Elizabeth Futral is a reassuring example of excellence rising steadily to the top. From her start in the chorus of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Futral has taken on increasingly prominent roles with ever-mounting success. Her Met debut, as Lucia di Lammermoor, earned the kind of reviews singers dream of. She was chosen to create the role of Stella in André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and has challenged memories of a certain New York redhead by taking on two of her famous roles: Handel’s Cleopatra (in Los Angeles and featuring a controversial nude scene) and Douglas Moore’s American classic, Baby Doe (at New York City Opera). In an era when the classical recording industry seems to have gone south, Futral’s discography is steadily impressive; it includes the ‘original cast’ recording of Streetcar, and the part of Desdemona in Opera Rara’s new release of Rossini’s Otello. In private life, she is married to baritone Steven White. How does she do it? By combining diligence and humility with common sense and a healthy sense of humor. All of these qualities were in place when she spoke with Classical Singer last April while in town to sing The Ballad of Baby Doe at the New York City Opera.
Freeman Günter: I’ve been told that you never read your reviews. Is that true?
Elizabeth Futral: That’s true.
FG: I understand why, but aren’t you ever curious?
EF: Yes, of course I’m curious.
FG: How do you not crack that paper open when nobody is looking?
EF: Well, I’ll tell you how. It’s a protective device, really. Whether it’s good or bad, the written word means too much. If I happen to read it, I just cannot make it not mean that much to me. But what I realize is, this is one person’s opinion, one person who may not have ever heard me, and may not know anything about me.
FG: And if that person were just talking at a dinner party, that opinion would count for much less. But because it is in print, people think it is true.
EF: Exactly. So I can’t allow it to mean that much to me. I really do take to heart the criticisms of the people around me who know me, and who know every note of what I’m doing better than I do, people who are my ears in the theater. I take that very seriously. It’s not that I just don’t want to hear it from anybody; it’s not that at all. But I would rather hand-pick the people I listen to. I need to know that they care about me, and want me to be a better singer. I cannot give too much attention to a random critique of what I’ve done. It can be glowing and glorious, but even that, to me, is something I can’t take to heart.
FG: I would think it could also make you self-conscious about certain details of your performance.
EF: Yes, absolutely. To be honest with you, I will occasionally read something. If my husband says, “Oh you can’t imagine this review. It’s like your mother wrote it. You have to read it one day.” Maybe a year later, when the performance is gone and long past, and I’ve forgotten about it, I may pick up the review and read it.
FG: Do you have other devices to protect yourself? I’m sure that the more famous you get and the more people are drawn to what you do, they want a part of you. They want attention; maybe they want to be your friend, and all that.
EF: That happens. I’ve learned from experience, and from making some mistakes in that regard. You think, well, I’m going to do the right thing. If someone invites me to coffee, why would I say no? Well, now I understand why I say no, having said yes maybe once or twice to a total stranger. My first impulse is: Yes, I’m free! How could this be harmful? Well, it can be harmful. It never has been for me, and nothing terrible has happened, but it has just gone over the border of professional relating to people. I think you do have to keep a distance, partly because there is just not enough time. As a good friend of mine said, I hardly have enough time to be with my good, close friends. You need to nurture those relationships rather than start being with people that you don’t even know, who may or may not have good intentions. You have to conserve your energies.
FG: On the subject of self-protection, I’ve read about your highly acclaimed performances as Handel’s Cleopatra, and the famous nude scene. Did you know about that when you took the job, or was it sprung on you later?
EF: Yes, I knew.
FG: What was your first reaction to that request?
EF: Well, my first reaction was to ask if it was going to be done in such a way that I was going to be comfortable. Will I have to be really nude? And the answer was no. I didn’t have to be completely nude. I was to be in a milk bath which is opaque and I would not be seen. Despite what you read in the New York Times, it was not a true nude scene because I was not completely nude. I was never frontally nude. It was very discreetly and wonderfully done, I think. It was titillating in a way, but it was not ‘in your face’.
FG: And it gave the desired sensuality to this famous character.
EF: Absolutely. It was a wonderful effect. There was a hot tub on stage. So it was warm, opaque water. I came onstage singing an aria. I had a robe on and another little piece under that. I gradually took the robe off. Then began to take this other piece off, and as I did, I turned my back to the audience and allowed the costume to fall as I went into the water. So it was the illusion, and I was immersed while singing the rest of the piece. Then Caesar came in and he created a shield with the towel. And I came right up to the edge of it, and came behind it and took it around immediately. He was discreet about it. He looked in my direction but had his eyes closed at my request. He was very kind.
I really loved the director, and I believed in the production, and I believe that the director had our best interests at heart. He understood the music, he understood the form of the piece. So that’s why I felt I could really go for it, and believe it and make it work for me. And it did.
FG: You are well aware of the tradition of passing on these roles from one generation of artists to another, and the tremendous responsibility of sustaining this tradition. I would never presume to deal in comparisons between you and Beverly Sills, who was much beloved in New York for her singing of both Cleopatra and Baby Doe, the role you came to New York to sing at the City Opera. I understand that you had a meeting with her, and she kind of gave you her blessing. That must be a dream come true for a young singer on her way up. How did it come about?
EF: Well, she had sent me a lovely note the week I arrived here to start rehearsals. It just said basically, “I know you’re starting to rehearse Baby Doe and I think you’re going to have a great success with it. I’m going to be there cheering louder than anyone.” It was very sweet, and I was just so touched. Eventually we hooked up, and she invited me to come and have coffee with her at her office one morning. We spent an hour together, just chatting and talking about the role and my career. She was so generous and so interested about me and in what I’m doing. It was great. I was so inspired and so touched that Beverly Sills could spare the time and the wisdom and the experience.
FG: Did she give you any pointers?
EF: Sure! I asked her how she felt about the role. She said she really loved doing it, and she never imagined she’d end up doing it so often. She really loved the character, and loved singing it. She also told me that the composer, Douglas Moore, was just one of the nicest men she had ever met. It was wonderful.
FG: Is this the first time that you’ve sung this part?
EF: It is.
FG: Is it technically difficult?
EF: Well, it has its challenges. The English language of it poses some inherent difficulties, because I’m an English speaker. That sounds strange, but I tend to do things with the English language in speech that I can’t translate into singing or it disturbs the singing—you know, lateral vowels and things. So that’s an interesting thing I’m dealing with, and I’ve dealt with before singing English. The high notes in this piece sort of spring out of nowhere in a way, so I’m figuring that out and at the same time I’m trying to etch the character.
FG: I would think that this would be the particular difficulty, as with Violetta. Certain operas require an absolute command of character, and in other operas it’s not as important.
EF: Yes, dramatically, I’ve felt that lots of other roles that I’ve done and do are more clearly delineated by the music and by the text, the stage direction. Perhaps Baby Doe is not the most interesting character I’ve ever played. The singer has to fill in a lot.
My husband pointed out that it’s called The Ballad of Baby Doe, but I’m not so sure that she’s really the central character in the piece. Horace Taber has a huge sort of mad scene about his life in the end. Its kind of about him and she’s the catalyst, which is why she got the title, I guess. And I do sing a lot in the show. But the character of Augusta is much more interesting perhaps. And Horace is much more likeable; he’s just a good old guy. He makes mistakes, but I think audiences respond to him. And they respond to Augusta because they sympathize with her. And here is Baby Doe, sort of creating all this division. I don’t think it’s the most satisfying role I’ve ever done, dramatically. But musically it’s enjoyable to sing. I think the Silver Aria is the best piece, musically and poetically. That’s kind of my take on it at this point in the middle of my first run of performances.
FG: Do you have a problem with nerves?
EF: I think I’m much calmer than most people that I see. I’m only nervous if I don’t feel completely prepared. And I mean prepared in a rehearsal sense. Of course I know my music. If it’s a really short rehearsal period of a challenging production, I’m stuck with that. But if I have enough time, I’m usually comfortable.
FG: Does the fear tend to go away once you start?
EF: Yes, it does, absolutely. You get into it, and over the course of the run it gets easier and easier.
FG: Was there a time when you were coming along, that you knew that you had a real chance at becoming a professional singer?
EF: Gosh, I don’t know; it has just seemed like a gradual kind of building for me.
FG: You’ve spoken in other interviews about your teacher.
EF: Yes, my first teacher at Sanford was really the one, Eleanor Ellsley.
FG: I’ve read that she is the one who made you feel that you could be a professional singer, and you really had not thought that a possibility.
EF: At that point, I believed her, but I didn’t really know for sure that this would turn into a career, and I didn’t know what a career would be like. I think it was good that I didn’t, that I discovered it gradually.
FG: Why do you say that it was better?
EF: Because I think that it might have been daunting and overwhelming with the end thing as the goal. I don’t know that I would have stuck with it. I think having small goals as I went along was just more manageable for me. I’ve always done that, I am a very goal oriented person. Yes, one of my goals was eventually to sing at the Met, but that’s not what I was living for. One of my early goals was to get into an apprenticeship program.
FG: That was helpful?
EF: Oh yes, absolutely. It is definitely worth trying. It’s a really good middle-ground after school and before a career to have this haven.
FG: After school, would you say that you were not really ready?
EF: No, I wasn’t. Absolutely not. I really needed the bridge between school and the professional world.
FG: And it gave you a chance to work on the roles and experience being in front of an audience?
EF: Yes, and to really coach in that in-depth way that I had never experienced. I mean, I went to Indiana University, which was a big opera factory.
FG: People tend to glamorize singers because they’re opera singers, even those who should know better. Like everybody else, I have always pronounced your name Foo-TRAHL. I was quite surprised when you left a message on my voice mail in which you announced yourself as FEW-trull. Somehow, we all just want to give that foreign emphasis to it.
EF: You know, a funny thing happened to me at City Opera. I sang there for several seasons in the early-mid-90s. And they used to call me “Foo-TRAHL”. I don’t think anyone ever asked. Over the monitors, when they’re calling for places, “Miss Foo-TRAHL to stage right.” Who has time to correct everybody? It didn’t bother me; I didn’t care. I knew that’s how it looked, and that’s fine with me. I was sort of used to it. If people do ask me, I say, “well FEW-trull is how I say it, and how my family says it, but don’t worry about it if you can’t remember. It’s OK.”
So anyway, one of the stage managers had asked me this time around, so I told him. So when he got on the microphone, he said, “Miss FEW-trull to stage.” So everybody in the chorus exclaimed, “Can you believe how they pronounced her name? Did you hear him? FEW-trull!” (laughing) I just kind of laughed, I didn’t know what to say.
FG: André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire was a great breakthrough for you because you got to create a glove-fitting role, and you got seen and heard by millions of people via the telecast of the world premiere. Did you have any input into the composition of it? Did you meet with Maestro Previn at all beforehand?
EF: No, I did not beforehand. But he did know my singing and sort of hand-picked all four of us principals, so he wrote with me in mind, but I didn’t confer with him beforehand. There was a lot of conferring going on during the rehearsal, but I don’t think I asked for anything to be changed.
FG: Was the score changed much during rehearsals?
EF: Not much. I mean, there are notes and words here and there, and a few bars added.
FG: But it was not like a Broadway show where you’re constantly learning new pages.
EF: No, not at all, there were just things to make it work a little better — a note change here or there. But basically that was what he wrote.
FG: Is Streetcar the only work you created that nobody else ever sang before?
EF: No, very early on in my career, I did a Philip Glass opera, La Belle et la Bête, based on the Jean Cocteau film, and that was the premiere of that piece. It was at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge.
FG: What are the special benefits or challenges of creating your own character, as opposed to singing something for which there are so many precedents? Does it give you a sense of freedom, or is it more daunting?
EF: I approach it in the more positive sense of freedom!
It’s great to forge new territory. I love that. Both experiences were terrific, I worked with composers who are great people, very generous and very humble and grateful to have their music performed. I think both André and Philip had the spirit of being really grateful this is being done, and being done well. And so it made me feel even more free and excited about the prospect of making something out of what they’d written.
FG: Many of the critics just didn’t recognize how great an opera Streetcar really was.
EF: I contend that a big part of that is all the history with the play. It just carried a lot of baggage into the opera as far as people’s perceptions are concerned. So I took a lot of that with a grain of salt. The real test to me is that it has lived since then, and it has. And it continues to. I was just recently asked to do concert performances in London with the London Symphony. He did a semi-staged production in Pittsburgh recently. I think he thought it would just be a concert version, and then they expanded it and did a lot of staging. But the orchestra was on stage, not in a pit, because it was the Pittsburgh Symphony. So it was quasi-staged.
FG: How about Blanche, would you sing that?
EF: I want to. And I’ve told André. I said, “When I grow up, can I sing Blanche, please?” I said I’ve done Stella, I want to do Blanche next, I’ll do Eunice if I have to when I’m old, and I’ll even do the flower lady, you know, when I’m really old.
FG: And that’s a beautiful part too, that is very moving.
EF: That was the hardest thing in the process to make happen. André wasn’t ever really happy with it. But they could never decide if they wanted her to sing more, or sing less, or talk more and it went back and forth and back and forth.
FG: Do you still get excited when you meet or work with someone that you admire?
EF: Yes! Are you kidding? You know, that was one of the real bonuses of apprenticing at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The first year I was in the chorus, and the second year I wasn’t in the chorus but I covered and I did small roles. And just being on the stage with the likes of Anna Tomowa Sintow was so inspiring to me. Who has a more beautiful voice?
Singing the Marshallin, she was just fantastic. I just wanted to cry every night. She was such a wonderful, generous, beautiful person. And I thought, “That’s what I want to be like when I grow up!” Even my colleagues, people who are exactly my age in position and life and career impress me tremendously. I just have such respect. Of course, I have my critiques and whatnot when I talk with my husband in private. But I have a healthy respect for the career and for the daunting task of getting up and singing an opera. It’s not just like walking down the street.
FG: You have to have your will. You have to really want and need it. The faint-hearted will fall to the side because it’s so discouraging. How did you deal with the discouragement, when you were coming along?
EF: A couple of things. I had and still have a wonderful manager who taught me one thing, and I give him lots of credit for this because it was really important advice early on. I never moved to New York, but I said to him, “I’m not going to move to New York, just trust that I’ll fly to New York anytime you want me to come and audition. I promise you I’ll buy a ticket and I’ll come.” So I stayed in Chicago because it was much more affordable and I liked it. I just felt comfortable there. And I flew to New York a lot, during those early years of auditioning a lot, and getting sometimes great feedback, sometimes no feedback or half-hearted feedback. It’s awful, auditioning, frankly, and I was sort of good at it. But it’s still awful. And he said to me, “Elizabeth, I don’t want you to worry about anything else, except for learning how to be a singer. Learn how to sing better every day. Don’t worry about what dress you’re going to wear, don’t worry about trying to impress somebody with your personality. You’re a wonderful person. Don’t worry about any of that other stuff, let it all fall by the wayside and learn to sing.” And I’ve taken that very seriously. The other thing that I always say to people and to myself is I’m the only Elizabeth Futral there is. That is not necessarily a great thing, but it’s a unique thing. That is something I can take to the bank. I am the only person who sounds exactly like I do. It’s a gift, it’s a blessing, its something that we all have, is the unique quality of being the only me. I just think that’s really important to hold on to.
FG: So now that you’re a working singer with an impressive resume behind you and an impressive future in front of you, how does the reality compare to the dream?
EF: Well, I always knew that traveling, while it seemed exciting and glamorous, would pose its problems. I know myself quite well, and I know that I’m a homebody. And I grew up in a very tight knit family, a strong community feeling. I have a very different life than I grew up with, it’s almost completely different, and so I’m always trying to manufacture this thing that I think feeds me and is good for me, which is having a sense of a community around me and friends and strong relationships with my family. It’s hard, and I’m not always good at it, but its something that I work at. Otherwise, I could just be out here by myself just feeling alone and unconnected and I have felt that at times, so I really work to try and keep relationships.
FG: How do you manage to feel at home enough to concentrate wherever you are?
EF: Lots of different ways. People are very used to their routine. So when somebody diverts from that, they sort of stay in their routine. I remember early on when I moved to Chicago and started working, I felt like my family wasn’t really calling regularly and writing, so I called them and I said, “Look, I am out here and I need you guys.” I made it clear that we need to keep in close touch. I remember doing that, at least with my sisters. Thank goodness for email now. I resisted getting a computer for a long time, and when we got it I thought, how in the world did I ever live without email? It’s really great, so that’s one thing. And also, now that I can afford it a little more, I try to be in places that are comfortable, where I have room, and can relax.
As a singer we’re allowed to escape the real world, to just leave it behind for a few hours, and have a cathartic experience that can get us through or leave behind or transform some things that can be difficult in our real life. I feel sad to think of a great artist like Maria Callas and how turbulent and unhappy her life seemed to be. But because of what she was able to give, I think that when she was onstage and doing that, it had to have been a good moment for her. I hope the singing for her was freeing and transcendent. It is that for me, often. I love what I do, and I’m really grateful to be allowed to give, and it also feeds me.
