In an era when big voices seem to garner the most praise, Kiera Duffy offers a vocalism that is characterized by sophisticated phrasing and a gleaming soprano timbre. Her performance schedule consists of a healthy dose of the classics—Vivaldi, Handel, and Mozart—but she does not shy away from edgier repertoire either. She sang the role of Venus on stilts in György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre at the New York Philharmonic, joined a trio singing Unsuk Chin’s Cantatrix Sopranica with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and sang Violet in Peter Ash’s pastiche-flavored opera The Golden Ticket at the Wexford Opera Festival.
Petite and blonde, Duffy looks every bit the precious ingénue, perfectly suited to Mozart’s soubrette roles. Yet, surprisingly, Duffy goes against the grain and gravitates toward Schoenberg and Berg. Richard Strauss is her musical idol and his Lieder her vocal sanctuary. Duffy is one self-possessed soprano who is defining her own niche—and in doing so is gaining recognition as a virtuosic singer.
What things about your upbringing, either musical or non-musical, led you to where you are today?
I come from your traditional, suburban, middle-class family. My mom’s a nurse and my dad’s a builder. I’m the oldest of five kids: classic Philadelphia Irish-Catholics. My parents were certainly not aficionados of classical music. They had a great record collection, however, of popular music, which included everything from the Beatles and the Moody Blues to Carole King, James Taylor, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, to David Bowie and Michael Jackson (I have vivid memories of being terrified by “Thriller” as a kid!). But to my parents’ credit, when I was very young—maybe two or three—they had inherited a piano, recognized that I had an interest, and promptly signed me up for piano lessons, as well as ballet and gymnastics. It was a smart choice, as I would go on to study piano for nearly 15 years.
Aside from the piano, I would say another big influence was my dad’s family’s love of classic musicals. Every holiday, we would go to my grandparents’ house—and my grandfather would pick out the sheet music from the piano bench, and soon enough we’d all be belting away tunes from Camelot, Carousel, Gigi, South Pacific and, of course, The Sound of Music. I have incredibly fond memories of those times.
So your parents didn’t make you practice the piano every day?
Never. I was sort of your typical overachieving oldest child and kind of a nerd—what can I say? There was something very personal about classical music that really hooked me, so I didn’t need prodding from my parents. I connected to Bach and Mozart from a very young age; plus, I loved the sense of accomplishment that I felt after I finally nailed a piano piece after months of practice. I should say, however, that I was a good pianist but never a great one. I certainly knew that I was not going to pursue a virtuoso piano career. But I loved piano, I loved the discipline it required and, of course, I loved the music making.
So it was from that basis that you found out about Westminster Choir College and applied?
My path toward Westminster and singing is actually sort of convoluted. I studied piano until I was 18. When I got into high school, I wanted to expand my musical horizons and audition for the musicals and the choral ensembles. I was lucky to have gotten opportunities in both—mostly, I think, because of my strong musicianship skills acquired through years of piano study. But I did feel limited in terms of the technical part of singing, as I had had no training in that. So, my junior year in high school I decided to sign up for voice lessons with a teacher at my high school who happened to be in graduate school at Westminster. It was through her that I first heard of Westminster—and as I was becoming more and more enamored of choral music while I was in high school, that connection would turn out to be a fortuitous one.
So you were thinking that when you went to Westminster you’d study to be a professional chorister or an educator?
After doing the all-state choirs for two years in high school and being completely blown away by those experiences, I decided I wanted to be a professional choral conductor. I couldn’t major in choral conducting as an undergraduate, so I decided to audition for the voice performance program (on the recommendation of my voice teacher). My plan was to figure out how singing works so that when I became a choral conductor I knew what I was asking my singers to do. Somehow, I was accepted into the voice performance program.
Do you think of yourself as having always been a natural singer?
Ha-ha! No way!
So, for example, coordinating breath with phonation was not natural for you?
I am a technical singer through and through, and I credit all of that to my teacher of nearly 14 years (with whom I studied at WCC), Laura Brooks Rice. She really built my voice. Even now, I still can’t believe sometimes that I am a professional singer. I keep waiting for someone to find me out. I guess I’ve always felt more comfortable calling myself a musician . . . who happens to sing.
What was her method like?
Laura was a student of famed teacher Margaret Harshaw for many years, so she obviously came from a very firm technical foundation. However, unlike some of Harshaw’s successors who perhaps took the technique a bit too far (an overly depressed larynx, perhaps too much space, a sometimes “woofy” sound), Laura really took what she thought was the best of Harshaw’s technique and combined it with other approaches that she saw were equally successful. The result is really a “Rice Technique.” I think she’ll laugh when she reads that! Like all great teachers, Laura is curious. She’s always reading and listening and learning in order to be a better teacher. Like any technique grounded in the Bel Canto tradition, she focuses on breath, space, phonation, and resonance. I find it to be a very holistic approach. Laura is not a trick teacher. Her teaching method is all about process. And obviously that process has served me well, as I am still learning new things from her!
What’s your approach to keeping your voice healthy and maintaining a healthy technique?
I have an incredibly (annoyingly) delicate instrument. It’s taken me a long time to be OK with that.
So you’re not one of those singers that can go out and smoke right after rehearsal?
Heck no. Wow, do I envy those cords-of-steel singers! That’s just not me. Part of it is intrinsic to my voice type. I’m a high soprano. Generally speaking, a coloratura’s physiology is more delicate because the vocal folds are stretching longer and vibrating faster than any other voice type.
I had a vocal injury recently singing Le Grand Macabre with the New York Philharmonic. I don’t mind telling this story because I think the topic of vocal pathologies is still sort of taboo, and it shouldn’t be. I was singing the role of Venus, which is a very small role—I was on stage only about eight minutes—but it is incredibly high and also requires straight tone on high B-flats and Bs (and pianissimo, at that). Needless to say, this is sort of a limit-pushing role.
I had been feeling some post-nasal drip during the whole last week of rehearsals, but didn’t really think about it because it was such a condensed stint on stage. Everything had been going fine. But a few hours after the morning’s final dress rehearsal, I noticed that I wasn’t able to phonate at the top of my voice. By the next morning—the morning of the opening, mind you—it was worse. I went to the ENT and called the New York Philharmonic, devastated. I had very apparent pre-nodule swellings and I would not be able to sing the opening.
As a result of the rehearsal process?
I think that it was probably something that was building over the course of the week. I was singing on swollen cords, but not knowing it because the role was so short and I had always had enough recovery time before the next rehearsal. Having said that, I think that the voice is sort of a mystery—especially my voice. I’ll feel like I’m doing everything right and sometimes my voice just feels like crap, to be blunt. Then sometimes I can talk all day, sing, and still feel great. Sometimes, the voice defies logic.
Anyway, after consulting with my teacher and Dr. Woo (the ENT who diagnosed me), I made the decision to go on steroids for the duration of the run. But I need to caution that these were extraordinary circumstances and I did not take this decision lightly. I felt that because the role was so short, and especially because I knew I would have nearly a month of recovery time after the show, it was an acceptable choice.
Did you feel that there were any long-term consequences as a result of using steroids?
No, thankfully, but one has to be extremely careful. It’s a very strange feeling to sing on steroids; sort of disembodied, I guess.
Mentally or vocally?
Both, really. Vocally speaking, you feel like when you make the sound, there’s some kind of disconnect. You can’t exactly feel when you’re pushing your limits. On top of that, steroids are often known to make one feel euphoric or even invincible. The danger here, of course, is that a singer will continue to sing, sing, sing—and then completely crash. Steroids temporarily relieve swelling, but the only way to relieve swelling permanently is to be quiet and hydrate. If not, you’re just exacerbating a problem.
I knew all this, so I was very careful. I sang the last two performances and then I was quiet for two weeks. Which, for me, is not easy. I am a talker! Despite myself, I got the necessary rest I needed, the swelling disappeared, and I’m singing normally again. The moral of the story, though, is that I need to be vigilant about maintaining good vocal health.
You are represented by CAMI. Do you sit down with your agent and create a strategic plan about what you want your career to look like in five years? Or do you allow it to be more organic and unfold as you receive offers to perform?
It’s a good question. When my manager at IMG Artists left for another career opportunity, I was introduced to Damon Bristo, my current manager, at CAMI. At our very first meeting, he asked me what kind of career I envisioned for myself, and to this day I think we both reference that conversation as a jumping off point for all of the decisions we make.
Every four or five months we sort of check in on the bigger-picture stuff. We evaluate what gigs have been successful, which were perhaps not exactly the right fit, with whom I’d like to work again, and whom I’d like to sing for in the future.
So you’re still doing auditions.
Absolutely. I am lucky that I have not had to do a ton of auditions, but I am certainly not beyond them by any means.
Of course, you can have all the strategic conversations you want, right? But at the end of the day the work you get is the work you get, especially when you’re starting out. It’s good to have a general sense of what kind of career you think you’d enjoy, but you have to stay open to possibilities that maybe you hadn’t considered.
When I was in school I never thought of myself as the next Jan DeGaetani, a.k.a. “the next new music singer.” But it’s funny—I think the one thing that launched my career more than anything was going to Tanglewood and singing Elliott Carter’s opera What Next? I was very lucky to be doing that with a guy named James Levine, which certainly helped things from a press-attention point of view. But, it was a great experience in a lot of ways. Obviously working with Maestro Levine and Mr. Carter was amazing, but I also discovered that I was pretty good at singing these kinds of complex scores, and people noticed me for it.
But you’re drawn to it, too?
One of the reasons I especially enjoy singing new music is because a lot of the traditional, canonical opera roles for my voice type are bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, ingénue types, and I’m just not that interested in them. With new music, I find there are more choices. I’m not an “-ina” girl, as they say—perhaps with the exception of Despina in “Così.” That’s a lady with depth.
You have written that you perceive your voice to have a steely, silvery quality and find that it’s better suited to German repertoire, yet it turned out that you sang two Italian arias in the Met finals—and you did very well. Would you talk about the art of choosing competition or audition repertoire?
The year that I got to the Met finals it was the fourth or fifth time I’d done the Met auditions and I had never before advanced beyond the regionals in New York. I had taken a year or two off and I had started to find my way. I had learned Lulu’s aria, had been working, and started working with my first manager. I had done the Tanglewood thing and I started realizing that the thing that set me apart was a lot of the Austria-German repertoire, English language stuff, and of course, new music.
I was very strategic about how I did the Met auditions in 2006-07. I began every single level (except the finals) with “Lied der Lulu.” My thought was that if anything was going to set me apart from the pack, it would be this.
And you want to show agility, sostenuto singing, a Mozart selection as well.
Right. I knew I could sing Lulu well and that a judge would think it was interesting. And then he/she would think, “But can she really sing?” So each time I was then asked for either “Durch Zärtlichkeit” or “Caro nome.” I did end up singing two Italian selections in the finals, but . . . that was sort of a fluke and not necessarily indicative of the repertoire I generally sing. I was gently encouraged in that direction and well, when the Met encourages something, you generally listen. Ha!
You’ve got a Strauss recording coming up.
Eek, yes! Hyperion Records is recording the complete Lieder of Richard Strauss with pianist, Roger Vignoles. The other volumes feature Christine Brewer, Christopher Maltman, Anne Schwanewilms, and Andrew Kennedy. And somehow Roger asked me to do the fifth volume.
Which is in keeping with how you perceive your voice.
I have to say, making this record confirmed that Strauss feels really good in my voice. Nevertheless, Mr. Strauss presents his challenges. The centerpiece of the CD is his Opus 68, the Brentano Lieder. They are fabulous songs, and the middle four are particularly well suited to my voice. The bookends (Nos. 1 and 6), however, are quite huge and would, in my opinion, be best served by a heavier voice than mine. I am probably best classified as a lyric coloratura, and those movements are ideally sung by a dramatic coloratura, particularly if done with orchestra. Thankfully, this recording is with piano, therefore rendering those songs manageable in my voice.
And, man, did I have a blast singing them! I was certainly channeling my inner Kirsten Flagstad for the final song, “Lied der Frauen,” which is like a scene from Salome—it’s enormous! Incidentally, I believe this will be only the second commercially released recording ever of the Brentano Lieder with piano. If for no other reason, I recommend purchasing the CD in order to hear Roger Vignoles absolutely devour the piano accompaniment of the “Lied der Frauen.” The piece is almost never done with piano because it’s so bloody difficult in the hands—so to hear Roger toss it off with utter panache is thrilling, to say the least.
