Jennifer Larmore launched her career in 1986 when Pierre Medicin offered her several contracts to sing at the Opera de Nice. Her first roles were Sesto (La clemenza di Tito), Annio for alternate performances of the same opera, Zerlina, Giovanna Seymour (Anna Bolena), Isolier (Le Comte Ory), and her now revered Angelina. After establishing herself in Europe, Larmore sang I Capuleti e i Montecchi with the Opera Orchestra of New York under the baton of Eve Queler. Representatives from the Met attended that performance and congratulated her with an offer to debut at the Metropolitan Opera house singing Rosina.
Despite the current downturn of the classical recording industry Larmore spent considerable time in the recording studio in 2008, completing a CD of Rossini arias with Malcolm Martineau, highlights of L’italiana in Algeri with conductor Brad Cohen for Chandos, and a recording of Offenbach’s Vert-Vert for Opera Rara.
I met Jennifer Larmore, now 50, in Atlanta a few days before Halloween, when the city had just begun to yield to blessed autumn weather. Atlanta is Larmore’s hometown and the internationally acclaimed mezzo was engaged to make her belated Atlanta Opera debut singing one of her signature roles, Angelina, in La Cenerentola. She had just finished a run of the same opera in Brussels at La Monnaie the week before we spoke.
You grew up in Atlanta, but have never sung with your home opera company. How did your debut with the Atlanta Opera come about and why this season as opposed to years past?
I’ve been singing all over the world and I really wanted to come back to Atlanta. Of course, I’ve been hearing the Atlanta Opera profile is really coming up beautifully, and they have this new Cobb Energy Centre, so I came down and made an appointment with Dennis Hanthorn and Eric Mitchko. We talked about possibilities and this just seemed perfect.
So the Atlanta Opera was an opera company in transition and before now it wasn’t the right timing?
Well, all my life it seems to have been that funding wasn’t an easy thing to get for any opera company in any part of the world, except for maybe in Europe, where they do have a lot of subsidy from the government . . . they’re not having an easy time of it either. Their subsidies seem to be getting lower. It’s just the world crisis I believe. One of the first things to go is opera ticket sales.
But your schedule’s not getting any lighter.
No! I am so lucky! I’m happy. I’m lucky that it’s like that and I think, really, that the Atlanta Opera has a lot of good support in the community, and that’s what we need. It’s high quality. We are all starting to hear about it. When it filters into the upper reaches and people really want to come be here, you’re doing something right.
And it’s run extremely well. The first day I was here we had something called a “meet and greet.” I’ve never had one of those ever in all the years I’ve sung. I love it because it gives a feeling of community, that you’re all working together.
Are singers usually kept separate from the administrative staff?
Yeah. We have to find where the offices are and then climb up there to see the people—if we have time. But this made it possible for us to all get to know each other a little bit. I was impressed. Normally you’re thrown on stage the first day; you don’t meet anybody. It’s like a factory. Here we met people. We even had a musical rehearsal the first day. That’s unheard of. It’s a luxury to have people come smile at you and have fun.
Do you remember where and when you sang your first Angelina?
I think it was at the Opera de Nice and that was maybe 18 years ago.
Was that one of the initial seven contracts you were offered in Nice?
Yes, it was! It was an incredible time.
You’ve sung Angelina all over the world. How do you keep it fresh?
I’m a re-actress. I react to the people that I have around me. You have real spontaneity when you have a new production. Of course right now my body’s fighting to do the production I just did in Brussels, and so yesterday it was funny because we had a run-through of the first act. My body kept trying to go in different directions! I’m still kind of jet-lagged. I had a performance, took the plane the next day, and then had a rehearsal here the next day.
How do you think you’ve changed personally and professionally throughout the course of your career?
There are a lot of changes that a singer goes through. Your vocal cords aren’t really set until your 35 years of age. There’s an evolution that goes on with a person’s voice, especially for women, because we go through hormonal changes at different times in our lives.
I remember being 15 and having an operatic voice, almost the voice I have now. But I had this other voice in my head that I really wanted, a different kind of voice—but I was too young. I had to go through those changes and grow up and become a woman.
There are also many psychological changes that you go through. Let’s just say you’re a young woman with a voice, but you don’t have the confidence in it yet, so that affects your voice.
The great Dame Joan Sutherland once told me to stay light as long I could because you must take care of the health of the voice. That means not singing heavy things with a voice that’s too young because it probably only depresses the larynx, creating a lot of tension, creating an atmosphere in which you will not be able to flip up into a high extension or go where you need to go in your voice.
Some young singers don’t have any idea what their repertoire is. They are the ones that have to be the most careful. If you’re a soprano or a mezzo you have to know what is healthy for you as a young singer. I sing Monteverdi to Wagner, but you can’t do that in the beginning.
So the repertoire on your new CD, Royal Mezzo, is music you couldn’t have done 10 years ago?
I’d say the Shéhérazade I could have done. The other things, no. They’re too dramatic.
The [Samuel] Barber is my favorite.
Me too! Oh, I’m so glad that you said that. You’re the only person I’ve found that has said that. I think that it’s the most incredibly dramatic, fantastic thing. But as a young singer you can’t do those sorts of things because it stretches your voice and it makes you push. I think that it’s more psychological than anything, because of the drama of the text and the drama of the way the music is written. You just don’t have what it takes at that point to know how to not push.
I feel that I’ve changed in a million different ways—except I’ve always sung the roles that I’ve sung with the voice that I had. Let me just explain.
A lot of people will start out with a very refined voice, like I had for all of the Baroque, the Mozart, the Rossini. Perfect for me! Then I started adding Carmen, Geschwitz in Lulu, and dramatic concert pieces.
Now I have the capability to sing whatever I sing with my voice. I’m not going to make it darker. I’m not going to make it brighter. I’ll sing Cenerentola with this voice and I’ll sing Fricka in Das Rheingold with this voice.
I think that with the Barber, for example, when Andromache is cursing Helen, that it would be so difficult not to get carried away. Plus, the performance was live. But you probably know what your limitations are at this point.
You learn the hard way, but also, if you’re lucky, you learn as you go along so that you don’t make that mistake again. If the next day your voice isn’t feeling so good you think, “What did I do yesterday?” Or you feel it in the moment.
You learn to ask, “What colors do I have in my voice? What’s my palette? What can I paint with? What’s at my disposal?” You use that to create anger, for example, with the color of the voice. I love a voice that has a million colors. I don’t care if it’s a perfect technique. I love an interesting voice.
But your technique is pretty solid and it sounds like you were always a natural singer.
Yeah. I feel like the [old shampoo] commercial: [“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”] Don’t hate me, but that was my voice. I never had many problems. I had a jaw that clicked, still does, but it never really interfered with what I tried to do.
Nowadays you’re teaching a lot of masterclasses.
I love masterclasses. We have a lot to say, as you can tell, we singers who have been around and doing it for a while. These days I feel bad for the young singers because they don’t have a lot of guidance about how to make a career.
You take a young singer in his last year of college. He’s facing the abyss, an incredible divide between the unreal world where he just was and the real world of performing. But performing is way over here: trying to make money to live, ways to make money that are musical, getting an agent, because you have a lot to do before you can get an agent. Putting together your portfolio is not just a headshot anymore—it’s body shots, because it’s all about youth and beauty. You have to look good now.
In your radio show you have brought up the issues of weight and fitness for singers. Reviewers writing about you now note that you’ve slimmed down—but you were beautiful before.
But I was a big girl.
Did you feel pressure from the industry to slim down or was it a lifestyle change that you chose to make?
Honestly, both. There comes a time in a woman’s career when you kind of start to feel the earth shift a little bit underneath. I see who’s getting hired, who’s doing what. I’ve never had a moment when I wasn’t getting hired so in that respect I’ve been incredibly lucky. I admit it. But that luck came from an enormous amount of hard work on my part, [and hard work] from my agents and everyone that supported me.
No one makes a career by themselves. In the end, of course, we are the people singing and have to deliver the goods, but we have a whole world filled with people who are trying to help us. That’s a beautiful thing, but they can only help you to a certain point. You’ve got to be fit. You have to look good.
You’re the one that has to take the flights. You have to be in Vienna yesterday, Paris tomorrow, Atlanta on Thursday and New York the next day. How are you going to be able to do that if you don’t take care of yourself?
It’s even worse these days, with instantaneous travel. In the old days it used to be you’d get on a boat and take one month to prepare things with the maestro himself. Then you’d have no jet lag. It really didn’t matter.
Do you think that people were distracted by your appearance?
I think that when the Baz Luhrmann La bohème came out people noticed that these singers were young and really pretty. Singing has become rather secondary.
I think that there are still purists out there who listen first.
I really hope you’re right.
I have to say that I’ve catalogued the comments in my mind. People usually say first, “You look so great. I love that dress. What a great production, the lights!” Then, about two or three or four down the list, “Your voice is amazing.”
But look at any review. They’re going to talk about what they see first because we live in a visual society. Opera singers have to go with the changes.
Do you think that fine singers have been passed over because of weight?
Oh yeah. That’s a part of the process, I’m afraid. I’ve known singers who have glorious voices, but they’re huge. If there is another singer with a gorgeous voice who’s smaller they’re going to get hired. That’s just the way it is.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the young singers you are hearing in masterclasses?
I’ve heard some incredible voices. I was at a wonderful seminar—with Sherrill Milnes, the great legendary baritone, and his wife Maria—the V.O.I.C.Experience in Orlando. It lasts three weeks. Young singers come and get private teaching, masterclasses, room and board, drama, movement, staging, consultations, and Disney World park passes. Agents come down to hear them. It’s fantastic.
I think I’ve heard some of the opera singers of tomorrow there. I really do. I think they’re really on the right track. The young women are slim, and seeing that they have to be that way. I do a lot of round table discussions where I sit and talk just to the girls.
Are you seeing any weaknesses in these aspiring singers, or any room for improvement?
No. I would, however, like to see young singers that take more drama classes and more movement classes. A lot of times they’ll get on stage and they have no idea what to do with their extremities or how to create a character. But they have really good voices.
Do you think music schools in colleges and universities are selective enough today when they are enrolling performance majors? So much goes into a successful performing career, but some of it is an innate uniqueness, both in the voice and in the charisma. Weighing that with the incredible investment of tuition dollars, are music schools propagating false hope?
Well, I have no way of knowing if they are selective enough, but I can say that the teachers and faculty have a big job to do preparing the students. I would never under any circumstances burst somebody’s bubble or tell them that they can’t do it, because at that age you never know what they’re going to blossom into.
Music schools can be as selective as they want and prepare [students] well, but nobody can tell what’s going to happen. No one can tell how a voice is going to develop, even in a span of a year or two.
You were able to build your career in Europe. The track now for many young American singers is to apply for apprenticeship programs. What do you think of that track?
There are a lot of decisions that you have to make. One of them might be to go to an apprenticeship program where you can take that movement class or extra voice lessons and pick somebody else’s brain, [somebody] who might get you that much closer to this path. Also, apprenticeship programs can maybe help you get an agent so [that] you’re that much closer.
There’s nothing wrong with that track, as long as it gets you closer and closer. But you’ve got to sit down, as a young singer, with pen and paper and write down all of your options.
What were the benefits of building your career in Europe?
For me it was the way to go. I needed that flavor. I needed to learn my languages and bring my level up. I needed experience and I wasn’t going to get it in the United States because we don’t have an opera house on every corner.
The opera houses here can pick the cream of the crop and they’re not going to pick singers that they don’t know. I don’t blame them. They need to sell tickets.
You have said that in your life the breaks just kept coming.
Yes, and one break will create another break. This person heard me and talked about me with that person, and then there was a buzz. It came over the sea to New York and Eve Queler of the Opera Orchestra of New York brought me over to do a concert at Carnegie Hall of I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Mariella Devia did the Giulietta. It was amazing, and the people from the Met were there. At the party that night they offered me Rosina.
That started my career here. There was such a buzz that when I came out of the door at the Met the audience clapped until I started singing “Una voce poco fa.” I was on cloud nine. I also had a temperature of 103 or something, but I didn’t care. I was so happy to be there, to sing my role and to get that sort of response.
You’re very busy. How do you pick and choose what you’ll do?
I make at least five or six recordings a year. I started out with Teldec. I had two exclusive recording contracts with them—and those were in the days when you signed a contract and all the press was there. When the CD was released the press was back.
The recording industry has hit a lot of snags since then. The Internet has helped the snags come about. It’s not regulated. You can download whatever you want. You can hear whatever you want. There are no real royalty rights. Who knows what’s going to happen next with that. But I can say that with Teldec I had one of the last real comprehensive recording contracts—opera, oratorio, solo, all kinds of songs. After that, all the independents started dying out or getting swallowed up by Polygram or Warner Classics. My solo CDs got reissued with new covers and titles.
Then I met Patric Schmid of Opera Rara. Patric is now deceased, but he had a vision to get his dream casts together for little known or never recorded operas. I’ve worked with them for a long time, and with Deutsche Grammophon.
What are the pros and cons of taking time to do recordings, versus singing on stage?
I got to a certain point in my career where I wanted to do just the things I enjoyed or was really interested in. I’ve done just about everything I wanted to do, except Octavian. Maybe the Atlanta Opera will do that. I can die happy if I do that or maybe the Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District or something like that—something that I can really sink my teeth into.
In the years to come there are going to be other things. I have a new group called Jennifer Larmore and Opus Five. It’s [Larmore and] a string quintet. You do things to reinvent yourself as you go along. I started it because it just seemed like such a fun thing to do: not just give recitals with a piano, but with a tiny little orchestra with double bass, that great bass sound. We have Sebastian Hamann, one of the most incredible violinists in the world, and a violist from the Alban Berg Quartett, one of the best violists in the world.
Is this a Chicago-based group? Is your home still in Chicago?
No, not anymore. I have an apartment in Paris. I lived in Chicago for 15 years, but I never really got to put down roots because I was so busy all the time.
What type of repertoire will you perform with Opus Five?
Duets. Sebastian and I will do duets from Lakmé, “Poppea,” songs from Obradors. They do Bach’s “The Art of the Fugue.” That’s one of my wonderful projects.
I’m also doing a tour with conductor Thomas Hengelbrock. He’s the head of the Balthazar Ensemble. The concert is about the seasons of a woman’s life, with Dame Judi Dench as the narrator, which is going to be incredible.
[I have] another project, with John Malkovich, and one with my good friend, actor Patrick Stewart. He has a wonderful speaking voice and we did Camelot together at the Hollywood Bowl. Michael York is also a wonderful actor and we have a whole program about love. Everyone does programs about love, but when you put arias and the spoken word together you have an interesting program. Themed programs. People nowadays want a little drama in their lives.
These are more entrepreneurial projects?
Yes. And I’m writing [children’s] books from [late dog] Sophie’s perspective. She really made a career—in Geneva, Paris, [at the] Metropolitan Opera—on stages that most opera singers never stand on. It’s going to be a little while though. Sophie just died in August so I put the project away for a while. I miss her too much.
Who are your most trusted colleagues that you go to for coaching or advice? And about what sorts of things would you ask for professional counsel or advice?
Rudolph Fellner. I think he’s now 96 or 97 and lives in Pittsburgh. Rudy is a person I’ve taken a lot of my music to over the years. He’s forgotten more than I’ll ever know. He’s a vocal coach, originally from Vienna, knows everything, everybody, every nuance. My husband is a trusted colleague, a bass-baritone. If there’s anything I need to ask him I can, without any reservations whatsoever.
I have very trusted ears in Jacque Trussel. He teaches at SUNY Purchase. Bonnie Hamilton [who teaches at Mannes and Purchase] also. They will always tell me the truth. If I feel like my voice isn’t doing what I want it to do I can sing something for them. It might just be something as simple as, “Oh, Jennie, just modify that vowel.”
Sometimes you just need an extra pair of ears. You can’t do everything on your own.
One last thing I should say. My parents have been the biggest support to me, of everyone and everything. More than I can ever say. Without them I wouldn’t have had this career. Starting when I was a little kid . . . [they told] . . . me that I would be successful in whatever I wanted to do.
My dad has a degree in lighting for the stage and worked at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. When I was 12 and 13 and doing little competitions he would say, “Stand up straight. You’re an Amazon queen! Look for the lights. Feel the warmth of the lights.” And my mother would prepare me, just in case I wasn’t going to win, and then when I would win she’d cheer. They instilled in me a love for opera and the desire to be an opera singer.
Music aside, what are your other passions in life?
I’m a voracious reader. I’m constantly reading. Right now I’m reading Tiziano Terzani: A Fortune-Teller Told Me. He’s an Italian writer. He talks about how we travel and how we see the world. It’s so interesting. He talks about how the duty-free shop in this airport looks exactly like the duty-free shop in that airport, about how we’re not really experiencing the voyage.
If you didn’t take a plane for a year and you took buses, cars, and rickshaws instead, you would see the locals and what’s going on. But we tend to close ourselves off and get on a plane going from point A to point B, never seeing what’s going on. For a year the author did not take a plane because a fortune teller in Malaysia told him he would die if he did. Not wanting to tempt fate, he decided that the idea sounded interesting.
I love historical novels—the Philippa Gregory novels, The Other Boleyn Girl, and The Constant Princess. They’re fantastic. She has a way of bringing it to life and creating a whole world. And Sandra Brown. I read two or three books at a time.
You’ve traveled the world and sung the entire repertoire you’ve wanted to sing. Are there any rocks that are still unturned for you? Any curiosities that you still hope to explore?
I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to and if there’s something that comes up, I find a way to do it. I can’t think of anything, because I go through life trying not to regret. I’m relocating to Paris. It’s always been a dream of mine. Life is changing a lot and Paris has been my home away from home for the last 20 years.
