Corrections or additions?
This article by Elaine Strauss was prepared for the October 22,
2003 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Boheme Opera’s `Carmen’
Mezzo-soprano Lori-Kaye Miller has so thoroughly
absorbed
the character she plays in the Bizet opera that sometimes she says
"I" when she means "Carmen." Moreover, she accounts
for Bizet’s torrid protagonist with an immediacy that even a Valley
Girl could understand.
"Carmen" opens the Boheme Opera Company’s 2003-’04 season,
its 15th, in the Patriot Theater of the Trenton War Memorial.
Performances
are Friday, October 24, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, October 26, at 3 p.m.
Appearing with Miller are tenor Thomas Roche as Don Jose, baritone
Daniel Sutin as Escamillo, and soprano Addina Aaron as Micaela. Miller
and Roche are making return appearances with the company. Reegan
McKenzie,
who made her directing debut with Boheme Opera last season, directs
"Carmen." McKenzie, a dramatic soprano, is also active as
a voice teacher and dramatic coach. Joseph R. Pucciatti, who was
present
at the creation of the opera company, conducts. The opera is sung
in French, and has English supertitles.
"Carmen is full of games," says Miller in a telephone
interview.
"She toys with people a lot. She knows what she wants and she
gets it. She’s been doing it for years. The poor soul who comes along
and doesn’t know her games gets sucked in."
"In her first aria, the `Habanera,’ she says, `If you love me,
I’m not interested, but if I love you, beware." Miller sings out
the relevant text into the telephone. "Carmen likes a challenge
and Don Jose is not paying attention to her. She thinks, `I don’t
really want him. But he is kind of cute." She underlines the word
"is" with her voice.
"Don Jose could have married a nice girl, Micaela," says
Miller,
"but he gets involved with this sorceress. Carmen keeps doing
her thing. Then Escamillo the toreador is her next victim. By the
third act Don Jose’s mother is dying and he decides to go home to
see her. Carmen thinks, `Good. I’m tired of you anyway.’ Don Jose
is saying, `But Carmen, I love you.’ I’m rolling my eyes, thinking,
`He’s going to whine for the next 15 minutes.’"
I imagine an impatient Miller-Carmen, tight-jawed, one hand on a hip,
looking upward. Her rejection of Don Jose clarifies his situation.
Poor fellow, he has a double motive for wishing the worst for Carmen.
By joining her and the smugglers, he has thrown away his chances for
success in the army. And, perhaps more important personally, Carmen
has abandoned him and is pursuing Escamillo.
Miller continues: "When Don Jose starts getting violent at the
bullfight in the final act, I tell him, `I’m not afraid of you. I
heard that you were here, and heard that you were thinking of taking
my life. I tell him, `I’m not yours. No one owns me.’ I say, `Go
away’."
Miller delivers these words in decisive staccato syllables. "I
don’t want you anymore." Here she sounds heartless. "But I’m
getting a little scared. I already know that something is not right
because I got the death card from the fortune telling cards. I take
off the ring that he gave me. I throw the ring at him. He calls me
a demon and stabs me."
"The way I want to play the final scene is: I cannot believe that
this is happening. Men are always in love with me. I’m invincible
and I have everything under control. How can a crybaby like you kill
me?"
Miller speaks the dialogue with passion. From time to time during
our conversation she sings musical excerpts to flesh out her summary
of the tragically familiar story line.
Born in 1971, Miller comes from a musical family. Her father, who
came from Tennessee, and her Mississippian mother met through church
choirs, and later moved to Chicago. When Lori-Kaye was growing up
the family lived two hours around the lake from Chicago, in South
Haven, Michigan. Her father sang spirituals in a quartet. Both parents
are now retired. Father Miller was a truck mechanic. Miller labels
her encouraging mother "a secretary-schoolteacher
extraordinaire."
Miller lived for a time in Manhattan, but moved to Atlanta in January.
"I needed a break from the pressure cooker of Manhattan and
settled
for more space and less money," she says. However, she keeps her
Manhattan address. "A singer has to have a presence in
Manhattan,"
she adds.
Miller is the youngest of seven children, all of whom,
as she puts it "did something in music." Among the siblings
were three pianists, a clarinetist, a percussionist, and two
violinists.
Miller and her next older sibling performed as "The Wilson
Sisters,"
duo-violinists.
At age 13 Miller heard a Leontyne Price recording of George Gershwin’s
"Summertime" from "Porgy and Bess" and was captivated.
"Hearing that recording made me decide to take voice lessons,"
she says. Her first voice teacher, Sally Wheeler of South Haven, has
stayed solidly in her memory. "When I was 15," Miller says
"the Michigan Opera tour of `La Boheme’ came to my school. That
solidified it. I cried at the end when Mimi was dying."
Still, Miller continued with her violin. After attending the
well-known
Interlochen, Michigan, summer music camp as a violinist, she
auditioned
for the camp’s Blue Lake International Orchestra. She also auditioned
as a vocalist. The orchestra toured in Germany, Belgium, and the
Netherlands.
At the University of Akron Miller trained as a soprano, but found
the soprano vocal register limiting. "I knew I had low notes,"
she says. "I did competitions as a soprano, but toward the end
of my sophomore year, my wins were dwindling. When judges talked to
me after the competitions they would tell me that there was more voice
there."
"My real training was at the Tri-Cities Opera Company in
Binghamton
[in upstate New York], where I became a mezzo overnight. I married.
My husband was a tenor. He auditioned and got into the training
program
at Tri-Cities. I followed him. My voice teacher still teases me. `You
walked into the audition with a soprano aria,’ he says, `and you
sounded
just like a mosquito.’ To break the barrier he assigned me the role
of Tituba in Robert Ward’s `The Crucible.’ It’s really a contralto
role."
Miller’s repertoire includes two famous trouser roles: Cherubino,
in Mozart’s "Marriage of Figaro," which she has performed
with Opera Carolina, and Octavian in Strauss’ "Der
Rosenkavalier,"
a part for which she has high hopes. Comparing the trouser roles and
her female parts she says, "It’s like night and day. I like being
versatile. People find me convincing in all sorts of roles.
"Sopranos are always nice. Mezzos are the witch, the bitch, the
pants role, or the maid," she says with relish.
"Octavian is the meat of my voice. But there’s never been a black
Octavian as far as I know," says Miller. "I would like to
become known for the role. I came close when I was covering Octavian
at the Minnesota Opera. The mezzo got sick, but decided to go on,
so I didn’t get to sing."
"There are a lot of things that black singers haven’t done,"
Miller says. "Normally, we don’t sing the leading pants roles.
There’s no black Figaro. I’m really not sure why. Perhaps it’s hard
to accept a black man playing a romantic role opposite a white woman.
A recent article in a Dallas newspaper about discrimination in opera
mentions this."
"I’m not conscious of my color when I’m singing," Miller says.
"But when I go to the opera and see no blacks, I think `Why not
blacks?’ It makes it seem as if there are no black opera singers out
there. There are a lot of us. We have so many good singers. But blacks
don’t go to hear opera because of the lack of black singers."
Miller describes yet another worry. Speaking from experience, she
says, "When ethnic children see their own kind on stage, their
faces light up. They think, `This is something I could do.’ But in
the real world, this may not be true. In the colleges they would do
OK, but in the professional world it could be different. I try to
be optimistic that things will change."
Without fanfare, Boheme Opera has incorporated blacks and Asians into
its casts and major roles, and won critical acclaim. However, the
majority of Boheme performers are white, just as they are in other
mainstream opera companies.
"Opera is predominantly white," Miller says. "But what
would happen if all the cast were ethnic? Would you not go to opera
because of that? Obese opera singers play romantically attractive
roles. Why not open all roles to blacks and Asians?"
— Elaine Strauss
Memorial, Trenton, 609-581-7200. Directed by Reegan McKenzie, with
music direction by Joseph Pucciatti. Sung in French with English
supertitles.
Pre-curtain talk 75 minutes before each performance. $20 to $55.
Friday,
October 24, 8 p.m. and Sunday, October 26, 3 p.m.
Corrections or additions?
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— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
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