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A Different Kind of Diva:
2004 Newsday Profile

by Marion Lignana Rosenberg

Most divas believe that being waited on is their birthright, but soprano Dawn Upshaw crouched and peered at the service bell on a table in the Algonquin Hotel lobby. “Should we ring it?” she whispered in a conspiratorial tone. “We could be really obnoxious!” She laughed, wrinkling her nose like a schoolgirl, before bashfully dismissing the idea.

That flash of mischief was the first of many surprises to emerge in conversation with Upshaw, whose two-year Carnegie Hall “Perspectives” series opens Wednesday with a program including a world premiere by Osvaldo Golijov. Like her career as a whole, Upshaw’s “Perspectives” offerings are both brave and wide-ranging and in coming months will include Bach cantatas, French chansons, Hungarian folk songs and a workshop for young composers and vocalists with composer John Harbison.

Only 43, Upshaw is the first singer and one of the youngest artists Carnegie Hall has invited to oversee one of its “Perspectives” series, through which select artists create their own personal concert series over a season or two, highlighting their musical concerns and favorite collaborators.

“I was given carte blanche,” the soprano said in her surprisingly low, sensuous speaking voice.

Extending the invitation to Upshaw “was the easiest, most natural choice” said Ara Guzelimian, senior director and artistic director of Carnegie Hall, who called Upshaw “one of the most deeply affecting and communicative singers on the planet.”

Health restored

Upshaw’s “Perspectives” series was to have begun last fall, but a severe inflammation of the larynx forced her to take four months of vocal rest. The health problems seem to be behind her. Two weeks ago, she returned from well-received recitals in Europe and appeared eager to press on with her work.

She patted an envelope containing the latest installments of Golijov’s “Ayre,” a song cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble based on Sephardic melodies. “I brought it with me to read on the train,” she said.

The composer, who has written a number of works especially for Upshaw, fell silent when asked what he most valued about her.

“Well, that’s very big,” Golijov said by phone. “She is at once spontaneous, direct but also deep. I don’t think of myself as the composer and her as the interpreter. She is composing me, in a way.”

Colleagues underscord Upshaw’s human qualities, as well. Tommy Krasker, who produced several of Upshaw’s recordings of Broadway music and standards, described the soprano as “one of the most gracious people I’ve ever met or worked with.”

Pianist Gilbert Kalish, who will accompany Upshaw’s May recital of French songs at Carnegie, paid tribute to her integrity, citing a recording from which she withdrew while still an up-and-coming artist because she felt that the organization behind it “was not really involved or committed to the project.”

Besides her probity and intellect, profiles of the soprano often stress her cheery, uncomplicated personality, with the British magazine Classic FM summing her up as “pure, sunshine yellow.”

Up close, though, Upshaw’s huge, opaque brown eyes convey restiveness and an inner life held closely in check. She mentioned the suburban town where she lives with her musicologist husband and children, ages 9 and 14, then quickly asked that it not be named in print. Upshaw wore no makeup and little jewelry, but a cluster of earrings in her right ear added an unexpected boho glint to her sober slate and black ensemble.

Her voice seems to have taken on a new richness and warmth in recent years.

“I don’t notice huge changes,” she said, “but after having children, I felt that my middle range was stronger. I’ve never found it particularly easy to do all that light, floaty stuff, though I know that some people think that comes naturally to me.”

The myriad colors of Upshaw’s voice come to the fore most seductively in her 2003 Grammy-nominated CD of Alban Berg’s “Lyric Suite” with the Kronos Quartet, in which she sings the rarely done vocal version of the desolate final movement.

The “sunny” soprano summons ferocious attacks and anguished tones for this spare but madly erotic music.

Tapping darker realms

Upshaw will tap into darker parts of her psyche for one of her most intriguing “Perspectives” offerings: the tortured, aphoristic “Kafka Fragments” (1986) by György Kurtág, a 70-minute piece for soprano and violin to be staged by Peter Sellars early next year.

When Sellars first proposed the work, Upshaw said, “I found it too heavy for me—not vocally, but emotionally—and I thought ’Whoa! It’s going to be so exhausting going there.’ But as I pulled it out once a year, I kept feeling closer and closer to it.” She made a wry face. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”

In recent years, Upshaw has starred in a number of high-profile international opera productions, including Handel’s Theodora (directed by Sellars), Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin and John Adams’ El Niño.

But talk of the Metropolitan Opera—where, for now, she has no upcoming engagements, despite having given nearly 300 performances in the past 20 years—left her fumbling for words. “Um, that’s… Well, I’ll let you ask the questions.”

Pressed as to whether the problem was a lack of interesting offers, Upshaw responded edgily. “Not that I’ve been offered uninteresting repertory…” She put a philosophical spin on a situation that seemed to be a source of regret for her.

“I don’t want this to sound like there’s some big story that I’m hiding. They are aware that there are certain things that I don’t want to repeat, and I truly think that I’m not appropriate for a lot of the standard repertory that they do.”

In any event, conductor James Levine and the Met Chamber Players will partner with Upshaw next year in Schönberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” and Upshaw spoke with gratitude of Levine’s role in shaping her career.

“He took me under his wing, trying to be sure that I went to a management with good connections in opera as well as recital and chamber music,” she said.

She also emphasized the Met artistic director’s willingness to “take risks” on her behalf, as when he had her cover a leading role for Kathleen Battle when Upshaw was still an apprentice.

Redefining the singer’s role

For many, Upshaw has redefined the singer’s occupation with her passion for exploring so many different facets of vocal art: not only the dozen core roles that make up a typical operatic career, but also chamber and orchestral music, folk and art songs, popular standards and especially, contemporary works.

“I don’t think of myself as forging a path,” she demurred, “though I am aware that there was no other career I was trying to model my own after.”

She acknowledged the late Jan de Gaetani, a luminous recitalist and fierce champion of new music, as an important inspiration but insisted that her own career so far “has been about trying to follow my own true interests.”

Upshaw will share her insights into new music in the unique workshop for young singers and composers she is to co-chair with Harbison, in whose opera The Great Gatsby she created the role of Daisy Buchanan.

The latter explained by phone that the sessions will cover “general ideas about vocal music, text reading and what a singer’s contribution can be at various stages in the [compositional] process.”

Nearly 200 composers applied for the workshop, but only 35 or 40 singers, which was telling for Harbison. “There are, let’s say, a few vocal teachers who say, ’This is not the repertory that will take you to the top.’”

Upshaw’s career, though, proves otherwise, and her “Perspectives” series promises to show how this always surprising singer will continue to stretch the boundaries of her profession and her own radiant, probing artistry.

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