This interview was originally recorded on February 18th, 2021.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Kevin Burdette, bass

American bass Kevin Burdette has appeared with many of the world’s leading opera houses and orchestras, including the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Santa Fe Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Known for his comic brilliance and dramatic versatility, he has created more than a dozen roles in world premieres and is a leading interpreter of contemporary and buffo repertoire. Recent appearances include M. Butterfly at London’s Barbican Centre, The Listeners at Opera Philadelphia, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at The Dallas Opera, as well as concert performances with the New World and Knoxville Symphony Orchestras.

He is a recipient of the Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the Dr. Marcia Robbins-Wilf Award for outstanding dramatic ability.

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Good evening friends, and welcome to another episode in OPERA America's Onstage at the Opera Center, and I am just so thrilled to welcome Kevin Burdette. Kevin, thank you so much for being with us tonight.

Kevin Burdette: Marc, thank you for having me. It's a thrill and it's an honor.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, as you probably know, I start every interview asking: who brought you to your first opera?

Kevin Burdette: I love that question. It's such a great question. I grew up and I'm the youngest of five children, and my siblings before me all played musical instruments, took lessons, as did I. So, I grew up around classical music. I played in the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra, but I did not go to the opera until I was a junior in high school, and interestingly, I think I actually took myself. I was interested in asking a young woman out at high school, and I thought, "I gotta do something interesting". And so I looked at the local paper and found out what was going on in Knoxville that weekend, and I saw that they were doing a Don Giovanni, and I thought, "Aha, maybe that". And so I called up this young woman and said, "Hey, I have an extra ticket (winks to camera) to Don Giovanni this weekend at the opera, would you like to come?" And so we went, and that was my first opera experience. Interestingly, I think, in that opera was my friend Phil (Philip) Cokorinos, a legendary singing actor, and I've sung many times with Phil, and there's something fulfilling for me to know that my first opera experience ended up starring someone who became a friend many years later.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, I have several questions there. What was your instrument when you studied a musical instrument?

Kevin Burdette: I played the viola, and all of the viola jokes are totally appropriate; it happended. It was (gestures unstable). Third position is not my forte.

Marc A. Scorca: Did the family string quartet need a viola, why viola?

Kevin Burdette: Because that's what my siblings before me had played, so that's the instrument that my parents owned.

Marc A. Scorca: I thought they were trying to put together a string quartet you could take on the road.

Kevin Burdette: Wouldn't that have been smart? No, like the von Trapp Family Singers, we were the Burdette Family Violists.

Marc A. Scorca: I love it.

Kevin Burdette: Didn't sell a bunch of tickets...

Marc A. Scorca: So, there you were, and you decided that you'd go to the opera. You like classical music, and you thought maybe you'd like this opera thing?

Kevin Burdette: That's absolutely right. And it turns out, I was right. There's a story about that evening. The thing I remember most about that evening at the Tennessee Theatre was - I sat down. I was nervous, obviously, sweaty palms, 'cause I was on a date, and I opened the program, and in the program, I looked at who was in the show. And one of the chorus members, a gentleman named Ed Patrick, was someone I had grown up near. His children and I had played sports together, and so I knew Ed very well. And something about that connection made me relax, made me comfortable, made me feel at home. It made me feel like I had a connection to the stage over the pit. And it's not like the chorus in Don Giovanni is a huge chorus, but just having that one connection on stage took away all of these presupposed barriers that were between me and this art form that I didn't know much about. And I think about that often, even now, many years later when I've been to more than one opera, and how having that personal connection, connects the audience with the people on stage. And all of a sudden, that story on stage is partly my story, because it's partly Ed Patrick's story, and I'm a part of all that I have met. I'm a part of his life; he's a part of my life. So, somehow this story is my story too.

Marc A. Scorca: It's really interesting how a personal connection just transforms the experience. And it makes you feel that you're not in a strange place, but a place you belong.

Kevin Burdette: That is absolutely right.

Marc A. Scorca: How did the date go?

Kevin Burdette: Listen, we're still friends. We ended up going to prom together. We weren't meant to be, if I'm gonna be honest. We weren't meant to be.

Marc A. Scorca: Does she still go to the opera?

Kevin Burdette: I reckon she does. You know what? I will ask her. I have a sneaky suspicion that she still goes to the opera.

Marc A. Scorca: This was an early investment in audience development. We have to see whether it paid off.

Kevin Burdette: Absolutely.

Marc A. Scorca: Now Kevin, your repertoire, your performance resume is so varied. New works, works from the inherited repertoire, works from the inherited repertoire in traditional productions, in creative reinterpretations. I wanna ask what are the relative challenges of interpreting a role many have played, versus creating a role no one has played?

Kevin Burdette: I would say for what you call the inherited repertoire, opera is such a tradition-rich art form, and I think the student of opera must do a deep dive into from whence we come, the shoulders on which we stand. And what makes it difficult for me and inherited repertoire, is that I have Sam (Samuel) Ramey's voice in my ear, and I have Ferruccio Furlanetto, Ezio Pinza, Cesare Siepi, all the way back. And so, it's how do I make it my voice and yet also honor that tradition. And in fact, my work in new music was sort of a way I reverse engineered that, because doing new music, of course, you're relieved of that burden. I don't have (Ruggero) Raimondi's voice in my ear when I'm singing in Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer's Everest. And so, I can just focus on Gene's text. And it helps. Like I've done a couple of Gene Scheer world premieres. I've done Terrence McNally words; I've done Mark Campbell. These librettists, they write such compelling words, and they leave a map for you into the character through those words. And you realize, if I just deliver these words in my voice, then I'm telling the story. Then of course, the onus for the new works is you have the onus of bringing it to life. Like, you don't have the burden of hearing other voices, but you have to actually bring that character to life. But doing the new music helped me find my voice, help me realize how I tell stories, and now I can apply that to Leporello or Bartolo or to whomever, and realize it's not about manufacturing a sound, per se, it's about figuring out how to tell, just like you say, (sings) "Bless you, Ruby. The world goes around..." from Cold Mountain. You can sing, "Bless you, Ruby" like that; you can also sing (sings) "Madamina, il catalogo è questo". It doesn't have to be, 'This is the way it's supposed to sound'. Speaking of new music, Jake Heggie has that signature at the end of all his emails that says (it's an Oscar Wilde quote), "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken". And so it helps to realize, "Yeah man, I'd love to sound like Pinza or Siepi or fill in the blank". All the people like Paolo Montarsolo or Andrew Wentzel, Spiro Malas - the people who shaped the way I think about music. But, you know, Paolo Montarsolo is taken. You have to be yourself.

Marc A. Scorca: I'm fascinated by how you talked about the librettists. So, when you are taking on a role, do you start with the words?

Kevin Burdette: Absolutely. I think it is very important, for me, to really get into the words and to repeat the words - of course, in a foreign language, to translate the words - and to paraphrase the words, and to emphasize different words in each sentence, to (emph) emphasize different words in each sentence, to emphasize (emph) different words in each sentence, and feel then how to end each sentence, and to figure out how each one plays, and how each one informs... For me, it's about internalizing that text. There's this video (from the Royal Shakespeare Company) of Sir Ian McKellen breaking down the Macbeth "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" monologue. And it's so revelatory for me to see the depth to which he analyzes the text and how he looks at it in the rhythm. But he also looks at the imagery and how he talks about "Tomorrow", but he also talks about hereafter and also talks about yesterday, so it's about eternal. And he talks about this huge breakdown of how he dives into this text. And then he says, "We don't do this, though, to show the audience, 'Oh, look how smart I am'. I know that it's an eternal, because it says, "Hereafter and to tomorrow and today". All it is is to feel, is to know that you are in the role and the role is in you, so that when you're on stage, you're at complete ease to just let whatever comes out, comes out, because you're in the moment". I'm not sure that answers your question.

Marc A. Scorca: You really have, because a quality of you on stage is this incredible authenticity of the character. I mean, you really do inhabit the characters that you portray on stage, and you're explaining how you get to that point of oneness with the character. Because I've also heard from singers that you kind of learn the music, learn the rhythms, learn the pitches, and then they add the words in. And I'm hearing you really starting with the words, so that you know what you are saying before you begin to inflect it with music.

Kevin Burdette: Yeah, that's definitely it, and I know we all do it differently. So each singer - I respect whatever process gets it to where it is, but for me (maybe I'm just a words person) it's integral. It wasn't something I started doing in my career. It was something I came to later in life. And again, partly because when you have Gene Scheer, when you have the imagery that he gives, and you're like, "Oh, there's the character, there's Beck Weathers right there. I see it. I can feel and taste: this is what he's talking about". It also gets you from worrying about getting hung up on musical points. Like, "Oh, this tessitura is weird here", and, "I don't know how I'm gonna take a breath there". And I think if I start there, then I'm already sort of anxious about "How am I gonna line this up musically?" Instead, it's like, I'm comfortable in this role, and now that I'm comfortable and have this foundation underneath me, I can figure out...the music will learn itself. Well, it won't learn itself, but the music will be able to be layered on top, without some sort of baked-in anxiety; maybe?

Marc A. Scorca: So you talked a little bit about the dichotomy between new work and inherited repertoire, but you are someone who also does comedy and serious works and tragedies, and you go the emotional gamut, and I'm curious, do you prepare differently for comedy versus tragedy? Is it a different approach that you take to the work?

Kevin Burdette: That's fascinating? It might be. I would say I am a clown. I was a class clown; through life. You name the class, then I was a clown. So, I have this innate desire to make people laugh, and hopefully a facility to do so as well. So approaching a comedic role... For one thing, a lot of operatic comedy is rooted in Commedia dell'arte, and so we have this tradition that goes back to Venice in the 16th century - don't Google that. I might be wrong, something like that time-wise - but there's this deep tradition and you have these 'lazzi', these bits that you can do, this physicality that you can imbue. And so I've done a lot of study of that physicality and then tried to make it my own, tried to figure out how my body works to make people laugh. And so, when I approach a comic role, I have a good sense of what I think I'm gonna do physically. But also, there's a freedom there, because I'm pretty confident that I can sort of figure out what's gonna make people laugh and sort of go for it. For more dramatic roles, it's not the same because the physicality isn't there, but for me, for dramatic roles, I have to have all of that same intention of what I'm going to do, but I need to figure out a way to do it while standing still, and how to exude the point that I'm making without showing it. Do it instead of show it, and it requires more and more concentration for me, because as you can tell, as I bounce around the screen, I like to move around. But I have ways that I think about these (roles). For instance, I just did Claggart at Central City, not too long ago, and like Claggart is a tortured soul, and it was a delight because Central City is such an intimate theater, and I could trust that my intention will get over the footlights, will get over the pit and get to the audience, in part because it's such an intimate space. But I have a thought about the way I approach that sort of still, dramatic acting, which is in opera (I don't know as much for straight theater) but for an opera, the way I think we should deliver our text, or at least the way I need to deliver my text in a dramatic moment is with an implied, 'I need you to know, beforehand'. And so it's not just when he goes, "I, John Claggart, Master-at-Arms upon the Indomitable, I have you in my power, and I will destroy you". He's not just saying that. It's not just like downtown Frank Corsaro talking to your father, talking to somebody that hurt you (not that my dad ever hurt me), but talking of whatever your issue is. You have to sort of push it beyond that, and for me, it's not just "I will destroy you", it's in your brain. You're thinking, "I need you to know, I will destroy you". And that feeling of 'I need you to know' is what gets me to be grounded; to be this tree that's just standing there exuding 'I need you to know' in front of and behind everything I say, in the hopes that that is enough energy and that it propels it over the footlights, and you can just exude it, if that makes sense.

Marc A. Scorca: Did this all come to you naturally? Did you study acting in a serious, focused way?

Kevin Burdette: I have studied acting, and I actually teach an acting class now to the young artists in Atlanta Opera. And I teach the different techniques, the Suzuki technique, and I've done sort of a deep dive in some of the techniques. But this is just something that over the course of time and talking, like talking to my friends, talking to my fellow singers about what it is they do; being curious, being interested. It might be all wrong, because it's not rooted in study, so much as an experience.

Marc A. Scorca: The proof is in the pudding, so we're good with that. Comedy in opera is hard, because landing a joke, landing a laugh depends on a whole lot more timing than does 'I love you, I love you, I love you'. So, do you recognize and just navigate through the complexity of that extra layer of timing in comedy?

Kevin Burdette: I feel like, yes. And it's tough also with the timing - to your point - that timing is a little more difficult when you have the train of the score going by. Like in straight theater, you do the setup...even like Marcel Marceau, you would do a setup, and you do trip, you look back, you look out, and it's been in a score. It'll cook by, and you have to figure out how to bake it into that train that's going. I will say that, for me, the comedy - there's a saying, and I forget who said it, and I'm sorry about that, but "If you are still on stage, what you're telling the audience is, 'what I am doing now is more important than what I could be doing'". And I feel like that applies both to dramatic opera, but it also applies to comic opera. And if you look at the master buffos, (Fernando) Corena, (Renato) Capecchi and I studied with Paolo Montarsolo and Tom (Thomas) Hammons, a dear friend who recently passed. The lessons you learn watching these gentlemen work, you realize I have this instinct of what I'm going to do, but if you want the bit to land, you have to clear enough space so the audience is looking and ready for you to do your boom (gestures hand out), boom (looks down at hand), boom (looks up), and move on.

Marc A. Scorca: Within the rigidity of the score.

Kevin Burdette: Exactly right. The hard part, like you said, is the rigidity, but the benefit is especially in Rossini, Donizetti, Offenbach or Gilbert (and Sullivan), there's so much lighthearted comedy, effervescent humor in the score that it is a nice trade-off, that if you have an actual lazzo bit that you want to do, it's a little hard maybe, but patter unto itself can be funny. And like the way they write these scores, you can hear the comedy in it, and so you can sort of let your body just go with the music. And that in and of itself is gonna get a laugh, most likely.

Marc A. Scorca: And we talk about it in our New Works Forum, because there are so many new works, and it's really hard to find a comedy among all the new works. And the difficulty, and the more you think about it, the more you realize what a genius Rossini was to be able to create comic opera. And also, you need more rehearsal. In order to get the timing, and as you say, to leave the space for the setup, within the rigidity of the score, it needs even more rehearsal than a tragedy which plays itself out more easily.

Kevin Burdette: That's absolutely right. And in fact, I did a fair amount of operetta and comic opera at Glimmerglass a while ago, and we did 9, 10, 11 or 12 performances of a run, and you realize, 'cause every show, you show up early and you run through the dialogue just to make sure it's in there, and by the fifth or sixth show, all of a sudden everything comes into focus and you realize, "Oh, if we had an extra month to run these lines and to get used to each other, and to just let it all sink in, so that now all of the comedy that we've been looking for and trying to find, just clicks in".

Marc A. Scorca: The time with it. So Pangloss in Candide or Claggart in Billy Budd, which is the true you?

Kevin Burdette: I contain multitudes, Marc. I would say the comic. But I've gotta say, for me, every high has a concomitant low, and I will turn it on. Ned Canty, one of my favorite people, one of my favorite collaborators at Opera Memphis, an old friend, claims that laughter to me is a drug, and I just feed on it. And so for me, I probably have my instinct more toward Pangloss, but once that's over and once I go home, I'm actually very calm and I don't know that I'm Claggart. I do seed some, but every high that I get from laughing has that concomitant stillness. So, I would say probably a little more Pangloss.

Marc A. Scorca: True of many people who are comedians that, you know, when they're done on stage, there is that moment of compensatory calm and downness.

Kevin Burdette: Absolutely.

Marc A. Scorca: You also do a lot of concert work, and here we are talking about clearly you're a stage animal, and I mean that in a good way, but in concert work you don't necessarily have a character, you are just standing there singing a score, the music without the character. Is that really challenging for you?

Kevin Burdette: It is, but it's also rewarding. In part because I'm sort of known as a singing actor, and listen, first things first, it's just nice to be known, right? I don't remember the old joke that Peter Kazaras used to tell me, at least, "There are four major stages to a career. It's "Who is Kevin Burdette? Get me Kevin Burdette. Get me someone like Kevin Burdette", and then "Who is Kevin Burdette?" And so, as long as I'm in the middle two, I'm fine. I'm delighted to be known as a singing actor, but one thing that concert work brings is, it allows me to just show off my singing, and for me, that's very rewarding to be able to show that I can sing...I love singing Messiah. And it may not be a perfect example, because Messiah has such a story, and Handel is, as you know, an opera composer, and so the way he wrote it, it's an almost operatic setting of a story. There is no set, there is no costume, but man, you're still selling that story. And for me, it's a nice sort of luxury every once in a while to be able to just to try to show off that I'm not (just) a good singer, to show off my musicality and enjoy telling that story, vocally and telling the story through musical interpretation.

Marc A. Scorca: Yeah. I guess any time you are singing and singing words - if there are words, there's a story there.

Kevin Burdette: I agree.

Marc A. Scorca: If there are words, there's gotta be something behind those words.

Kevin Burdette: I totally agree.

Marc A. Scorca: Interesting. So let's talk about young artist programs. You were at San Francisco Opera in the Merola Opera Program. And then interesting, you were at the Opéra national de Paris in their young artist program. So, how did you wind up in the Young Artist program in Paris?

Kevin Burdette: So, those two go hand in hand. I was at Merola in '98, I suppose, and Christine Bullinn, who had run Merola in the '80's in an incredible time in Merola's history with Debbie (Deborah) Voigt, Carol Vaness, Dolora Zajick and Nancy Gustafson, and the list goes on and on of the amazing singers that came through Merola back then. Christine had gone to Paris and she was there and she needed an extra bass to do a Dulcamara with Paolo Montarsolo (that's how I met him). And so she called up her friends at San Francisco Opera Center, and there were four of us that year, and so she came and auditioned us. I guess it was August, maybe first or second week of August, and I was planning on going back to Juilliard in two weeks, but she gave me the offer, and I called up Juilliard and said, "Hey y'all, do you mind if I go do this for a year, and then come back and finish up?" And it was an incredible experience for me. It was unreal being able to go. I worked for maybe two months straight with Paolo Montarsolo staging The Elixir of Love, where I was the Dulcamara. And so to be with Paolo six days out of seven, working with Paolo on Dulcamara, and there's one place that the words became so important because he would stop at any time in rehearsal and say, "What are you saying right now?" And one time I didn't know. I can't remember what the words were. It was basically 'fresh off the presses' in the beginning of act two. And I went, "Uh", and just, "Uh", and I didn't say it immediately, and he said, "Rehearsal's over. There is no need for us to be here right now. If you don't know what you're saying, there is no need for us to be rehearsing". I was mortified, but I was inspired. But I learned so much from Palo. I have noticed since that, I do a fair amount of buffo, and there are some great buffos in this country. I keep asking...who did I ask? Maybe it was Bill (William) Madison, or maybe it was Fred Cohn...they should do an article called American Buffo, because there's so many. You talk about John Del Carlo, who just passed. You also have (Paul) Plishka, and you have Tom Hammons, and you have Dale Travis, and you have Kevin Glavin, and you have Peter Strummer. And then on down to this generation with Patrick Carfizzi and me. There's a really strong lineage of American buffos. And one thing I have found talking to the more experienced buffo practitioners is they like to know that you have a school, and they like to know that I studied with Montarsolo. And even though what I do might look more like Jim Perry than Montarsolo, they know that I've studied Montarsolo, and I respect the tradition, and I am just trying to do that tradition in my own way, which Paolo 100% would've endorsed, in my opinion.

Marc A. Scorca: I'm old enough to have seen his performances, and they were just extraordinary. Just the body language, it was just extraordinary. But young artist programs in general? So, a useful time to sort of test your mettle.

Kevin Burdette: It's invaluable, I think Marc; it truly is. It goes beyond...it's very useful, of course, to have a bridge between graduating and sort of jumping into the defense of the professional career. But it's an invaluable sort of median space where you learn. Well, for one thing, you get on stage, and I think where one learns the most is through experience, and being on stage, you learn how to follow a conductor. You learn how to throw the ball to your castmates and hope that the ball gets thrown back, and you learn how to juggle in a protected space, sort of. You get to learn, you get to work with amazing singers. But because you're still sort of a student, you're a young artist, you understand that you still need to have the growth mindset. There's a book I love called Thanks for the Feedback that talks about that we need as people, and certainly as singers, to be prouder of our ability to grow; we need to be prouder of our ability to take feedback, to take notes, than we are of our natural ability. So, we need to be prouder of our ability to grow and become better, and to accept the feedback, than we are of how great we are. And that is an important step, and hopefully you keep that with you for the rest of your career, because as you come out of graduate school or out of conservatory, generally you're praised for your natural ability. And you learn, you learn, but you're praised for your natural ability. And you need to know, and the earlier, the better, and I think this is where I got this at the Young Artists program, is you learn, you gotta have that growth mindset. I've gotta understand these notes are helping me become better. And if I can take that note from Janine Reiss, and apply it, then that is better than having known in the first place, than actually guessing what she would've wanted, if that makes sense.

Marc A. Scorca: Absolutely. I wanna put that on a loop just to play it lots and lots. We are in the middle of our National Trustee Forum, and I've suggested to our trustees that learning is one of their fiduciary responsibilities, and that the process we have in the rehearsal hall, which is about rehearsal and coaching - it has to inhabit every part of the opera enterprise: board, staff, artists, that we all need to be open to those notes that make us better when we go on stage tomorrow.

Kevin Burdette: Amen. Amen.

Marc A. Scorca: Now, you deferred Juilliard for a year when you went to Paris.

Kevin Burdette: I did.

Marc A. Scorca: But you deferred Columbia University for six years in terms of going to law school? So, we are aware that you lead a double life, as comedian and tragedian, but here as singer and lawyer. So why did you apply to law school?

Kevin Burdette: So, in undergrad, I was actually dead set on becoming an attorney. I was in a program that was more or less pre-law. I worked on the Hill in DC and that's what I thought I was going to do. But then after my junior year of undergrad, I took a year abroad and went to Vienna. And in Vienna, I ended up studying at the Hochschule für Musik, took voice lessons, got in a couple shows, and probably most importantly, was at the Staatsoper, on average, maybe twice a week. And the standing room only at the Staatsoper was about three bucks at that time. And a movie would've been maybe 10 bucks. And you know, music is the lifeblood of Vienna. So, if you're gonna be in Vienna, go to the State Theater. So I was at the Staatsoper so often, and that's why I sort of fell in love with telling stories with music. So when I returned back to finish up my undergrad, I decided I'd apply to grad school and law school. I was always gonna apply to law school. So I thought, "Maybe I'll apply to grad school too". And Juilliard deferred...

Marc A. Scorca: So you applied to both?

Kevin Burdette: I applied to both. And so, Columbia deferred. The Dean of Admissions was a guy named James Milligan, and he liked opera, and he liked the fact that I was going for it, so he ended up letting me defer initially for two years, and then an extra year for Paris. Then I started singing at City Opera, and for six years, I deferred.

Marc A. Scorca: And did he finally call the question and say, "Okay, you need to come to law school." Or, had you somehow had a moment of questioning the operatic career that made you go back to law school?

Kevin Burdette: The latter. I was on a stretch of doing gigs. I was doing regional work, doing a bunch of Mozart. And I realized at one point that I wasn't as happy as maybe I could be, and I started to focus on the negative aspects of the career. And I realized maybe I'm focusing on the negative aspects of the career, not because there's so many of them, but because I have this other terrace sort of calling me over there. And so, because I have this other option, beckoning me, maybe I'm dwelling on the aspect that I don't like as much - being on the road too much and not being able to be with the person I was dating at the time, and all that. So I said, "To be happy, I probably need to go figure out if my first interest is actually what I should be doing". So I called up Dean Milligan and said, "Are you sitting down? I will be there in the fall". Then I called Robin Thompson and Paul Kellogg (at New York City Opera) and told them, "Sorry to say this, but is it possible that I can withdraw from the contract next year?" And they were gracious. Paul said, "I'm on my third career right now. I respect that, and if you ever come back, you always have a place at my Opera". I'm gonna start crying.

Marc A. Scorca: Paul was one of the gracious men in our business. That's just wonderful. So, it wasn't in your first year of law school, or your second year of law school, or your third year of law school, where you thought, "Well, no, I wanna go back to opera". You finished law school at Columbia, which is a great law degree. There are some important Supreme Court justices who went to Columbia Law School and you started at a big law firm.

Kevin Burdette: I sure did, yeah. It's funny you mention that about Columbia, but Columbia was a great experience for me. I had a wonderful experience there, in part because - again, talking about Paul - I started at Columbia in the fall of 2003, and in the summer of 2003, I was doing an Offenbach piece, Bluebeard at Glimmerglass and Justice Ginsburg and back then Marty (Martin) and the whole family would go up to Glimmerglass every summer. And so Paul facilitated my meeting them after one of the Bluebeard performances. And I met Jane Ginsburg, who was a professor at Columbia, one of the gurus of copyright in the world. And so I met Jane there, and then when I arrived for orientation at law school, a couple weeks later, one of the people who was running orientation, said, "Oh, you're Kevin Burdette, Professor Ginsburg said you should have this packet". And so I ended up being her research assistant. I took her classes, of course. I helped her edit case books, and so she sort of shepherded me through law school, which was a huge honor of course, and also very helpful. And I took some semesters off at law school to sing, to work my way through law school, and upon graduation, I went to work at a big firm in New York, Debevoise & Plimpton, where Sherwin (Goldman) used to be a partner.

Marc A. Scorca: I didn't know that connection. That's a good connection.

Kevin Burdette: Sherwin had a practice there, and then I worked for about two and a half years as a corporate associate at Debevoise & Plimpton.

Marc A. Scorca: So when did you decide "Okay, this isn't for me". And it had to have been a big fork in the road, because you were probably making more as a third year lawyer at a big firm than you were as an opera singer, and the potential financial rewards and lifestyle if you had gone on, versus the peripatetic, lower-paying lifestyle of an opera singer. What was that decision matrix like?

Kevin Burdette: So, fortunately Debevoise - they call it a lifestyle firm, which is a bit of a misnomer as it's a big firm, but among those white-shoe firms, it's the one that would allow you to take a leave of absence to go to a gig. So, I did a leave absence to go down to Buenos Aires to do an Abduction from the Seraglio with Teatro Colón, as the actual Teatro Colón wasn't open from the renovation yet. And then I did another leave absence to do my Met debut. And after doing those two gigs, I thought about it and... I did not dislike being an attorney. I thought I had a nice niche. I had a couple partner mentors that were sort of shaping my career. I had a lot of great experiences, but at the end of the day, I thought, "I'm going to be happier, I think". Having those experiences in direct contrast: going to The Met, going to Buenos Aires which is traveling internationally, and then the pressure of being at The Met, I was like, "This is still (even with a possible negative aspect that I had been focusing on), just more rewarding being on stage. But your point is well-taken. The arc of being on partner track and even being a really successful opera singer was never gonna line up. But for me, I was fortunate at the law firm... Because at Columbia, I didn't actually always take the hardest courses at Columbia. One of the courses I took was The Anatomy of the Large Law Firm, and so we talked about how to survive in a law firm. And one thing it talked about was not getting into golden handcuffs. Like when you become an associate, don't just then go get a $5,000 a month apartment, because y'all have a big salary. You don't want to be stuck. And so I sublet half of a rent-controlled apartment in Washington Heights, from a friend of mine. And so, I just kept doing that throughout the whole time at Debevoise. So I was able to pay off my debts when I was practicing, and I was able to build up a little bit of cushion, then I had a couple of gigs lined up. And I would say that the analysis...so one of my favorite authors, one of my favorite speakers and thinkers is Brené Brown. Her book, Daring Greatly is near and dear to my heart. And in it she says, "If we wanna get away from perfectionism, we have to make a long journey from 'what will people think' to 'I am enough'". And it was very important for me at that time to think, "I am enough". If I go back to opera, I think I will have enough. I don't need to be rewarded financially on the trajectory that I get from the law firm. I need to embrace the fact that I am enough and this will be enough. It rings a little hollow right now in Covid, because a lot of my friends who are singers, and who have spouses who are singers and have nothing, because all of a sudden we don't have enough. But at that time, in 2009, 2010, I had this stuff lined up and the perfectionism aspect isn't perfect, but it's like, I need to make the journey from 'What people think' to 'I am enough'. I need to not base my success on what other people would define as success. I need to know that I'm enough.

Marc A. Scorca: It's brilliant; just brilliantly said. And you're so wise to have gone through your years as an associate that way. I do get calls not infrequently from people who are seventh, eighth year associates. Maybe they've made partner, but now that the student loans are paid off, they want to have a job in opera administration, 'cause they love opera. And I think, "Are you ready to take a 70% pay cut?" And they're not willing to make that, they want to go from young partner in a law firm to the top of an opera company - it just doesn't work that way. So you're so smart in the way you handled that. But I just find it astonishing that while you were at Columbia Law School, you were still performing some, that you would take a leave from the law firm to make your Metropolitan Opera debut. That's just a crazy story, but really incredible. Now, there was another benefit to the law firm.

Kevin Burdette: Oh, yes. The biggest benefit, and the one for the rest of my life, is I met my wife at the law firm.

Marc A. Scorca: Also an attorney as well?

Kevin Burdette: She is an attorney. So, I was doing commercial real estate, which at Debevoise at least, was not exactly the glamor group to be in. She was doing a fund formation, private equity and hedge fund formation. That was the glamor group to be in at Debevoise. So she is definitely the smart one. Yeah, so I met Natalia there.

Marc A. Scorca: How wonderful.

Kevin Burdette: She had sense. So then I left to go back to be an opera singer, and she, not long after, thought, "Well, that seems like a better way to approach life". Again, she was great at the firm, but she went back and pursued one of her first passions with education. She grew up in Brooklyn, went to public school in Brooklyn, and it was education that got her to where she was. And so she went from Debevoise to be in-house counsel at an education not-for-profit, Teach for America.

Marc A. Scorca: How fantastic. Isn't that great that you both pursued what really mattered?

Kevin Burdette: Absolutely.

Marc A. Scorca: You have two children?

Kevin Burdette: We do. I have a daughter, Isla who's six, and a son, Edison who's two. Isla Is a performer also. She was Dolore, (Trouble) in Madam Butterfly at Central City and loved that experience. And also here at Knoxville Opera, she was the Sorrow in Knoxville Opera. She covered it at Santa Fe Opera. Brad Woolbright thought one day, "You know what, I think Isla is old enough to cover this". And so Brad created a monster, frankly. Not the first time Brad's done that.

Marc A. Scorca: So, when you do your opera gigs, which we will be returning to soon, do you travel with a child under each arm? Do you bring them with you?

Kevin Burdette: As much as possible? Now that Isla has started school, it's more difficult. Up until Isla started school, I traveled with the family. I find it very rewarding on multiple levels, in part because it informs my time in whatever city I'm in. Like sometimes before I had children...maybe I was doing a gig in Philadelphia, and what I would end up doing is I'd go to rehearsal and then maybe I'd get a cheesesteak and then I'd go back to the hotel room, and I wouldn't necessarily become a part of the fabric of the city. But when I'm there with Isla, I go to rehearsal, and then we go to the Liberty Bell, and then we go to Independence Hall, and then we go to LOVE Statue, and we go to the Museum of Art, the Barnes. And the next thing you know, it's like I am part of this city. Choosing Philadelphia is a good one because Philadelphia Opera, it's so much a part of its city. Like the mission...it's not just an opera company in Philadelphia, it's Philadelphia, the opera. And so, somehow it informs what you're doing, how you're telling that story on the Academy stage, to be a part of the environment that you're in. You feel the ground; it informs how I perform. And on the flip, it means that everything just doesn't kind of blend together for the kids too. Like I remember the first time Isla started to crawl, it was in Milwaukee. I was singing with Florentine Opera, and there she goes, crawling across the floor. I'd probably remember that if we were just in our apartment in New York, but it doesn't blend together as much. We have very distinct memories of what happened, where,

Marc A. Scorca: When did you move to Atlanta?

Kevin Burdette: We moved in 2016. Isla had just turned two. We had a one bedroom up in Washington Heights, and we had outgrown it and started looking around. And Natalia, like I said, she's from Brooklyn, so she's a New Yorker. We looked around and we just realized financially it made more sense for us to leave that area. And so, any gig we'd go to, I'd say, "Well, what about this city?" And I did a gig in Atlanta. It was the middle of February. It was springtime. I'd gone there straight from Philadelphia where it was a foot and a half of snow. And Natalia was like, "How about Atlanta?" And I have family there; my sister lives there. It's not too far from where my mom lives in Tennessee. It's got a great airport.

Marc A. Scorca: Tell us about The Atlanta Opera Company players.

Kevin Burdette: Oh, that's a great experience. It's amazing. Obviously Atlanta Opera, like all opera companies had plans for the 20/21 season that went sideways with the arrival of Covid. And so, Tomer (Zvulun) came up with this idea of creating The Company Players, which consisted mostly of people that are in Atlanta, or near Atlanta. And it's a little bit like a fest contract, sort of. Speaking of community ties and opera to the community. There's a bevy of great singers in Atlanta, maybe, in part, because of the airport, and so to use the local singers and the Georgian singers and the people who grew up near Atlanta as a group of singers that would then put on plays...as you heard probably yesterday, in The Big Tent series where we did socially-distanced and very rigidly safety-protocoled performances. But it's with friends of mine in Atlanta. And it's like I mentioned, my first opera and when I saw my friend Ed Patrick on stage...the community I think responded beautifully to The Big Tent series, because these are our friends on stage.

Marc A. Scorca: So it's not like you are, you know, a bubble in Covid terms, in that you perform and you live your lives, but you are local, so you don't have to be in hotels, you don't have to go through airports, but you are local and can perform for the company in a variety of repertoire, 'cause there are so many good singers. So it's kind of a local identity of a cluster of singers.

Kevin Burdette: That's absolutely right; everything you said is on the nose. And every week we'd be tested to make sure everything was good. And if there was a chance there was an exposure event, everything shifted. It's exactly what it is. And right now we're doing more in the winter season. We're also working on producing digital content for Spotlight Media at Atlanta Opera. And it's just a blast for me, because these are friends of mine that I have known for years. Alek Shrader and Daniela Mack, two of the best singing actors alive, live in Valdosta, Georgia, and they are Company Players. And Jamie Barton, the literal singer of the world, she's from Rome, Georgia. She lives in Atlanta now. I had not realized this - in 2013 when Jamie won Singer of the World, the runner-up was Daniela Mack. It's unbelievable. These are company players: Morris Robinson, like the Morris Robinson. It's unreal.

Marc A. Scorca: I think other companies are looking at developing this sort of cluster of local singers if they're able to, because it does provide some level of safety through the current Covid crisis of no hotels, no airplanes, you get to stay at home. It all makes sense. But how have you been through the Covid crisis? Lots of projects just canceled, contracts canceled. How's it been for you?

Kevin Burdette: You know, it's been disappointing. I'm kind of Pollyanna I guess. I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but I keep thinking, "Oh, this next one will come through", and it never does. And so, it's a little disillusioning. There were a couple of world premieres I was gonna do that went away. One has been rescheduled where I can do it, but the other one, I can't do the world premiere, 'cause they've rescheduled it when I can't do it, so that's disappointing. I was gonna do this Bartolo in Dallas, which was gonna be amazing for me, because one of the previous Bartolos, I guess two Bartolos ago in Nozze di Figaro in Dallas was Paolo. And for me, that was gonna be incredible, and I don't know that that's gonna happen. It might, I don't know. That's way above my paygrade. But, you know, it's also been nice, when all is said and done, I will look back on this time and realize that it's been a really great time for me to spend time with my family - that's been an invaluable gift. And also, one of my favorite quotes is from the poet Mary Oliver, who says, "Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it". And for me, that's what opera singers need to do. We need to pay attention. We need to be astonished, and we need to tell about it. And unfortunately, in pre-Covid times, it was a lot of going from "Tell about it", to "Tell about it", to "Tell about it", to "Tell about it". And I didn't spend enough time on the "Pay attention" and on the "Be astonished". And so right now, I'm leaning into the paying attention and the being astonished, and figuring out...when I did Kaiser von Atlantis with The Company Players in Atlanta... This is an incredible piece that has so many layers, and it's just 60 minutes, but it has all this depth to it. And if you have the time to do that dive, it is all the more rewarding to find out that Ullmann, who had studied to be an attorney in Vienna, his fascination with the duality of time, the duality between the temporal time and eternal time, and how you can use... It's still applicable to Ullmann's life, to his being in Theresienstadt, but it's also applicable to our time. This sort of tension of what is eternal and how do we shut out the material burdens of today? And he looked to form and he looked to structure to do that. His structure was writing music. The form he looked to, to survive Theresienstadt psychologically...he was much more prolific in Theresienstadt than he had been prior, because he had that. And so for us to see this big tent on Oglethorpe Field is a literal manifestation of form. And for us to have these performances, these rehearsals, and for an audience to be able to come to a performance and have this structure and how it ties into the eternal.

Marc A. Scorca: I'm so sorry for all of the lost performances; thrilled to hear about what you've been doing with Atlanta Opera, and I just love the idea of The Company Players that has been put together. But it's been a season of some disappointments, even as you talk about the wonderful opportunity to spend more time with your children and with your wife. So, I have a last question. We'll end on an upnote. What is Drunk Opera?

Kevin Burdette: So, Herbie Hancock has this story - you know, Herbie Hancock played for Miles Davis - and he said one time they were playing along, and all of a sudden in the middle of a solo, he hit this chord that he just like, "Oh, that's the wrong chord; that's the wrong chord. I can't believe I just did that". And Miles stopped, kinda looked at him and then started playing, and he played some notes that made that chord make sense. And Herbie Hancock said that for him was a lesson as a musician, but also a lesson in life: that you take whatever is in front of you, and you figure out how to be constructive. You take it as it is. That chord was there, and it's not a mistake. It is my present situation. Now, how do I make my present situation make sense? How do I make it more constructive? One of the things that my manager, who's really worked so hard, he's done an incredible job, keeping me sane as we try to line things up that keep falling down, was by creating a streaming series, Fletcher Artist Management and Entertainment, where we pivoted to doing storytelling over video. And one of my ideas was - you know, we have drunk history. It's this great series about people who might be a little inebriated, telling the story of history. And then for a long time, I've talked to friends about how great would it be if we could have a drunk opera and have someone get a little tipsy and tell the story of an opera, and hey, no better time than the present. We're not doing anything else. So, we did a drunk history version of Daughter of the Regiment. I don't know if it was funny or not, but it was enjoyable.

Marc A. Scorca: Do you have some more coming down the pike at us?

Kevin Burdette: Oh, well, I have passed that off to Steve (Steven) Osgood from Chautauqua Opera. I keep thinking he should do one, because he knows his potable and he knows his opera. I suggested Fledermaus.

Marc A. Scorca: So true. Kevin, it is such a pleasure to get to know you this way, because when we see one another in the Opera Center in New York, we're in an elevator going up and down seven floors. Thanks for sharing your insights into life and into your career, and I just can't wait to see you on stage again, hopefully this summer in Santa Fe. Fingers crossed.

Kevin Burdette: Amen. Thank you so much for having me, Marc. I'm honored beyond words. Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure.