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Verdi baritone Gordon Hawkins
takes up a great American role

By Robert Wilder Blue

Gordon Hawkins

The unexpected hit of the 2001 Bregenz (Austria) Festival was Carlisle Floyd's Of Mice and Men. Floyd's powerful opera based on John Steinbeck's American Depression-era story played to sold-out houses and standing ovations. Tenor Anthony Dean Griffey was Lenny; Julian Patrick, who created the role of George in the world premiere in 1970, played Candy; Patrick Summers conducted and the production was created by Francesca Zambello. American baritone Gordon Hawkins starred as George and will reprise the role in Houston in February 2002. Gordon talked to USOperaWeb about the opera and about his path to becoming an opera singer.

"I was born in Clinton, Maryland, the youngest of seven children. My father was a minister and we sang in church and that's where my musical heritage began. All of my older brothers and sisters played musical instruments. Each of us had to find a musical instrument no one else in the family played, so we could have our own turf. It was sort of a sibling rivalry thing. I learned the clarinet and started off playing symphonic music mostly. After high school, I went to the University of Maryland on a baseball scholarship but ended up getting an injury and couldn't play, so I turned to music. I had a natural gift for singing and the passion and love were certainly there, but like anybody, I needed to develop it, so I started taking voice lessons. I did the opera productions and also did a lot of plays. As it turned out I found myself in the right place at the right time and found the right people to guide me. I got my undergraduate degree in voice and then took a couple of years off to figure out what to do. During that time I did the apprentice program at Wolf Trap and won the George London competition and the Met auditions and came under the eye of the folks in New York and at the Metropolitan Opera.

"My professional debut was in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Baltimore - the soprano was Allesandra Marc whom I went to school with. I did some smaller roles with Washington Opera but probably my big break was doing Porgy and Bess at the Met with James Levine conducting. That led to other roles, including Marcello in the broadcast of La Bohème in 1991 with Mirella Freni and Plácido Domingo when I stepped in for a buddy of mine, Brian Schexnayder, who was not able to perform that day."

Porgy and Bess has been a mixed blessing for black singers. Many have viewed it (along with Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts and to a lesser extent Scott Joplin's Treemonisha) as an opportunity for regular work; others have felt it was a trap. "Leontyne Price had a great quote that was something like, 'when that boat left Catfish Row, I was never going back.' It's like, when the boat left Catfish Row, some of them were left behind. Porgy and Bess really never has become an issue for me as it has for some singers though. I think the more you do it, the more race becomes an issue for you. I get offers to do Porgy and I almost always turn them down. I'll say yes only with the stipulation that they give me another role also. You can get typecast doing it and you can't assume that singing Porgy will open other doors for you. There have been singers who have had problems getting other work. There's still the debate about whether it is musical theater or opera and for some it doesn't translate into the traditional operatic repertory. A Mozart or Verdi singer doesn't have to be careful about how much Mozart or Verdi he does. But with Porgy and Bess you have to be careful about where and how much you do it. At least that has been my experience.

"It will be interesting to see what happens when Gershwin's stipulation calling for Porgy and Bess to be performed only by an all-black cast expires. I'm all for multicultural casting and diversity in the theater and I think every singer should have the opportunity to sing this opera. The theater is supposed to be the place where possibilities abound, where fantasy can come to life. I'm not really sure in opera, theater and dance that we have an obligation to present a museum piece. I think we have the obligation to serve the piece itself. Each artist can call on all of his or her gifts vocally, dramatically and culturally to illuminate a piece. I would love to see what Samuel Ramey would do with Porgy, for instance. I can't convince people how difficult the role is. For three and a half hours you are on your knees, using only half of your body. I would love to hear Sam Ramey say, 'yes, this is a difficult role.' But if Donnie Rae Albert says it the response is, 'so?'"

Has race been a factor for you during your training and thus far in your career? "Honestly I don't think I really have any issues now with race. Early on in my career I had some. There were things that came along and I wasn't sure how to react to them. I find that many American singers who perform with the Met, Chicago and San Francisco - the big three - have a sense of right or entitlement that they deserve to be up there. But those singers who come up through the regional companies have a harder time finding their way. I spent five years at the Met and got a pretty good idea of who my competition was. But I was not getting the opportunities to sing the roles I wanted. I wasn't going to learn anything about singing Rigoletto if I didn't go out and perform it and I wasn't going to get that opportunity at the Met at that point. So I needed to leave and go out and perfect my craft and sing those roles. That's when you go to the regional companies or to Europe. Is that a race issue? I don't think so. It's what every young singer goes through.

"Basically, you have to have the goods. You are going to be judged on your last performance and how good you are now. Most of the roles I do are Verdi. Over the years, I have built up relationships with companies in Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Berlin and Düsseldorf, and I perform in those houses regularly. But when you are talking about San Francisco or Chicago or the Met, it becomes more about politics and recording contracts and agents and all that stuff. Anybody can be discriminated against if you want it to happen. I'm sure that there are people who are heavy who feel that the only reason they don't get work is because of their weight. I'm sure there are certain Asian singers who think that if they don't sing Cio Cio San they won't get other work. That may in fact be true. The only thing you can control is how well you perform when you get the opportunity. You can't necessarily dictate when the opportunities will come, but you can be very professional in how you approach your craft and present yourself in the best light. I'm not interested in singing everything. I'm interested in singing those things I know I can do in the top five percent of the singers worldwide. What I do, I better do it as well or better than anyone else who does that repertory or I won't get hired. I think that is why I have a good career.

"More than anything, it's the comfort zone the companies have with you. They generally hire you when they know you and your work and feel they can trust their reputation by putting you on their stage. If you perform well, then you'll be asked back. People who do the casting have a tendency for their own reasons, perhaps for definition's sake, to say, 'well so-and-so does this, so-and-so does that.' But I'm an artist. What I do is interpret. I might have an affinity for the Verdi roles, for their humanity and how they speak to me, but I love music and I would never want to position myself in a manner that restricts my desire to perform other works. That would be death. But because of how the business is, when a company wants to do a specific piece, a Wagner opera perhaps, they will call an agency and say, 'we need Wagner singers.' They should just think in terms of hiring good singers and whether a particular singer can handle a particular role. But that's not how the business works, so the same singers get hired for the same roles."

Of Mice and Men

When asked about choosing Gordon Hawkins for the role of George in her new production of Of Mice and Men , Francesca Zambello said, "Carlisle has never had a black singer in that role and we talked about that because, of course, it makes a big statement. How does George get into Lennie's life? That's a question you ask anyway, but in this case it takes on a larger meaning. It wasn't as though I sought out a black singer; I thought Gordon would be very interesting in the role and it happens that he is black and it adds a different layer to the piece."

Gordon also found it interesting to be cast in the role. "I think I'm the first African-American singer to do the role in a major production. I heard that Tom Hampson once asked Carlisle about doing the role and Carlisle told him he was wrong for it physically. So how did I get cast [he laughs]? The fact that I'm black and Tony [Griffey] is white is different than what one expects. But imagine how different our perceptions would be if a great actor like Sydney Poitier had played George in the film version?

"The first session we had together we read the play around the table with Francesca and I brought up the issue of how the Austrian audience was going to perceive the piece with a black man and a white man on the stage, particularly with the anger that George has to show towards Lenny. Some of the assistant directors who were from Austria and Switzerland thought that the issue of color would not be as significant for them as it would be for an American audience. They thought that Germans, for example, who had seen so many different interpretations of operas with singers from different cultures, would not find it unusual. We'll find out how much of an issue it will be in Houston. I'm sure that might have been a factor in the minds of those putting this production together. All I wanted was an opportunity and fortunately my reputation in the business was solid enough that it came my way. But it wouldn't have come my way if the majority of my bio was Porgy and Bess. I know for a fact that [conductor] John DeMain, whom I've worked with many times and done a lot of my Verdi work with, recommended me to the people in Houston. I had worked with one of Carlisle Floyd's students at the Met and he spoke with Carlisle and that made Carlisle more comfortable with me. Once he realized that I could handle his baby and would treat it with respect and illuminate it, he was more than pleased. I thought it was fantastic to have two big guys doing this opera. Compared to the others on the stage we seemed more like misfits not because of my color but because of our size. I'm 6'2", 250 pounds and Tony is even bigger than that. We seemed odd and separate."

"It was so great working with Cesca [Francesca Zambello]! We did a lot of improvisation during rehearsal. She gave me a free reign interpretively. I need to believe 100% in everything my character says and does in order to make him real. The only way I know how to do that is to bring honestly everything about myself emotionally to George and just let him speak. What I had to do was love Tony, not just the character of Lenny, because he was who I was playing with. It was Gordon and Tony up there as much as it was characters we had to play. During the rehearsal period, we spent a lot of time getting to know each other as human beings. That's the only way I could do a role like this and make it real. I had no preconceptions or biases about the role. I had never performed it before and there are no recordings. I certainly knew the story and could relate to it, but I wasn't shackled by any tradition of what George was supposed to be. What was interesting was that Julian Patrick, who was the first George, was playing Candy in this production. I've know Julian since 1989 when I first worked in Seattle. We're very comfortable with each other and we talked a lot about the character. He told me some things he had done and if they were really good I stole them [he laughs]. If they didn't work for me, I tried something else.

"We had over four weeks of rehearsal and I didn't really think much about the vocal aspects of the character as much as I did about feelings I had. I thought about how I felt being burdened with someone who wasn't carrying his own weight and how I could be so much greater and move so much faster and be so much lighter if I wasn't carrying this dead weight with me. By all rights I should have just let Lenny go, but I had made a promise to his aunt and I had to keep that. In the first scene I hated Lenny's guts. I mean that I hated Tony's guts - I had to make it that real. I couldn't strike him of course, but I had to hate him and the fact that he was making my life uncomfortable. Then I had to realize that I was dealing with a child and that if I weren't there he wouldn't survive. So I had to become like a parent.

"Tony gives a lot in the role of Lenny. He is critically acclaimed and very well respected for it and I understand why. It was really easy playing off someone who gives that much. All you have to do is be honest. So in that way doing it wasn't hard at all. The hard thing was living it for the three months I was preparing it and for the entire summer when we were rehearsing and performing it. It was not easy to get back to normal, to get out of those feelings. There were a couple of performances when it got too close and I didn't want to talk to anyone afterwards. The audience didn't know it but I was showing as much of my true self through that character as any other role I've done. There wasn't a single acting crutch or tool I needed to use. I think that when you are comfortable with yourself you can get to the point that you can show yourself like this. As an artist you have to be able to do that. Then it's the director's job to bring you into line with the entire picture. My job is to bring as many colors and options to show Francesca; she will utilize the ones she needs to bring her vision to life. How can you be an artist, how can you paint a picture if you don't bring your whole paint set? You won't have as many options. Not everybody thinks that way of course.

"Carlisle Floyd's works are wonderful of course. Susannah is a great piece and I'm glad it's done so often. Cold Sassy Tree is fantastic and Of Mice and Men is a masterpiece dramatically, musically and emotionally. There's no reason it shouldn't be done in every house in the U.S. The audience in Bregenz was primarily Austrian and they were incredibly moved by it. You could hear them crying. I don't want to rant and rave about American artists' inferiority complex but I think we are a bit fearful of promoting our own works. I believe we as artists have some obligation to promote American works. But it takes the biggest houses, the Met, Chicago and San Francisco to agree and make it a priority to produce American works. It's inconceivable to me that the American classics are not done in American houses on a regular basis. Why are we so embarrassed about our riches?"

Steinbeck links
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/steinbec/srchome.html
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Steinbeck/

Of Mice & Men (opera)
http://www.jdlh.palo-alto.ca.us/pr/micemen_floyd/

Of Mice & Men (novel)
http://www.isk-tv.no/~gmdata/teachers/english/novels/micemen/micemen.htm#introduction
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/helpsheets/steinbeck.html
http://www.englishresources.co.uk/ks4/fiction.html