Upshaw, Dawn

views updated

Dawn Upshaw

Opera singer

Natural Talent Combined With Scholarship

Even though Dawn Upshaw is one of the most sought-after contemporary performers on the operatic and concert stage, she is in some ways an unlikely star. Raised by parents who, as amateur performers, specialized in songs by folk greats Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan, her early musical heroes were Linda Ronstadt and Barbra Streisand, and she even briefly considered a career singing commercial jingles. She was not at all impressed by her first exposure to opera—a production of Rossini’s Barber of Seville— while she was in high school and did not become serious about singing operatic roles until her audition in 1984 for the Metropolitan Opera’s (Met) Young Concert Artists program.

Even after achieving international fame, Upshaw is something of an atypical celebrity—an “anti-diva,” as David Patrick Stearns of Stereo Review has called her. In a profession where monumental egos have become legendary, Upshaw remains modest and self-critical, once telling Gramophone’s Edward Seckerson, “I don’t have an incredible voice; I don’t think that I have a particularly individual sound.” And although the rigorous demands of a performing career have been known to wreak havoc on the families of many artists, Upshaw has carefully guarded her private life, often bringing her husband and daughter with her on tour and insisting on at least one full month off a year to spend with them. As she confided to Stearns, “I’ve always found my sense of identity from my family, not through performing. And that will always be most important.”

An Inventive Performer

As remarkable as Upshaw’s path to stardom has been, her choice of repertoire and the manner in which she has presented it in recital and on recording. Although she has been widely acclaimed in mainstream operatic roles, such as those in Mozart’s operas, she made a commitment early in her career to champion contemporary music, especially works by American composers. She has followed through on her decision by premiering roles—such as the lead in William Mayer’s controversial Death in the Family— programming contemporary vocal literature on her recitals, and recording works by such American composers as John Harbison, Gian Carlo Menotti, Samuel Barber, and Charles Ives.

Upshaw has also tried to bring a new freshness to the time-honored traditions of the vocal recital; she enjoys chatting with the audience during her performances and occasionally builds recitals around a single theme. In one performance she chose “Childhood,” beginning with the Mussorgsky song cycle The Nursery and ending

For the Record…

Born July 17, 1960, in Nashville, TN; daughter of a psychotherapist and a teacher; married Michael Nott (a musicologist), 1986; children: Sarah Elizabeth. Education: Illinois Wesleyan University, B.A., 1982; Manhattan School of Music, M.A., 1984; studied with Jan DeGaetani at summer workshops in Aspen, CO.

Opera singer and concert performer. Attended apprenticeship program and debuted as Countess Ceprano in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1984-85; sang soprano lead in premiere of William Mayer’s Death in the Family, St. Louis, MO, 1986; replaced Kathleen Battle as Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Metropolitan Opera, 1988; sang in four Mozart productions, Metropolitan Opera, 1991-92; appeared in concert with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and other ensembles; toured with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; performed in festivals in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Aix-en-Provence, France, 1992.

Selected awards: Winner of Young Concert Artists International Auditions, 1984; first prize, Walter Naumberg Vocal Competition, 1985; Grammy awards, 1989, for Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and 1991, for The Girl With Orange Lips.

Addresses: Agent —Agnes Bruneau and Associates, 155 West 68th Street, No. 1010, New York, NY 10023. Record company —Elektra/Nonesuch, 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10019.

with Brahms’s lullaby. Her inventiveness is even visible in the packaging of her second solo recording, The Girl With Orange Lips, which features a provocative photo of her taken at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. “People have an idea of what classical records should look like,” she expressed to Stearns, “and I think that’s a little ridiculous.”

Although she sang informally with her parents and was a choir member in high school, Upshaw began her formal music training at Illinois Wesleyan, where she studied with David Nott. Nott’s son Michael, a musicologist, became Upshaw’s husband in 1986. After graduating, the singer moved to New York, where she studied voice with Ellen Faull at the Manhattan School of Music. During summer workshops in Aspen at this time, she became acquainted with Jan DeGaetani, considered one of the country’s outstanding vocal interpreters of contemporary music. DeGaetani had a profound impact on Upshaw’s career; as Upshaw told Susan Elliott of the New York Times, “I was always aware of Jan’s particular devotion to 20th-century music; but also, just from watching and listening to her, I learned how important it is to have a lot of respect for myself. To do things I think are important.”

Began Road to International Career

The first important stepping-stone in Upshaw’s career was her success in 1984 at international auditions sponsored by Young Concert Artists, which led to an apprenticeship at the Metropolitan Opera. Upshaw made her operatic debut there during the 1984-85 season, singing the small role of Countess Ceprano in Verdi’s Rigoletto. She also developed a friendship and important working relationship with the Met’s artistic director, James Levine, with whom she has since appeared on several recordings.

In 1985 Upshaw shared first prize in the Naumberg competition, subsequently giving a recital at the Lincoln Center and recording her first solo disc for Musicmasters. Another major break came at the Met in 1988, when she filled in for an ailing Kathleen Battle in the role of Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. Upshaw’s career has skyrocketed ever since; she has received requests to perform at opera houses and festivals throughout the United States and Europe, has traveled on lengthy recital tours, and has appeared on several highly acclaimed recordings, two of which have won Grammy Awards.

Natural Talent Combined With Scholarship

Throughout her career Upshaw has been praised for the warmth and freshness of her tone and the effortlessness of her vocal technique. Reviewing Upshaw’s performance as Pamina in Mozart’s Magic Flute, Bernard Holland of the New York Times called her “the radiant pure center of the evening.” In addition, David Stearns has written of her “spring-water-fresh vocal quality, rare directness, and simplicity of manner.”

Yet, part of what has made Upshaw a truly outstanding artist has been her striving for more than just sheer beauty of tone. As she told Connoisseur’s Elizabeth Riely, “I don’t think about sound alone in singing. That comes before. Ultimately, in performance I forget about the technique. I try to get the message across through the music the composer has written.” To do this, Upshaw studies the texts of the pieces she sings in tremendous depth, exploring the details and nuances of the words in order to communicate them to her audience. “I try to have a solid understanding of the text—not just what it’s saying, but what it means and why the composer has set it in a particular way,” she commented to Elliot. “And I go for a certain naturalness and simplicity, because through that, the message gets across much more easily than fussing about how I’m standing or even singing.”

It is the unlikely collection of elements she embodies—the informal, “girl-next-door” image combined with a brash sense of musical adventure and a profound dedication to the art of singing—that has no doubt endeared Upshaw to audiences, critics, and fellow musicians. Although the singer herself may at times seem surprised at the turns her life has taken, there are those who find her talent a natural gift that could not go unexpressed. As the great conductor Robert Shaw declared, according to Elliott, “It’s [Upshaw’s] nature to sing, just like it’s a bird’s nature. That’s why she’s here on earth.”