'I'm fine playing men on stage - and my private life is my private life'
BBC Music Magazine|May 2023
The BBC Music Magazine Interview
By George Hall
'I'm fine playing men on stage - and my private life is my private life'

American baritone Lucia Lucas may not be the only transgender singer on today’s operatic stage, but she was among the very first to transition while maintaining what is an increasingly busy career. And she is certainly the most prominent: for some years she has been based in Germany, but her work involves major productions with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Lyric Opera of Chicago and London’s English National Opera.

At these and other venues, audiences are by now used to seeing her play male roles on stage – including last autumn the Sacristan in Christof Loy’s production of Tosca at ENO, and at the beginning of 2023 Grech in David McVicar’s staging of Giordano’s Fedora at the Met. Managements, audiences and the singer herself all take this in their stride as no big deal. ‘I guess the whole thing that I’m always fighting against is that I’m fine playing men on stage, and my private life is my private life.’

Lucas comes from Sacramento – ‘a beautiful place,’ she tells me, ‘situated between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe’. Was her family interested in music, theatre or opera? ‘Not really. My dad’s a civil engineer and my mom is an electrical engineer, and my interest still puzzles them.’ Growing up there, she had a tough time expressing herself ‘until I got into music, partly because it allowed me to express myself without words. So being able to send the energy of what I felt to somebody else was powerful for me.’

Esta historia es de la edición May 2023 de BBC Music Magazine.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición May 2023 de BBC Music Magazine.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINEVer todo
Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day
BBC Music Magazine

Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day

Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day. For most people, undertaking a lockdown project meant learning to bake sourdough bread, getting fit with Joe Wicks, or taking up a language. But Professor Roger Parker, the eminent historian of Italian opera and emeritus professor at King's College London, had something far more ambitious in mind. He set about unearthing songs by Gaetano Donizetti - many of which had been lost since the composer's lifetime - and the enterprise turned into a two-year labour of love.

time-read
6 minutos  |
August 2024
Composer of the month - Bohuslav Martinů - Though the Czech absorbed many influences from his exile abroad, his colourful music was always distinctively his own
BBC Music Magazine

Composer of the month - Bohuslav Martinů - Though the Czech absorbed many influences from his exile abroad, his colourful music was always distinctively his own

The youngest of six, Bohuslav was a sickly child, and his father or older sister often had to carry him the 193 steps up to the tower. He was shy at school, too, though showed an early talent for the violin and gave his first concert at 14. By the following year, the future composer was off to the Prague Conservatoire to take the first, if faltering, steps towards a career in music.

time-read
6 minutos  |
August 2024
Symphonies Beside the Sea- Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction
BBC Music Magazine

Symphonies Beside the Sea- Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction

Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction. It's a dimension of music-making that once was integral to many a British holiday experience, yet now has all but vanished. The tide went out, you might say, on the professional seaside (or pier, or spa) orchestra many decades ago. In their glory days, though - perhaps a quarter-century on either side of 1900-these ensembles were everywhere, from Bridlington to Eastbourne, New Brighton to Worthing, Blackpool to Bexhill-on-Sea, Cleethorpes to Brighton... the list is astonishing.

time-read
6 minutos  |
August 2024
Richard Morrison- Do Classical Works About Mortality Reveal More To Us As We Get Older? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise?
BBC Music Magazine

Richard Morrison- Do Classical Works About Mortality Reveal More To Us As We Get Older? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise?

As we get older do we respond differently to that vast canon of music dealing with mortality? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise? Or do human beings possess such a flexible sense of empathy that we can relate to virtually any state of mind if it is evoked convincingly enough by a composer?

time-read
3 minutos  |
August 2024
Do Notes Win Votes? - There are multi-dimensional ways that music is used by political campaigners and their supporters today.
BBC Music Magazine

Do Notes Win Votes? - There are multi-dimensional ways that music is used by political campaigners and their supporters today.

It was a little bit of history repeating when Rishi Sunak announced the UK General Election to the heckling of his political opponents blasting out D:Ream's 'Things Can Only Get Better'.

time-read
2 minutos  |
August 2024
Västra Karup Sweden
BBC Music Magazine

Västra Karup Sweden

The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory

time-read
3 minutos  |
August 2024
Federico Colli
BBC Music Magazine

Federico Colli

\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music

time-read
6 minutos  |
August 2024
Harmonic Progression
BBC Music Magazine

Harmonic Progression

What happens when classical music-style levels of ambition, invention and sheer length are brought to pop? The answer, as Meurig Bowen explains, is Prog Rock

time-read
6 minutos  |
August 2024
Golden years
BBC Music Magazine

Golden years

Young musicians may be physically fit, but with age come the advantages of wisdom and experience

time-read
6 minutos  |
August 2024
Sweet Sixteen
BBC Music Magazine

Sweet Sixteen

As The Sixteen celebrates its 45th birthday, founder Harry Christophers speaks to Andrew Stewart about directing a choral powerhouse

time-read
8 minutos  |
August 2024