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.’
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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.
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Symphonies Beside the Sea- Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction
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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'.
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The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory
Federico Colli
\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music
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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
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Young musicians may be physically fit, but with age come the advantages of wisdom and experience
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