No one would characterize mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves’ rise to the top ranks of the operatic world as a bed of roses. It’s clear when you talk with her that she sometimes questions the physical and emotional toll of traveling most of the year to opera houses around the world. But you also feel that she is compelled to sing, that it’s part of her core and that opera comes first.
This art form was unknown to her growing up in a single-parent home in Southwest Washington, feeling out of sync with the neighborhood. Her mother made sure that Denyce and her two siblings had plenty of projects to keep them off the streets, limited their television viewing, and went to church numerous times every week. They sang in the church choir and had their own gospel group, performing in churches around the District. The neighborhood kids dubbed Denyce “Hollywood.”
Judith Allen taught Graves and her siblings music in elementary and middle school. Calling the relationship “a love affair between teacher and family,” Allen got permission from Graves’ mother to take Denyce to music events on weekends, including an opera at the Kennedy Center. “It wasn’t her voice then. … It was how she fell in love with the music and what it did for her life,” Allen says.
Once Graves got to Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a public school in Georgetown, when she was 14, her music teacher there suggested that she listen to a Leontyne Price recording of Puccini, as a way to study legato singing.
“They were the most breathtaking, exquisitely beautiful sounds that I had ever heard. I cut class to keep listening; I didn’t eat. That sealed the deal,” Graves recalls. Years later she got to know Price and made sure that the older woman understood what a profound effect the recording had on her.
Allen, who had become assistant principal at Ellington, was invited to Graves’ vocal test in front of the music faculty and says that she could hear Graves’ voice growing. After Graves’ dazzling performance at senior recital, Allen knew she could be a star — if she got the chance. “Something had to be done,” Allen says. “I knew her mother’s circumstances.”
After Allen told the culture club at her church, D.C.’s Zion Baptist, that Graves was “going to be the next Leontyne Price and I don’t think we want her to fall through the cracks,” Allen helped organize a public recital to help with her college expenses. Graves has since sung at Zion several times — which shows, Allen says, that the singer is a person who never forgets those who have helped her.
After making her entrance from upstairs for a recent interview, the diva is sitting in her theatrically decorated house in suburban Washington, complete with a grand piano and masses of white roses. Graves is gorgeous in a green chiffon party dress, a real presence, but on this day she also exudes a soft vulnerability.
After high school, she followed her voice teacher, Helen Hodam, first to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, then to the New England Conservatory, working multiple jobs to pay tuition. Graves’ first setback came in 1986, when she was forced to withdraw from the finals of the Metropolitan Opera auditions because of severe vocal problems. She went through consultations with many doctors before being diagnosed with a treatable thyroid condition.
Frustrated and unwell, she took a job as a secretary and stopped singing.
The Houston Grand Opera was her salvation, inviting her to audition for its young artists training program. She had not sung for more than a year, and it took three calls from the opera and the encouragement of friends to prompt her to try. She sang her first lead role in Houston and met Placido Domingo, a longtime mentor.
After three years in Houston, her career took off. Graves has sung with all of the Three Tenors — Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and Jose Carreras — and at many of the world’s most famous opera houses, including the Vienna State Opera, La Scala in Milan, Italy, and London’s Royal Opera. She has also performed at venues from baseball games to state funerals to Sen. Edward Kennedy’s recent birthday celebration at the Kennedy Center, singing spirituals, patriotic songs and show tunes, along with opera.
“There’s music in our house nonstop. I enjoy other kinds of music, but my heart, soul and temperament are attracted to classical music,” Graves says. “I’m an honest singer — the stage is a magnifying glass, you can’t lie. I’m so moved by music, I still get tremendously nervous. I’m an emotional creature. … I wish my skin were tougher and my heart was not so open.”
Then there is Carmen, the Spanish cigarette girl in Bizet’s opera of the same name. She first performed the role with the Minnesota Opera in 1991, and has sung it dozens more times since. Her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1995 was as Carmen. Many critics and opera professionals believe her to be the quintessential Carmen. Graves herself is more measured when she talks about her connection to Carmen and her other signature role, Dalila in Saint-Saens’ “Samson et Dalila.”
“I’m not sure I was called to them as an artist, but they suit my voice and temperament,” Graves said. “Carmen is courageous, crafty and in charge of her own destiny. Dalila is as dedicated to her God as Samson, they’re equals. They are the girls who were sent to me, but I’m not like them.”
In 2000, Graves suffered a round of crises that marked a turning point in her career. She had an emotional breakdown; her marriage of 15 years collapsed; her vocal cords began bleeding; her voice dropped to a stage whisper.
Tests revealed a non-cancerous polyp on her vocal chords. Surgeons removed it in 2001, and Graves told no one because the opera world often writes off singers who have vocal surgery.
Her return to singing couldn’t have been more public — she performed “America the Beautiful” and the “Lord’s Prayer” for the memorial service at Washington’s National Cathedral following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Her career got back on track.
“I don’t have a role that’s a cakewalk,” she says. “I’m judged by my last one, and I have to compete with myself at this point in my career. I’m doing something that I really love, and I’m fortunate to be able to make a living doing it. But there’s a great personal cost.”
After living for seven years in France, Graves returned to Washington without her French musician husband, but with their 4-year-old daughter, the object of great maternal doting. Most of her family is in the area, and at 45, she wants to feel more rooted somewhere.
“I have six enormous suitcases upstairs that I haven’t unpacked from my last engagement,” she says. “It’s increasingly difficult to have long periods away. My daughter functions better when there’s a sense of order and belonging.”
Somehow it seems that at this point in her life, the diva functions better that way as well.
