Internationally acclaimed soprano Audra McDonald has had a remarkable career that includes both opera and musical theatre. On the classical side, she has been guest soloist for the Philadelphia Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle—and recently, she returned to the New York Philharmonic for concerts conducted by John Adams, singing his orchestrated version of Charles Ives songs, where she also premiered a new song cycle, The Seven Deadly Sins (featuring songs composed for her by seven favorite composers). Carnegie Hall commissioned this one-woman work for Ms. McDonald, who performed it as the season closer of the new Zankel Hall.
On the nonclassical side, Ms. McDonald is a four-time Tony Award winner—for Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, and most recently, as best supporting actress in the Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun, opposite Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. Also, she was Emmy-nominated for her role in HBO’s Wit and headlined Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Ms. McDonald recently gave a cabaret-style performance presented by the award-winning Pulse program at Syracuse University. The day following the performance, she donated her time to give a student Q and A session. I interviewed her following that session, and share the thoughts and comments she gave so generously that day.
How did you get interested in the theatre?
I come from an incredibly musical family, and my dad was a music teacher at Lincoln University. Both of my grandmothers were piano teachers and had degrees at a time when black females didn’t really do that. So, I sort of had no choice: I had to learn to play the piano. And then, when I was about 8, they put me in the church choir, and after three or four services, they said, “She’s just so loud!” It was maybe at that point that I realized something was there.
I also started working in a dinner theatre. In my school district, they had something called Project Talent, and a performing arts high school. These meant that all of my electives were piano or theatre literature, and all my PE classes were dance.
For college, I went to Juilliard. I don’t know if I would recommend a conservatory program like that. You miss out on having a campus life. I would recommend doing a school like this [Syracuse University] that has a focused program, and then for graduate work, go on to a conservatory program.
My very first summer after my freshman year of Juilliard was in 1989. My teachers recommended that I do Aspen [Music Festival], but I saw an advertisement for Man of La Mancha. My teachers were furious, but I was cast and I was off [to perform].
I was also very, very lucky. I went back to Juilliard to finish my degree, then back to the show Secret Garden. I did have odd jobs while in school—I was even a ringer in a temple! (She laughs at the thought.) I could only get that job because we were behind a screen and no one could see me. But you know what? If you have to wait tables, you do that—but when you find the joy [of singing] is gone, then that’s the time you want to think about giving it up. Keep it up as long as you have that joy!
Were you always encouraged to sing in different styles?
No, I just wasn’t ever discouraged, except for my time at Juilliard. You don’t know that you can’t do something until someone tells you that you can’t. For me, I just sang the music I loved. As a child, you think you can do anything you want.
Was there ever a time when you doubted yourself and your career?
Last night at 5:30 (laughs). That’s something that you have to deal with all the time. First you’re trying to be good enough, and then you’re just trying to stay there. I wonder every day: “When are they going to find out that I’m a fake?” But I find you have to use that fear.
I have a wonderful voice teacher, Arthur Levy, who has been with me for 10 years. He teaches at both Mannes [College of Music] and at Manhattan [School of Music]. It’s a very collaborative relationship. He’s not trying to hijack my voice or my own personal sound.
The most important thing a teacher can give to you is vocal health. You don’t have to sound like anyone else. That’s something that is important in my work with Arthur: I’m singing in a healthy place. How can you make a sound and do it in a healthy way? What’s most important to him is vocal health.
It’s just so important to find a teacher that you click with, that you are able to open up with. Find your own self-expression. I don’t think that there is anything new out there. Acting and singing are all about the human body and the human spirit, and that hasn’t changed in thousands of years.
When you started to study voice, what aspect of vocal production was the most challenging for you? What came naturally? Get as technical as you’d like!
For me the challenge still is, like every other soprano, the passaggio, and working your way through the passaggio. And when I first started studying in Fresno, Calif., my challenge was bringing the two voices together. I had only been belting at that point (I was 11) and my teacher there taught me how to find my head voice. I needed to learn to use it, to bring it down in order to sing in a healthier way. I also had to learn to trust that I had notes up in the stratosphere. I thought I was just a belter.
I’m still working on solidifying the voice: keeping this big open tube and letting the voice go all the way through. Still, the biggest surprise for me is that I have high notes. If I haven’t seen Arthur in a few weeks, he’ll warm me up and won’t tell me how high we’ve gone, and then he’ll finally say: “That was an F.” I just can never believe that I’m truly a soprano!
Your recent picture in the New York Times for your Sondheim work captures you in a moment full of emotional commitment that I think of as typical of your performances. How do you keep this level of involvement without unduly involving the voice?
I probably don’t, to be completely honest. However, I find that if there is enough emotional commitment in what you are doing, then believe it or not, there is usually enough physical support. The physicality tends to support the voice: If you are fully committed to something, it will be there.
If the emotion is getting to you, then concentrate on what you are trying to do. I focus on that, rather than the emotion. I go back to the objective: Why is this character singing this song? You don’t try to cry—you’re trying not to.
Who is your mentor? Who do you look to?
Zoe Caldwell. I named my daughter after her. I could call her in the middle of the night and ask her what to do. She could have been a real diva, but she really took an interest in me.
She’s a legend. It was very important to her that she know all the names of the tech crew, that all the dressing rooms were nice for everyone. That was important to her. It was important to her that the craft was served. There was no ego involved. When I consider what role I should do, I go to her. She’s my mentor.
What singers of the past inspire you?
Judy Garland first and foremost, and [Mirella] Freni—whether one likes her sound or doesn’t, there is so much emotion in that voice. Barbra Streisand inspires everybody. Another singer (perhaps not as well known) who has a sound that I’ve always just loved, just wanted to crawl inside of and just live (or die!), is Florence Quivar. She moved me at a time when I was hating classical music, just hating it. I heard her in Dialogue of the Carmelites at the Met. I loved it. She moved me to tears in a way that classical music hadn’t done for me until that point. I just wanted to cry “mommy,” because it was like her voice was a womb, and I just wanted to crawl inside of it.
Just “hating classical music”?
I was hating it. It was at a time when I was resenting where I was. It had so much to do with me. I really just wanted to be a musical theatre person, and I felt stuck at Juilliard.
How did you get back to it?
My French diction teacher, Thomas Grubb. He said I needed to find music that really stuck to me. He is the one who introduced me to Poulenc, and to La voix humaine.
This is the opera you’re slated to do with Houston Opera?
Yes, although unfortunately, they want to do it in English, so I won’t be working with him on it.
Can you imagine yourself doing other opera roles?
I do love “Rosenkavalier”—oh, that trio at the end with those ladies! I heard Suzie Graham, Heidi Grant [Murphy], and Renée [Fleming] do it. You are just a big ol’ puddle in your seat by the end of all that.
I could do Suor Angelica. That’s another opera I would listen to when I was at school. I would drop the needle in the record library on “Senza mamma,” on Lucia Popp’s recording. Oh, and [Renata] Scotto! That was her role, too. That I could do. But right now, no, other opera roles don’t speak to me.
You’ve had many composers write expressly for you. I’m thinking in particular of your commissions for the song cycle Seven Deadly Sins. What inspires you to work with a particular composer? What are you looking for?
Oooh! Michael John LaChiusa—no one writes better for me, and knows my voice better. He would say, “These notes are the best for you: your D and E-flat are great, so when you are really angry, I’m going to give you those notes to sing.”
Composers, if you are writing, you must collaborate. You must work with your actors and performers. You must give it over, give your babies to others to bring them to life.
I also love Adam Guettel and Ricky Ian Gordon. It is such collaborative effort. All these composers are really open to making it the best piece that it can be. They aren’t so married to their work. With Michael John, you know you can always go to him for something sassy, although he’s also very deep. These are not still waters! These are rough waters that run very deep! He’s a very intense and wonderful man. I get the whole kit and caboodle from Michael John. I can always go to Ricky if I want a really beautiful, more classical song.
When you first come to a song, what is your process?
Before I chose to sing a song, it must hit me. It must make me laugh, or cry, or I must love the melody. I know myself well enough to know when a song is for me. There has to be that connection. From there, I immediately go to Acting 101: What do I want? What am I trying to achieve by saying these words? Why am I bursting into song? I go right to that, straight to the lyric.
From there, it is a matter of learning the song. Don’t just sit there and get into the sound of what you are doing. The more you get into that, the farther you are getting from why you are singing the song.
Your diction has always been impressive in that it is both clear and meaningful. What process do you use in your work to develop this?
It just has to do with the importance of the text; it’s just as important as the sound. Sometimes, in classical music, we tend to be so obsessed with the sound—but in musical theatre, because I have such a strong background in that as well, I need to be moved by what I’m saying. What I’m saying needs to be the driving force behind everything. Knowing that it’s an acting piece that happens to be sung is how I look at every song.
You have a daughter, Zoë, with your husband, the bass player Peter Donovan. Any advice for people mixing a singing/performing career with parenthood?
That you can. It is not easy, but I think if it is something that you want to do, you can do it. I think that it is important to be fulfilled as an artist. It allows me to be a better mother. If I know that there is this performing thing out there, and I am not able to do it because I am just raising my child, then there could be this resentment. I could be directing that towards my daughter, or it could somehow end up in her psyche.
I want to be able to have both my career and my family life—to show Zoë that if that’s what she wants, she can have it—so that I can be fulfilled, and therefore be a better mother. I think you need both, I really do—if that’s what you want—unless your career is your motherhood, and some people make that choice. There are people who can do that, and God bless them.
So how do you balance your professional life and your family life?
It’s a precarious thing, especially for women—I mean, who is going to have the baby? My husband and I are now thinking of when to have a second child, but I’m booked from now until 2007. It’s even more complicated, because I have a condition where I’m prone to premature labor, so I lose seven months right there.
You’re just going to lose things. For instance, there is so much going on in L.A. right now, but I just can’t move to L.A. I have to put my personal life ahead of my professional life. It makes your professional life seem all the more real, because you have that balance.
Did having a child change your voice?
Yes, it did. For me, it became a little more open, because you certainly have a much better idea of your breath. You find muscles that you never knew you had, because you’re willing to do anything to get that child out of you. Also, just being pregnant, the weight of that child on your diaphragm, you find more room. And just hormonally. I think my voice is a little darker, but I don’t know whether that’s age or the child, because I had her when I was 30 and that’s about the time when your voice starts to take on a slightly different color anyway. I don’t know which to attribute it to.
You have a medical condition to cope with as well?
Yes, I had undiagnosed Crohn’s disease for years. I was finally diagnosed last year. For me, what’s great is that I now have medication and I now have relief—whereas before there was this idea that I was just really sensitive, but I kept thinking: “No, I’m in a lot of pain. It’s not just that I’m an emotional person or something.”
I’m healthier than I ever was, because I know what it is and I know how to treat it. As long as I have my health in order, the singing is fine. In some way, the Crone’s forced me to get myself healthy.
How do you stay in such great physical shape?
The gym, the gym, the gym! I do lot’s of vikram yoga. A lot of people don’t really believe in it. It’s “heated yoga,” where the room is 95 or 100 degrees, so that you sweat. I find that it’s great, because it’s all about your breath and all about your breathing. You are doing all these poses and you’re staying in these poses, but the only thing that’s keeping you going is your breath, your core. And you can connect that completely to singing.
What’s your performance-day routine?
Nothing. I stay in the hotel and then go to the theatre and then I go back to the hotel. It is a very monastic life.
Is there a director you love to work with? What do you do if a director asks you to do something you don’t agree with?
I’ve been working a lot with Lonny Price. We’ve been working together every summer at the Ravinia Festival. We did Sunday in the Park with George last summer, and next year we’re going to do Anyone Can Whistle. What I like about him is that he knows me really well, and he understands my whole instrument, both my vocal and my acting instrument. But with any director, if I don’t feel that it’s organic, I will say, “This doesn’t feel right,” or “please explain.” … I’m all about the collaboration. Please tell me if I’m doing it wrong, but please help me get there through my instrument.
You spoke yesterday of generosity with fellow performers. Can you talk more about that?
Generosity is everything in this business. The most exciting work that you can see is when you have two people up there having a tennis match, working together. You are nothing without other actors, and we are all nothing without our audience. It used to be out of stage fright that I began in my concerts to talk with my audience. But now, I want us all to have an experience. The most talented people I’ve ever worked with have been the most generous. You must have an open heart in order to convey all that is human in the work that we do.
Do you ever teach voice lessons or do master classes?
No, I haven’t. Maybe someday, I will—not necessarily from a technical standpoint, but I could see myself teaching a master class more like Barbara Cook. She’s trying to yank the person out and bring them to the music.
Master classes are difficult for the student. You have all your peers watching, and then there is this person. These are not optimum conditions to perform in at all. It’s about making them comfortable. And you have to find out who [the students] are organically, and coax that out, make a safe environment so that can happen.
What advice do you have for young singers?
I’m not one to discourage. For one thing, you never know. The one thing that is unique is you. You must bring that to your work, or you are doomed to fail. We all are rejected on a daily basis; that’s just this business—but you have to do those auditions, because the most important thing is getting practical application of your craft. You must have an audience. You must learn to be comfortable in front of an audience, and you must have that experience. Don’t ever be ashamed of where [you get that experience], even if it’s just dinner theatre.
On another note, do you still find casting barriers as an African-American?
Absolutely, 24/7. I don’t want to say that will never change, but it will take a long time. Race is a big issue. Also, people tend to think that they can categorize you. I don’t ever want to stay put too long, so people don’t put me in a box. Some people like to say: “She can only do this” or “She can only do that.” It’s about staying away from categories. I can’t deal with categories, but they are still out there.
Any last words for Classical Singer readers?
I truly believe that you can have a beautiful, beautiful sound and be a great artist and actor of classical singing, so that the emotions, the story, and the character are just as important as the sound. That’s when I find classical music to be the most exciting, when you get someone like Suzie Graham out there—or Lorraine Hunt [Leiberson]: love her—someone who has the technique, has that incredible sound, and you believe with 100 percent of your being that they are that character.
