For two decades, Susan
Graham has dazzled Met audiences with performances in some of the powerhouse
roles of the operatic repertoire—but she’s also a master interpreter of comic
operetta, including Lehár’s The Merry Widow, which returns this month. As she prepared
to star as the eponymous widow, the mezzo-soprano spoke to the Met’s
Christopher Browner about one of her most beloved roles.
You’ve been singing Hanna
for 15 years. What keeps you coming back to her?
It’s my favorite operetta
role. She reminds me of me, in a way. She is a very deeply feeling person,
though she hides it sometimes. She’s funny and sarcastic—all things I can
relate to. And Lehár gives her such beautiful lines to sing. There’s so much theatricality
to sink your teeth into with the music and so much opportunity for great
character development. Not to mention that all night I’m surrounded by adoring
men.
What are some of the
challenges for you in singing operetta?
It is real singing, and it
is very demanding. There are some talky bits—that’s part of the
storytelling—but you’ve got to sing it like it’s Verdi or Puccini. So I sing it
the same way that I sing anything else in my repertoire, bringing out those
gorgeous long lines.
It’s not often that you
sing in English.
Singing in English is
fabulous because it’s our native language. You can color a word without having
to think about it. Unlike when we do operas in other languages, expressing the
text is very immediate and emotional and unconscious.
There is quite a bit of
spoken dialogue in this piece. How does
this affect your performance?
The dialogue allows us to
make a lot more choices. We’re in charge of our own tempo and how long we make
a line last. You can take a pregnant pause to give a long searing glance or a
double take, for example.
Your Danilo this season is
Paul Groves, with whom you’ve sung many times at the Met.
Oh, my gosh! We’ve sung
together for more than 20 years, and, to tell you the truth, our biggest
challenge in working together is keeping a straight face. He’s the funniest guy
on the face of the earth, so at some point, he will crack me up, and I will
crack him up. Hopefully I’ll be able to hold myself together.
Comedy comes naturally to
you, doesn’t it?
Well, I am blessed with a
good sense of humor. I find most things funny, so I can usually find the comedy
in my roles. Most importantly, if you’re trying to make it funny, it’s not
funny. If you just let the comedy do its job, it will land.
http://www.metopera.org/Discover/Articles/Interviews/merry-mezzo/
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