"Wednesday, April 8, Eric Owens (Left) and Morris Robinson (Right) perform during a rehearsal of the opera Don Carlo" (Associated Press)
Here is an article that is definitely worthy of attention.
Sergio
Huffington Post
AP By Mike Silverman
Posted April 20, 2015
When King Philip II of Spain faces off against the Grand Inquisitor
in Verdi's "Don Carlo" at the Academy of Music, they won't just be
portraying history, they'll be making a bit of it, too. In what's
believed to be a first, a major opera company has cast two
African-Americans in the roles.
Bass-baritone Eric Owens as the
king headlines the cast of Opera Philadelphia's new production, which
runs for five performances starting Friday night, while bass Morris
Robinson sings the smaller but crucial role of the Inquisitor. Their
highly charged encounter, which lasts just under 10 minutes, is one of
the great scenes in opera — and one of the few written for two deep male
voices.
Both men are in their 40s and at somewhat different
stages in their careers. Owens, who grew up in Philadelphia, studied
singing at Temple University and the Curtis Institute, developing a
voice that allows him to excel in baritone parts as well as lower bass
roles. Robinson, who grew up in Atlanta, attended The Citadel on a
football scholarship (he was an all-American offensive lineman) and
didn't begin studying singing until he was 30, when his deep, booming
bass voice caught the attention of teachers at the New England
Conservatory of Music.
Recently the two men talked with The
Associated Press about their careers, working together and the
challenges of being a black opera singer.
AP: How did you become interested in opera?
Owens:
I've been an opera lover since I was 8 years old. Classical music just
took hold of me early on, before I had any designs on singing. I was
there waiting for the Saturday-afternoon radio broadcasts from the
Metropolitan Opera to come on.
Robinson: (Laughing.) You really
ARE a nerd, aren't you? Around the same time Eric was listening to those
broadcasts, my only exposure to opera was Bugs Bunny and 'Kill the
Wabbit.' I spent my time trying to get all the recordings I could of The
Sugarhill Gang. Classical music didn't start getting to me until high
school. I realized I couldn't play in the band and be on the football
team, so I quit the band and joined the chorus.
AP: How does it feel to be singing these particular roles at this point in your careers?
Owens:
It feels good. I mean there's something with Verdi where things just
click in to where they're supposed to be. If the technique is not just
like a nuclear reactor, just going, going, going, Verdi will kick your
butt real bad. You sing any one of these arias and you feel like you've
done 100 sit-ups.
Robinson: You can't fake your way through it.
The Grand Inquisitor covers everything that's expected of a bass to be
able to sing, from a low E to a high F, it's there, and it takes a lot
of sustained legato lines. Eric just gets through singing his aria and
he's downtrodden and then I come in (Owens, interrupting: 'All fresh!')
and I tell the king what to do. I got to use my puppet strings to
control him. And when you've got a guy like this singing in front of
you, you've got to reach deeper and bring something a little bit more.
Comment by email:
Sergio: Many thanks for alerting us to this important article, which I hope
will reach the younger set! This scene is very powerful, with the king
being advised to have his son, a supporter of the Dutch heretics and
freedom fighters, killed (after all, he is told, God sacrificed his own
son -- Verdi's willing slap at the clerics). The entire opera --
readily a masterwork -- strikes close to home, including Schiller's
reference to the Count of Lerma {historical fact: should have been the
Count of Denia and then Duke of Lerma -- direct ancestor of mine (later
to include Lucrezia Bori [née Borgia]), who made massive
contributions to the collapse of Spain as a world power (Felipe was a
very weak monarch who trusted Lerma far too much), partially due to the
Inquisition's racist expulsion of Jews and Moslem converts)}. I was
once offered by Hans Busch to sing the role of Lerma in a performance in
Panama, which I rejected. Verdi would never have survived. Dominique Dominique-René de Lerma
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