Genaux1

“It was difficult for me, coming from Alaska,” she explained on the DVD, “because I always felt that the feminine side was not useful, since you’re always working in a very hostile environment where the most valuable characteristic you can have is knowing how to change a tire at 40 below – necessary survival skills – how to build a fire, all these things.”

THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENT:
The environment where she grew up, a log cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska, probably explains why this very feminine thirty-seven- year old with a gorgeous voice, counts so comfortably among her twenty-eight roles, twenty trouser parts. “No one person is 100% male or 100% female,” she told OperaOnline.us in October. “We are all a mixture of both facets, and we choose or are trained to react to various situations in different ways. That, for me, is the most important thing to study and bring on stage.” Where Genaux is concerned, it’s not the gender, but the “humanity” of the character being portrayed that is important. “It is this, which the audience comes to see,” she said.

This is a view shared, no doubt, by many singers; but is it a view also shared by today’s audiences? When questioned about the contemporary audience’s acceptance of women singing men’s roles, she said it was an area that was a “pet peeve” of hers. “I don’t need to physically see a male in a pants role to believe in the character’s humanity, his worth and what makes him attractive, repulsive, in conflict or in harmony with the characters with whom he interacts.”

To the extent there is a reaction, she said, the reaction seems to be less a factor in Europe than here in the states. In Europe, she explained, “the Baroque performances have a much higher percentage of young people in the audiences, as well as in the performing groups,” adding that in Europe the productions also seem to be more contemporary and, because of this, the overall affect seems to be more positive on younger audiences. Indeed, she noted, “it has been the older audience members who show little patience with women in pants roles, rather than younger ones.”

Ask if her Alaskan upbringing has played a role on her heavy-ended trouser parts and she’ll argue that if it has, it isn’t in the way you might expect. “I don’t think that [the harsh environment] has changed so much the roles that I look for, but it certainly makes me more comfortable in a greater variety of them."

It’s not a minor point.

COMING TO GRIPS WITH THE FEMININE SIDE:
Even though trouser roles are a natural for this singer, they are not to be taken for granted, for when she began her career, the first thing she had to come to grips with as a singer was the very thing she valued least as a woman – being feminine. “Being feminine,” she said, “wearing high heels, wearing make-up, wearing jewelry and things like that -- all the beautiful

things about being feminine – I never saw as being useful. And it took me a long time to take that wall down, to be feminine.”
That the walls came down quickly, like Jericho, is obvious. She appears in recital toward the end of the above DVD wearing a long, peach gown, necklace, earrings and make-up. She’s svelte, very sexy, very fit and displays a world class virtuosity of vocal technique that is luminescent. There’s no doubt that whatever preconceptions about gender that existed in her mind when she left Fairbanks to study Genetics at the University of Rochester at the tender age of eighteen in 1987, those views have long since vanished. Married and living with her husband outside Venice, Italy now, it can truly be said of Vivica Genaux that she has found satisfaction, recognition and success in whatever role she sings.

Indeed, today, she is at a point in her career where she is rated one of the top female mezzo’s in the world, noted for her fluid bel canto style and technically superlative vocal agility, as when navigating the tricky Baroque appoggiaturas [an embellishing note, usually one step above or below the note it precedes] common to the style of the Baroque period.

In addition to the trouser roles, which she has excelled at, Genaux has also made Rosina in “Il barbiere di Siviglia”, Angelina in “La Cenerentola,” and the feisty Isabella in “L’italiana in Algeri,” hers. As noted, she began her career with these roles, debuting as Isabella in Rossini’s “L’italiana” with the Florentine Opera in 1994 at the age of twenty-five. It’s an experience she recalled vividly. “I was terrified during the rehearsal process,” she said, “because I really didn’t have any stage experience other than the musical theater I had performed in high school, and here I was in a leading role with a real opera company. I would study my staging before and after rehearsals, practicing as much as possible so that they wouldn’t get wise to the fact that I had no idea what I was doing.”

If the debut was daunting to her, it must have been even more of a shock when she was approached opening night by Joseph Rescigno, Music Director and Dennis Hanthorn, General Director of Florentine. It began with a knock on her door. “Both looked a little ashen,’ she recalled. “They were holding programs. The programs were open to my bio page. ‘Is this really your debut?’, asked Dennis in a somewhat shaky voice. Well, I remember thinking to myself, ‘Vivica, it’s five minutes to curtain, you’ve got the wig on, the makeup and costume. They cannot send you away now’ and looking at them straight in the eye I responded, ‘Yes, it is.’”

She stayed and the show went on.

A STAR IS BORN:
From that first performance it was clear that a star was born and, as sometimes happens when fate steps in and takes your hand, the road to success was sealed. Sitting in the audience next to her mother, who accompanied her throughout the first six years of her career, was Ian Campbell from San Diego Opera who was seeing her for the first time. Once, was enough, apparently. During intermission Campbell leaned over and told her mother that he intended to hire her daughter not only for San Diego’s upcoming production of “L’italiana” but to sing Rosina in “Il barbiere . . .”.

It was “a good day” recalled Genaux, coming on the heels of being chosen to sing in Dallas Opera’s “Cenerentola” by Jonathan Pell, Dallas’ Director of Artistic Administration. Pell hired her right after hearing her perform in the Marguerite McCammon Competition in Fort Worth a year earlier. “He was enthusiastic about me from the beginning,” Genaux recalled, “and when I won the Competition he was on the phone the very next day telling everyone in the business about me.”

As she looks back, she muses now that, “the first three years were very good for me because I basically only sang those same three roles over and again, which gave me time to figure out what I was doing on stage. I was very fortunate,” she continued, “to have had that time performing and studying the same material. By the end of those three years, however, I felt people were seeing me as too limited in my rep.” At that point, she admitted, she “would have been happy to continue only singing those three roles.” But, of course, that’s not what happened.