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Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, May 15th, and I'm Michael Brennan, ambassador of the America 250 Ohio Commission.

It is my honor to introduce today's forum as part of the City Club's America 250 Ohio series and presented in partnership with the Cleveland Orchestra throughout the year and in partnership with the America 250 Ohio Commission, the City Club will host conversations to commemorate America's 250th birthday for our theme for the month of May.

Our state is celebrating arts, culture and literature.

For decades, the Cleveland Orchestra has consistently ranked among the very best orchestras in the world.

Their excellence has kept Cleveland and Northeast Ohio in global arts and culture conversations, and as a place where world class art can thrive.

Beginning in 2023, the Cleveland Orchestra and music director Franz Welser-Möst launched the Jack Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival.

It is a new tradition of innovation opera presentations that tackle themes like reconciliation, power, and the American dream.

The festival's inaugural edition was praised by The New York Times as a compelling proof of concept and an ambitious achievement.

We would expect nothing less from our great orchestra.

This year, the festival will explore the theme of courage.

It centers Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, which serves as a testament to courage and human nobility.

Yet what does opera mean today, and what might it become in the future?

At the heart of the festival is a new creative partnership with American jazz trumpeter and opera composer Terence Blanchard, one of our speakers joining us today.

Eight time Grammy winner Terrence is a celebrated artist with extraordinary contributions to jazz, groundbreaking work as an opera composer, and deep commitment to using music as a bridge beyond language.

Also joining us on the stage are two of the artists that are part of the festival, David Butt Philip, one of Britain's most exciting tenors and who appears as Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio.

And Adrienne Danrich, an Emmy winning soprano, composer, lyricist and sound designer.

Moderating the conversation today is the Cleveland Orchestra's very own president and CEO, André Gremillet.

Before we begin, a quick reminder that our live stream and radio audience, if you have a question during the Q&A portion of the forum, you may text it to (330)541-5794 and City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

Now, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Terence Blanchard, David Butt Philip, Adrienne Danrich and André Gremillet.

Good afternoon everyone.

It's a great pleasure to be here.

Thank you for the kind words about the Cleveland Orchestra.

I would be remiss if I did not begin this forum by mentioning that in light of the robust attendance today, not to mention all of you listening live on the air and the almost sold out upcoming three performances of Fidelio.

It seems to me that a certain famous actor was utterly mistaken when he mentioned that no one cared about opera and ballet.

So I'll just start with this.

I'm so honored to be with these wonderful artists on the stage, and I thought I would start by asking Terrence.

I love opera, by the way.

You love opera.

Thank you.

I figured since you wrote two of them.

Exactly.

But speaking of that.

What?

Why do you care about opera, Terence?

Someone who, again, has written two operas critically and publicly acclaimed.

Fire, Shut Up in My Bones and champion, someone who certainly did not need to get into opera to get the artistic prestige.

Given your credentials yet you spent the time you took a considerable artistic risk in entering that field.

What was it about opera today?

Well, the thing that I've been telling all of my friends, you know, I said, stop thinking of the word opera.

Because when you think opera, you're thinking of the stereotype that's being portrayed out in the ether.

A guy with some Viking horns and a staff with a long coat on or something singing on top of a mountain, you know, and that's not what it is, I said.

For me, opera is the highest form of musical theater that you could ever experience.

And once I got into it, man, and I was telling Andre, this year, you know, as soon as you get to the theater and you have that moment of doing tech where we're just in the lights and everybody is finding that spots on the stage, and you see how the set design is have put things together and how that along with the wardrobe and then with these amazing singers, you got to remember they're not only singing, but they're acting as well.

And you see all of this stuff coming together.

It's magical, you know, it takes you into a whole other realm of experience.

And for this guy to say that, I'm sorry, I have to go back to this.

Just, just.

No, really, it lets me know he's never experienced it, you know, because people who have come to my operas and Adrienne knows this, people have come to the opera when we did it at the met, both operas.

Sometimes some of those people, it was the first time coming to opera.

But what we found out is that most of those people started buying tickets to other productions because they got bit by the same bar.

That was bit by, you know.

So for me, there's a there's a magical thing about telling stories that you can't do in any other form like you can in opera.

Adrienne you've song actually both types of operas you've sung the more traditional with the Viking horns, you know, or let's say Tosca at least.

But obviously you're one of the foremost interpreters of, of modern operas, whether it's Terence's works or other works.

What's the thread here?

You know, when you when you sing Puccini and when you sing Blanchard, what what connects these radically different work?

Music is.

The first thing that comes to my mind is humanity.

Opera.

It has a way of shining a spotlight on us as human beings.

And I am one person with two lungs and two vocal cords.

So I bring my full self to Puccini.

I bring my full artistic creativity to the new works.

The exciting thing for me about the new works, though, is I get to decide who the characters are going to be.

I will be doing my 10th world premiere upcoming in Cincinnati, and I'm playing a character who I equate to the The Woman King, the Viola Davis in the.

Yes, she's a warrior, honey.

And and that is a little bit different than playing someone like Tosca or Madame Butterfly or Aida.

However, something that Terrance just said, we have to act nowadays.

There is no stage that I will ever be on where I will be.

What we used to call park and bark, where you just stand there with your staff and you just sing that.

That does not excite me as much as a really delving into the physicality of it.

So when I look at a role like Tosca, the first thing I do with any role is decide how the character walks.

You know, the only thing that's going to change from Puccini to a champion will be how I embody the character.

My voice will be, my voice will be my instrument, and I bring in realism whether I am doing I did and I eat a years ago.

And my agent said, I thought you hurt yourself when he throws threw me on the ground.

I was like, no, I was good, but I, I throw myself literally into all of the operas that I do, no matter who the composer.

Not that interesting how you enthusiastically you speak about acting because I mean, David could comment on that.

I don't think it's necessarily the case for every every singer.

How did you get into the opera, Adrienne Through acting or through singing?

What brought you in first?

Well, I actually started singing when I was a tiny tyke with with my father.

He was a blues singer, and I made my debut at age eight singing Aretha Franklin's Natural Woman.

For a crowd of, like, 2000 people.

And I was terrified and my dad paid me with ice cream.

I did not know you got.

You got money for for singing.

Sounds like we have for for tonight's before.

But but to speed this up, I actually.

Come to the stage with the school boys.

Don't you dare.

Don't you dare.

But I got.

I went to a performing arts high school in Saint Louis.

And then when I was a junior in high school, I received a scholarship to study at the local university, Washington University.

I'm sure you all have heard of that.

And that teacher is still my teacher to this day.

And and then I started winning a couple of competitions and then I, you know, I was going to be a teacher, y'all.

I got my bachelor's in education from Eastman, but my teacher told me there's a time to teach and a time to sing, and this is your time to sing, and I've been doing that for 30 years now.

David, give us your thoughts.

About opera.

You told me earlier, as we were about to get here, that you had some controversial thoughts about people caring or not about opera.

We want to hear.

No, no, I mean.

Of course I care about opera.

And of course, I was very lucky.

I was brought up in a house where there was a lot of music, a lot of classical music.

I got into classical music as through the sort of traditional English route of being a church choir boy, and I sang in church choirs and cathedral choirs from when I was seven years old and fell in love with choral music.

Then in my teenage years, I fell out of love with classical music and in love with rock music and electronic music, and then sort of rediscovered music, theater and choral music.

When I went to university and then discovered in my late teens, early 20s that I had a voice that was maybe more suited to bigger repertoire and went to study opera.

So that was my kind of roundabout way into the business.

So I care about opera, and I think people should care about opera, which incidentally, I think is what Timothée Chalamet was actually saying.

If you listen to the whole interview, he's not he wasn't saying you shouldn't care about opera.

He was saying he's glad that he's in an industry which has popular appeal and which society as a whole still just about.

Although the film industry is struggling as well just about values in a financial sense, and I don't think anyone can seriously say that that's the case with classical music or opera.

I'm sorry, and I wish that wasn't the case, but that is the truth.

This is an art form that is struggling to attract popular appeal, to attract audiences, to attract funding in all countries all over the world.

And these are conversations that are taking place in brutal terms, in boardrooms of opera companies and symphony orchestras all over the world.

We are talking about money.

That is the that is the crucial factor here, and the fact that people like to dance around in the classical music industry, we are talking about who is going to pay for it.

That is what we're talking about.

Is, is the country going to pay for it?

Are the public going to pay for it?

Someone has to pay for it, otherwise it dies.

And that is what is happening slowly but surely in Europe, in America, all over the world, death by a thousand cuts a little bit less every year to go around until eventually there's nothing.

Left but nothing.

Cleveland, if I must, it must.

Well, great.

But I. Hear what.

You're saying.

The concerns are real parents.

But doesn't it also have to deal with content?

You know, one of the things that Yannick talked about, you know, at the met, he said, listen, man, we're music nerds.

Yeah, right.

You know, so we love Verdi.

We love Puccini, you know, but we need to put on current pieces.

You know, when we did Champion in Newark, excuse me, in New Orleans, in New Orleans, there was a guy who came up to me afterwards.

He remembered the fight of Emile Emile Griffith.

He remembered what had happened when had gone on with everything.

And he told me, he said, if this is opera, I'd come.

So I think a lot of times when people see themselves on the stage, you know, with fire shot up in my bones, there's a scene in there that has nothing to do with me.

I just wrote the rhythms for it.

But Camille Brown did the choreography.

Where there's a college thing from Charles Blows College Time, where they have a stomp show, right?

I used to make fun of the singers, the dancers, because they would get like long standing ovations every night, and they would have to hold the post.

Yeah.

And by the end of it, this shaking.

But a lot of people would come up to me and go, it brought me back to my college days.

So I think, you know, when we talk about opera, one of the things that companies have to accept themselves is like, look, we have to we can't.

Nobody loves La Boheme more than me, you know what I mean?

And as I freely said, was amazing.

And when I saw it in New York and they got to the second act, the set got a standing ovation before anybody hit the at the stage.

And that's that's amazing.

That's fine.

But what are the new versions of that for us?

Sure.

You know what I mean.

And I think those are the things that will start to attract people to come, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, they're talking about doing Champion in Amsterdam and they're really excited about it because they want to do it in concert, and they want to put a ring in the middle of the concert about.

And check this out.

They found a photo from the 60s with actually have.

Yes.

You know what I mean.

So these things are relevant when they're relevant to people's lives.

People really get into it, you know?

I know.

They agree with that.

And I mean, no, like, I missed you for contemporary opera as well as for traditional opera, which is mostly what I do, although I have done world premieres many, many times.

But but new operas cost a lot of money, even more than traditional operas, right?

Because if you're an opera house like the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden or the Vienna State Opera, you can do performances of La Traviata and La Boheme every night, and it costs you virtually nothing because you have a production in the back from 40 years ago that you can just reel out over and over again, and people will buy tickets.

And even if people don't buy tickets, it doesn't matter that much because you don't lose a huge amount of money.

But to commission a full scale new work for a big orchestra and a big ensemble and a new director is a unbelievably expensive and be an enormous risk.

Because what if it's a failure, which probably half as new pieces are?

I do have to say though, I always like to say, here's the good news.

Yeah, yeah.

Here's the good news, y'all.

Even though it costs bucket loads of money to produce all of these new operas and and there's the struggle with funding and all of that.

We can name five companies right now who are still delving into new works and really putting their efforts into telling the stories of of real life people also like Opera Theater of Saint Louis there.

They have a program right now, and they're bringing in writers who are not associated with opera.

So they have poets who are now writing libretti.

Cincinnati Opera, they're doing the Black Opera Project, of which I'm one opera.

I'm a part of that.

But they have five more operas.

The Metropolitan Opera is doing a new opera that I might be be a part of, which will be great.

And someone else just mentioned the other new offer that they're going to be doing as well.

Omar is out there.

Terrence is.

Operas are out there.

So even though there's a fear that the money won't come, these new opera sell.

Out because there is a level of curiosity of the new.

So you've seen Bowman, I love Bowman, I love Tosca, and I love Aida, and I love all of those works.

But I find that there are a lot of this is my first time seeing an opera coming to see champion.

This is my first time seeing an opera.

Seeing this house in Opera Theater of Saint Louis for by Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage.

So there is an excitement there that this opera, opera is evolving, not dying.

There is a seed there that has been planted, and there are young people out there, 20 years old, 30 years old, who are coming into this art form and infusing it with the new energy that is so very exciting.

So while those the struggles are real, the successes are also real.

And the appeal is real, right?

The music.

And the story telling.

So what we're really.

Working about is how you get to that audience, because the audience is still there.

And most of my friends and people younger than me, they're not classical music people.

But when they come, if they come to see a friend or something that I've recommended.

They go.

Nuts.

For it.

So you just have to get to that audience.

But the problem is, of course, and the silver bullet is education, because again, we're talking about money.

Right.

But but music education has been destroyed in particularly in my country.

But I know that that's true in other countries as well.

And kids where I was educated and had experiences in classical music from an early age, which were which were given to everyone in a state school, those experiences and opportunities simply do not exist anymore, and kids are now going all the way through school systems without having any experience of classical music whatsoever.

They don't know what an opera is, so how could they possibly be excited by it?

But if you reach those people, if you can get to them, and if you can give them that joy and that love for the art form early, then you have an audience for life.

I think.

I say.

You're right, and I think that that's where it's incumbent upon the opera companies themselves to do the work.

You know, it's great that Adrienne brought up Opera Theater Saint Louis, because that's where I got my start.

Those are the people who commissioned me the first time to write an opera.

And when it comes to money, we didn't have a lot of money.

You know, we had six dancers, we had a couple of people in the chorus, and we made the thing work, and I thought that was it.

When he got to the met and all of a sudden I had like 20 some dances and I had like 50 chorus people.

I was like, oh my God, you know, it was, it was, it was an incredible thing.

But but what happened in Saint Louis was I went to high schools, churches, I went everywhere.

They needed me to go to talk about this opera.

When it came to doing it in New York.

They would show the operas, the premieres in Times Square.

We made sure that they set up a place in Harlem for them to show it for the people up in Harlem in a big park.

And the place was packed.

As a matter of fact, what I wanted to do, I wanted to go up there and introduce it to the audience and then drive down to the met, but we didn't have enough time to do that.

I also went to the high schools, you know, that would teaching young kids music talked about music, talk about my upbringing, talk about me being a film composer, being an opera.

And all of a sudden you could see the light bulb goes off in the kids eyes, you know?

So I think it's I think it's not necessarily that people don't want to do the work.

Some people don't know where to go.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And I think with us, when my wife, who's my manager, she's really great at this, you know, she comes up with all of these ideas about outreach because that's the most important thing.

When we did this thing in Saint Louis, we did a thing also.

We were trying to get young kids to understand what a libretto is.

So what we did was we had them write poetry, and then we paired them with a little rap artist in the neighborhood and had them take the poetry and make rap tracks out of the poetry.

Right.

And, you know, all of it was like, really fine until this one girl, she must have been like 12 years old.

She started her poetry was about being bullied, you know what I mean?

And there wasn't a dry eye in the place and it became really real.

So when you look at that kid and you go, we need to grab that kid because that kid has something to say, you know, and they're dealing with issues, and these art forms are the things that help all of us heal, you know?

So when I look at what's going on in the future, the art, the companies themselves have to open up their minds about how to do these things and how to approach them, because some people still come up to me and they want me to do that.

Everybody wants me to do new work, and I'm like, dude, we have stuff already done, you know what I mean?

Can we do this?

But everybody wants to have a new word for their particular company.

And it's crazy to me because and I'm not saying this because it's me, but I'm just saying it's just because it's been my experience.

My operas have been selling out wherever they have gone, you know?

And if you really want to try to engage people into the opera, then let's just go out here and, and, and deal with what's already out there.

Omar's been doing really well.

You know, I can't wait to see this opera that she's talking about.

That's going to be a new premiere, because the thing that I love is that since I've been in the world of opera, you know how many jazz musicians have come up to me saying they want to write opera?

You know?

And to me, that's huge because we're creating interest.

You know, when my opera went to the met, you know, and I got a lot of press because of the whole idea of what it was, you know, I was, you know, everywhere doing interviews.

It was amazing to me the responses that were coming back to me about it, not necessarily from a negative standpoint, but from a standpoint of being curious.

So when can I see it?

And it was funny because, you know, some of my friends, they don't know anything about operating.

So when did you play going to be on.

I'm like, don't worry.

About her.

It's finished and you can get it next year.

You know.

But I think the thirst is there for that.

But it's a combination of things.

You know, there was a guy who ran opera company in New Orleans, man, and God rest his soul.

But when he came out to introduce my opera man, he started going into this long, you know, statement.

And I'm sitting there going saying, stop, stop, stop right there.

You are not talking to the choir.

You're trying to bring in people.

So let's not hit them with heavy terminology.

Yeah, right.

You know what I mean?

This is not the time for that.

This is the time to say, hey, man, this is an art form that can appeal to everybody, and anybody can come in here and really just enjoy it for what it is.

When I'm trying to get my friends to get in the jazz, I don't sit down and tell them, hey, man, what time signatures?

Yeah, exactly.

You know.

You know, I don't I don't I don't do that.

You know, I just said, listen, look, tell me what you hearing it and tell me what you find in it because it's different for everybody.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think, like, traditionally, that's what opera was, was an art form for the people.

And I think too often perhaps this is certainly true in Western Europe.

Too often in the last 20, 30 years, perhaps, opera companies and opera directors have tried to much to lecture the audience rather than to speak to them, and rather than to communicate something basic on something real and something human that they will understand.

And we get a little bit too obsessed sometimes with the intellectual and the clever and the and the concept and the high concept, when really if the work is good, if the music is great, if the libretto is great, and if the performances are great, you need to trust the value of that and the quality of the work that will speak to people.

If you build it, they will come.

And if you if you perform great art with great artists, people will get it.

You don't have to talk down to them.

Anyone will get it.

Always used to tell us all the time, never speak above your audience, never speak beneath.

Speak writer.

You know, and I'm a firm believer.

Absolutely.

David, tell us, you know, this weekend and next week you're singing Florestan in Fidelio in a semi-staged presentation.

So you're not acting.

How different is that for you?

And how important is it for you to to do these kind of performances where you, you don't have the set and the acting to worry about?

Well, I mean, I do this kind of thing quite a lot.

And obviously it comes with pros and cons.

So the pros are, for me, selfishly, as a musician, to have like 100% of my brain be able to be focused purely on the music is kind of fun.

It's kind of exciting.

And particularly to sing in an acoustic like the Severance Music Center, which is astonishingly nice for singers and to sing with a world class orchestra literally underneath you is kind of cool.

But it is.

It's also a bit strange because I've done the piece fully staged in, I think, seven different productions.

So I it's quite my role.

Specifically, the role of Florestan in Fidelio is quite a heavy, visceral, physical thing because you're talking about a guy who's been a political prisoner locked in a in a pitch black jail underground for years.

So playing that on stage is kind of amazing because you really get to go fully like, for some reason, I'm quite.

A. I'm quite a kind of easygoing, happy go lucky guy.

And I've kind of found this weird niche playing these incredibly psychologically tortured characters.

Parents, take note for.

Your next opera.

It's become kind of my thing.

Like I started out doing these kind of light, romantic roles, and I've kind of my big success started to come when I started to play these kind of screwed up anti-heroes who've got a lot of psychological demons.

So playing a political prisoner held in a cell underground is is pretty fun, because you get to go really all the way into that space, into that like, darkness, you know?

And Fidelio is a is an opera that is about a journey from darkness into light, both literally and spiritually and metaphorically.

So my character starts in literally pitch darkness, and it's a redemption story which ends with this extraordinary, ecstatic pean to liberty and humanity, which, of course, Beethoven was obsessed with for his whole life, partly due to the context of the time that he was writing in, which makes it all the more relevant today.

I mean, really, and it's part of the reason that Fidelio and for example, the Ninth Symphony, which is very similar in terms of the musical structure, but also in terms of the thematic material, this kind of exuberant feeling of human love and joy.

And that that is very exciting to be a part of.

Adrienne I would love to go back to you and pick up on what you said about the evolution of opera, because I think that's really what we're talking about here.

How do you see the next phase in its evolution?

I mean, I'm thinking, among others, of the work that you've done on Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price, like two giants of, of of American and opera and voice culture and how they made the art form evolve themselves.

What do you see coming next in terms of this continued evolution?

Well, I would say that the operas that I have been a part of, the new operas, have a way of demystifying opera, because if you take the word opera out of it, if you just go and there's no mention of the word opera, you really are getting movies with people singing in them.

The way that the stories are written, the way that they are put together, the way that the libretti are written, read like a novel.

I mean, it's not just highbrow.

It really the vernacular is changing, not just with the words, but with the music.

There is a greater acceptance, at least in my experience of the cultural music of the person who is writing the music.

You have people who are writing music that native, native people are writing their music with their own, with their own sounds and their own harmonies.

In it, you have people who are Asian born who are writing it with their own sensibility.

So I see the future of opera embracing the humanity of the people who are writing the stories, and also the people who are viewing the stories, like Terence was saying about people coming and saying, oh, this is I saw myself on the stage write this.

I can really relate to this because this is a story that is now this is a story that is relevant.

And I'm just going to say this one thing about, because I can only speak of this because I am an American.

All right.

I'm speaking from my own experience.

We as African Americans in the art form, we have had our stories told and they have been disaster.

It's always something bad happening to us.

Well, what's exciting now is that we are really having seeing operas written for and by African Americans that celebrate our lives.

That is like, you go out of there and you're singing as opposed to crying.

You know, it's not just delving into our history in this country as slaves, but what we did after that, and that is exciting for the for opera and simply for humanity, that is exciting to me.

Well, I can't think of a more inspiring way to get into the Q&A.

Which we're about to do.

Thank you.

Adrienne.

Thank you, David and Terence, for those just tuning in via our live stream or radio audience.

I'm André Gremillet.

I'm the president and CEO of the Cleveland Orchestra and moderator for today's conversation.

Today we are talking about the tradition, innovation, and the future of opera.

I'm here with Terence Blanchard, award winning musician and composer and curator of this year's Jack Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival, and two of our artists appearing with us this week.

David Butt Philip, an operating tenor, and Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio this weekend and next week.

And Adrienne Danrich, an Emmy winning Emmy Award winning soprano composer, lyricist and sound designer.

We welcome questions from everyone city Club members, guests, students and those joining via our live stream at City Hall or live radio broadcasts at 89.7 WKSU Ideastream public media.

If you would like to text a question, please please text it to (330)541-5794.

That's (330)541-5794.

And city club staff will try to work it into the program.

May I please have the first question?

my wife and I, when we discovered last fall that Herbie Hancock was performing at Severance, snatched up two tickets, not knowing that we were going to see Terence playing his horn on stage that night.

What a thrill that was now around to the opera world, since that's what we're here for.

Terrence, thank you for being part of the Cleveland.

Cleveland is a big city with music, all kinds of music, including the world famous Cleveland Orchestra.

So I want to thank you for being part of the Cleveland music scene here.

And my question is.

I think I already know the answer to this, but I needed to have a question to be up here.

Are we going to hear you playing the horn tonight?

I think I know the answer.

I'll take my answer off the air.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you for that.

And of course, you know what we're doing tonight.

We're doing a small version of Malcolm X and fire!

Shut up in my bones with Adrienne singing with us.

So, yeah, you're going to hear me play the night for sure.

Hi there.

I'm going to read one of our text questions that came in.

How is the orchestra's festival helping overcome hurdles to bringing new people to the opera?

Thank you.

Well, I think you you heard a lot of this today.

I mean, this festival really is about providing greater access to what we think is great music, and great music is Fidelio and great music is Terence Blanchard is music.

And we view this as one big universe of fine music that appeals to everyone.

And when you have a curator and an artist like, like Terence, you know, organizing all this and curating all this, I think a lot of new people pay attention, pay attention to what's happening, and maybe we'll take a chance on on accessing something that they may not have access before.

And this is how you develop an audience.

And so this was a really deliberate choice.

We were very fortunate that Terence accepted our invitation, and I couldn't be more pleased with what you're about to hear this week, I don't know.

Terence, if you want to add anything to.

The.

What can I add to that?

Well, I think what you guys are doing here is, is, is an example of what should be happening in other arts organizations.

It's like we all, like I said earlier, we respect the past, but we also have a present in the future.

And we need to make sure that we don't throw that away, trying to constantly uplift what we've already done.

You know, there are great musicians out there with great vision.

You know, they just need opportunity.

You know, one of the things that I've been trying to do, and it's hard to with opera organizations is, you know, Adrienne was talking about how Saint Louis wants to bring in new people who may not write for opera.

I'd like to be on because I know what those pitfalls are, you know, given my experience working in San Francisco, because, listen, when they came to ask me to write an opera man, I leaned across the table to smell of dude's breath because I thought he was drinking.

You know.

To ask me to write an opera.

But having gone through the experience because they were great at, like, literally holding my hand through the process, you know, I think sometimes people who are not a part of it can become overwhelmed easily.

You know, and the thing that I would like to be is that, like go between person and say, listen, now, don't just relax.

Let's do a step by step by step, and then you'll start to see it grow from there.

Hello.

Thank you for being here.

The gentleman before me took us back to 18 in Hiram, Ohio.

I'm going to take you back to when I was seven in Philadelphia, and I was exposed to opera for the first time through the Our Gang comedies, when alfalfa sang Figueroa, Figaro, Figaro in a production of The Marriage, Barbara civil marriage.

Figaro put on in a barn, I believe and they alfalfa they they sold out the house in Spanky.

How did you do this?

How did you sell out?

He said, well, I told him they could pay on the way out.

Andre, the Cleveland Orchestra did a phenomenal job a few years ago of outreach and took the orchestra to the neighborhoods and played in churches and saloons and every place in between.

What can is it feasible to do that again on some scale?

And could you also, perhaps through your own experience, tell us about who's doing outreach?

Well, someplace else.

Thank you.

Briefly before I pass it on.

Yes, it's possible.

And we we still do it.

You know, we had recently our composer in residence, Allison Loggins Hall, who was here for a three year residency.

And that's a lot of what she did.

She spent time getting to know this community, writing music that was relevant and meaningful to this community.

We just issued a recording of her works, and to me, that's also the future, you know, to really take the time to, in our case, get to know Cleveland, get to know the people of this community that have made this orchestra, the great orchestra, this today.

Right.

There would be no Cleveland orchestra, and certainly not that stature without the incredible community that understands it and supports it and makes it evolve.

So to me, that's really something that we do need to do more and more and tie in to David's earlier point, education programs and educational activities that really make this feel like the natural thing that this should be.

This is not a high brow art.

This is something, again, that's universal, that's appealing to everyone, which is why it's still around.

And this is why Terence's work will be around for a very long time.

It's the same concept, and I think we need to keep focusing on what the core is.

And the core for us is the music, and everything else is needs to be questioned to make sure that people don't feel that there is a barrier to experiencing this great music.

We put up the barriers.

It's not the music that does that.

I, I had a great experience when I was young in growing up in Saint Louis, and I participated in some of the first concerts with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in Unison program, which is still going on today.

It's a volunteer organization of singers from all around different churches in Saint Louis.

And when they first started, the symphony would come and go to different churches within the inner city of Saint Louis.

And so that was exciting also.

Cincinnati, it does a great job.

They have a program called Opera Goes to Church.

Have you have you been a part of that?

Terrence?

It's so amazing.

So we as opera singers have a great history of singing other types of music, like you were talking about singing and bands and everything.

So we as opera singers get up there and we sing Tramaine Hawkins and we blow and, you know, we sing other types of music, which is great.

And also opera theater is now starting our songs which which I curated a show for them a couple of years ago, and we go out into the community, we go to different parks and bars and stuff like that.

It's really quite exciting.

So opera is alive and well, and getting out there into the community and being with the people and not just being a diva, but just being yourself and being with the people, I think is what brings the people into the art form.

When they see us as human beings and not as, you know, to hope.

You know.

I think, you know, when we did, one of my friends in New Orleans, I had a conversation with two of the principals, Karen Slack and Arthur Woodley, and they blew me away, because what they made me realize was that as African Americans, a lot of times when they enter the opera world, the opera world told them to turn off who they were, you know?

And it was an amazing realization for me.

So when we got to do Fire Shut Up in my Bones at the met first ever hustle, you know, we had this big discussion with everybody in the production in one big room like this, and it just hit me to say to them, listen, you know, I know that you've been told to turn things off.

This isn't Puccini, this isn't Verdi.

Bring it all back.

Bring back your church expression.

Bring back your R&B or blues expression.

Bring all of those things back into the fray.

And I'll never forget Angel blue, who sang one of the the really powerful arias in the piece.

She said, is it okay if I, you know, if I add my church voice, I'm like, yes, please.

And when she did it, there wasn't a dry eye in the room.

And I think for the singers what it was because LaTonya Morris said something to me about it.

She said, you know, I've been in this business for over 30 years and this is the first world that I could really relate to, you know, as an African-American woman.

And so I think, you know, all of these things are really important in terms of when we talk about reaching out to people.

So, you know, it's one of the reasons why when I was talking to Peter Gerald, I was glad to to hear him say that I wasn't going to be a token because I didn't want to be a token.

I want to be a turkey.

You know, there needed to be other people, women, people from different other ethnic backgrounds, writing opera about their stories, you know, so everybody can see themselves and relate to what's going on on the stage.

And for those of us who are not part of those cultures, we can learn from them.

You know what I mean?

To me, that's what it's always about.

Question for our soprano and our tenor.

What difference is?

What differences do you face when you perform in a fully staged opera versus a opera just with an orchestra?

Oh.

You want to go?

There is a freedom that comes in an orchestra opera, a semi-staged opera.

You are the director.

You get to decide what you do when you are in a fully staged production.

You have a conductor and you have a director, and you have, you know, the choreographer.

Usually nowadays, and when you are standing there, you had said something about the acting is not there.

Actually, we act a little bit more when we are doing it on our own because there's no one telling us yea or nay.

It is our interpretation of what the character is.

So the acting, I think, gets bumped up a little bit because I get to be my full self with all of the information that I want to have the characters say, so they're both very exciting.

But I do love the freedom of a semi-staged production, I really do.

It's amazing.

Yeah, I agree with everything, Adrienne said.

But also the other thing that you have to remember about singing opera, and this is why, you know, like there's this sort of myth that Pavarotti was not a great actor, but of course, because of course it was.

He was so much more.

And in those days, opera was so much more focused on the voice.

But of course, what you can do and what Pavarotti was perhaps the greatest ever exponent of, was acting with the voice, portraying emotion and drama through the changes in your voice.

And when you do a semi-staged or concert performance, you can focus obviously so much more on that and on how can I make how can I get even more expression out of each of these phrases and each of these notes?

Whereas sometimes, perhaps in a fully staged production, if it's complicated, if there's a lot going on, most of your brain, most of your conscious brain is focused on what the.

Hell am I supposed to do next?

Stage left.

Stage right?

Yeah.

Right.

Exactly.

Am I blocking the soprano?

Right.

But how about the audience perspective?

Because I think the other side is also really interesting.

From from your experience, how different is the audience reaction.

To that?

Because.

Because.

Because you've done both.

Of course.

Well yeah.

But you know, but I'm talking about from her watching her, you know, I can't remember what city we were in.

We were doing fire.

And at the end of it, you know, she's playing Charles's girlfriend.

And at the end of it, she says, you know, he's begging her to stay.

She says, I can't stay.

I'm sorry.

And when she sang this thing, when she said, I can't stay.

This guy I'm from.

Come on.

Come on, man.

He was so mad at me, I was.

Like.

I didn't write it.

I just.

Said it.

Yeah, yeah.

So now her acting was like, was amazing because he bought into the story.

Next question Joanna.

Joanna Brown with the Cleveland Orchestra.

I joined the Cleveland Orchestra.

I'm in my fourth year and this is actually where I learned about opera.

So the first opera that I attended was with the Cleveland Orchestra.

And I'm like, now I'm forgetting which one it was, because we don't done so many.

And so I wanted to ask you, for people who are new to opera, what operas would you recommend people.

Let's start with.

I was like, oh, don't be sorry.

It needs the recommendations on.

You know, maybe Seminole works, but also maybe a contemporary.

So I'll ask some recommendations from you.

Yeah.

I'm going to start off by saying this opera is like a box of chocolates.

And you have to pick your flavor that you like.

And the way that you do that is, thank you for your question, by the way, because the way that you do that is to experience a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Right.

So I would say taste the whole box, you know, go to some new, new I mean some, some of the like parcel, some of the, the what is the.

Yeah.

Thank you baby.

Some of the baroque operas.

I can't think of any at this moment.

Can you think of oh, Julius Caesar?

Yeah, that's.

A long first opera.

It is not known for the first.

Opera, but I'm trying to give her the box.

I talk that idea now.

It's not the first one.

She's going to see.

But I'm going chronologically now.

But anyway, the first one, I would say.

If you haven't not seen Aida, of course, that is like the quintessential Carmen is so much fun.

You know the ABCs, you know, you have Aida, you have Madama Butterfly, and then you have Carmen.

Those are the ones that we usually, since.

The tunes.

Definitely.

Carmen.

For the tunes, the number of.

Recognizable tunes.

And you can recognize.

You know what?

Cause that's my voice as the baritone.

Anyway.

Point is.

Exactly.

So you have those.

But then for me, Mozart, I love me a Mozart opera for first opera and the way that my family does, they are not opera people at all.

So what I did with my family was I would tell them in my vernacular, okay, so this is what happens.

He gets what her?

And then and then she comes in there and they had his fight and Lord have mercy.

So I feel like if you when you are reading through what it's what the opera is about, kind of start thinking about it in the terms of how you talk and how you think.

Because if you think of this as something that is removed from reality and removed from you, then opera is not going to be your jam.

But if you come to it with an open mind and think about it, how you can relate to those characters is going to be great.

So Madama Butterfly, Aida, Carmen, and The Marriage of Figaro is a good one.

I like.

That one too.

I'm going to go very quickly.

Before we get stopped, I'm going to say two things which Adrienne hasn't talked about.

I'm going to talk about opera in English, which for an English speaking audience, it can be a real barrier breaker.

So let's talk about operas by people like Benjamin Britten and Terence Blanchard, where people can relate immediately without the barrier of a foreign language.

Almost all my work is in foreign languages, but I love opera in English, and I also want to go into that as a big nerd, for the operas of which are of the ones of the traditional repertoire that is performed, I would say dramatically can be the most accessible.

Janusz for Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen, which can be performed in English.

Of course, these are stories that even kids understand and that are real and are about real people and like real human relationships as opposed to gods and monsters, which is a lot of the stuff I do.

Friends Andre, Terence, David and Adrienne Thank you.

Yes, I love it.

I'm Cynthia Economy, director of programing here at the City Club.

And forums like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

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Today's forum is presented in partnership with the America 250 Ohio Commission and made possible thanks to support from Bank of America, Cleveland Cliffs and the Rock family of companies.

It was also presented in partnership with the Cleveland Orchestra as part of the fourth annual Jack Joseph and Morton Mendel Opera and Humanities Festival.

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Our gratitude is well to the Albert B and Audrey Ratner Family Foundation for their generous support of our arts programing this year.

Thank you so much to the Ratner family.

The City Club would like to welcome students joining us in the audience today, as well as guests at the tables hosted by the America 250 Ohio Commission, Bank of America, Cleveland Cliffs, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Crew Foundation, and friends of Dave Nash.

We are off next Friday, May 22nd for Memorial Day, but be sure to join us on Friday, May 29th as we discuss the rise of women in entrepreneurship.

Will be joined by entrepreneurs Ayesha Childers and Natalie Debo, and also Corinne Green with the Women Business Center of Northeast or Northern Ohio.

They will discuss the current challenges, opportunities and landscape of women in entrepreneurship.

Huntington Banks Rashawn Smith will moderate.

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I'm Cynthia Connolly in this form is now adjourned.

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