If she has the voice of an angel, and the face of an angel, she have to be an Angel.
Angel Blue, that’s.
The American soprano, one of the admired singers of her technology, is headlining the Metropolitan Opera’s first new manufacturing of Verdi’s “Aida” in 36 years. Blue, now 40, debuted on the Met in 2017 as Mimi in Puccini’s “La Boheme” and has change into a fixture on the home, starring in two opening nights and this fall portraying the lead character in Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar.”
However “Aida” is one thing else. The title position of the enslaved Ethiopian princess torn between love for an Egyptian warrior and loyalty to her nation represents the top of Verdi’s mature vocal model. It calls for energy, flexibility and the power to spin out lengthy phrases, whereas conveying the dramatic depth of the character’s emotional turmoil.
It additionally comes weighted with historical past, particularly for a Black soprano on the Met, the place Leontyne Worth embodied the position from her first efficiency in 1961 till her retirement in 1985.
“I don’t think I’m the next Leontyne Price, but I’ve definitely looked at her my whole life as an example of someone to model myself after,” Blue stated in an interview after a day of rehearsal.
“Sometimes in opera there’s an intimidation factor because of those who come before us,” she added. “But when it’s somebody who I look up to, I feel like, OK it’s my turn. Thank you so much, it’s because of you I’m here.”
Blue’s flip comes on New 12 months’s Eve, when Michael Mayer’s manufacturing opens earlier than a sold-out home with a solid that features tenor Piotr Beczala as her lover, Radames, mezzo Judit Kutasi as her rival, Amneris, and baritone Quinn Kelsey as her father, Amonasro. Met music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts. The Jan. 25 matinee might be broadcast reside in HD to film theaters worldwide.
Blue was lower than a yr outdated when Worth made her Met farewell, so she by no means bought to listen to her reside in opera. However her father, a classically skilled gospel singer and pastor, cherished her recordings and — in keeping with household lore — pronounced shortly after Blue was born that she could be “the next Leontyne Price.”
“My beautiful dad, he was just enamored of her,” Blue stated. “It was like a thought that came into his heart when I took my first breath.”
Rising up as one among 5 kids in Southern California, Blue sang in church, studied voice and piano in highschool, then entered a number of magnificence pageants and used her prize cash to assist pay for her musical research. She had been bitten by the opera bug at age 4 when her father took her to see a live performance efficiency of Puccini’s “Turandot” whereas the household was visiting relations in Cleveland.
Although she had sung “Aida” as soon as in live performance in Detroit, her solely earlier staged performances got here final yr at London’s Royal Opera Home. The critics had been impressed, although some felt she was nonetheless mastering the position.
“Sometimes Blue’s tone frays under pressure,” wrote Neil Fisher in The Occasions. However he added that she is “a heartfelt, affecting Aida … riding high in ensembles. This gutsy Aida will grow in authority.”
Mark Elder, who carried out Blue in London, recalled that “when she got here to me, she wasn’t very skilled within the half, and I used to be extremely impressed with how she would quietly go on with finding out it and fascinated by it and taking over board among the concepts that I gave her.
“To express everything the music demands of her is by far the hardest thing that she’s probably ever had to do,” Elder stated. “By the time she did the first performance with me it was clear she was very suited to the role. She will sing it for years to come.”
Mayer stated that throughout the Met rehearsals he was struck by how naturally Blue was in a position to seize the character’s internal conflicts as she is torn between love for her Egyptian captor and obligation to her homeland and her father.
“What’s remarkable about working with Angel is that she is utterly sympathetic,” Mayer stated. “She does the factor that nice actors do: She has the thought, and we see it. She’s not doing any histrionic indicating of emotions, she’s trusting that Verdi knew what he was doing by way of how the music is telling its personal story.
“She’s a gentle soul, but then she opens up and you hear this magnificent voice,” Mayer stated.
Opening evening of the Met manufacturing might be a poignant event for Blue as a result of New 12 months’s Eve marks the 18th anniversary of her father’s dying. Her mom and brother might be within the viewers cheering her on, and the remainder of her household will come to a later efficiency. She’s decided to not disappoint them.
“I feel like a boxer at the side of the ring, and I have these gloves on that say ‘AIDA,’” Blue stated. “People are giving me water, patting me down and saying, ‘Angel, you’ve got this. You can do it!’’”
