Frank Talk From Shirley Verrett

For over 25 years, Shirley Verrett (who was born in 1931 and died last year) reigned as a leading diva of the international operatic stage. During her career, she aroused her share of controversy when she shifted from mezzo-soprano to soprano repertoire. She also attracted significant attention for being an African-American artist.

After retiring from the opera stage, she made appearances on Broadway in Carousel (1994) and In Dahomey (1999) and held a vocal teaching position at the University of Michigan.

In late 2003, following the publication of her autobiography, I Never Walked Alone: The Autobiography of an American Singer, I conducted an extended phone interview with Verrett. She was then in her early 70s, and continuing to read scripts and consider undertaking new roles. On the occasion of Black History Month, SFCV publishes major portions of the interview for the first time.

To honor her legacy, Sony Masterworks has just issued four Verrett albums in their initial outing on CD. Verrett mentions several of these recordings at the end of the interview. 

Verrett co-wrote her autobiography at the instigation of Christopher Brooks, who pointed out to her the paucity of books by African-American singers. Its publication enabled Verrett “to set the record straight about what was happening behind the scenes, as well as onstage and in the recording studio during my highs and lows.”

I recently read in Opera News [2003] that issues of racism still affect black singers. Issues were implied, but nothing was said straight out.

Well, you know what the situation is. We still have racism around. People just don’t usually come right out and say, ”This is what happened to me.” Instead, they imply it. What they’re trying to say is that we still have racism around.

From my time, when I was a little girl and segregation was going on in the South and I wanted to bomb the South, my parents never knew about those thoughts. Out of those ashes came such a different thing. If you look on television today, there are not many instances when you cannot see African-American faces but also Asians, Indians, the whole gamut. Having said all this, there is that part of our society that is racist in a very subtle way. My father took us away from the South to California when we were young because it was freer. But racism was still there. There were rules and there were laws, but if you looked under the surface, there it was.

I was speaking to someone the other day about a young singer at the Met [Opera] who says she feels it. She is one of the blacks that’s there now. What’s interesting to me is that during my time, when the struggle was going on full force, we had more African-Americans at the Metropolitan.

Yes. I knew some of the prominent ones, but I’ve learned of others from your book. I didn’t know that soprano Adele Addison was black, or that conductor Henry Lewis, who was married to Marilyn Horne for 14 years, was black.

He was lighter skinned. This is what a lot of people don’t understand. I have some relatives on both sides who are white. Some on my mother’s side went to Chicago before the Civil Rights movement and passed for white because they were whiter than some whites you see. So it’s a complicated sort of thing.

People say that the lighter you are, the more advantages you can get. I didn’t. I’m black. I was very, very lucky. I was fortunate. I always like to say that, because if I don’t say that and I cannot say it, it is putting down all the struggles that other people have had and did not win, for many reasons.

Racism is always implied unless you come right out and give specifics, as happened to me when I was banned from singing with [conductor Leopold] Godowsky in Houston because I was black. But something also happened in the North around the same time that I don’t mention in the book.

In 2003, I say thank God to all of the people who did stay in the South to fight the fight. And thank God for all of the Whites who are there who also believed in the cause and helped out a great deal. So my mind changed about bombing the South. But as a youngster I really did feel that. I was so disgusted at what I saw and heard and what you read.

Coming to the present day, someone in Seattle asked me about now. “Things have changed,” they said. Yes, but we still have prejudice around. I hate to be a party pooper, but I have a feeling that it will always exist to some extent. What we have to do is go on with our lives and do what we can do to fight these demons, without losing faith.

My father taught us about what was going on and what we read in the papers when we were young. The whole point was, he said, “Don’t get your feelings stuck out so far — don’t wear the feelings on your shoulder as though you’re always waiting for someone to knock the chip off.” In other words, don’t sit around waiting for a fight. When it comes, don’t back off. Try to go to the highest authority you can, rather than arguing in small groups.

My adopted daughter is half Chinese and half black. When she went to a private girls’ school, sometimes comments would be made in front of her by people who didn’t realize she was black. Sometimes students would assume that because someone was black, they didn’t know how to do certain things. When she’d come home and tell me these things, I’d tell her that she wasn’t going to get anywhere by just yakking away in her little group. You’ve got to go the headmistress or even higher if it’s important to you. But don’t just talk about it.

Many of us have been slapped — I, not so hard as other people — for saying things like this. But I’ve said it all my life, especially where black males were concerned. The females were doing very well in the past. Now, I don’t see too many females either.

Something is going on. You can put it down to what another of my colleagues said the other day: “They’re not singing as well as we did.” That could be one component. On the other hand, I know of several really fabulous voices that have passed through the Met and other places. Before, we had maybe seven, and we weren’t there for [only] one season. I was there almost 25 years. Ms. [Leontyne] Price, [Grace] Bumbry, and [Martina] Arroyo were there even longer than I. So something is going on.

It could be that the voices aren’t like our voices. Maybe they aren’t as big as ours. If God has made the [vocal] bands a certain way, there’s not much you can do to produce more volume without forcing. Or maybe they haven’t worked hard enough.

As you built your career, you seemed blessed with an intuitive sense of what to do.

You have to be born with what they call in the South “Mother Wit.” It’s instinctive. I made mistakes, which I talk about. But at the beginning of the career, up until the last part where there were certain health issues I had insufficient control over, I didn’t just jump at everything that was offered.

I see this happening a lot, and I wonder how much it contributes to the demise of certain careers. People kill themselves, learning opera after opera right on top of each other before they are really into the body. You should not start a career doing this. This is why some of the glorious voices that I’ve heard you don’t hear of. They start to force the voice, and they think they can sing Brünnhilde, which maybe they will someday, but not at this particular moment.

You speak about the time you used “open chest voice” to sing El Amor Brujo. You can hear it on your astounding recording with Stokowski. Isn’t that what Callas did when she forced the chest voice up into the middle register?

That’s right. It’s like belting out. It’s more than belting. I had a certain sound in my ear, having never before sung the piece until Stokowski asked me to learn it. Thank God, I had the foresight to say, “You cannot continue to do this and keep your voice, because something is going to happen.”

The recording is fabulous. No wonder Stokowski wanted to work with you!

I hardly ever vocalized backstage — I vocalized at home — and in this case I vocalized normally. I knew what to do to make that other sound. But I said to myself, Do you really want to continue to do this, even though you believe in that sound? I would teach my students to do it a little bit differently now. My chest voice came from God, and I used to overuse it when I was young. Not good. I am teaching my students to use it and never get into trouble.

Which is different than what Callas did.

Yes. I always felt that she had allergies. She had this fantastic extension, but a cover would come over the voice as if she was singing through a cloth in a certain part of the voice. I always thought that came from the overproduction of the chest voice going up too high.

When you were doing Macbeth at La Scala, the newspapers dubbed you “The Black Callas.” How did you feel about that?

It’s the same as when they started to talk about me as “The Second Marian Anderson.”

First of all, I feel that when people do things like that it, is a great compliment they’re trying to pay you. When Callas came on the scene, and had a certain kind of charisma, contact with the audience, and ability to color the voice and the words, she brought back things that had been almost forgotten. (Actually, she was not the one to bring it back — she was the one to become famous for it; Leyla Gencer was also beginning to do this repertoire, but she never received the fame). To be called “The Black Callas” is thus an honor.

But my second feeling is that I want to be “The First Verrett” and not the second anybody. Which was never going to happen. So in the long run I never lost sleep over it. Instead, I accepted it as a compliment, suggesting that a young black woman was doing the same thing as this great singer who had preceded her.

How did you feel when they put you in whiteface?

I did not feel anything, because theater is magic. It’s all about the stage and make-believe. What does Otello feel when he’s white and they put on black makeup? You do what you have to do. If you can’t handle it, then get off the stage.

My first year as a student in New York, I went to study with Godowsky at Tanglewood. I was a statue in a Lukas Foss thing. I had to stand still for 45 minutes before beginning to sing. They painted me then. What is the difference?

I also lightened my skin when I did Norma, because my skin soaks in makeup. Before people understood how to make up black skin, we used to look horribly gray on television. What we did at the time was to always put a base down — on my skin, it was red — and on top of that another coat, so that the makeup would stay. When the lights hit it, it made me look much lighter that I really am, which was good, because I needed to be in the same kind of light as those with white skin. Otherwise I would get lost.

The same thing happens when you take a photo of a black and a white person together.

You obliterate the black face. You see teeth and eyes.

Your book told me about people going absolutely nuts for your performances, carrying you out of the theater on their shoulders, demanding signatures for hours. But when I listen, I hear an incredible magic — a blend of sheer voice, intelligence, and an acute artistic sensibility that make for brilliant singing. I never would have known that, had I simply read your words. I think you understate what a great artist you were.

I left so much out that I would have loved to have put in. I thought that including all the descriptions about what went into preparing a role would give people the idea that my career was about more than just picking up a book and saying, “Oh yes, I can sing this.”

I talk a lot about my belief in the story, having a good technique, and out of that doing certain things with the voice to bring out the words. My expression came from the words — not just knowing the music, but what the words were saying. How I would speak them if I were first reciting them, because my first love (after music) is the stage.

You have to learn about every character in the opera, and how that character relates to you. You need to recite the opera as if it were poetry, rather than just learn the music at the piano. Most of the time, the words fall where they’re supposed to fall. You begin to hear phrases instead of just notes.

You’ve also got to have the passion. If you feel it’s an old-fashioned story, then don’t do the opera. If you don’t like to eat, get out of the kitchen.

People get up there without knowing what the words mean. They want to get onstage too fast. That’s why I follow the mantra I learned from Hall Johnson: Hurry Slowly.

When you were 17, you turned down the opportunity to study with Lotte Lehmann. Your approach to uncovering the meaning of words is something I expect Lehmann would have emphasized had you worked with her.

With all due respect to her, I did not feel that I was ready to do what I had been told I was supposed to do from the time I was a little girl, which was to be a wonderful singer. I wasn’t ready to devote the time.

I also talk about when the “mezzo Verrett” was born. I actually went to New York as a soprano. But when I attended Juilliard in 1955–1956, my teacher, who had been a contralto, wanted my voice to sound like one. When I was told to cover the voice, I asked why and was told it was better. So I asked how it sounded when I didn’t cover. When they said “Fine,” I asked why they were asking me to cover.

When I began my career, I knew I was eventually going to have to take my voice into my own hands. But I visited several studios, listened to recommendations, took a number of lessons, and finally realized that the people were just talking. They were handing things down they had been told. The good teachers are few and far between.

Finally I said, “Who knows Shirley Verrett better than Shirley Verrett?” I knew what my body wanted to do, what it could do, and what my vocal cords were all about.

So I began to work on my own voice. I bought a tape recorder and started to listen to myself. Then I started to experiment, throwing away things until I found what was right. All of the things I worked on by myself served me until menopause and allergies got in the way.

My candida started to bother me early on. But it would be sporadic. I’d perform fine in 10 places, and suddenly I’d go somewhere and have trouble because of the mold and yeast in the air that my body could not support. I think I had to go through it so I could do what I’m doing now — teaching my students and helping them not go through the same thing. [Note from 2011: Vinson Cole recalls running into Verrett at the allergist’s office.]

If someone wanted to hear echt Verrett, which recordings would you point them to?

Mostly the soprano ones. The commercial Scala Macbeth. Norma, which did become my favorite role, especially the Norma from San Francisco. Certain things from L’Africaine, like the death scene. The Trojans from Rome, especially the first scene and the death scene.

If I were going to pick anything from Samson and Delilah, which was very low for me but I sang because I liked it more than Carmen, I’d choose San Francisco. Then something from the RCA duet album with [Montserrat] Caballé. There was a Carmen I did for RCA with some nuances that I like very much. Then there’s a French recording, and the RCA Verrett in Opera, which includes coloratura in the Sappho aria, which people aren’t used to hearing me sing. There’s also a Singin’ in the Storm spirituals disc that includes work songs, including one in Yiddish.