Christine Brewer is coming to town. Her upcoming recital for Cal Performances on Sept. 27 will feature the music of Berg, Strauss, and Britten, along with some old chestnuts favored by big-voiced sopranos of the last century. She was happy to be back home in St. Louis for a couple of weeks, as I caught up with her to chat about her life as world-class dramatic soprano, mother and ... Hootenanny hostess.
You started out singing in the chorus with Opera Theatre St. Louis. At what point did you feel that you had what it takes to be a soloist?
I’d say it was probably watching some of the principals. Sheri Greenawald and Vinson Cole come to mind. The first opera I did was The Magic Flute and they were singing Pamina and Tamino. Watching them in rehearsals and figuring out what they were doing and what worked for them — all that stuff inspired me and I thought, maybe this is something I could do. I was teaching K through 12 music and I also sang in the St. Louis Symphony as a paid section leader and I had a job as a soloist in an Episcopal church. I never thought I would make a huge living. A couple of my girl friends in the Symphony chorus said let’s audition for the St. Louis Opera Theatre. I auditioned every summer, and every summer I got a bit more, maybe to understudy a part.
You worked with Birgit Nilsson. Is she someone you feel was important to helping you develop your voice?
I spent a long time with her in the late ’80s and early ’90s. After that, we didn’t see each other much but whenever I did a performance that had been on the radio, I would send her a recording of it or I would let her know that I was going to be on live radio and she would always write back or call me and give me her critique. She was always very frank with me and encouraged me not to jump into singing the heavy repertoire, the Wagner, until later. She said, as long as you can sing Mozart the way you do, sing it as long as you can to keep your voice healthy and youthful. Those were the two words she used most about my voice. She wanted to keep it healthy and youthful.
Can you describe how you approach Wagner and how you approach that differently from when you’re preparing Donna Anna [in Don Giovanni]?
I approach it the same way. Quite often I’m described as a dramatic soprano, but I don’t think of myself as a dramatic soprano. I still think of myself as a lyric soprano who has a big voice. It sounds kind of silly. I did lots of Mozart when I first started. I did lots of Donna Annas and Countesses, Vitellia and Elettra in Idomeneo. I approach Strauss and Wagner in the same way. One of the things that Chris, my voice teacher that I study with now, says all the time, it’s sort of a mantra that we have, is: “Just sing it with the voice you have today.” Especially I think that’s important with Wagner. The voice I have today is a lot different than the voice I had five years ago when I first started singing Wagner. I think 2003 was the first Isolde I did. It is bigger now than it was then. I think that’s helped me to keep from pushing my voice and trying to sing louder. I just try to let the voice grow into the role.
What are your hobbies when you’re not singing?
I love to read and I love to cook and I love to entertain. When I’m home we have friends over a lot. They always call me “Julie on the loveboat.” I’m organizing parties. In fact, we’re having a huge party a week from today. We have one every year. We’ve done it for the past 20 years, since our daughter was really little. We call it a “hootenanny.” My husband and I both play guitar and he plays dulcimer and we have friends come over and we just jam and play music in the backyard. ... We have people from the St. Louis Symphony who play bluegrass. This year we’ve got three Kurdish musicians coming who are here working with the Symphony. Everybody gets up and sings. I give the kids harmonicas and teach them how to play harmonica. We have gutbuckets. I love doing that sort of thing, just singing with people and making music in my backyard. I guess I’m still kind of a hillbilly at heart. My mom’s family was all from Arkansas and that’s all we did. I used to think funerals were fun because we’d have the wake at the house and everybody would stay up all night and play music with guitars and harmonicas and sing.
I’m not sure if you took the time away from the too much traveling in order to raise your daughter or to hold off for vocal reasons to let the voice mature, but it sounds like those things dovetailed well for you.
They did, and I’m fortunate because if I’d had a different kind of voice I probably wouldn’t have been able to be at home with her as much. I took her with me a lot when she was little and when my mom was alive she went with us and then when Elisabeth got into sports and she played oboe in the band, she didn’t want to go with me so she stayed home with Ross and they had their own way of dealing with things, which, of course, wasn’t my way. ... In the long run, Elisabeth has turned out to be this very strong, independent woman and I don’t know if I would have been home with her more than I was. I tended to be sort of overbearing and smothering, so probably it was a good balance for her.
But for four years when she was in high school, I did take time. I only did opera in the summers. I did concerts primarily and I tried to only be gone two weeks a month. It didn’t always work, but basically for four years I was only gone a couple weeks a month and then in the summers we’d go to Santa Fe or I’d work in St. Louis. I felt that she needed me more. My mom died right before she started high school and it was really tough on her, and on me. At one point she said, “You know, Mom, I’ve lost my grandmother and my mother, because you’re just not available and you’re not really giving me what I need.” So that’s when I thought: This is getting ridiculous. In some ways, I probably missed out on some things in the opera world, but in the long run, I don’t think that I really have. I think it worked out OK because my voice kind of grew during that time.
What would you say is the most challenging sort of performing you do? Is it a big role like Fidelio, or perhaps a recital?
I have to say that recitals are very challenging because it’s just you and your accompanist. There’s no break when somebody else is singing an aria or you’re offstage for 10 minutes or you’re singing a concert and you can sit down and the orchestra’s playing for a little bit. Also, interpretively it’s more difficult because each song or each song cycle has its own style and interpretation, and you may just have a little window of three minutes to create the whole image, which is not only challenging but it’s exciting to be able to do that. But I think overall I’d have to say recital is probably the most difficult.
The very last section of the [upcoming Cal Performances] recital — we’re calling it “Echoes of Nightingales” because the first song is about “sing to me, sweet nightingale,” and they’re songs that were sung by Kirsten Flagstad and Helen Traubel and Eleanor Steber and Eileen Farrell: Women who had big voices and did lots of recitals. As I look at old programs that my old voice teacher left me, I see that a lot of these songs were the ones that they would program in the last section of the program, or they would do them as encores and they’re sort of from this era that they’re just not performed anymore. They were written in the ’30s and ’40s and a lot of people would look at them and say, oh they’re just so schlocky.
But I know why they sang these songs: because they were written for big voices and the piano parts are very dramatic and they’re really drop-dead-gorgeous songs that really aren’t done any more. I’m going to do a recording in December with Roger Vignoles in London ... of those songs. It’s all those sort of encores. I just love them and I’m really excited about that part of the program.