How do you get to Carnegie Hall? “Well, you could practice, of course. Or you could take the Seventh Avenue subway,” so chuckled Sherrill Milnes during a recent interview discussing his appearances at Carnegie Hall. Milnes has been appearing in first-class international opera productions for nearly forty years and hasn’t missed a single major opera house. His discography includes over thirty complete operas, plus recitals, aria programs and concert works. Still, Milnes remembers clearly his days as a young artist, including his debut at Carnegie Hall in an unexpected role.
“It was the Poet in Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia. Alan Sven Oxenburg was the Impresario of The American Opera Society, and he brought in first-class people to do the obscure repertoire. I already had a number of years of tour experience with the Goldovsky Opera Theatre, and we had done a production of Il Turco in Boston. So I knew the work when few others did, and I knew the style. Boris Goldovsky helped me get an audition with Oxenburg. Oxenburg brought together a fine cast for the Carnegie performance. We had Betty Allen and an Italian bass named Giorgio Taddeo. So the Poet was my Carnegie Hall debut.”
Shortly after that, Milnes launched his Met career with a December, 1965 debut as Valentin in Faust. “Carnegie was special to me for the ambience, the sense of history. I also did eighteen performances at the old Met my debut year. It gave me an appreciation of both Carnegie and the old Met.”
Despite an increasingly busy Met schedule, not to mention European appearances, American tours, and recordings, Milnes returned to Carnegie Hall in February, 1966. “It was Alan Oxenburg and the American Opera Society again. This time we did Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco. I was Giovanna’s father (a role Milnes later recorded), Carlo Felice Cillario conducted, and we had an Italian tenor named Angelo Mori. Teresa Stratas sang Giovanna. What a stage animal Stratas was! Even though it was a concert performance, we made entrances and exits, and related to one another in character. Some people used the book in these concerts. You got the sense they’d die if they took their eyes off the score. Not Teresa!”
Throughout his career, Milnes made a number of memorable Carnegie Hall appearances, often in concert with the Richard Tucker Music Foundation. “I did around 15 or 18 concerts with the Tucker Foundation. Those concerts in Carnegie gave me some fabulous moments. I remember singing the ‘Pearl Fishers’ duet with Alfredo Kraus—a thrill! And the big Forza del Destino duet, ‘Invano Alvaro’ with Giuseppe Giacomini. Eventually, the Tucker concerts moved to Avery Fisher Hall, and some of the great ambience was lost. Over the years I did operatic evenings at Carnegie—one especially memorable one with Renata Scotto and another with Martina Arroyo. And like the old Met, at Carnegie you never lose your sense of history. The ambience there is very powerful. Another great gift in working at Carnegie Hall is appearing with people you might not otherwise sing with. I was on programs not only with Eileen Farrell and Bernstein, but with Isaac Stern and Frank Sinatra. At Carnegie Hall, you stand on the stage and rub shoulders with the most memorable artists in the world!”
Milnes has a second perspective on Carnegie Hall, having also appeared there as a conductor. “Once in the late Eighties I conducted the Met Orchestra at Carnegie, in the overture to Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani. That was a different kind of a thrill. In 1997 I conducted there again, this time leading Mendelssohn’s Elijah. So much of that performance had to do with my mother, who was a choral conductor, a teacher and a great musician. What I learned from her I was able to bring to my performance as a conductor. Being shown into the conductor’s dressing room at Carnegie Hall was something else. There I was, surrounded by photos of Toscanini, of Szell, Stokowski, of Lenny—preparing to conduct Elijah, my mother’s most beloved oratorio, nearly thirty years after her death. It was incredible.”
Editor’s note: For more information on Mr. Milnes’ ideas for putting together that recital for Weill Hall or elsewhere, see his excellent autobiography, American Aria, From Farm Boy to Opera Star, p. 162-164. You can find the book in some bookstores, most college libraries, or on amazon.com.
