One of the pleasures of college teaching is the opportunity I have to introduce students to opera. Occasionally they become seriously interested, as was the case with a young man I took to Chicago last March to see the Lyric Opera’s production of Die Götterdämmerung. He had become an ardent Wagnerian via recordings, but did not know quite what to expect in the theater.
“The only thing you have to worry about,” I said jokingly, “is a man with a microphone coming in front of the curtain before the opera starts. That means that the person you probably have come to hear is sick.”
The lights dimmed and the house was waiting for Sir Andrew Davis to enter the pit. Instead, we did indeed have the man with the microphone, who announced that Jane Eaglen was indisposed, and would be replaced as Brünnhilde by the Gutrune of the production, Jennifer Wilson. There was the expected groaning in the theater, and I felt very sorry for my student, whose first Wagnerian opera was beginning with disappointment.
As for Ms. Wilson, I had a vague recollection about a Houston Turandot, but certainly had never heard the first note from her mouth. This is the kind of situation that brings the most thrilling surprises, and I was not the only one to be progressively more thrilled by the powerful and gleaming sound that came pouring out over the orchestra for five hours. When I returned home, I discovered that James Jorden had the duet posted on his website. He awarded the singing his highest accolade: “Demented.”
I knew exactly what he meant. When Ms. Wilson launched into “O heilige Götter,” you knew this was a voice that actually liked to go up, and got larger as it did so. The final high C—full and vibrant, with upper overtones reminiscent of Leonie Rysanek’s sound—brought an audible gasp from the audience, who greeted their Brünnhilde at the end of the opera with one of the largest ovations in recent Lyric seasons. It was every artist’s dream, to triumph unexpectedly in one of the most taxing roles of the entire repertoire.
I went backstage afterwards to greet Alan Held, whom I wrote about for Classical Singer in 2001, and on the way encountered Ms. Wilson, perfectly calm, with no hint of strain in her speaking voice, talking happily to friends. Her justifiably proud agent, Neil Funkhouser, was there too, and it suddenly struck me that she would be a perfect singer to feature in this magazine, someone who had steadily plugged along for many years, perfecting her technique and dramatic instincts, and now enjoying the fruits of her hard work.
We arranged to have lunch at Nomi, the Park-Hyatt’s new restaurant, and in that conversation and later e-mail exchanges, I discovered in Jennifer Wilson a very warm and very intelligent person, who has worked hard in her career and was happy to talk about what she had learned.
I was of course interested right off in what it was like to sing Brünnhilde for the first time on short notice, when your first appearance onstage had been only three years before.
“I debuted as Turandot during Connecticut Opera’s 2002-3 season,” she said. “I also was no stranger to short-notice debuts, having gone on to do an entire run of Turandot in Houston for someone who withdrew. I’d had extensive rehearsal for the Brünnhildes—Lyric does an amazing job preparing its covers to perform—but it’s true that I didn’t know definitively that I was going on in “Götterdämmerung” until about noon on the day of the performance. My cover as Gutrune was debuting in that role as well—and she was, in addition, still singing her scheduled role, the Third Norn!
“It was an incredibly exciting evening, beyond anything I could have imagined.
“There were several surprises that night! Maestro Davis approached me during one of the intermissions and told me that he planned to ‘go like a bat out of hell’ in the Act II trio. To me, it just made singing it that much more thrilling.
“My colleagues, all of the cast, music and staging staff, carried me through that performance. I couldn’t have done it without them, especially John Treleaven, Alan Held and Eric Halfvarson. They just made it so easy for me, and I’ll always be grateful to them and to the others for their support that night.”
When I complimented Ms. Wilson on the terrific C she sang, characteristically for self-critical artists, she was more worried about what didn’t seem so good to her.
“The low notes were a little weak, though. I think I gave too much in the duet, and that can weaken the lower register later in the evening.”
This comment was coincidental, since I had just read an interview with Christine Brewer where she described talking about her worries over low notes to Birgit Nilsson, who had come back after a performance to see her. “Never sing any harder down low than you did tonight,” was Nilsson’s advice. “If you do, you will drag down the top—and those low notes aren’t the ones people pay you for.”
Jennifer was not convinced.
“That may have been true in Nilsson’s day, but now in Europe they like dramatic sopranos who are mezzos with an extension. I’m still working on the balance.”
Technical issues led me to ask Jennifer about her own training.
“I started late, but an early beginning is not for everybody, especially people with larger voices. I didn’t study at all until I was 18 and in college at Cornell, intending to gain a fall-back degree in law (to satisfy those members of my family who claimed ‘you can’t make any money in music!’) before embarking on my full-time musical training. I started there filled with optimism, studying with Barbara Troxell, but after only two lessons, tragically, she passed away.
“Eventually, I left school and went back home to Virginia. There, I began study with Marilyn Cotlow, who had also taught Alessandra Marc. I was with her for six years, and she really gave me the confidence in my talent that carried me through some of the rough times.
“I have worked with a number of wonderful teachers, all of whom helped me in their own particular way. Lately, Gianna Rolandi, who is married to Sir Andrew, has been very helpful technically.
“I sang as a mezzo until my early 20s, and when I was 28 I still had problems with high ‘A’s. In 1997, I had a breakthrough over a period of about three weeks, studying with my friend Margaret Stricklett, during which I stopped throwing excessive weight into the top—at last, my high notes arrived. I set out to improve them, going from teacher to teacher and being helped by all of them, until finally the top locked in. Make of this what you like, but it happened during a tour of France with my church choir, in the majestic, ringing expanse of Notre Dame des Chartres, to be exact!
“Vocal technique is not the only thing you need to make a career, though. I studied dance and acting, and had what has to be one of the briefest modeling careers on record. You’d be surprised how much use knowing how to walk down a runway can be when you’re onstage in a fabulously elaborate Turandot costume! And I must be the only singer working today who was once a baton-twirler.”
I learned that Jennifer had done all sorts of work, musical and otherwise, before being launched on her career.
“For five years I was a wire editor for Radio Free Europe—and I always believed that you have to make music happen yourself, no matter where you are. I actually founded an opera company, the Lyric Opera of Arlington. I was the Countess in a production of ‘Figaro,’ which we did completely from scratch.
“I assembled a cast of very gifted friends, one of whom was a graphic designer by trade, who made wonderful programs. Another’s partner was a well-known interior designer, and he not only designed all our sets but provided his own materials and a pair of Louis XVI chairs, which we used as the Count’s and Countess’ thrones. The sets were built by an architects’ group, the Atelier Forum, who all showed up bearing hammers and nails—can you imagine! We scavenged lumber from a building in D.C. that was being demolished.
A friend of mine, who was one of the founders of the Voice and Vision theater group in New York, was our director. And I worked out an agreement with a local arts council that gave us a great 800-seat theater for one-quarter of our house, and gave us all our costumes simply for the price of cleaning!”
Entry into the professional world of music was, however, a more difficult proposition.
“I was turned down five times before I got into the chorus of Washington National Opera—which makes it nice now to have Plácido invite me to sing the ‘Walküre’ Brünnhilde with the company at the Savonlinna Festival in Finland. I don’t blame folks for not hiring me then, though I think it would be nice if instead of just a ‘thank you,’ singers got more feedback from auditioners who reject them, especially if they are rejected repeatedly. What we really need at auditions are people who are like Simon on American Idol: ‘That was bloody awful! You sound like Cyndi Lauper on helium!’ [Laughs.]
“Eventually I did get into the chorus in Washington, and I sang there for six seasons. I learned a great deal while I was there, everything from how to follow a baton in a monitor while doing the polka to how to create a character given absolutely nothing to go on in the score. At the same time, the center of my musical life became my church job, at Holy Trinity in Georgetown, which has a terrific choir of dedicated singers and a director who gave me a lot of great opportunities. We had a steady diet of Palestrina and Buxtehude and Langlais, and it’s that kind of disciplined ensemble work that helps you develop a sound technique and keeps you out of vocal trouble.”
I wondered whether this experience partially explained the freshness of Jennifer’s voice, and the complete lack of anything approaching the dreaded wobble that afflicts so many singers in her repertoire.
“I definitely think it’s related to the choral work I did. You cannot sing with a wide vibrato in this kind of music, and you must be able to pare your voice down to its core, so you don’t fall into bad habits. Holy Trinity is a warm, live church community, and singing there was great for me in so many ways. During the French tour, I was a soloist at the Festival d’Avignon, and in the 500-odd weddings and funerals I did there [at Holy Trinity], I was always singing for interesting people. I sang for talk show host John McLaughlin’s wedding; I did a wedding with Emmylou Harris. I especially remember Pierre Salinger’s funeral, where Sen. [Ted] Kennedy gave the eulogy.”
By this point in her story, Jennifer’s career was beginning to remind me a little of James King’s: a long time to find the voice and then no immediate entrée into the profession.
“It’s the old story of needing management to get auditions and being successful at auditions to get management,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times I heard ‘Why haven’t you done more?’ I had grants from the Wagner societies of New York and Washington—they also generously featured me in concerts—and from the [Olga] Forrai Foundation, but it still takes a special kind of support system to be able to keep pursuing your goal.
“My mother has been very important to whatever success I’ve had. Not everyone is so lucky.”
And what was the breakthrough?
“Meeting Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart, who took a real interest in me. They connected me with the DC Wagner Society, which gave me a lot of help through its Emerging Singers Program. It was through Evelyn and Tom that I met Matthew Epstein, which led to the engagements here at the Chicago Lyric, as well as to my getting a wonderful manager, Neil Funkhouser. They also put me in touch with Connie Barnett, who gave me a lot of fantastic help and advice.
“The 2000 Liederkranz Foundation concert at Alice Tully was important too, where I sang ‘Dich Teure Halle’ and ‘Du bist der Lenz.’ Before that competition, I said to the Universe: ‘All right, if you want me to continue, give me a sign!’ That was enough of a sign for me!”
Since Jennifer seems destined to make a Wagnerian career, I asked her feelings about the composer, who continues to cause so much controversy, even in his own family. Her response was thoughtful and itself provocative.
“I think there’s no doubt that the source of the music is found in his internal struggles. It was his form of self-criticism. He was a man apparently filled with hatred, and yet nothing but love flows from his music. I believe that the creation that resulted from what must have been a great deal of pain and turmoil is some of the most sublime, life-affirming and spiritually uplifting music ever written.”
Turandot, however, was the opera of Jennifer’s “big break,” at the Houston Opera in 2003, where she again replaced another singer at the last minute. She has recently debuted in the role at Santa Fe and Thessaloniki, and this summer will perform the role in Sydney. I wondered what her concept of the title part was, since the Chinese princess is not one of the more attractive characters in opera. Jennifer seemed anxious to defend her.
“Turandot has spent her whole life secluded in the palace, raised to rule by governesses in isolation from all men, including her doddering father, whom she sees but rarely. Her only knowledge of the male gender comes from her history books, which don’t paint a flattering picture (especially the tale of the lamented Principessa Lou-Ling!).
“‘In Questa Reggia’ defines not only her view of her men, but her role as a leader: She sees herself as a benevolent despot, her sacred task to rule with an iron but serenely gloved fist, and most of all, to choose a successor to her father to stand at her side as emperor. The Riddles exist to help her, to weed out the schmoes—those who might, like those conquerors of long ago, mess things up for everyone, most of all herself. She will not be pressured nor hurried!
“When Calaf shows up, she knows almost from the start that he is the one (not least because he is the only suitor who has shown any interest in her as a woman, not just the throne), yet she is not able to make that final decision of acceptance until confronted by the love and sacrifice of Liu. Liu teaches Turandot that it is all right to love, that love makes taking risks and making sacrifices thinkable, and that Calaf is worthy of these things.
“As Turandot finds herself forced to torture Liu, she cannot escape the realization that she has become no better than the men who tortured Principessa Lou-Ling, and she is devastated. Ultimately it was the death of a woman that made Turandot the monster that she was, and the death of a woman that began the process of her change.”
With a first Isolde coming up in Montpellier, I suspected that Jennifer was at that point absorbed with her study of Wagner, but I wondered if any roles outside the Wagner-Turandot circle interested her.
“I’ve been offered Tosca, and there are so many beautiful Strauss parts I’d like to do someday. I believe it’s important to support contemporary composers as well—as great as Shakespeare was, where would the film and theater communities be if all that were ever performed were Shakespeare?
“But new operas are hard, since it’s not a commercial art form—although it could be—and there is a tendency on programmers’ parts to want to stick with the tried and true. Producing an important work today depends very much on context. Dana Gioia and Alva Henderson collaborating on Nosferatu is a good example of a poet and composer committed to a unified vision. I was fascinated when I listened to it recently. The success of An American Tragedy, Dead Man Walking, Dr. Atomic and other great new works show that contemporary opera can be both cutting-edge and commercially successful.”
As we finished lunch, an old difficulty in an opera singer’s life intruded.
“When I got up this morning I felt a cold coming on,” she said. Brünnhilde had returned to Gutrune in the Chicago “Ring” cycle, at least temporarily. But Jennifer’s persistence has paid off, and a future calendar filled with the big parts now seems sure.
“If you really want a career and can manage your life to develop one, even if you are getting close to 40, don’t give up. It only takes one person believing in you to unlock the right doors.”
Those doors are now open wide for Jennifer Wilson.
