Opera tenor Lawrence Brownlee is trying to find
ways to express who he is in a traditionally white world, in part, by
commissioning and seeking out new works about aspects of the African
American experience. (Brian Branch-Price/For The Washington Post)
Sergio A. Mims writes:
Lawrence Brownleee was profiled today in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
April 5, 2019
By Anne Midgette
Lawrence Brownlee is among the most celebrated bel
canto tenors alive. He regularly sings at the major opera companies
around the world, and at 46, he’s at the peak of his career. Where do
you go from there?
In Brownlee’s case, you commission new work exploring, in song, the experience of being a black man in America.
Brownlee
is front and center in Washington this month. On Friday, he takes the
tenor lead in Washington Concert Opera’s production of Rossini’s
“Zelmira,” one of the less-performed serious operas by a composer best
remembered for his comic romps. On Thursday, he appears in recital with
Vocal Arts DC at the Kennedy Center. Washington has long been a kind of
artistic home for Brownlee, going back to multiple appearances at Vocal
Arts and the Washington National Opera,
the Virginia Opera and even as a young artist at Wolf Trap in 2001. (He
was going to return to Wolf Trap in the summer of 2002 but was invited
to make his La Scala debut then.)
“Zelmira” shows Brownlee in silvery voice as a
leading Rossini tenor. The Vocal Arts recital offers another side of the
singer. It features “Cycles of My Being,” a song cycle by Tyshawn Sorey,
the experimental jazz composer, and the poet Terrance Hayes, both
winners of the MacArthur “genius” grant. Brownlee is pleased that the
piece, designed for an art-song audience, was created entirely by black
men.
“At a point,” he said by phone from
Atlanta, “you realize your platform, your cachet will allow you to do
certain things. This was a passion project. [It shows] black men dealing
with problems based largely on their skin color.”
And Brownlee is finding that audiences are eager to hear about it.
“Because
of what I’ve built up over a 20-year career, people are open and
receptive,” he says. “I’ve done ‘Cycles of My Being’ in the most
conservative voting district of the United States, in Provo, Utah, to an
audience that was 99.9 percent Caucasian. The response from them was
overwhelming. [They were] happy and eager to hear it. As an artist, you
have to be intelligent about a subject that can be divisive. You have to
present it in a way that’s true, and also digestible.”
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