For some singers, the formative moments in one’s career, the times in one’s life that define who they’ll later become, start early on. They’re rooted in musical family members, school choir, summer performance camps, or pre-college studies at notable conservatories. For soprano Susanna Phillips, there were similar instances: a senior recital in high school with a packed audience of 500 people and a childhood of hearing her father play piano in annual concerts with a violinist, for starters.
Yet the most career-defining moment of Phillips’ life came from the nonmusical side. Her father, while still musically active, is a rheumatologist (he double-majored in piano and math in college and minored in French; his violinist recital partner is also a doctor), and among those in the audience for her senior recital were friends she had made playing basketball and volleyball and serving as a member of her high school French club.
“It was the kind of place where no one cares what you do, so long as you do something,” says the Huntsville, Ala., native of her hometown and how it’s shaped her into the artist she is today. “And it’s not the end of the world if I want to change directions.” While she can’t picture herself doing anything but sing for the foreseeable future, one of the things that keeps Phillips on an assured path is that there is room for deviation. Knowing that there is the option for flexibility makes even the most strident demands of a singing career seem more pliable.
Inspired by a production of Madama Butterfly seen in New York at the Met and the leading soprano’s ability to convey emotions in spite of a language barrier, Phillips nurtured her love of singing in earnest as a teenager. She took voice lessons quietly on the side while accumulating a healthy résumé of extracurricular activities and maintaining a position on the honor roll. It caught the attention of her guidance counselor who encouraged Phillips to apply to vocal programs in her senior year. Huntsville was a community rife with artistic engagement, from dance to visual arts to an orchestra continually functioning in the black. However, with the absence of a local opera company, Phillips wasn’t quite sure where she stood.
Keeping her options open, she agreed to apply to some music schools in addition to liberal arts schools like Northwestern and Vanderbilt with the conviction that she wouldn’t end up in a conservatory program, and especially not one in New York.
Naturally, she wound up going to Juilliard.
“I was talking to my aunt and she said, ‘It’s easier to transfer out than to transfer in. You can always do something else,’” Phillips explains of her choice in schools. “I think that’s how I’ve always approached this life, this career, this path. It’s really fun and it’s really rewarding and amazing how much I don’t know, and at the same time it’s totally fine to go off and do something else if the sacrifices are ever too much or I’m unhappy doing it. Being given that permission, knowing that I have the freedom in case I change my mind, was really helpful for me.”
The advice of her aunt, corroborated by her parents, set the groundwork for a Juilliard education that reflects Phillips’s manifold interests and curiosity, reflective of the old Susan Sontag aphorism that the definition of a writer is “someone who is interested in ‘everything.’” It’s an idea that can be applied to any discipline of the arts, and one that also sets the stage for one of Phillips’s favorite aspects of her craft: consciously breaking the rules.
At Juilliard, she completed a five-year program that resulted in an undergraduate and graduate diploma and included an independent study over the summer with noted faculty member Michael White. “He is a perfect example of somebody who is so unbelievably excited by what he’s talking about that he cannot understand if somebody’s not excited about it, too,” says Phillips, who did indeed pick up on the professor’s enthusiasm, particularly for the music of Mozart (one of the most frequently name-checked composers in her artist’s bio). She still has her notes from her studies with White and actively refers to them.
In particular, White’s insistence that singers be “tasteful” in their ornamentation was an illuminating discovery in Phillips’s growth as an artist. However, it’s not a point on which she always agrees fully with White.
“I do always hear those rules in the back of my head, so I know when I’m breaking them,” says Phillips. “That’s how I function: I learn all the rules and pick the ones I break. [White] definitely supported that. He supports the conscious breaking of rules, the theoretical analysis of what you’re doing.”
It brings to mind another popular quote, from Katherine Hepburn, who cautioned that “if you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” And it’s a helpful quote to keep in the back of one’s head when singing roles like the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro (twice this past summer in back-to-back runs in Bordeaux and Verbier; she’ll return to Santa Fe to sing it next summer), Ilia in Idomeneo (most recently sung in August at the Ravinia Festival), and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni (which she recently sang in Boston; she brings the role to the Met this winter after singing Mozart’s “Exsultate, jubilate” as part of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival).
“I didn’t think that I would be doing as much Mozart as I am,” admits Phillips. “I think most young singers sing Mozart when they’re studying. When you present your five arias, everybody has a Mozart aria on there. . . . For me, it’s kind of a bellwether of whether I’m singing well or not. If I get off course, I start to sing Mozart again and it comes back to this central place, which I like.
“I’ve been able to, in a weird way, track my own growth when I’m singing Mozart,” she adds. “It’s kind of like a Bikram yoga class where you do the same positions all the time, but you see where you are that day, with a different motivation, a different color.”
With such a strong foundation in the composer’s works, Phillips found that her next step was the ability to explore one part several different ways. She has done the same with roles like Musetta in La bohème; however, she notes that Mozart allows for some flexibility—notably in the recitatives—that can make the repertoire easily tailored to different surroundings. To stay on the metaphor of the singer’s path, Mozart becomes the scenic route, the road that is about the journey more so than the destination. “When you’re preparing a role, you prepare it the way you see it with opinions, but with enough flexibility to work with a director and to try on that coat that he gives you to create the character that he wants in his production,” she says.
Even going from one Countess to the other meant exploring different aspects of the character, offering her as more of a spitfire on par with Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia in one while creating more of a stoic, class-conscious woman in the other.
“It’s funny, because both of them worked. I don’t think either one of them was the complete package, but I don’t think it’s fair to say in any way that I would have the complete package of such an iconic role,” explains Phillips. “I wouldn’t want to have the complete package of a part now; that would be so boring. It’s a constant process of growth and a constant process of exploration. Otherwise, why do it?”
Phillips is a fan of research in the right context—the Beaumarchais plays that inspired “Nozze” and “Barbiere” are a must, as was Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale when Phillips recorded a suite from Poul Ruders’ opera of the same name for Bridge Records this year—however, she’s not one to spend a weekend listening to 100 recordings of a work in order to find her own voice in a role. Perhaps it’s that contemporary music is less well-tread territory that makes it another area in which Phillips loves to experiment.
“There’s a line in Traviata . . . I know what it means in English, but I have no idea what it means in the scene. I still haven’t found a way to motivate it. Finally someone said, ‘You know, sometimes there are lines like that and you just got to sing them and let them go,’” she says of singing the works of dead composers.
Conversely, working with living composers means that the performance becomes a true dialogue between singer and writer, one in which she can ask a librettist or composer what they mean by tricky lines, or hash out vocal difficulties. Phillips discovered this by volunteering on a lark to sing for a Juilliard composition class. The experience gave her not only a taste for modern music, but also how to interact with composers to ask the essential questions.
Such an experience has primed her for one of her major career highlights this season, singing Stella in Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire, opposite Renée Fleming and Teddy Tahu Rhodes, in concert at Carnegie Hall and in a full production with Lyric Opera of Chicago.
The interpretation of the role presents some unique challenges, but such challenges can also be advantages. Unlike “Nozze,” there aren’t 100 recordings available of “Streetcar” that can cloud the research pool—Phillips watched the 1951 film version of the play, directed by Elia Kazan (and featuring Kim Hunter in the role of Stella) but won’t view it again before she makes her debut in the role. It makes a smart reference point, but Phillips notes that there are vast differences between the film and the opera in terms of interpretation.
“When you have a piece of music written for you, one of the strengths and one of the difficulties of that is that the interpretation is kind of there,” says Phillips. “If the composer wrote a high note in forte, you can’t really do anything different from that. You can color it in a certain way, but you have to go with their version and find a way to make that yours.”
Being a good Southern girl and singing Tennessee Williams’ ultimate good Southern girl does give Phillips added perspective on the character, particularly in her innately Southern motivation to please her socially difficult husband and her equally difficult sister. “She dances in social situations very well, and she has great difficulty loving her husband and really caring about her sister,” says Phillips. “She’s a buffer between the two. I can relate to that.”
While the community of “Streetcar” is often difficult to maintain, Phillips’ own community is a much more stable environment. When she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Musetta in 2008, over 400 Huntsville residents traveled to New York to see her in the course of the show’s run. There were people from Phillips’ hometown in the audience every evening that she was onstage, and later her manager told her it was the first time that they had seen someone make their Met debut and be applauded voraciously before even opening their mouth. It wasn’t that all 400 Huntsvillians were opera fans, though many were. It was—true to what Phillips grew up learning—that being part of the community meant supporting their own when one of them did something.
Community also plays a big part in Phillips’ willingness to experiment, as it’s the support and feedback that provides a safe environment for her to take risks artistically. She recalls a valuable piece of advice given to her in college when she was told to keep a small, consistent team of people around her. “It’s a very small group of people that you absolutely trust to come to you and to tell you when something is wrong so you can trust them to get over the whole pleasantries and be really honest with you and straightforward,” she says. “And you should trust them to also be honest with you when something goes well. It’s all opinion at the end of the day. You have to know what you believe in—and once you figure that out, the rest is what it is.”
Phillips also counts it part of her success that her parents and brother are continually in her life. While she travels back to Alabama frequently for recitals, her parents have also invested in an apartment close to Lincoln Center and visit monthly, whether she’s in town or not.
“They do their own thing,” she explains with a smile. “They dress in black and eat bagels and act all New York-y, and then they go home and dress in color. They really love this city and love being part of this community, so I actually see them all the time, which is great.”
Phillips also gives back to her community in big ways, most notably with the summer chamber music celebration, Twickenham Fest. Phillips established the concert series in 2010 with her childhood friend (and former babysitting charge) bassoonist Matt McDonald after the pair collaborated on a soprano-bassoon recital some years prior. The festival was later hatched over a Christmas break when both musicians were at home and catching up and realizing that they wanted to bring their music back to the community that fostered it.
“We were both talking about how in that transition from school to becoming a professional, before you have families and before you’re settled down in life, most people are looking for opportunities to play and opportunities to sing,” she explains. Musicians who participate aren’t paid; however, their travel expenses are comped and the standard set by the festival’s founders is high. Though, there have been learning experiences along the way.
“The morning of the first concert, we realized we had no lighting, and the only lighting they had available was red and blue disco lighting. It looked like prom!” she laughs. “But it all comes from a good place. We’re learning each year.”
Working on the festival—which she still runs, down to programs and T-shirts, alongside McDonald—has also given Phillips unique perspective on her business. “When somebody asks me for my artist’s bio or program notes, I’m quick to try and help them. I realize how important it is now,” she says.
Keeping involved with audiences, whether they’re her parents’ neighbors or Carnegie Hall concertgoers (or, in some cases, both), has also become a large component of Phillips’ career and outlook. As she also pushes to commission new works and now explores recording projects, Phillips finds that striking a balance between her own passions and the audience’s passion is key.
“As a performer, I try to program things that resonate with people,” she says. “But I also think it’s important to bring new music that resonates with people.” For her Alice Tully Hall recital debut, Phillips commissioned a song cycle from composer Philip Lasser, In Colors of Feelings, which featured texts by Wynelle Ann Carson, whose second-cousin Craig Terry accompanied the soprano for the work’s debut. Carson had passed away from muscular dystrophy, which made the performance an intensely personal experience for both Terry and Phillips and made the connection between musicians, music, and audience all the more rich and deep.
“It doesn’t always have to be your cousin’s poetry,” says Phillips. She felt an equally strong connection to Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi, a centerpiece of Paysages, and sought to record it because she felt the work in its original, piano-accompanied version was not fairly represented on recording. “It was one of those situations where I felt strongly that I had something to say,” she notes of the recording project, which she originally took out a loan to self-fund before it was picked up by Bridge Records. “You shouldn’t do a CD just to do a CD. You shouldn’t do an aria disc just to do an aria disc. There should be a reason.”
She pauses, then adds, “I do think music is personal. I don’t think people should sing things that they don’t feel personal opinion about. And initially if you’re not struck that way, it is your job to find a way to say something with it. Otherwise, what’s the point? There are always 50 other sopranos who can do it 100 times better than I could, so I’d let them do it if it’s not the right thing for me.”
While Phillips allows for a number of flexibilities in her life, committing to something requires a rigid discipline. She may not be completely sure as to where she’ll be three years from now, but as we settle up the tab at a Columbus Circle restaurant and she prepares to head back into the recording studio for her next album, one thing is clear: she’ll be doing something, and she’ll be doing it with 110 percent dedication.
