Brownlee - Page: 1 of 1

In March, Robert Mirshak, of Mirshak Artists Management, an adjudicator at the Connecticut Opera Guild’s 52nd Annual Young Artists’ Competition in Hartford, approached this writer and asked if OperaOnline.us would be interested talking with a young singer with whom he was associated. That singer was Lawrence Brownlee.
While it’s this publication’s business to write about singers and everything else associated with opera, we were particularly intrigued by the fervor with which Mr. Mirshak promoted Mr. Brownlee, and after reading what Classical Singer wrote last month, our interest was piqued even more.
Our story below, while covering some of the same ground as others, branches out and, we think, gives an even more personal glimpse behind the man behind the voice. We premised our interview less on career, although that’s certainly important, and more on the person Lawrence Brownlee. What follows is what we learned, and what we believe other singers will find instructive as they pursue operatic careers of their own.

By Paul Joseph Walkowski
OperaOnline.us

Lawrence Brownlee (33) has won critical acclaim, major awards and prestigious grants for his performances, going back to 2003 when, at the start of his professional operatic career, he won a career boosting Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation. What is particularly noteworthy about receiving this award is that he received it after landing both his first international role singing with the second cast of “Il barbiere di siviglia” at La Scala in 2002 (Juan Diego Florez sang in the first cast) and being recognized even earlier by the New York Times in 2001 for winning a Met opera competition that same year.

Considering that he only graduated with a music degree from Indiana University in 2001 this early offer to sing at La Scala might be deemed prophetic. It was. And for good reason!

It was a prodigious beginning for a young singer and one which, he noted matter-of-factly, wasn’t even on his radar when he was approached years ago by a high school voice teacher who recommended that he give opera a try. He was as surprised as anyone, he told OperaOnline.us, in an e-interview from Germany in mid-May that someone thought he might have a voice suited for classical singing. He remembered thinking. “I don’t even like opera. I don’t know anything about it.”

So if he didn’t like to sing and hated opera, why did he sing and focus on the thing he disliked most? It was an idea that caught on gradually, he says, nurtured by his father. “My father told me that it made him happy to hear me sing. He said I had a very nice voice.”

Brownlee, who showed an early inclination toward music – he played the drums, piano, trumpet, tuba, electric bass, guitar and organ, and “sang a lot with my family” -- says he didn’t see it at the time, but as he looks back now he realizes that his father was actually preparing him for a career in music.

“I sang all throughout ‘North Junior High’ and ‘East High School’ [and] as a freshman in high school my high school music teacher used me as a featured soloist even though there were many older singers, which was how I was heard.” It was while singing in high school that he was asked “to become a member of a very select group called The Youngstown Connection.”

It was the above experience, as a member of the Youngstown Connection, he says, that “really opened my eyes up to traveling as a singer. It was because of this exposure that I was able to take part in a program for gifted music students at Youngstown State University”.

By the end of his third year at Youngstown State, he knew he wanted to further his studies in music by attending graduate school where he could “whole-heartedly pursue music”. Encouraged by his teacher, Fritz Robertson, and boosted by a measure of success in some voice competitions, that’s exactly the path he chose.

But it was at the last recital of the program at Youngstown, he recalled, that he was “discovered by voice teacher, David Starkey.” He was the one who “told me that I had a special voice and that I should pursue music.”

His music teachers weren’t the only one’s who took an interest in his voice. He met his manager Robert Mirshak in 2001 on the day of the Met’s final auditions where he was a winner. “We clicked from the outset and have worked very well together, ever since.”

When his agent sent two tapes of his voice to La Scala in the summer of 2002, he was floored when the company said it wanted to hear more. “They heard it [the tapes] and wanted me to come and audition for the second cast.” What was his reaction to the invitation? What would any young singer’s reaction be? “We couldn’t believe it,” he says, “I remember sitting in the Green Room at Seattle Opera as a young artist when my manager called me and asked if I was sitting down; I wasn't, but I did sit then. He proceeded to tell me that a very important theater wanted to hear me. . . ". And the rest, as they say, is history. "We went and auditioned thinking nothing would come of it.” Maybe he thought nothing of it, and took it as an opportunity to gain exposure, but La Scala thought differently. They hired him on the spot. “We were blown away,” he says, but “nervous and scared”. The chance to observe how things worked at a world class opera house was just too much to pass up, he remembers thinking. “I really got an opportunity to see how the household names of opera did it at the highest level.” It may sound strange, he points out, “but my first professional contract was from La Scala.”

Fast forward a couple years to May of 2004. Tim Page of the Washington Post attends a performance of Mr. Brownlee singing the role of King James V in “La donna del lago” and is equally “blown away” by what he hears and says so in his review using some pretty heady language. Audiences will look back on Mr. Brownlee’s performance that evening, Page wrote, as they do “soprano Montserrat Caballe when she dazzled Carnegie Hall with Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia in 1965; it was one of those nights when a star was born and carried all before her. Without taking the comparison too far, it is distinctly possible that Brownlee’s performance on Friday may some day be remembered with some of the same fondness.”

With all the success and glowing reviews you might think this guy has it made; he travels; he sings at the biggest houses and has more on tap [he’s scheduled to make debuts at the Met, Houston, Philadelphia, Valencia, Dresden, Tokyo] and these are just a few. He is currently in Germany singing at the Hamburgische Staatsoper in “La fille du régiment” until the end of June 2006, and he has enough job offers to make the most seasoned singer envious. On top of this he gets to rub shoulders with “the household names of opera [to see how they] did it at the highest levels.” But he hasn’t made it yet, he says. There’s still a lot of work to do.

Throughout his interview one aspect of Brownlee’s personality surfaces and seems to weigh heavily on his incentive to move forward, in spite of the sacrifice, which he says is considerable. He is grateful to those who helped him along the way and he feels obliged to deliver what both they and he expects, starting with the Richard Tucker Music Foundation for giving him, early on, the financial support he needed to pay for additional coaching, study of Italian, photos and other career benefits, not the least of which was its very name. The mere association with the Foundation, he says, opens doors. “Many doors started opening and people generally wanted to hear me because of this great recognition.”

There were others, too, along with his family that influenced his career: Corrado Rovaris, who has since become the music director of the Opera Company of Philadelphia, was the conductor whose “vote was the deciding factor” in landing his initial La Scala job. Speight Jenkins, general director of Seattle Opera was the one who told him to stay with Seattle and offered him the Silver Cast of “Don Pasquale”. And Stephen Lord, music director of Boston Lyric Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis”, who gave him his first job at the Opera Theatre as an apprentice in the summer of 1998 “and continues to be another critical mentor.”

“Thankful”, grateful”, “humbled”, these are words that flow sincerely and repeatedly in the course of our interview with a singer who has clearly remained anchored to an upbringing that taught him boasting was for others. “I am truly humbled and honored and I consider myself very fortunate for all that has happened in such a short time in my career. I had been told how hard it was and I would never have imagined that I would have achieved as much as I have.”

“My father said to me once,” he continued, “‘If a man has a million dollars, he doesn’t have to tell everyone -- because he knows’.” And so, the singer whose star is on the rise, whose calendar is full, and whose accolades flow like water from a jar, the man who has enjoyed, at various times, spending his off-hours working in the garden, playing sports, going fishing and dancing [Salsa particularly] “in other words doing normal everyday things”, as he assesses his life outside opera, and who advises “a strong work ethic and confidence” for those starting after him, turns out to be a regular guy, after all. “I am fortunate to have wonderful parents,” he says, “who were strict, but instilled in me many things that are part of my character. I have never been boastful or arrogant, because they taught me quiet confidence.”

Lawrence Brownlee never expected it, at least not as quickly as it has come. And even though he is just beginning his own career, he says those considering entering the profession of opera should prepare for hard work, sacrifice, loneliness, which he says can at times be extreme, and above all else, “knowing what you’re doing, knowing what type of singer you are, what type of voice you have and what it is you do that is special, that other people don’t do.” When asked if there is anything else, he answered, “I would also advise singers to enjoy singing.”

What struck this writer most, after an interview that ran on and off over a period of two weeks, was what Mr. Brownlee said last. It seemed to sum up the character of the man better than any interviewer could phrase it: “I am aware that I have a gift,” he concluded, “and am grateful, but it’s not in me to get caught up in that. I’m just another guy named Larry, who sings opera.”