Minnesota Opera launched Denyce Graves to stardom. Now the famed singer returns the favor with her directing debut

Denyce Graves was a young mezzo-soprano, fresh out of the conservatory and serving an apprenticeship with Houston Grand Opera, when her phone rang. It was her agent.

"He said, 'Denyce, I've got some news that you're gonna love.' And I just screamed with excitement," she recalled last week. "Then, after that, I panicked. How can I do this? I don't know if I can do this."

"This" was the title role in "Carmen" at Minnesota Opera — one of the most iconic characters and popular works in the opera repertoire.

From that 1991 production at the Ordway Center, her career soared. She's since sung the role with most of the world's great opera companies, from the Vienna Staatsoper to London's Royal Opera to New York's Metropolitan Opera.

Now, 31 years later, Graves is back where she started, but this time at the helm of Minnesota Opera's new production of "Carmen," which opens this weekend. It's no coincidence that her first professional directing job comes on the Ordway stage where she first sang Georges Bizet's opera.

"I've done some beautiful productions," she said. "But my favorite production is the one we did in Minnesota.

"Everybody was really committed to making it great. And it was so exciting. I had the feeling that it was very, very special, and not just because it was my first one. The production was very beautifully electric and bold, a very visceral kind of production. … There really wasn't a set. There was a wall, and there were some chairs. And that was it. That sort of brought the focus in on the storytelling.

"It was just one of the most exciting experiences of my career. I made some of the best friends of my life."

Star Tribune critic Mike Steele praised her performance. "This is a violent and even cruel 'Carmen,' one that bristles with the anger of oppression and the dangers of repression. … The stage is a socio-sexual battle zone …

"This works only when Carmen is dominant, emotionally compelling and clearly in control. In Graves, we have a Carmen who fits the role perfectly. Not only does she possess an unusually expressive, opulent voice, a fluid style of moving and unafraid sensuality, but she can also act with great clarity. Her Carmen, from the beginning, is all internalized anger and willful calculation."

From there, the offers started pouring in. She was asked to step into the role on short notice in Vienna, then at San Francisco Opera, where both legendary mezzo Marilyn Horne and her replacement had been sidelined by injury or illness.

"So then I was on — and I broke my leg," she said. "But I still did it. … I did it in a cast, and it was so much fun. I had the time of my life. … The papers had a lot of fun with the puns, talking about 'the casting of Carmen.'"

Graves has made such a specialty of the role that she heads an Emmy-winning production company called Carmen Productions. Surely those three decades have given her some unique insights.

"You can certainly work on it and come to the rehearsal space with an idea of who you think that character is," she said. "But that may have to be reshaped once you hear the concept of the director.

"I went to a performing arts high school, and I was given the aria from [Christoph Gluck's] 'Orfeo ed Eurydice' of 'Che farò senza Euridice?' And I said to my voice teacher, 'I really don't like this aria.' And he said, 'Y'know, Denyce, nobody really cares whether you like it or not. Your job is to sell it.'

"So that kind of became a leitmotif for me throughout my career, that I would arrive on the engagement just a blank, clean slate. I've learned to continue to stay open. And to be committed to discover her every single time. That way you learn and you grow, and it's interesting for you, too."

This time she's helping two mezzo-sopranos do the discovering, as Maya Lahyani and Zoie Reams alternate in the role.

Like old friends reuniting, Graves has re-established her bond with Minnesota Opera. While she had been invited to perform at concerts, galas and other events, she didn't perform with the company again until 2013, as the mother in Douglas Cuomo's "Doubt." She since appeared in the company's 2016 production of Richard Wagner's "Das Rheingold."

"Minnesota Opera gave me my career," she said. "We did that 'Carmen,' and it got my name out there. … And now this directorial debut."

How did she react when the opera's general director, Ryan Taylor, called to gauge her interest?

"I nearly drove the car off the road. ... I said, 'Are you serious, Ryan? Are you serious? Omigod! I've got to think about this.' "

It so happens that one of Graves' students, Symone Harcum, is part of the Minnesota Opera's Resident Artist company this season and a cast member in "Carmen."

Harcum told her: "You've got to do it. When will an opportunity come up like this? I'm singing in it, so it's like a full circle — you return after 30 years and, this time, one of your students has one of the lead roles."

So, back to Graves' remark about singers shaping their performance to the director's concept. What is hers for this production?

"I knew right away that I really wanted to see it through the lens of [Carmen's] experience," she said. "And I wanted to strip away all of the artifice that we stereotypically see in looking at 'Carmen.' I knew that I wanted it to be organic and raw and gritty and all of the things that I think she is. …

"It also really looks at the Roma culture itself. … It's a community where there's been lots of discrimination, racism, a discarded kind of community. … She threatens to disrupt the whole structure, because she's this incredible, very free-spirited individual who ultimately pays a price for being loud and proud and unapologetically who she is.

"And that's what makes her desirable. That's what makes her so people want to be in her company, in her presence. Because she is the woman who lives the way that we all wish we had the courage to."

Carmen
Who: Music by Georges Bizet, libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Conducted by Elias Grandy, stage direction by Denyce Graves.
When: 7:30 p.m. Sat., 2 p.m. Sun., 7:30 p.m. May 12 and 14, 2 p.m. May 15, 7:30 p.m. May 19 and 21, 2 p.m. May 22.
Where: Ordway Music Theater, 345 Washington St., St. Paul.
Tickets: $25-$258, 612-333-6669 or mnopera.org.

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities freelance classical music writer. wordhub@yahoo.com