Jordan Weatherston Pitts shares his experience as both an opera singer and a drag performer.
In the Fall of 2024, rising tenor Jordan W. Pitts took France’s Got Talent (FGT) by storm, bringing his drag persona, Creatine Price, center stage on national French television. His unique musical numbers, which fascinated audience and jury alike, earned him a spot in the finals. Since this whirlwind success, Pitts’s career has skyrocketed, offering him a mix of standard classical music and operatic performances, TV engagements, a solo tour, and much more.
When did your musical journey begin?
I’m from Buffalo, born and raised. I didn’t grow up in a particularly musical family, but I grew up listening to everything my dad had on vinyl. I would listen to this Pavarotti King of the high C’s album that he had, as well as Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman. So, I had an early exposure to opera, but it didn’t resonate with me right away. I did end up in a boys’ choir when I was quite young, so I had a musical world around me. I always knew I wanted to be a performer, but I was trying all sorts of things, dance, musical theatre. It wasn’t until I was a junior in high school that I went to see an opera. It was at Fredonia, where a friend of mine had just started singing and where I ended up going to college. The opera was Carmen, and I remember thinking to myself, “This is everything I am good at all wrapped into one thing.”
There’s the stagecraft, the musicianship, the languages…. I grew up in a multilingual household, and Carmen is in French, so that really spoke to me. I was wowed by all of it and curious at how people could make these sounds with their bodies. Then it was the beginning of YouTube, of course, so there was a lot popping on the Internet, and I grew up listening to these queens like Sumi Jo or Natalie Dessay, artists who were so invested in what they were doing, and it became clear to me that is what makes a real artist. I also had a fascination with Cirque du Soleil, always these very “out there” kind of performances. It hit me early on that I wasn’t going to have the most traditional operatic career because I always knew that there was something a little bit different about what I wanted to do.
Did you know at that point what that meant for you?
I knew that I had all this art inside of me. I had this strong desire to perform. Opera was the medium that I was choosing, but in some ways it felt limiting to be doing that, because it felt like all those other things would come back to haunt me. And they kind of have…in this moment, in my life and in my career, which is exciting! It’s a big breakthrough for me.
When did your drag journey begin?
As one of my many jobs to survive in NYC as a young artist, I ended up working in night life, and that’s where I encountered drag for the first time, when I was around 25 years old. I became really invested in the local drag scene. Then RuPaul’s Drag Race became popular, and I became a fan of the show. A couple of years later I started to play around with drag loosely, just on occasion and for fun. And then Stonewall came about quite suddenly; it was my principal artist debut with New York City Opera.
The opera was written by Iain Bell and Mark Campbell. Mark had seen me do some drag and inquired if that was something I was interested in doing. Of course, I said yes, because as artists we’ll do anything for a job! So, I called my “Drag Mother” and asked her for guidance on how to go about this seriously and take it to the next level, now that I had this opportunity. She warned me that once you start, you don’t stop…and that’s how it happened. Stonewall was really the point in time where I realized how thrilling drag felt for me. I realized how much I loved doing it and the connection I felt to it. It gave me a sense of agency and power.
How did you decide to participate in France’s Got Talent?
Stonewall was a great challenge and success for me that got me closer to what I wanted to do in drag, which was to fully sing with my own voice. That opened the door to more performances in this style, where I would combine drag and opera. I put a video up on social media of me singing Carmen in a red dress from one of these concerts, and it went “opera viral.” Through that video, this well known French artist called Marianne James found me, and we developed an online friendship. She is on the jury panel of the show, and after a couple of weeks she asked me if I would be interested in being on the show. At first, I didn’t know what to say.
As opera singers, we don’t always have the best impression of these kinds of shows. Now having gone through it, I can say this is severely misunderstood—the level of preparation, pressure, and time it requires. This initial conversation was around 2021, and nothing came of it at that time. Then in December 2023, we reconnected, and I started getting calls from the producers of the show. Since Marianne and I had never actually met in person, they wanted to bring me in as a surprise for her. So, at that point I said yes, and I thought I was just coming to sing once, but then they kept calling me back for the actual competition!
Jordan W. Pitts
Your performance numbers were incredibly detailed and intentional. How much time did you have to prepare them and how did you handle the pressure to deliver?
It was the craziest two and a half months of my life. I went back and forth to France about five times during that period. It’s such a quick turnaround, and you have to get everything approved by the artistic team as well as come up with your own ideas, gowns, funds. You’re on your own. I spent an exorbitant amount of money on the dresses that I wore for the show, but the production has been helping me set opportunities up, like commercials in France, to offset some of this financial strain.
What helped me deliver is the level of professionalism that I’ve built as a singer, where I have learned to just show up and sing. I really relied on that. But I have to thank my drag persona for this strength I now have to just do it regardless of the circumstances. There are only so many things you can control. And, in a way, the difficulty of being in drag in those situations heightens the emotional intensity.
For my numbers I chose to sing arias that speak to me as a queen. A lot of those are soprano or mezzo arias, and people feel a certain way about that, which I have to both respect and ignore, because I want to do something that laughs in the face of the purists in opera. Going on national television, I wanted to give people a point of reference that struck a part of them and that was relatable.
Creatine Price
A big part of this experience has been a newfound level of exposure, especially on social media, with its positives and negatives. How have you handled this so far?
It is still very new to me, the amount of attention that it gets. And the fact that what’s on TV…lives in perpetuity. My performances are now on YouTube, so I constantly get people messaging me, some with love, but also many with unsolicited advice or hate. When the first episode came out, I was so excited about all the new followers I was getting, but then the hate comments also started to come in. It was very difficult.
The most helpful thing for me has been learning to shut off that voice that says I’m not good enough, because it gets triggered so easily by things that happen on social media. A good practice for me was to go through the comment sections of other successful singers and realize that I’m not alone. People will always have something to say. It did put me in a bit of a dark place just to see how much people really resented not just my singing but drag.
Now I feel a greater responsibility about the quality of my content and being intentional about what I post, focusing on my work while still letting my fun personality come through. I’ve had to learn how to compartmentalize myself, how I feel about my own art, versus what ends up in the comments section.
Following this whirlwind experience, I imagine there is a lot more to look forward to. Can you give us a hint of what is coming next?
The biggest thing is a concert tour in France. That’s my project, my baby that I’m putting together, starting in the fall. And in the meantime, I have several spots that are happening in France, some televised.
And on top of that, I am working with the Boston Foundation and a composer who won the Boston Live Arts Grant to create something called Project Creatine. It’s a one-woman opera that we’re going to try to tour in the U.S. as much as possible. I’m also going to be working with some very wonderful people to put together “Drag Messiah” again at the end of this year, and then also some future collaborations with Hélène Ségara, who I had the pleasure of singing with at the iconic Salle Pleyel on the day after the finals of FGT.
Any words of advice for the young artists trying to break through in the opera industry?
I run a Facebook group called YAC (Young Artist Community) Tracker, where I see a lot of the gripes that young artists have with the industry. I think we really need to move away from the idea that a “traditional” career path exists, because it does not. You have to think about what the actual skills are that get you a job to work in this industry and what are the outcomes.
If your goal is to sing leading roles at A-level companies, your life is going to look very, very different. It is important to know what that means and what you are asking for. And I found out for myself that I didn’t want to take a “traditional” route to a career. I want to do something that honors different elements of me inside of the frame that is opera.
I always tell young artists that it is not about other people. You cannot look at what other people are doing and think that it’s not working out for you. You have to look at other people and say, “If they can do it, I can do it.” Take advice from the people that worked for it and that really put blood, sweat, and tears into forming a career.
For more information, visit: http://www.jordanwpitts.com and www.creatineprice.com.
