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USOperaWeb Talks to Quintessential
American Singer Robert Orth

By Robert Wilder Blue

Baritone Robert Orth is regarded as one of the finest singing actors on the opera stage today. He is a favorite of many American composers and has garnered great acclaim in new American roles. Operagoers invariably note his complete involvement in the role, his use of the voice and his acting talent to inhabit a character and bring it to life on the stage. During the current season, two new American operas play prominently in his schedule, Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, and later this month, Michael John LaChiusa's Lovers and Friends (Chautauqua Variations).

Robert Orth

Not unlike many American singers today, he came to the opera stage by way of public school teaching and musical theater. "I grew up in Illinois (Chicago), Texas and Montana. We always sang in church -- where else do people sing these days besides church? My mother is a church singer, she's got the big voice in the family. My father didn't have a trained voice but he certainly was a musician and could read music. I have three brothers who still live in Billings. It was funny, when I was doing Dead Man Walking in San Francisco, my mother came to see me, and a couple days later she went to Billings to see one of my younger brothers in The Medium and other one in Madame Butterfly. So she saw three of her sons do three operas in a week.

"I went to a small, country elementary school. We didn't really have a choir but I managed to put together some performances. I went to high school in Billings and sang in choir and started studying voice when I was seventeen. Then, I went to Wheaton College, near Chicago, or as we used to say, 25 miles right of the University of Chicago - it was a very conservative school. They didn't have an opera program; in fact they hardly had a theater department. I studied voice and sang in the choir and did some solo work. I wasn't really interested in opera then; I liked musical theater. After I got my bachelor of music education degree, I started teaching public school and got married and had two children. During vacations I did summer stock, both musicals and plays, which I loved. But at some point they stopped hiring me for musicals - they were looking for rock-type singers in the 70s. So, I began to do some of the summer opera programs. I was at Wolf Trap and some people from Western Opera Theater [San Francisco] and Texas Opera Theater [Houston] heard me and offered me roles in their touring companies. But the work was during the school year, so I said no. I continued to get offers for work while I was teaching and after a year or two, my wife suggested I take a leave from teaching for a year to see if I could get work singing. I never went back.

"I did a lot of American opera during that period: Menotti's The Telephone, which was also recorded and Amahl and the Night Visitors, and Douglas Moore's Galantry, a one-act soap opera. To me these were like musicals, and part of the reason I loved doing them was that I connected with them on the same level I did with musicals, and of course, they were in English. I did Vittorio Giannini's The Taming of the Shrew with Anna Moffo and Julian Patrick at Wolf Trap; that's a wonderful opera. To me, the music sounded a little like a Hollywood film score. I played one of the suitors. My two sons were about 8 years old at the time and they played little street ruffians. It was fun to have them onstage with me.

"The first premiere I did was Rosina by Hyram Titus, with Minnesota Opera at the Guthrie Theater. That is a terrific piece. It is based on the third of the Beaumarchais plays, La mère coupable. I played Count Almaviva, who had come to Paris and found Rosina living in a garret with Cherubino and their newborn child. Barbara Field constructed a fine libretto using a ruby ring as a kind of motor propelling the story along.

"There are so many pieces I've done once that I would like to do again. Of course, tastes change. After a while, there's sort of an antique value to some of these pieces. It's like those kidney-shaped coffee tables from the 60s that are chic again. Perhaps some of the pieces that have gone away for awhile, like The Crucible and The Ballad of Baby Doe, which are viewed as being old-fashioned, will be viewed differently when they come back. They will evoke a certain period historically.

"And there was Lee Hoiby's Summer and Smoke which I did on stage and on television in the early '70s. He writes wonderful stuff. Many people say his music is very Straussian, with the wonderful sweeping melodies; it's very dramatic music and there's a great sense of theater. I did the revival of Dominick Argento's The Aspern Papers in Washington, D.C. as well as his Waterbird Talk, which is wonderful. It's a one-act, one-person show, based on a Chekhov monologue.

"In 1991, I was invited by Chicago Lyric to do Hugo Weisgall's Six Characters in Search of an Author in its first production since its premiere in 1959 at New York City Opera. We made a live recording, although on listening to it, I'm afraid I wasn't as musically accurate as I would like to have been. Six Characters is so abstract, it really helps to see it. But the nature of its abstraction lends itself to so many different ways of producing it. I got a chance to do it again last summer with Opera Festival of New Jersey. That production was very different from the one in Chicago. We got a lot of good press in New York, and they began to wonder when City Opera would take it up again. I'm hoping they read that!

"When we were doing Six Characters in Chicago, Weisgall was there, of course. At first he seemed kind of curmudgeonly, but he warmed up. He told me he liked my work on Six Characters and asked me to do Esther, which had been commissioned by San Francisco Opera. I said yes, of course, and became very excited about it. But then San Francisco cancelled it. NYCO did it but I wasn't involved in that production. It was a huge hit there."

Robert Orth as Harvey Milk. Photo by Jim Caldwell, Courtesy of Houston Grand Opera, 1995

In 1995, Mr. Orth played the title role in Stewart Wallace's and Michael Korie's new opera based on the life and death of the notorious, gay San Francisco City Supervisor, Harvey Milk.

"Harvey Milk was a big deal for me because it got so much exposure. One day, David Gockley's secretary left a message on my machine saying that Mr. Gockley would like me to call him. Well he never does that, so I knew something was up. When I called him back, he answered the phone right away. He asked me if I knew who Harvey Milk was and started telling me about the opera. He gave me a pitch about the theme of the opera, about the power of one person to change things. But knowing who Harvey Milk was, I knew there was more to the story. He asked if he could send me the music that had been written up to that point and I said, 'absolutely.' After looking it over, I was very interested and told them I'd love to do it. I went to New York to meet with the composer and librettist, Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie, and the director, John Dew. I sang a little for Stewart so he could get a sense of my voice and range, and talked to the director about the role. It was very exciting.

"The first act was ready by the time I signed the contract - about a year and a half before the premiere -- but the final act was not ready until a month or so before we began rehearsals. It seemed to me that one of the problems with the piece in Houston and New York was that the second act was very unbalanced between Harvey and Dan White - White had so much more to sing. I told the composer, 'gee, I hardly have anything to do in the last act.' But, there wasn't time to revise it before Houston or New York. By the time we did it in San Francisco they had added a magnificent aria and a couple of pages here and there for Harvey, and they had cut Dan White's part a bit so it put things back into balance.

"To prepare for the role, I looked for everything I could find about Harvey; I read the book [The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts] and saw the wonderful documentary [The Times of Harvey Milk, Rob Epstein, director] and talked to several people who had known him. I'm not sure how much effect that actually had on the performance, but it was interesting and helped me become more involved in the character and the piece. You start forming ideas in your head about the character as you read the libretto. But we determined very on that I was not going to do a Harvey Milk imitation. First of all, I was singing and he didn't. Mostly, we were trying to be faithful to his story and what he was like as a person. Sometimes I wondered if I could have done a little more of a New York accent or tried to look like him a little more, but that was not what the director or anyone else wanted, and that was fine with me.

"In the rest of the country Harvey Milk was not well known, but in San Francisco I was very aware that people who knew him would be coming to the opera. In fact, at our opening night in Houston, there were a whole raft of people who knew him, including his former lover, Scott. I was thrilled that they liked it. In San Francisco, the audience always roared at that first sight of Julianna Gondek as Dianne Feinstein - that wig.

"The City Opera performances were really terrible and I'm embarrassed when people tell me they remember me from those performances. The opening night was the worst night in the theater I've ever had. We got it together after a couple of performances, but that opening night, when all the critics were there, was just a nightmare. It was sad. Christopher Keene was very sick at the time and City Opera was having lots of problems. We simply weren't prepared. We had not rehearsed it properly. On opening night, Robynne Redmon, who had not done it in Houston, was walking around backstage stunned during the first intermission. I asked her if she was okay and she said, 'You know those dreams you have about being on stage and you don't know what's happening?' And I said, 'yes, that's what this is, isn't it?' I've done so many things at City Opera that have been very good, but that was not one of them.

"By the time we got to San Francisco it was much better. In Houston and New York, we had used body mikes because the composer wanted that. But in San Francisco we did not, so the orchestration needed to be changed. And the revisions to my part were wonderful. It was great to make the recording also.

"Shortly after we had done Harvey Milk in San Francisco, I was driving in my car listening to Prairie Home Companion on NPR and Flicka [Frederica von Stade] was singing a song by 'a young composer' named Jake Heggie. She announced that he was writing a new opera for San Francisco based on Dead Man Walking. Early the next morning, I got on the phone with my agent in New York and told her about it -- no one knew anything about it at the time -- and told her to call San Francisco and tell them I wanted in on it! I had no idea what role I would be doing - I didn't care - it sounded wonderful to me. I thought the song Flicka had sung was wonderful. I loved the film and it sounded like an extremely exciting project. When I told Jake this story later, he told me that he and Lotfi [Mansouri, General Director of San Francisco Opera] had already been talking about me for the role I ended up playing, Owen Hart, the father of one of the victims.

"We did a workshop the summer before the premiere. We worked on it for about a week and we were all just blown away by the piece at that point. We did two presentations in a small rehearsal room for the company people and the money people. Everyone was overwhelmed.

"When I do a new piece, I'm afraid to be too hopeful in a way. I can't help it, of course, when it seems good. But, during the first few days of rehearsals no one says much. As for Dead Man Walking, it seemed so good I wondered if I dared hope it would go somewhere. So many pieces don't go anywhere. You put a lot of yourself into learning them and you almost have to protect yourself against getting too optimistic. There's always a little reserve at the beginning. But eventually you can't help but become enthusiastic. And by opening night, you are so committed to it you hope everyone likes it as much as you do.

"What scares me about doing new operas is that people, critics especially, are making a judgment on one hearing. I don't know about other people, but I can't judge anything on just one hearing. A brilliant piece of music cannot be comprehended the first time. Surely it has to make an impact so that you want to hear it again. The first time I heard some of the Mozart operas, I thought they were nice but I didn't see what was so great about them. So, you learn to shut up and wait until you've gone through something several times to form an opinion. When you perform these pieces, you live with them. Part of the privilege of doing what I do is that I get to live with the music rather than just going to hear it once. I'm always a little appalled when a critic tries to write some profound reaction after one hearing.

"Dead Man Walking was really a fantastic experience. It had its problems along the way, of course, which is part of the normal creative process. At times, we were wondering if it was working. Changes were being made constantly and that is always hard for everyone. But with this piece, we really had a sense of being part of something very special.

"The thing I loved about it, and about Harvey Milk also, was that they were about something so important. It means so much more to me to be involved in pieces that are about important issues in my own time. It is much rewarding than doing something about someone's mistaken identity or the family honor. Those things are okay but they are not concepts that hit people on a gut level any more.

"To prepare for Dead Man Walking, I read some material written by and about people whose loved ones had been murdered. I discovered there was an organization for friends and family of murder victims. There's so much on the Internet - we passed around stories among ourselves that people had found. But, I don't think you have to have had a child die to be able to play this role. You need a certain basic humanity and a great script and music. There are roles where you feel as though you are creating something out of nothing, you have to use all your tricks to create the character to keep the audience's attention. But with a piece like this, it's all there in the words and the music.

"I have always been against the death penalty as long as I can remember. But that was not this character's position. I would never assume to know what I would feel like if something should happen to one of my boys. There are people who can forgive and meet with their child's killer and almost become a parent to the killer! I'm in awe of that. Others are angry and want the death of the killer. In some ways that makes more sense to me - it's not hard to imagine that. Of course, this death is different because of the long build-up to it. And, the fact that in our own time, it's the State, the government, that says 'we are going to kill this man on this day and this is how we are going to do it.' He knows it's going to happen, everyone knows it's going to happen.

"A couple of critics beat it up because it didn't take a stronger position on the death penalty. They thought it was an opportunity missed to make a strong statement about the death penalty. But how many companies would do an opera if it were about the death penalty? We weren't trying for a sermon.

"I've always loved singing in English. It is probably because I started out in musical theater. I've never understood my colleagues who say they hate singing in English because it's such an ugly language. It's the language of Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams! It's not ugly at all, it's a beautiful language. Finally, now though, opera singers are learning to sing in English. Pop singers have known how to do it all along. There are some composers who don't know how to set American English very well, but Jake does it beautifully.

"When I quit teaching to sing full-time, there weren't surtitles at the time. A lot of the smaller companies were doing opera in English and their audiences were growing because of it. Yet most of the singers resented having to sing in English. Many of them could not be understood in English. I believe that being understood in English is a matter of intent. If you want to be understood, you'll figure out how to sing in English. Furthermore, this is America. There is nothing like having the audience comprehend what you're singing while you're singing it. Look at how many singers now, like Renée Fleming and Dawn Upshaw, have a real love for American popular music. And they do it very well. When I was doing musical comedy, there was no question: if you couldn't be understood, you couldn't get a job! They didn't cut you slack for modifying your vowels because you were singing up high! You had to be understood. It is about the words, and Jake will tell you that. He is writing a story and he wants the words to be understood and as an actor I need to be understood. The words are my tools, not just the notes.

"Years ago, I got in touch with an old college friend who had not been having much success as a singer. And he said to me, 'I've spent my entire life trying to make the most beautiful sound possible and yet no one will hire me.' He asked me how I did it. I told him I tried to communicate something, to create a character, even in an oratorio. I'll do anything to communicate the character and the story to the audience. Singing beautifully isn't always what's involved and it's certainly not the first thing on my mind. I want to be part of a theater piece. I can forgive some things for the sake of good theater. The singers I admire have something to say. They don't just sing songs and perform in operas that mean nothing to them. They want to communicate something to an audience. In America, that can best be done in English!

"Lovers and Friends has been a fun project. Michael John is a real poet. I'm in awe of people who can invent stories. It's one thing to write an opera that is based on something else, like Dead Man Walking or Harvey Milk. But, when a person can make up a story out of his own mind, I am wowed by it. I think about the awe-inspiring genius that allows a person to create a story out of his own head and heart and experience. I guess I think of myself as a recreative artist - I need a good script. I'm not particularly brilliant with bad material.

"The character I play is America's poet laureate, Babbitt Cross, a WWII survivor who writes a poem for the president's inauguration. The president doesn't like it and wants him to revise it with less radicalism and more optimism.

"It has been interesting - this process has been a little different from some other new pieces I've done because I've seen so many of the changes along the way. I feel like with this piece I'm much more privy to the process. We did the workshop two years ago. After that, Michael John wanted to make a lot of changes. One of biggest ones was the opening scene for my character. As it was originally written, he felt it didn't give the audience anything. So he replaced it with a scene and sort of an aria including the actual poem we keep referring to in the show. And, it's a terrific piece of poetry.

"It's interesting because he's put some swing music in it and there are several kind of pop numbers in the show. One of my favorite numbers is between the senator and his wife and they do this whole number on Washington DC. There's a lot of it which is very operatic, more sweeping and dramatic. He goes in different directions depending on what he is trying to communicate, using a specific idiom in a scene to set a time or identify a character.

"Of course the critics always ask whether it's an opera or a musical. And I think, who cares? Does it work? Does it create a cohesive theater piece. Is it thought-provoking? Is it beautiful? I don't care how you label it.

"I very seldom say no to something new. Although I did turn down Nixon in China! Hello? What was I thinking? Actually, I was already booked, but still…. I like to do new things, even in a workshop situation. It's not really a performance so it's more about being involved in something new and the promise of being involved in something good and seeing what happens to it. When you are working on La Cenerentola or Don Pasquale or Così fan tutte, you know what you're getting. The production might be different and working with the other singers and the director can be interesting, of course. But it's a whole new dimension when you're working on something new. You don't know where you're going."

See also: interview with Michael John LaChuisa