely… thought. Personally, I’m a big fan of multi-racial casting, and especially of giving young singers and/or singers of color the opportunity to debut new roles… WHEN THEY CAN ACTUALLY SING THE MUSIC AND PERFORM THE ROLE.

Lately the theater world in general and opera in particular has been roiled by sturm und drang over this issue… assorted controversies about representing all groups, not seeing color in casting, everyone having a shot at the lead roles, etc, etc. All worthy and valid issues to be considered… but if you’re an impresario choosing a group of performers for the purpose of bringing to life a particular story you will probably need to have a different perspective on casting than, say, an art director who is putting together a Benetton ad. Yes, many fictional characters can theoretically be any color or shape… por exemplo, Diahann Carroll was beautiful and captivating in the role of Norma Desmond in Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, despite the very Caucasian Gloria Swanson having created the original character…  But because so many opera plots (and especially the literary works they were based on) take place in a specific time and social milieu (and especially for stories where the ethnicity of specific characters is an issue in the plot), the race of some performers sometimes IS a consideration. And again, Carroll was a success as Norma BECAUSE SHE WAS A TALENTED AND RIVETING SINGER/ACTRESS… not because she was a black woman performing a role conceived for a white woman.

The basic truth is there are a zillion different singers out there, in a kaleidoscope of colors, shapes, races, ethnicities, genders and orientations. But to make someone’s race the REASON you cast them in a role, rather than incidental to the performance you’re trying to achieve, does neither the performer, their colleagues nor the audience any favors (much less the composer). If the character you’re casting happens to be written as a person of color, and you’re able to secure a skilled and capable singer of that same race, count yourself fortunate and hire them… it’s one less complication for your stage director and make-up designer to deal with. But if the Cio-Cio-San you’ve hired ISN’T actually Asian, or the Aïda, or the Otello that your company can afford isn’t Black, then hire a good make-up designer to make them look the ethnicity that the story requires. To start from the assumption that any soprano you cast as Aïda HAS to be Black whether they sing well or not, or (even sillier) that your audience will cheerfully buy into a directorial conceit that Otello can casually be portrayed as a Caucasian man is simply hamstringing your opera production, and ignoring the specific ideas and conceptions of the character and their social setting as they were imagined by the librettist and composer.  

Fortunately, there are many operas where the race of any particular character isn’t really relevant, or is left to the imagination… Most of Mozart’s characters, for instance, or many of the bel canto roles of Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini. Then there are other opera stories where the race of particular characters IS a specific/relevant issue to the plot: works such as Porgy & Bess, Nixon in China, Aïda, Madama Butterfly, Otello, Treemonisha, etc.

The key and over-arching requirement should be that the person you cast is a CAPABLE PERFORMER of the role. Mozart’s Contessa in Nozze di Figaro doesn’t have to be any particular ethnicity … but she DOES have to be able to capably and beautifully sing “Dove sono”. Conte Almaviva in The Barber of Seville can be any race or color… so long as he can SING Rossini!  Likewise, no one gives a damn what race the baritone singing your Giorgio Germont identifies as… so long as he can sing Verdi! NOT muddle through it, not croak or holler or croon the music… but SING Verdi. Just as the race of a particular singer shouldn’t preclude them from consideration for a role they can perform well, it also shouldn’t automatically qualify them for a role that they CAN’T.

Being an Indigenous singer who has both lost and gained jobs because of that fact, I can honestly say that if I was the artistic director of an opera company I would hire Latonia Moore to sing pretty much whatever the hell she wanted for me, any time she wanted to darken the door… Not because she’s a Black soprano, but because she’s a pretty GREAT soprano. Likewise, less-than-gifted, capable, or well-trained singers, of whatever race or color, shouldn’t be automatically platformed and hired, simply on the basis of their race, no matter how big the donor’s checkbook may be. Our art form deserves better.