Lawrence Brownlee: Juilliard refused me an audition
OperaDavid Krauss’s latest guest on Speaking Soundly is the outstanding American tenor Lawrence Brownlee. His ascent was not easy. He sang Tamino in The Magic Flute before he had ever seen an opera.
He was singing gospel in his parents’ choir: ‘we didn’t learn by sheet music, people would be told their part… I would pipe up: that’s not right!’
‘Pavarotti was the first one whose sound made me sit up and think, I want to do that if I can.’
‘This agent said I wouldn’t have any career… maybe in some small place in Germany.’
Listen here.
Not surprising that Juilliard didn’t give him an audition. The racism there, and in the opera world in general, was inc probably still is palpable.
First round of audition adjudication at Juilliard is blind. Leontyne went to Juilliard when half the country’s schools weren’t even admitting students of color. Get your facts straight.
One of the finest belcanto tenors of the last 20 years, the black Juan Diego Flórez.
silly, Florez is as over engaged as Brownlee is under engaged, if Brownlee were white, he’d have driven Florez out of a job, every opera house would have engaged him much earlier and much more often for more roles, Brownlee’s voice is far richer and rounder
I vividly remember listening to a radio interview with Mr. Brownlee about a dozen years ago. Both he and Mr. Florez had been appearing in the same opera; if I recall, at the Pesaro Festival.
The interviewer referenced that Mr. Brownlee was in the “second” cast of the opera, to which Mr. Brownlee quickly interjected as a matter of fact, “the OTHER cast”.
Seemingly minor, but not. I was very proud to hear his sense of self and equality. Lawrence Brownlee’s position in the opera world has been earned and justly celebrated.
Wow that’s a terrible shirt this day and age. I hope he doesn’t wear it for lessons or around anyone he’s mentoring.
Huh? It’s the Opera Philadelphia t-shirt, what’s so terrible about it?
Admittedly I don’t get it (is it a pun?), but it certainly conveys no “terrible” message, “this day and age” or any other “day and age”…
Maybe it’s just an age difference thing. Chill in this context only means one thing unless you’re old enough not to know. I supposed most opera fans are pretty old so maybe it isn’t a big deal.
Just curious why you think it’s a terrible shirt? It’s a cute riff off of the phrase “Netflix & Chill”, which is what people would do on dates in the pandemic. Netflix and then… maybe something else. Two consenting adults. The shirt just replaces Netflix with Opera. I don’t remotely read it as anything inappropriately suggestive or predatory.
The lavishly gifted African-American baritone Ben Holt was a student at Juilliard when I was there in the late 70’s. He died tragically at age 34 of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I accompanied for his lessons with Oren Brown.
I remember Lawrence from IU- nice chap with lovely voice- I worked with him on Magic Flute. Juilliard’s loss was Bloomington’s gain- all the best to him.
petty stuff
I admire Brownlee tremendously, but I think it may be oversimplistic to suppose that racism was impeding his career. First of all – he has had a BIG career, any way you look at it. Second, as those who have heard him live in opera know, it is a slender and relatively small voice. I could be wrong here, but I can’t think of similar-voiced tenors of other ethnicities who scored plum assignments that should have been Brownlee’s. Florez, maybe–but that is a sample of one, and after all he was really good at most of the same things Brownlee is good at. It’s really hard to see them other than as two highly-appreciated, frequently-employed tenors who didn’t happen to have the voice-type for Pavarotti’s bread and butter roles.