The Basso Profundo

Few singers in the classical music world have made a bigger splash in recent years than bass Atlanta native Morris Robinson.

A graduate of The Citadel Military College in South Carolina where he was a football star, Robinson worked for a while as an executive at 3M before deciding to devote his rich voice to classical music. Since then he has quickly risen in the music world, making his mark in roles such as The Commodore in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Sarastro in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Ramfis in Verdi’s Aida and many other operas by Richard Wagner, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Hector Berlioz and Richard Strauss. Upcoming are concert recitals N.Y., Washington D.C., and Philadelphia and opera performances as Sarasto and Fasolt in Wagner’s Das Rheingold at the Los Angeles Opera.

EbonyJet.com had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Robinson about several things including his career, how he prepares for a role, and what roadblocks he has encountered.

EBONY: First off, one thing that perhaps really annoys me is that people who don’t know much about classical music think that it’s stuffy, too difficult or something that you have to wear formal clothes to listen to. It’s just music after all.

ROBINSON: Classical music has always been considered as being for the aristocracy -- for those born with a silver spoon in their mouths and that’s simply not the case. I mean I was first drawn into classical music because… well first of all I love all kinds of music. I grew up playing the drums in church. I’m the son of a Baptist minster, the grandson of a Baptist minister. I’d been around church music all the time. But I also had this desire to hear different things and when I first heard classical music I was drawn to it.

And how did I come to sing opera? I mean it came to me.

I had this voice and I went to a high school of performing arts and was introduced to classical music then. And I took a liking to it. I kind of took naturally to it. And of course my voice being as it is, it doesn’t really fit into any other kind of music genre, so I was kind of led to this life so to speak.

What’s your process for preparing for a role, especially a difficult work like John Adams’ Doctor Atomic?

Well I received the score and the CD and I copied it into my computer and I listened to it and I closed up the CD and I threw it across the room and I said to myself:  “There’s no way in hell I’m going to learn this!” (laughs) But I eventually got into it.

A few years back Samuel Ramey told me when we were performing at the Metropolitan Opera that: “The one thing I can tell you about this business being a professional musician is that you never stop learning.”  I mean when I had to dig into this John Adams’ work with its atonal music and multi-meter time signatures, etc., it was the hardest thing I ever had to undertake in my life. But when I got it, it felt like such an accomplishment. I felt so enormous, like solving a crossword puzzle. You get so much more enriched and so much more united, as you will from learning new things.

You mentioned the great bass Samuel Ramey. What other singers do you admire?

Ramey is my guy. I first him at the Metropolitan Opera in New York when I was performing in Verdi’s Nabucco. I was singing the High Priest and he was singing the part of Zaccaria. We first got together during rehearsals and I was like “(nervously) Ah…ah…ah…” (laughs) He was like: “Relax” (laughs) I mean everything I know I learned from him and (the British bass) Robert Lloyd listening to their CDs and it was such an honor to work with him. And I did get to work with Lloyd when I was a young artist and he would come and coach me and things like that.

I got to work with the (German bass) Kurt Moll who’s another one of my inspirations, and who’s just a gem of a person but also one of the great, great basses of our generation. And of course (the black British opera bass) Sir Willard White just seeing him and understanding his journey for someone who looks like myself.
 
Well, what do you look for in a role such as say the Commendatore in Mozart’s Don Giovanni or The High Priest in Nubucco?

Well let’s look at The Commodore. The first thing I look for is how I can bring something special vocally to the role. And The Commodore is such a role because he appears in a brief scene in the beginning of the first act and he dies, but then he comes back at the end of the opera as a ghost and sings the most memorable lines in the opera. (Robinson sings some lines from the character’s part)  It’s very powerful. You have to come out and make a statement.

So to me it’s important that I bring emotionally and vocally and stage craft-wise something legitimate to the character that makes it more worthwhile and memorable and makes it stand out more than it’s usually portrayed.  Those are some of the things that I love about that role. Now when I sing a role I try to uphold some of the standards that I have heard before and bring some depth and integrity to the characters.  And also to bring to these roles what I consider a healthy, great big sound. I think my sound is my signature.

One role you’ve been really getting into recently in performance is the role of Osmin in Mozart’s comic opera The Abduction from the Seraglio.

Because of the characterization, because he’s big and a Moor and a Muslim; all the things that work for me physically and vocally. It’s a virtuoso role as far as the voice goes. You got to have coloratura, you got to have legato lines, you have to have all the highs and all the lows.  All the things that require you to be a great singer are exposed in that role.

But it’s one of the true great operatic roles but a tricky one, he can be played  as a straight up cartoonish comic buffoon for laughs or evil, sinister villain. There’s a fine line doing the part.

I like to play him both ways. This is what I think…Osmin is a very powerful character. He truly believes and thinks that he is a very powerful person, everybody else in the opera thinks he kind of goofy. He’s telling everyone in the opera ‘I’m going to get you. I’m going to wring your necks, I’m going to kill you. You’re not going to make a fool of me.’ He’s a really powerful and sinister guy, but it’s just that all the stuff around him makes him look kind of goofy.

I’ve been working on it and before I unveil it I’m going to see Kurt Moll in Berlin and just drill it, work the character out.  It’s a tough role to play because as you said there’s a fine line and you’ve got to get right on the line or you’ll miss. You’ve got to get it right down the center, too far left or too far right and you’ve blown it.

Here’s the obvious question, what roadblocks have you encountered being a black singer in the operatic world? I assume things are much better for black  opera singers than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

Well of course I can’t imagine what was happening 20 or 30 years  ago, but I will say this, because I’m a bass, I’m not on stage kissing the lead soprano and I look a certain way and I’m big I think it works for me. Because I’m 6’3’’, I’m bald headed and I’m black. They want somebody in positions  of authority -- priests, gods, devils, fathers those type of things so I think it doesn’t detract as much from my ability to portray a character on stage . If I were a lead tenor and looked the way I looked, it may have visually impaired my ability and  career.  I don’t know because I’m not a lyric tenor. There have been some instances,  but it’s only happened one or two times and I was able to work my way around that.

I was talking with an old friend of mine, a sales manager who I worked with at 3M who was the fairest guy I’ve ever worked with. We talk all the time. He told me once that if you go down there and prove to them that you’re an asset and that you can do the job, they have to respect you at the end of the day no matter what you look like. They can’t say I don’t trust or I won’t work with him. I take that same mentality to the opera world. What you see is one thing but when you hear what comes out when you see the quality of my work, let that speak for me.

Keep in the back of your mind not to let that stuff run the way you run your life. That is important in every aspect of African-American lives. You have to know from whence you came, you have to be familiar with the fact the playing field isn’t anyways level, but you can’t let that control you, you just have to take your best shot and hope that that speaks for itself.

Of course we can’t end this without asking you your feeling about our new president-elect.

C’mon man! (laughs) I’m from Atlanta Georgia O.K.? And I can tell you that I remember as a young kid growing up in Georgia riding by the Fox theater and there are a set of steps that goes down the back that, years ago, were only used by black folk to enter the theater. So when they made the announcement that night that Barack had been elected president I was in tears. I was uncontrollable. You know we’re not so far removed from when this was considered completely unthinkable.

You can look back 20, 30, 40 years when this was considered incomprehensible that this could ever happen, I’m just so proud. I heard Maya Angelou say the other day that as a country we’ve now
grown up. It’s just so amazing to see this because I have a little 3 year-old boy at home and his first impression in life is to see a black president. And he’ll grow up in a completely different world because of this. Because the world of opportunity shown to him has been expanded so much. I’m just so excited to be a part of it. And I’m so proud to be an American, I’m so proud to be an African American and I’m so proud to be an African-American dad.

Morris Robinson’s debut CD Going Home is now available on the Decca label.

Film critic, lecturer and festival consultant Sergio Mims covers all things film from the city that works, Chicago. He is a regular contributor to ebonyjet.com