Honeysucker2

You might think that after five years of college (he took an extra year to study piano) with a major in music, he would have had a clue about the direction his life was going to take, but that wasn’t the case. He just wasn’t ready. A campus civil rights activist in the early sixties, he says his life was tumultuous. He had been arrested twice on campus and was a close friend of the slain civil rights leader and local NAACP head, Medgar Evers. As his college days came to a close, he says he realized that his life wasn’t going anywhere. “I was pretty ready for something different, something that was perhaps less intense.” So in 1965, he decided to attend graduate school at Miami University in Ohio to pursue his music studies, still not sold on music as a career, though, calling it a “reactive rather than a proactive decision”. As with most of his life prior to then, he reacted to what opportunities existed, but never pursued music as a career choice, although he does admit that inside he wanted to sing, but just couldn’t bring himself to admit it either to himself or others.
It was right after attending graduate school that he received a call from “Pops” inviting him back to Tougaloo to take over the Music Department himself. “I went back and taught for five years,” he says, acknowledging that teaching didn’t interest him much back then.
But then a chance to sing opened in a most unusual way. It was an offer, not from an agent or singing coach, nor did it materialize in the form of an offer from a friend, or artistic director – it came from a nun, Sister Mary Elise. “I believe it was around 1970 or 71,” he recounts, “there was an opera company formed in Jackson, called Opera South. It was formed by this little nun, and little is probably the correct way to describe her in that she was probably all of five feet. But she had taught for years in New Orleans and had taught a lot of young singers, who came under her influence, and she knew a lot of talented Black singers out there not working. And so she founded this company, and she went around to various businesses and made them give her money to start this opera company. Now, you have to appreciate this: it’s Jackson Mississippi, and this Catholic nun, white, is going around to white businesses and making them give her money to start a Black opera company. That’s quite amazing, especially just coming out of that whole turbulence of the sixties, and there was still bitterness that existed among the power structure.”
It is evident that what Sr. Mary Elise lacked in physical size she made up for in determination and moral stature. She worked deals with several colleges, garnering from each what support she could get – choral singers from one, rehearsal halls from another, production materials from whomever she could call upon.
At its very first production, “Aida”, Sr. Elise approached Honeysucker and confided in him that she was having difficulty casting a particular role that, though it was small, was very important nonetheless. The role was that of the high priest, Ramfiss. She asked the choral coach if he would be interested in singing the part. “And I said, yeah, sure, fine. And we got the hall and started rehearsing, and then that was the epiphany. That was when I got to use the Biblical analogy of Saul being knocked off his horse, and I was figuratively knocked on my ass – and that’s when I said, this is what I want to do.”
He says it was only after this that he really began to size up his strengths and weaknesses and arrange his life to follow his newfound dream. “I realized that I could not stay in Mississippi. I had to be someplace where I could study. I also knew I was nowhere near where I needed to be to do anything of any significance. I decided to pack up and head off. I didn’t even know enough to know where I had to go. I knew New York and the Met, and that New York was the place where things happened. I knew it had to be East. It was daunting, but I knew what I had to do.”
He managed to secure some grant money and come back to Boston to enroll in the doctorate DMA program at Boston University. After a couple years, however, singing fairly regularly in various programs and concerts, and turning forty, he realized he needed less in the area of education than he did specialized training and greater experience on a stage. “I needed to be about learning to sing, catching up. By this time most of the singers out there are pretty much out there establishing their careers.”
He found an instructor, a voice teacher at Boston University, who agreed to tutor him in the areas he needed to know most. Her name was Mary Davenport. “She was a very, very good teacher for me,” he says. “She taught at Boston University, but I didn’t start studying with her until I left the school.” Describing her as a “technical teacher” Honeysucker says he learned a great deal from her.
Having made the decision to sing, casting all indecision and doubt aside, he says he “began auditioning for companies in the area, and started getting small jobs” in Boston, through the Lyric Opera and Sarah Caldwells opera company as well as a number of singing opportunities in Rhode Island. “With Opera Company of Boston I was doing ensemble and chorus and some comprimario roles and was about to make a living off it.” He secured a New York agent and started getting auditions and jobs out of state. “And slowly, things started to come along.” By the mid-eighties he was invited to sing in New Zealand and tour in the Middle East singing excerpts from Aida, and through another singer who was unhappy with the work her agent was giving her, he embarked on a tour to London, where he was noticed and landed more regular work in full opera productions.
When he returned to Boston the Boston Lyric Opera hired him for three of its productions: “Carmen”, “Luisa Miller” and “L’Italiana in Algeri” – and he has been busy ever since.
Since the mid-nineties, Robert Honeysucker has entertained and charmed audiences from Fort Worth, Tulsa, Utah and California to Boston with his deep, resonant bass-baritone voce, and just recently has returned from a tour in Japan. He has sung in Germany and Austria, and has been a regular with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and has sung with the Roanoke, Flagstaff, Omaha, St. Luis, Portland, Sacramento and Tokyo symphony orchestras. He conducts classes at the New England Conservatory of Music (vocal and Master Classes), Mount Holyoke College (private vocal), the Boston Conservatory of Music (vocal instruction) and at the Longy School of Music (vocal instruction). His discography includes performances with three Videmus discs: “Music of William Grant Still” (New World), “Watch and Pray” (Koch International), “More Still” (Cambria), “Starlight and Sweet Dreams” (Centaur) and “Highway 1, USA” (Albany).
He reflects back at the end of out interview and comments with a smile that it’s been a very interesting life. Now, however, at 62, he says he wants to enjoy it more and travel less. “I’ve always enjoyed opera,” he says, “and it will always have a special place in my heart in terms of what I enjoy doing, but I don’t enjoy the extended periods away from home, having to make every place you go home.” He’s a nester, he says “because of my childhood being so unsettled and nomadic. I don’t think I ever lived in one place longer than three years” So, does this mean his days of traveling outside the state to sing opera are over? No, he says, pointing to his recent tour of Japan. It just means, he says, “when I settle in a place, it takes a lot to get me to leave.”
The reluctant singer who emphasizes that most of the choices in his life have been reactive rather than proactive, has finally settled in and appears more mellow than he probably was when he was a young civil rights activist attending Tougaloo College. He is also more mature now, too: confident, accomplished and content that the choices he has made, even those he backed into, turned out for the best. “As a younger man I was aiming for the now,” he says. “I auditioned for the Met, LaScala, Chicago, Now, it's not as important that I do that. For me, it's important that in my life and in my work, I have affected people."