Soprano Angel Blue is young in the race widely known as Margarita Xirgu in Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamarin the opera's premiere at the Metropolitan Opera. On New Year's Eve, he starred in Verdi's title role Aida-the first new production of that opera at the Met in decades. Until this year, Blue was perhaps best known for playing the role of Clara in the acclaimed 2019 Met production. Porgy and Bessa recording that went on to win a Grammy. Blue's massive voice is like a cathedral, thick columns of notes reaching up to the sky, his rich and smoky mid-low range planting it firmly in the earth. It's a voice that radiates warmth and gentleness while showing love that points to lines of power yet to be uttered. Blue is a magnetic performer who achieves the best of the opera singer: polish and vulnerability, perfection and rawness.
The 40-year-old singer began vocal lessons at the age of 6, initially under the tutelage of her father, Sylvester Blue—himself a pastor and highly successful gospel singer. His family loved music, going back generations, with his grandfather from West Virginia an opera-loving coal miner and barbershop singer. “There was never a time in my life when singing wasn't there… when it wasn't part of me,” Blue told the Observer.
As a child, he traveled the streets with his family, playing bass guitar in the family gospel band: his brother drummed, his mother played the piano and his father and sister sang. In addition to giving him some of his warmest memories of his family, this experience, he said, gave him his first taste of singing in a band. “It taught me a lot about what it means to be part of a group, part of a group, and that's what opera is all about; we are part of a team. One person can be the leader but, in the end, people come to see the group. “
Unusually for a lead soprano, she spoke well of working in groups and ensembles and held her own in impersonating other actors. The ensemble, when it works, describes it as a special force. “I think it comes from being theater kids, being one of those kids when we're little, and we're in our rooms in front of the mirror pretending to sing or dance… .”
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Such a powerful group took to the stage Ainadamar this is just fall. “If I could sing this opera twice a year, I would,” said Blue. He found Deborah Calker's powerful directing style and the entire eighty minutes of arranged music very enjoyable. “I was very happy every time I practiced. I woke up this morning happy, excited, ready to go.”
An emotional and engaging actor, tall and always moving on stage, it's hard to take your eyes off him. Blue achieves that beautiful opera singer's illusion of making the audience believe we can see her, her heart fully open, and her painful emotions revealed. He is able to tap into rich emotional veins as a performer, expressing an intimacy with the text and music as well as a brutal intent and intensity in his composition and voice. “Every word has to mean something to me,” said Blue. “If it doesn't mean anything to me, it's like it doesn't mean anything to me on stage.”
Not all performance is the same Ainadamarhowever, and Blue has performed many of the same traditional roles, such as Mimi and Musetta, many times since her career began about fifteen years ago. When asked how he gets back into acting when he finds himself struggling, Blue replied that he works hard to interact with his fellow actors. “I will look into their eyes to see how they feel and try to get that understanding from them about who they are, which helps them to let me know who I am in their world, and mine. That often sets me back.”
He grew up singing in his father's church and his family's gospel group, religion and spirituality have remained with him as an adult. “People can feel pressured because of faith and religion, as if they don't agree with this or that, but I was never raised like that,” said Blue. “I think that's one of the reasons why I kept my faith.” Your average lead soprano in an opera must, by necessity, wander around in hot tropical weather. It would be difficult to separate Blue's ability to capture and convey the feeling from his soul, from what he describes as his closeness to God. This love has been built, validated, and honed by decades of training; however, Blue also has a special ability to push to an extra level of meaning. She shines in some of her roles, as if touching the supernatural, breaking down the walls of the audience's mind as they are drawn into the world of the story. Seeing this material of conflicting possibilities live on stage is empowering.
A career in opera is a tricky mountain to climb, and its challenges can often seem insurmountable. Being close to God, Blue said, also helped him to be able to enter such a difficult industry. “The Bible says we all fall short of God's glorious standard, and that's true… we all make mistakes, but there's also grace in making mistakes.” Kindness, he said, has helped him a lot in his music career. Given the industry's centuries of experience and the industry's strictest standards, Blue said he has “failed at that level many times.” However, in singing, as in the growth of the human soul, “there must be grace in trying again and again.”
