Leah Crocetto: With Arms Wide Open

Jason Victor Serinus on October 15, 2013
Leah Crocetto

Most Bay Area vocal fans have “first time I heard Leah Crocetto” stories they recount with wide-eyed wonderment. Mine merge two events: the 2008 Merola Grand Finale, where the unforced power and tonal beauty of her “Tu puniscimi” from Verdi’s Luisa Miller bowled everyone over; and a press season-preview performance, where her remarkably nuanced, extremely beautiful “Tacea la notte” from Verdi’s Il trovatore impelled me to declare to the head of one of the biggest artists’ agencies in the U.S., “If she’s not signed already, grab her!”

Crocetto was already taken. Since crowning her residency as a San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow with a marvelous Liù in Puccini’s Turandot (2011), the big-voiced soprano has also been grabbed by a host of companies and conductors. As she approaches her Metropolitan Opera debut as Liù in the 2015–2016 season, she has already sung Trovatore in Bordeaux, alternating with her friend, former Adler Fellow Elza van den Heever; Verdi Requiems in Los Angeles, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Canada; and Otellos at La Fenice (Venice), which included a company tour of Japan, and in Frankfurt. She’s sung with the Berlin Philharmonic, made a memorable Santa Fe Opera debut in Rossini’s Maometto II, and sung in the Orchestre National de France’s opening night gala.

All this has served as a prelude to what may be Crocetto’s most exciting Verdi Requiem to date. Scheduled for Oct. 25 in the War Memorial Opera House, and conducted by SFO Music Director Luisotti, the must-witness evening teams Crocetto with three other artists of her caliber — Margaret Mezzacappa, Michael Fabiano, and Vitalij Kowaljow — plus 320 choristers from the opera houses of San Francisco and Real Teatro di San Carlo of Naples. Not surprisingly, tickets are sold out.

The Woman Behind the Voice

During an hour-plus in-person interview, Crocetto shared her thoughts on the music she loves and the arc of her career. We began with her recent seven-mile run along New York City’s Hudson River, a personal best that she announced on her frequently updated Facebook fan page.

Since arriving in San Francisco for the 2008 Merola program, Crocetto’s lifestyle change has prepared her for the rigors of an opera career. For several years now, she has combined cardio with light weight-circuits and sessions with a trainer.

“I started running in Verona a couple of months ago,” she revealed. “I just put on my shoes and decided to try it. It was 100 degrees, and I still loved it.”

She doesn’t like to run with other people, preferring to be in her own head. “I put my little earbuds in, and off I go. Sometimes I take my Maltese, Ernie, with me; he also flies with me under the seat in the plane. I love him. He’s actually ‘Ernest Hemingway,’ named after my favorite literary figure. I’m kind of a nurturer in life, and it’s much less lonely being on the road when I have something else to take care of besides myself.”

Nicola Luisotti and I in Berlin before the Poulenc Gloria with the Berlin Philharmonic
Nicola Luisotti and Crocetto in Berlin before the Poulenc Gloria with the Berlin Philharmonic

Nurturing also plays an important role in her musical life, which is why she calls Luisotti a “singers’ conductor.”

A lot of times, conductors are very homed in on the score and the musicians in the pit. We’re up there, doing our song and our dance, and we’re not getting any feedback from the conductor at all. We can’t survive like that. In order to have a successful performance, we need to know we’re heading the right way. Both conductors blow me a kiss from the pit when I do something excellent. That may be an Italian thing, but I think it’s more the trait of a full musician.

I feel like [Riccardo] Frizza and Luisotti are with me the entire time. During Turandot, Luisotti and I were weaving in and out, in a complete give-and-take, as though we were one. I was with his baton all the time, and he was conducting within my vibrato, which is very difficult to do. It’s a learned craft. Everyone’s vibrato has a different tempo and rhythm, and it must work within the tempo of the piece. A lot of times, the tempo of the piece is set up by the tempo of the singer’s vibrato, because if you go too fast, the singer can’t get the breath they need to sing to their full capability. There are few conductors who conduct with a singer’s vibrato in mind.

The Spirituality of Interpretation

Having seen a YouTube clip of one of Crocetto’s stints as Desdemona, I commented that when her character enters and greets the children in Act 1, there’s an unforced graciousness to her movements that suggests that Desdemona is a perfect role for her.

Desdemona has become a role I love. I identify with her a lot and think she’s so much deeper than a lot of sopranos give her credit for. If you read Shakespeare’s play, the scene before shows her defying her father and saying, in a very loving and respectful way, ‘I’m in love. I’m going to marry Othello.’ That’s not in the opera, but it’s important for me to know as an artist and actor. It’s very brave and daring of her to ignore what’s expected and do what she feels is right. I identify with that on a very deep level.

“Jesus did not shun anyone. ‘Here are my arms; they’re open to anyone.’ That’s how I want to live my life.” –Leah Crocetto

I also think she’s one of the most gracious women in all of literature. She’s constantly looking out for other people. She’s very devout in her relationship with God, but her faith is very personal rather than what’s expected by her family. I identify with that, as well, because I’m a Christian, but my relationship with God is personal; it’s not the stereotypical judgmental relationship.

Desdemona marries a black man, and there’s evidence that she was raised by a black woman. My grandmother was raised by her nanny, who was a black woman, so I can relate. When my mother was a child, [an interracial family] was a complete no-no. This is what I mean by my Christianity being my own; I support all my brothers and sisters. Jesus did not shun anyone. ‘Here are my arms; they’re open to anyone.’ That’s how I want to live my life, and I feel that’s how Desdemona is, too.

The Verdi Requiem

Crocetto calls Verdi’s Requiem “the perfect piece of music, without mistake or fault. It’s magnificent music, and it’s written for my voice.”

“I don’t warm up before singing the Requiem, because Verdi has written it as an ascending mountain,” she says.

By the time you get to the end, you’re bellowing this high C. But the way it starts, with the Kyrie eleison, gets you right in your mask [the resonating area of the face] and your warmed-up place, so your voice feels all the things it needs to feel to continue on. I will check my voice out to see if it’s in a good place that day, and I’ll have warmed up a little bit in the morning, but I don’t do a whole sit down/stand up/play the piano warm-up before the performance. A little ‘mi mi mi’ — to make sure I have all my notes — works. It’s the same with the role of Liù, which is also written as an arc.
Greg Kunde as Otello and I  on opening night of Otello at La Fenice in Venice

Crocetto’s approach to Verdi’s most operatic of requiems is unique, and involves assigning a character and role to each part.

The soprano character, I think, has a guilty conscience. She’s constantly asking for salvation. The subtlety with which she asks for it the last time, when she’s chanting the ‘Libera me,’ indicates her final realization that it’s been there all along, and she’s now resolved to put her score down and live.

That’s the way I look at it. I could be completely wrong, but it’s the way it comes to me as an artist. She’s got her big ‘Mad Scene’ at the end, when she throws her hands up in the air in desperation and repeats, over and over again, ‘Libera me, Domine.’ Then, finally, the chorus comes in and supports her. I like to be really intense at the end, because the chant lends itself to that.

There’s always dead silence after it ends, because the conductor will hold the audience so they can reflect on what they’ve just witnessed. It’s the redemption moment, and it’s so powerful. I love it!

Artistic Growth

Crocetto, who in her mid-20s feared she was too old to embark on a career in opera, acknowledges that when she entered the Adler Fellow program at age 28, she was still too young to sing the heavy role of Leonora in Il trovatore. Nonetheless, Sheri Greenawald and Mark Morash let her tackle it because “they understand what needs to happen with big voices, and knew where my voice was going. That’s why I did three years as an Adler Fellow; my voice was still ‘cooking.’”

As a result, her voice has changed. “There’s more of a seamless presence in the middle of the voice, which has a lot to do with performing a lot of these Verdi roles. Desdemona is very ‘middle’: There’s not a lot of high stuff, but it’s lyrical singing that really made me focus my middle voice. It’s what they were working on with me in San Francisco, and that I finally found after I left.

“My pianissimi are also different; they’re rounder, and not so croony. Before, I think I relied a lot on the ability to just pop up there without support. Now, they’re a little rounder than when I sang Liù two years ago. At least that’s what I’m told, because I don’t listen to myself when I sing.”

She speaks honestly about her capabilities as a musician. “Playing the Female Chorus in Britten’s Rape of Lucretia changed my musical life,” she says, “because of the role’s musical difficulty. I don’t have a degree in music, so I always have to work a little harder to learn roles, and doing that role made me a musician. I can essentially read music now.”

The personal arises frequently when Crocetto discusses her repertoire. Of her performance of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, she says,

I was thrilled to do the Barber piece in my hometown because it’s so nostalgic for me. I was born in the South, in South Carolina, for one. I also have remembrances of being a child of 4 in Palmira, Michigan, when, on the perfect night, just like in Barber’s piece, my father put out these wonderful quilts and we lay on the grass. I remember holding onto a little birch tree that we had planted and running around in circles as the quilts were there and my mom and dad were drinking margaritas.

Also, I think it’s so important for artists to be fed, not only artistically, but also familialy. It’s nice to give 100 percent to people who are essentially hugging you back. I will always go back home because I just love the people.

She says the same about Japan, where hundreds of people met her when she arrived for her makeup call before her performance. Ditto for the audience at Arena di Verona, whose claque met her at the stage door. “I didn’t have to pay them, but they liked me, so I got ‘Brava, Diva!’ I love singing in Italy, and feel at home there now.”

Present and Future

Crocetto

Crocetto can say only so much about performances not yet officially announced. Among them are two leading roles at the San Francisco Opera in coming seasons, and two Liùs besides the Met’s. She also has repeat gigs in Bordeaux, performances with the English National Opera, her first Alice in Falstaff in Frankfurt, and a Verdi Requiem in Stuttgart.

Next spring, she makes her role debut as Mimi in La Bohème in Pittsburgh. Her Rodolfo is David Lomelí, who, she reports, is doing great and singing beautifully. She’ll be adding Elisabetta in Don Carlo and returning to Rossini’s Maometto II as Anna, which is among her favorite roles.

Closer to home, she presents a solo recital at UC Davis on Dec. 7. She identifies her pianist as “the fabulous” Mark Markham, who has worked with Jessye Norman for a quarter century.

“I’ll be premiering a work written just for me by Gregory Peebles, who is a soprano in Chanticleer,” she says. “It’s called Recurrence, and it’s about our lives as musicians. It’s very rare that you find a composer who writes your soul, and I feel that he has written my soul in this piece.”

“I think it’s so important for artists to be fed, not only artistically, but also familialy. It’s nice to give 100 percent to people who are essentially hugging you back.” –Crocetto

She’s also debuting at Philadelphia Opera, Washington National Opera, and the Canadian Opera Company. She received an invitation from Rome, but had to decline because of scheduling conflicts. She is currently scheduled out to 2018.

For her Met debut, Crocetto plans a triple play. “While I’m there, I’m going to do an old-school cabaret, the way I used to do as a singing waitress. When I was 25, I would wait tables at the Olive Garden in Times Square, then run down to ‘Restaurant Row’ and sing my ass off all night. I’m friends with a lot of the people I worked with at the OG; I hope they come when I’m in New York. I’ll also do a legit recital in a new series that’s starting up there.”

As her fans already know, Crocetto has the torch-song idiom in her blood. For New Yorkers old enough to recall the impact that Verdian/Wagnerian soprano Eileen Farrell made when she tackled blues and pop songs, it could be major déjà vu.

But before all that comes the Verdi Requiem, and her return to the city where her voice opened up to its full potential.

I consider San Francisco my artistic home. I owe the community so much gratitude. There’s nothing like coming back here to sing; it makes me warm and fuzzy to think about it.

I couldn’t do it without fans and family. I’m sure there are people here who don’t necessarily care for me or my voice. But the ones who do like me make it all worthwhile and fulfilling. That’s why we do we do what we do — so people are fed.