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Barbara Hendricks

One of the most successful classical recording artists in the world, soprano Barbara Hendricks has an omnivorous approach to repertoire. Her debut in San Francisco back in 1974 at a Spring Opera production of Francesco Cavalli’s L’Ormindo launched a career now extending to a full three decades, taking the soprano’s sparkling, limpid lyric voice to appearances at virtually every major international concert stage and opera house. A favored soloist by the leading conductors of the day, Hendricks has always enjoyed the wide support of an enthusiastic and appreciative public, even in those times when critics couldn’t agree among themselves about her work. Excelling in opera, chamber music, vocal-orchestral repertory, Negro spirituals and jazz, the soprano from Arkansas is also a highly respected art song recitalist, in command of a vast catalogue of lieder repertoire. Growing up in the newly integrated American South of the 1960s, she has also remained a committed activist for most of her life, currently serving as a life ambassador for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees.

The Girl from Arkansas

Barbara Hendricks was born in Stephens, Arkansas (pop. 2,906) in 1948. Her earlier musical experiences were largely unstructured, pursued for sheer fun and amusement, while her serious musical study started relatively late. “There was no classical music in my family,” says Ms. Hendricks. “My father was a pastor and I sang in his church. From about age 10 or 12 I started singing in school, in choirs. My early musical education came largely from choral music, in junior and senior high school; that’s where my musical horizons were extended. We sang all sorts of things, from Negro Spirituals to parts of the Messiah at Christmas and Bach cantatas at Easter. In between, we did Broadway musicals and jazz. My parents didn’t discourage me, but I don’t think anybody saw what I was doing as some sort of preparation for career opportunities. I was focusing mostly on mathematics and science and that was what my parents took more seriously. I was always good at math.”

Some might not have considered mathematics and the sciences to be among the common range of pursuits for young women growing up in the American South of the 1950s, but still, Ms. Hendricks insists that the aptitude was widely present amidst her peers. “I think a lot of the young women in my time were quite good at it, it was just that they were discouraged from pursuing it. In the lower grades, the smarter kids in class were always the girls. At some point, the girls are sort of discouraged to continue. I was lucky I didn’t, I was encouraged. It was very clear from my teacher’s point of view that my scholastic studies were most important. Singing was an extracurricular activity. I was very active after school; I also did debate club and I did some theater. I even tried cheerleading, but my choir director put his foot down and said it was either the cheerleading and the football games or singing. I would have no voice left from Monday through Wednesday and then Friday it was the football game again.

“When was a junior at University of Nebraska I sang in the choir and took voice lessons as an elective for fun. And I entered a Met competition. I don’t remember for sure why I did it. But I won for the state of Nebraska, which surprised me more than anyone else, because I hadn’t a clue of what I was doing. I was not a serious music student and I was competing with music students from all over the state. I went on to the Minneapolis regionals, which I didn’t win–thank goodness–because I had no business being there at that time. But from that process some people in Nebraska noticed me and I was offered the opportunity to go the Aspen Music Festival that following summer. I accepted because my other option was to do complex ion substitution research in Vermillion, South Dakota, with my organic chemistry teacher.

“The teacher they had chosen for me in Aspen was Jennie Tourel. And that was the turning point for me–those nine weeks spent in Aspen–because for once I was surrounded by classical music–not just vocal music, but orchestral and chamber music. There was an opera production that year, and lots of concerts by fantastic soloists: Itzhak Perlman, Benita Valente, and many others. Jennie Tourel sang Mahler’s Second Symphony with James Levine conducting. By the end of that summer it was clear to me that I had to see what this talent was all about and what I was supposed to do with it. Jennie Tourel said that if I wanted to continue singing and wanted to apply to Juilliard, she would accept me as her student. So I had to figure out what to do. I went back to finish my studies and I received my degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Nebraska. And I auditioned for Juilliard and received a full scholarship–I wouldn’t have been able to attend otherwise.”

A Child of the '60s

Ms. Hendricks is known for her social activism, a calling that was perhaps intensified by her awakening of consciousness during the turbulent ‘60s. Does she consider herself a product of the decade of Peace and Love? “Definitively,” she asserts unequivocally. “I was very politically active in the ‘60s and I have remained so. I may have been less active in the beginning of my career, since I had so much to learn when I started to study music. I had never studied music in any serious way–I didn’t know how to play the piano, I had languages to learn. But I came into the ‘60s as a witness of the Civil Rights Movement. I was living in North Little Rock when the Central High School was integrated and the National Guard was sent there so that the students could go to school. I witnessed those events from quite close quarters and my sense of justice and injustice was kept high.

“And then there was the Vietnam experience with ‘give peace a chance’ and ‘make love not war.’ I am definitely a product of that time, and I’m very happy because I feel that maybe the generation that came after us found life a little bit easier, with less of a need to confront and question. But today we find ourselves in a situation where we need to start the questioning again, which is part of the democratic process. I have a great love for the principles of democracy, probably because I received my rights as a citizen quite late. I’m talking about my right to vote in America. Growing up in Arkansas, I didn’t have the right to vote. That was something so precious that was won by thousands of people who marched and fought and lost their lives. It gave me a responsibility to be an active citizen, which I have tried to continue to be.

“You mentioned that I have Swedish citizenship now, and this came out of from the fact that the last time I tried to vote in a general election in America, I was completely unable to do so intelligently. I was uninformed. I had to set the clock to the middle of night so that I could get up and watch the presidential debates and try to make an intelligent choice. I just felt like I was not exercising my citizenry properly.

“My life is now in Europe and has been for half of my life and I want to participate where I am. I saw this Europe around me trying to form itself, and I was very interested. Since I have the right by marriage to be a Swedish citizen, I decided to take it so that I could become a more effective participant. It was something that was very important to me, to receive that citizenship. It was a gift. I no longer needed to see myself as a victim. I could be responsible and proactive. If I didn’t like the way things were, instead of complaining I could try to make a change in a positive way.”

The Post-Leontyne Black Diva

Barbara Hendricks as Liu in Zhang Yimou's production of Turandot. (Beijing, 1998)

As an African-American soprano with a major international career, Barbara Hendricks is constantly and inevitably asked to consider if higher expectations were placed upon her, coming in the heels of Leontyne Price’s pioneering ascent to international stardom. “Coming along at that time, the struggles of Marian Anderson and many others lesser known, made it possible for me–at least that’s what I felt–to just be the best I could be as myself. I could be my harshest judge, but I didn’t have the burden of representing an entire race the way that Leontyne Price must have felt. Marian Anderson prepared the way, but Leontyne Price was the first internationally known black opera star recognized both at home and abroad. I felt much freer than she had been able to be and I feel an enormous gratitude for her and others, such as Grace Bumbry and Shirley Verrett. I didn’t feel as much pressure as they did and I benefited from the doors that they opened. Of course, America is the thing that makes me who I am today. It is a very important part of who I am, the girl that I was, that grew up in South, in Arkansas, and the time it happened. I’m a product of that environment and I’m proud of it.”

Asked if she felt an artistic responsibility to assert her African-American heritage, Hendricks replies, “Well, I’ve always sung spirituals,” adding that her audiences know and expect that she will encore with them, even when they are not listed in the program. “I do whole programs with [spirituals] when I sing with choirs. Spirituals are music that I will always sing. It is music that I love. It’s my roots and it’s music that has great meaning. I need this music as a constant companion. So I share spirituals with my audience not out of a sense of responsibility, but a sense of love.

“But currently, I’m now feeling a greater responsibility to defend the liederabend. The experience is so rare nowadays and I am one of the few people who can fill up a hall with a song program of Schubert, Berg, or the program I am doing right now, which is Poulenc, Brahms and de Falla. I’m like a dinosaur, but I feel a responsibility to do programs like that, not mixed-up with opera arias. I know there are a lot of the younger male singers who are doing lieder recitals, but there are very few women who are doing on the scale that I do. Of course, you have the opera singer who will do a recital tour every other year, but it’s not the same as in the time when I started, when you had Christa Ludwig, Elly Ameling, Janet Baker and so many others doing this repertoire.”

New Directions

While making an effort to preserve tradition, many singers from the older generation have become vocal critics of what has been called “the age of the stage director,” pertaining particularly to the excesses of Regietheater and the nihilistically abstract, concept-driven productions common at many European opera houses. Hendricks observes: “As I do opera not that often, what I look for when I agree to do an opera is for the possibility to do a complete kind of work on a musical level and on a theatrical level. So if a stage director has an idea that makes absolutely no sense to me, I don’t want to waste my time. But I have the luxury of having so many other things that I do, I can afford to say, ‘no, that doesn’t interest me.’ I remember once talking about a Rake’s Progress where the director was going to set it in Los Angeles and all of Anne Truelove’s family was going to be black and Nick Shadow was going to be white. Well, if you want to deal with the problem in Los Angeles between the races, this is not the vehicle. This is exploiting the problem for an opera that has absolutely nothing to do with that. When something like that comes I long, I’m just not interested.

“Maybe because it’s because we’re in a period–not only in music, but in the arts in general–when we’re not producing as much as we did in other periods, that we have this rise of stage directors who are trying to make new operas out of old operas. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do find some concepts where you wonder why the director chose to do the opera, if you look at the way they’ve staged it. There was a time that was supposed to be the singer’s period, then the conductor’s period, and now it’s the stage director’s turn. So maybe things will come around when it will be an ‘ensemble’ period, where everybody will be working together, which is what I consider to be the ideal for working in opera–the music, the drama and an ensemble really working as they should. Those opportunities are not so common, unfortunately.”

One of Barbara Hendricks most unusual repertoire excursions was her recent album of Disney songs sung in French, titled “Un jour mon prince viendra” (“One day my prince will come”), issued by EMI in Europe. While her singing was critically praised, the project was somewhat controversial despite the album’s strong sales. “It sold well, but I had many records that sold better. Disney is not much appreciated in some circles over here [she laughs]! That album was the one thing that the French press criticized me for the most. I said, ‘hey, I like these songs, I sing them for my kids.’ I did that record for my kids, really. It was a fun record, but I got a lot of flack for it. That is the American part of me, I don’t put any boundaries on my music, I do jazz and everything else I like. European artists, even if they liked it, would be afraid. Not so much the younger generation, they’re really opening up, but I remember hearing Schwarzkopf saying that she only did four roles and that she was quite content only doing four roles. The music education I had in high school and junior high school choir, where we sang everything, served me well. For me it’s just natural to sing things I feel connected to. I can sing pop music in my recitals, and yet my programs can still be very serious, I’ve been able to maintain that. I feel lucky that I have this opportunity to share with my public the range of music that I love.”

A Citizen of the World

To many, Hendricks seems to be living the exciting, charmed life of the American expatriate diva, as glamorized in the 1981 Jean-Jacques Beineix film, Diva. And just how glamorous does it get?—her legions of fans may be excused for wondering. “Well, I think my life is certainly not as glamorous as many fans think, especially when you have to travel as much as I do. I have a career that is more like that of a violinist, instead of an opera singer. Quite a lot of singers do opera and then they do a little recital tour. I’m on tour all the time, since I do not only opera but also chamber music, orchestra dates and recitals. When my children were younger, I was constantly rushing to take the 7 o’clock plane, so that I could be there when they came home for lunch. That part is not glamorous at all, I can tell you, not the glamour that people imagine when they see it in the movies.

“I do have a wonderfully rich life; I have worked with wonderful musicians and been in some extremely exciting places. But still, there’s hard work and no life has just one side to it. I love my life, it is enjoyable, but if my fans had to keep up with me, I doubt they’d find it extremely glamorous. “I am [the proverbial] diva [she laughs]! But managing quality-of-life is very important to me. My family life and my friends are important to me. When I’m home, I’m ‘mom,’ and I cook and I clean up. I’m quite normal. I do whatever needs to be done while trying to find some time to myself and my work. I always had enough success to keep me going, and never so much success to make me lose the sense of who I am. I made quite a lot of choices in function of my personal life. My family, my children, have always come before my career.

“My career had started quite well in America. It began in San Francisco and I did quite a bit of orchestral work as well as opera. Then I left America and came to Europe because I met my husband and he had a job in Paris and I said, ‘hey, why not?’ I started from scratch in Europe. I did Susanna in Berlin and Aix-en-Provence and one thing led to another. I have always done recitals. Since I was a student in Juilliard, I have always done liederabend, even against the advice of my agent in New York who said that you couldn’t have a career singing recitals. I said ‘but this is what I love to do,’ so recitals were always a big part of my work. “When I moved to Paris, many close to me where saying, ‘oh, you’ve got your big career starting here [in the U.S.], and now you’re leaving?’ I thought, ‘well, I can sing over there! And they also have an airport!’ So my life choices came first, my career choices came after that. At the time I came to Europe, there was still a lot of classical music on prime time television and that sort of made me a real star! It’s an opportunity the young singers don’t get nowadays, the kind of exposure which I was fortunate to get.

“I am proud of myself as an American, and very grateful that I can be both an American and a European. The passport I carry is just something I need so that authorities at the airport can know who I am and let me in and out of the country. I feel American, I feel European and I also feel very international, not just because I sing all over the world, but because of the work I’ve done with the UN, which has taken me into situations I normally wouldn’t experience in my profession. But ultimately, my voice is really the passport that makes me a citizen of the world in the truest sense, even when I go somewhere I don’t speak the language, people understand me through music.”

The UN Ambassador

Ms. Hendricks continues to pursue social work and activism, beyond the considerable demands of an international singing career. “I always read the paper and watched the news and I always had an opinion. I supported Amnesty International and was involved in a smaller way until I was asked to become Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), a temporary organization set up to deal with refugees from the Second World War. Unlike UNICEF, UNHCR was supported solely by governments. It only had a three-year renewable mandate; it is not a permanent organization within the UN system, because they thought they would only need three years to handle refugees coming from the Eastern block. As it turns out, we have over 22 million refugees and displaced persons today, which is not at all what we expected when the Berlin Wall came down. We expected there to be fewer refugees, but unfortunately that was not the case. I accepted the appointment because I thought it could be interesting work and I thought I could put into action some of my own ideas about human rights from my background in the civil rights, the war in Vietnam and the women’s movement as a university student.

“The ‘60s were the time when everyone was fighting for their rights and I’ve come to the conclusion that if we’re just going to fight for ourselves–women against men, blacks against whites–it’s just a matter of who is going to be on top and who is the strongest. There’s always going to be somebody who is disenfranchised. There must be a possibility for all of us to have our rights and when we’re in disagreement to find some way of dealing with that without having to kill one another. And as it turned out, when I started to work for the UN, one of the documents they gave me was a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There it was: everybody has the right to be born free and the obligation to respect the other person. Maybe I don’t agree with you and maybe I’m even afraid of you, but let’s put our guns down and try to talk about it and see if can find a solution. We tend to shoot first and talk later.

“I have strong feelings about human rights, so I felt this could give me an opportunity to see how an organization like the UN works. I told them I would accept the appointment if they would allow me to be independent and to work in the field. I’m not interested in doing gala dinners–I have enough of them in my profession. I wanted to be able to speak about what I saw, and they agreed. That started a relationship that has made me very connected to the cause of refugees and particularly to the cause of preventing people from becoming refugees. Over the years, the refugees themselves and the people who work at the UNHCR have inspired me continuously. It has made me see very clearly, more than ever, that we need to emphasize the importance and respect of human rights. It’s a tough time right now, because governments are wanting to give less when there are more and more refugees. Our governments are always looking for short-term solutions and that’s one of the things that keeps the situation escalating. That’s what happened in Bosnia and Cambodia. I was in Cambodia when the refugees were returning for the elections and the UN got out too soon. Rwanda is completely unfinished business. There’s much work to be done.”

Reporting from the field, as it were, Hendricks finds it impossible not to take a stand. “When you’re on the ground, you’d be inhuman if you didn’t side with the victims,” she says, even though taking a political stance invariably brings her criticism. “I’ve been criticized [for my involvement]. But I never pay any attention to that. I think you have to lead your life by what you believe. At the end of your life the only person that you have to look in the face is yourself. Not even your fans will be with you at that moment, when you have to make that last passage. I think you have to do what you believe and be able to acknowledge your weaknesses and your mistakes. Nobody is perfect.

“I feel very strongly that we must have a society based on human rights and solidarity. Whatever I can do for that, I’ll do so. Having come face-to-face with these victims I know that justice is something absolutely necessary for them to continue their lives, particularly those who have gone through such horror, as the people have in Rwanda, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, and Cambodia. Justice is very important, not only to help the living get on with their lives and be productive, but also as a deterrent for those who think they can get away with crimes against humanity. I was listening to a report on the BBC the other day about the amputations in the civil war in Sierra Leone. They were just rounding up people and cutting off their limbs–a hand here, a foot there, a leg there. I cannot separate that from the necessity for a sense of justice, so that the victims can have reconciliation and rebuild the rest of their lives.”

Looking Back, Looking Forward

“I don’t think you can follow anybody else’s path, because life presents you with all sorts of things. You just have to put your eye on that goal and be true to yourself. I grew up in a straight Protestant work-ethic family and doing music was always part of my pleasure. I realized that being an artist meant being at the service of your art was a noble thing to do. I was so lucky to have Jennie Tourel as an example, the kind of artist I wanted to become. She was intelligent, she was curious, open, and always at the service of her talent and the music that she was singing. She was a rare example.

“I have been singing for thirty years and I would say at the same high level. I have yet to compromise and give the audiences less than I have to give. If I’m dropping below 90% percent of what I can give, then it’s time to stop. I would say to any young singer, really, you must know your own way and be true to that. I always compare my work to cooking. I love to cook and I never cook with a microwave. A stew that is slowly cooked has much more taste. It’s the same with life. Take your time, not somebody else’s time, but yours -– time to grow, time to become an artist. You’re not an artist when you start, you’re just talented. I’m still trying to become an artist. Take the time and keep loving it: that’s how you keep getting your energy back.”