Ann Panagulias has had an extraordinary operatic career. With a repertoire from Lully to Lulu she has graced the world’s stages, from San Francisco Opera, where her career began, to the Teatro la Fenice in Venice, the Teatro San Carlo in Genoa, and the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. Now she is branching out into a new repertoire in a new venue: the music of the French music hall, cabaret, and café concert on the recital stage.
Panagulias is teaming up with an old colleague, Marianne Labriola , to explore and share this new repertoire. Labriola and Panagulias once shared the stage together when they participated in San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program, but now they are collaborating in a different way. Labriola, who has retired from singing, maintains an active career in the arts, playing cello in the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble and as the artistic director of the Good Shepherd Sunday Concert Series on Roosevelt Island. And it’s that concert series that will be hosting Panagulias next month.
I recently sat down with Panagulias to discuss a wide range of topics, from her formative years as a singer to her newfound passion for French cabaret song.
Were you always interested in singing or did that develop as you grew?
There is a favorite story of mine. I’ve always had a good imagination. My mother would be concerned because I would come home from school, close my door and play with my stuffed animals. My grandmother would bring me dolls from Greece.
The ones in the native costumes?
Yes. My mother said to my grandmother, why does Ann like to spend so much time by herself? And my grandmother said, Someday that will come in handy. So, when I found out I was good at singing, it was my thing. I didn’t do it to impress anyone; it was something that I could focus on myself. I had a very good choir director in high school, and he suggested that I take voice lessons. It just so happened that the daughter of Ezio Pinza lived in Pittsburgh. She became my teacher. I’d go to her house on Saturday mornings, this really scary Victorian house. She’d teach me in her robe. She had me sing only in Italian and listen to no one but Mirella Freni.
I began singing in musicals in high school. I was always one of the older characters because my voice was bigger than everyone else’s. In my senior year, I sang Mama Rose. I wish I had a recording of that! How could they let you sing a role like that at 17? But at that point I had no fear. My grandfather used to say, “Remember the play,” because he just loved me as that character.
So by the time you started college, you were well on your way.
It didn’t occur to me to do anything else. I was very, very focused. I was lucky, I had a good teacher in college and I stayed with her for six years, Helen Hodam. She was a very difficult teacher and very demanding, but she worked for me.
What singers do you listen to now?
I like all of Régine [Crespin]’s work; she was a mentor of mine. She still inspires through her many recordings and one very special DVD. In fact, some of the Poulenc songs on my program are stolen from my favorite Crespin recording—the cover photo with that little French pucker. Remember that?
I certainly do.
But Leontyne is about it for me right now. She’s like Shaquille O’Neal on the basketball court: how can he even move like that? And especially in Verdi, where you have to have ease from top to bottom, she sings with such ease, it’s extraordinary.
I also love listening to Barbra Streisand, because it is such a well-produced sound, and also Judy Garland. Those women sing really well. Now with the women I pay tribute to in this recital, there wasn’t necessarily a technique of singing, but there weren’t microphones, so they had to at least have some ability to project their voices. I think there was more “technique” in general, in actual performing, than we see today.
Tell me more about your upcoming concert, and how you arrived at your repertoire choices.
Originally a version of this program was planned to honor Levi P. Morton, who donated the money for the library in Rhinecliff [where Ann currently lives]. He had been governor of New York, vice president of the United States, and before that, ambassador to France at the time the Statue of Liberty was being transferred to the United States. So I started with French music in the 1880s. That’s why I start with Debussy. But I didn’t want to be too esoteric for my audience.
[I also] discovered an early song by Cole Porter called “The Lost Liberty Blues,” an anti-Prohibition song sung by the Statue of Liberty. [She’s saying,] “Here I am. I was a gift from France, and now what the hell is going on in this country? Nobody’s free here.”
[Quoting a few lines from the song:]
Once my country France
Had a Yank romance,
So she gave me to Uncle Sam
But he’s changed me so
I no longer know
What I’m meant for or who I am.
When was Cole Porter in Paris?
In the ’20s. He had been in the Foreign Legion, because he couldn’t get into the [U.S.] army. He hadn’t had any success in the United States with his compositions; he was considered a dilettante, really. These early songs are from revues. He hadn’t [yet] established himself as a serious composer.
You’re also interested in songs from the early days of cabaret in Paris, including those by Erik Satie.
Satie was a pianist at Le Chat Noir, which was the first cabaret. Apparently Debussy was also a rehearsal pianist there. There is that famous poster by [Théophile-Alexandre] Steinlen with the image of the black cat. And “The Black Cat” is a very famous short story by Edgar Allan Poe, which was translated into French by Charles Baudelaire. That could well be where the name “Le Chat Noir” came from. And that is yet another transatlantic connection.
I wouldn’t be surprised because Poe was so popular in France. Next on your program is a group of Poulenc songs.
Because I really do like Poulenc.
They also form a fascinating contrast between both the Cole Porter songs and the more “popular” songs of the chanteuses which follow in the next set.
I started to get into these women—Mistinguett, Yvette Guilbert—and from there, music hall in general. So what’s music hall music? What’s café concert? What’s cabaret? (That last term is often misused.) So it became about the evolution, how this repertoire “crosses over” (even though I hate that term). Also, in these songs, the singer often identifies so strongly with the character that she becomes the character.
And of course they were often singing quasi-autobiographical songs, which made self-identification easy. This group is framed by French and English versions of the same song, “Mon homme,” made famous by Mistinguett, and “My Man,” which was an early success of Fanny Brice’s on the other side of the Atlantic.
[Brice’s version] was done for one of Ziegfeld’s Follies. And Flo Ziegfeld modeled his follies on the Folies Bergères. He was certainly aware enough of Mistinguett’s version of this song to have it translated for Fanny Brice.
Yet another transatlantic connection. As is, of course, Josephine Baker, who began her career in the United States, but found enormous fame in Paris. You include Baker’s theme song, “J’ai deux amours,” in your program. This group of songs covers a wide chronological period, does it not, all the way to Piaf?
I felt it was important to have a couple of her songs.
And I love “Sous le ciel de Paris.” It’s so evocative of my favorite city. Could you also tell me about the earliest singer in this group, Yvette Guilbert? Didn’t she sing “naughty” songs, like Sophie Tucker?
Well, no, not exactly. She was famous for Toulouse-Lautrec’s depictions of her. She had a bizarre outfit which was a very girly white dress with these black gloves. She was more of a diseuse, a speaking singer. If you go online, you can find her book called How to Sing a Song, which you can download for free. It’s pretty fascinating. She says she had personal conversations with both Gounod and Verdi, both of whom she claims expressed a desire to write for a voice like hers. She could make all these characters with her voice and the way she colored it. It’s funny because she was not known for her voice.
In her book, she gives six steps that must come into play when performing a song. First she says to literally choose a color, and to find the color changes within the song. Then you must vary the refrains so that no one refrain is an exact repetition of another. Then find the atmosphere of the song: is it an interior song, that is, your story, or is it an exterior song, a story song? Very simple. Also pantomime, how much are you going to direct yourself? Then observation. You can get a lot of inspiration from just looking at people. That gives you the clarity for your [characterization]. And then there is this thing with the eyes and the mouth. What are your eyes, just your eyes, doing? What shape are your lips? And what’s the position of your mouth? You could think about nothing but these things. There are lots of pictures of Guilbert showing different mouth positions to express different feelings. They may look dated, but they’re amazing: she was very plastic—she even uses the word “plastic,”—and it’s fascinating to study these photos.
Richard Pearson Thomas will be playing for you on the recital. Have the two of you worked together before?
Yes, I have. He used to play for my voice lessons, and once I was doing a recital where my pianist cancelled at the last minute, and Richard stepped in and learned all the music really quickly. We’ve done other programs, too. My first foray into this repertoire was a Cole Porter/Kurt Weill program, and Richard played that. He is also a composer, so he handles the crossover material better than many pianists who aren’t interested in that genre.
I know he has written a lot of cabaret songs. Have you ever sung any of those?
Yes. I tried to incorporate some into this program, but it just didn’t work. He’s a really thoughtful guy and his cabaret songs are great. I love singing them.
I’m interested in what differences you perceive between singing a concert like this as opposed to an opera.
I think that’s what I found really interesting about reading Yvette Guilbert’s book, because people have this idea that the recital hall is going to be something less of a dramatic experience, right? But that’s why I love the Mignon-Lieder of Wolf or any number of Schubert songs. I always liked to think that I was as much of a character there as when I was in an opera. But once I read the Guilbert book, I realized there was so much more I could think about. I also think that in a way it’s a lot more work to put a recital together than one operatic role. For one thing, it’s you up there the whole time—you never get a break.
I’m not sure I even want to ask this because it’s always asked in interviews, but do you have advice for young singers?
As the ancient Greeks (and my grandfather!) said, know thyself. Be careful who you trust and stick with them. Don’t go for the flashy colors.
That’s excellent advice.
Yes, and be realistic; know what you’re good at and trust that. If anyone wants to make you into something else, not the best idea. And that became more important than recognizing my own strengths, which I never felt were adequate, because they were so different from other people’s.
It just doesn’t work for singers to have this exterior dependence on the opinions of others. Then you’re always scratching around, waiting for the next person to give you that recognition. It’s just another form of tension. It’s one of the many tensions singers have that just isn’t helpful. It has to be in here [indicates her heart].
Hear Ann Panagulias perform selections from this repertoire and the work of Cole Porter, Erik Satie, and Francis Poulenc, for Labriola’s concert series, on Sunday, June 5 at 2:30 p.m. Richard Pearson Thomas will join Panagulias as collaborative pianist for this event.
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Daniel Gundlach is a countertenor and vocal coach who lives in New York City. Find him on the web at www.danielgundlach.com.
