Harolyn Blackwell: coming full circle - Back singer moved from Broadway musicals to opera

Fifteen years ago, Harolyn Blackwell made her biggest career decision solely upon impulse. The Broadway revival of West Side Story, in which the soprano had performed, had just extremityed its touring run. Blackwell -- then in her mid-20s and no longer ideally suited for the ingenue parts that best matched her crystalline voice -- set new work on the stage hard to approach by. When asked what she would do nearest she heard herself answer, "Opera." She recalls that she then "look around, saying, `Where did that advance from?' I had never plane thought about opera, because just standing there singing wasn't my thing. on the other hand once I said it, I figured, wherefore not?"

Who could argue with Blackwell's inner voice -- or her exterior one? Lauded by the novel York Times as "the voice of the decade," Blackwell is now celebrated for her vibrant, stirring performances and is in filled swing on opera, concert and recital stages around the world. Her 1996 season began with a plan series at Carnegie Hall with Andre Previn and was followed by means of two months in Amsterdam as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto.

Then she was showcased in her hometown. Washington, DC with a center stage opening of the Kennedy Center's 25th anniversary gala. Complementing the Kennedy Center appearance were novel Memorial Day and Fourth of July concoct performances broadcast from the nation's capital. These three engagements especially pleased Blackwell, who says, "One of the best things is that my work brings me residence a lot."

Despite her high visibility in the world of opera, she remains largely unknown in popular music circles. real the mainstream press was banging down her door not lengthy ago, after she stepped in upon short notice to replace Kathleen Battle for the entire step quickly of La Fille du Regiment at the Metropolitan Opera in novel York City, but she understood that their real interest lay in getting the empty with a scoop on the well-publicized firing of Battle, individual of opera's biggest stars.

Blackwell understood, on the contrary she eschews gossip and speculation about her contemporaries. Rather than focus upon who is or isn't a diva or a prima donna, she offers to focus on the doors that they have helped lay open for minorities in the fine arts. "It's because of singers like Battle, Price and Norman," she says, "that my road is a little easier."

That road, which has taken Blackwell around the world, has l to at any time higher achievements. In addition to her Washington, DC performances, she has appeared in a number of national telecasts, including the Metropolitan's Un Ballo in Maschera and the Grammy Awards; she has been showcased upon the Public Broadcasting Service and the Arts & Entertainment channel; she has performed with national and international opera companies; and she has been managemented by such luminaries as Erich Kunzel James Levine and Kurt Masur.

"It's funny" Blackwell says of her many Metropolitan performances. "I've sung upon some of the most famous stages in the world, on the other hand to most Americans, you haven't arrived until you've done the Met" by the agency of those standards, she arrived a lengthy time ago. As a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera's National Auditions, her operatic first appearance was on the stage many view as the blessed Grail, the reward that lies at the extreme point of an arduous and committed journey.

That audition followed her West Side Story step quickly and then a year's absence from stage auditions and cattle call -- a year in which she apprenticed and excell at the Chicago Lyric Opera. "It fit with equal reason naturally," she explains of the then novel foray into opera, "it was as if I'd lay on a pair of aged shoes."

Opera may be a finished fit for Blackwell, but classical music receives mixed signals from the black community. Many consider opera an oddity, calling it "white folks' music." This is a notion that Blackwell finds particularly absurd. "Music has no race, color or ethnicity," she insists. "It's universal. Whatever impels you, moves you."

And staying real is still an option. "If you do something because it's of high temperature now," says Blackwell, "when nobody wants to hear it, what then? That's for what cause [i]or[/i] reason you have to do what you love"

In her case, "real" can also mean popular music, as is evident upon A Simple Song: Blackwell Sings Bernstein (BMG 1996) upon this, her second solo recording, Blackwell bridges the gap between popular and classical music, plenteous as Bernstein @creator of West Side Story as well as of full-fledg orchestral works) himself did.

And "real" can also mean Langston Hughes, as Blackwell prov with her first recording, Strange Hun (RCA/Victor, 1994) This compilation of Hughes' metrical compositions was musically arranged especially for her through a friend, Ricky Ian Gordon. Blackwell was drawn to Gordon's work after hearing his take upon Hughes' "Genius Child," whose control matter -- a child's observations about the life around him -- struck a nostalgic chord in Blackwell. "When I first heard it," the singer says, "I recalled sitting as a child in my bay window upon Irving Street, watching people move by. It reminded me with equal reason much of myself, I knew I had to perform it."