This interview was originally recorded on October 7th, 2020.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Stephanie Blythe, mezzo-soprano

A renowned opera singer and recitalist, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe is one of the most highly respected and critically acclaimed artists of her generation. She has performed on many of the world's great stages, such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, Paris National Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Seattle Opera. Blythe’s many roles include the title roles in Carmen, Samson et Dalila, Orfeo ed Euridice, Mignon, and Giulio Cesare; Frugola, Principessa, and Zita in Il Trittico; Fricka in both Das Rheingold and Die Walküre; Waltraute in Götterdämmerung; Azucena in Il trovatore; Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera; Baba the Turk in The Rake's Progress; and Ježibaba in Rusalka. She was named Musical America's Vocalist of the Year in 2009, received an Opera News Award in 2007, and won the Tucker Award in 1999.

Blythe is artistic director of the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar at the Crane School of Music, and she was appointed artistic director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College in 2019.

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Good evening. I'm Marc Scorca, President of OPERA America, and welcome to the opening program of our 2020 onstage season, a conversation with the great, the incomparable Stephanie Blythe. I always ask, who brought you to your first opera?

Stephanie Blythe: I was brought to my first opera by my High School Choral Director, Martin Banner. We had a fantastic choral program at Monticello High School, and he also taught theory. We actually took theory in high school, which was amazing. And those of us who were in the theory class, and a few people from the chorus, were invited to go and see a show in New York once a year. The first thing I saw was the Chicago Symphony doing Mahler One at Carnegie Hall, and then the next year we went to The Met to see La Bohème.

Marc A. Scorca: Did you like it from first encounter?

Stephanie Blythe: I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I still remember it very vividly, and it was an amazing experience to be in that theater. We were actually seated in the rear orchestra, which was amazing, and I've said many times that, during the first intermission, I walked right down to the pit, and turned around and looked up at the house, and couldn't believe just the magnitude of the place, and thought "This would be the most amazing place on earth to sing". And less than 10 years later, I was singing on that stage.

Marc A. Scorca: That is amazing.

Stephanie Blythe: Yes, it was shocking.

Marc A. Scorca: When you went to that first opera, had you already realized that you had a voice, and a voice for opera?

Stephanie Blythe: No. Actually, my choral director told me I had a voice. I loved to sing. I didn't know what kind of voice I had. I remember telling him very early on that I wanted to be contralto, once I started studying voice. And he said, "Well, Stephanie, you know, contraltos are very few and far between, probably not".

Marc A. Scorca: You willed it, you absolutely willed it.

Stephanie Blythe: Well, you know, me and God. And it was an amazing experience to be in that space, to hear that music, to feel it: to feel it - that's the thing. That's the thing that you can't get any other way. And anyone who attends any kind of live event gets that, doesn't matter what it is. If it's a ball game, if it's a rock concert, if it's an opera or a symphony, or recital, it doesn't matter. There's this sort of visceral, "Huh" (exhale of breath) that you get when you're in the space, when the magic is happening.

Marc A. Scorca: So true. But I've read that your parents were musical, that jazz was your father's music, and your mother enjoyed symphony and opera.

Stephanie Blythe: My mother loved symphonic music, and really enjoyed having music playing in the house, but dad practiced at home. So my father, he played in all of the hotels in the Catskills. And so when you were that kind of player, you had to be limber, you had to be ready, you had to be ready to play anything, because every night they just put the music in front of you; you'd read it cold, unless you had a really big show and that would get a few hours of rehearsal. So, he practiced all the time. I remember hearing constant scales and fake book playing going on all the time - and patterns, lots and lots of patterns and rhythm, but no vocal music. We didn't have a lot of vocal music in the house. My dad didn't like singers. He was very vocal about that; he didn't care for singers. But I discovered them on my own, and just fell in love with the human voice.

Marc A. Scorca: And I guess his everything approach to being ready as a musician somewhat informs your everything approach to opera? That wide menu is something that you imitate from him?

Stephanie Blythe: Probably, yeah.

Marc A. Scorca: So, your career did take off and quickly from Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions into the Lindemann Program. Did you think, "Wow, this is easy?" Did it scare you to death to go so quickly, zero to 60 in a few years? How did you metabolize the speed with which your career took hold?

Stephanie Blythe: Oh well, not particularly well. To everyone else outside, it was fine, but to me, inside, I was dying, and I've made no secret of the fact that, you know, in the middle of my second year in the young artist program, I started suffering from anxiety disorder.

Marc A. Scorca: Did you really?

Stephanie Blythe: Yeah, and I suffered from it for a long time. It never affected my singing. Well, I'll say, I canceled one job because of it, an orchestra job. And I almost canceled going on as Berta one night, which was my first on-stage role I ever did. I remember I was sitting in the dressing room, and I was getting ready, and I was just about to go out and I thought, "Do I really wanna do this? I don't know if I can do this. I just don't know". And I very nearly just, you know, stopped. But, my moxie got the better of me, and I said, "Yeah, of course you can". And I went out, and the minute I hit the stage, I was fine. But I really suffered for a long time. I didn't get any help for it, for about a year, and then I was covering Marilyn Horne in Falstaff, which is my big starting story. That was my big break at The Met, where I was covering her as Mistress Quickly. And I always went backstage to watch the shows - always, because I thought, "When else am I gonna get this opportunity to see these amazing, these incredible people. First of all, Paul Plishka was, and is, my favorite Falstaff. With all due respect to my many colleagues, Paul really was just divine. And being able to watch Marilyn backstage was just incredible. So, I would do that every night. But before this particular show, I had a lesson, and I went and I sat down on my teacher's couch, and I just cried. I cried and cried and cried. I couldn't stop; I was just a mess. And she said, "You know honey, I love you so much, but I can't help you, but here's the number of somebody who might be able to help you". So, I called the woman who would become my therapist, who'd completely changed my life, and left her a message, hung up the phone. Five minutes later, Jonathan Friend called from The Met and said, "Marilyn Horne has canceled tonight, you're going on". So, that was my big start. And I remember I went to the theater, and all I could think of was that I have red nail polish on, and I cannot have red nail polish on. So, I took off my nail polish, and Maestro Levine was there in my dressing room. "What do you need from me, Stephie? What do you need?" I said, "Nothing, I think I'll be fine". Fortunately, I had done every scene with the principal cast in rehearsal, and so I was very comfortable with them, and they were very comfortable with me. I remember every second of that night, and the anxiety never hit me. After I got the phone call, that was it. I was like, "Well, business as usual, gotta go, do the thing, make the donuts". So, that's what I did.

Marc A. Scorca: Did it take a while until you actually just enjoyed performing?

Stephanie Blythe: I've always enjoyed performing. Even when I'm anxious, I've always enjoyed it. I love to perform, and it's one of the things that keeps me from getting anxious. It's that moment before. So many singers talk about this. I remember watching a special about Marilyn Horne, some sort of biopic they were doing on her. And she actually said that. She said, "Just the minute before I go on stage, I think, is there anything else I can do, besides this?" And I think all of us feel that at one point or another, but for me, being on stage is like where I feel the happiest, where I feel the most connected, where I feel the safest, oddly enough.

Marc A. Scorca: And where you make us the happiest.

Stephanie Blythe: Hopefully, hopefully.

Marc A. Scorca: So, there you are: you're singing Quickly and some other increasingly good roles, and Speight Jenkins calls and says, "Hey, how about Fricka in The Ring Cycle?" Had that been something you were thinking about? Or did Speight take you completely by surprise and you had to say, "Let me look at the score, I'll call you back".

Stephanie Blythe: No, I had been studying Sieglinde, because when I first started putting my aria package together, my teacher Pat (Patricia) Misslin said to me, "We need to put something on your package that shows where you might go. These are the possibilities". And so she had me learn 'Du bist der Lenz'. I brought her 'Der Männer Sippe'. I said, "Is this the one?" And she's like, "No, go for the baby one". So, I went to the baby one. And that was what I sang in my aria package to begin with. And I loved singing it. I studied the role of Sieglinde, but like a lot of of lower zwischen voices, that last couple of pages ... just didn't fit. And Stephen Wadsworth, whose production we were gonna be doing in Seattle, knew that I had been looking at it, and he said, "You know, you should take a look at Fricka", and Speight came to me and suggested this. And I said, "You know, I really don't know. I mean, I'm not even 30". And to think about doing that. I think I was probably 29 when he asked me, and at the time, I was singing Antonia's mother's voice. He had asked me almost a year earlier, and he came back after the show, when we were doing Hoffmann, and he said, "Have you given it any more thought?" And I said, "You know, I would love to, but I'm so young and I don't know if this is the right thing for me to do". And he said, "You know, Stephanie, I want you to sing your Fricka. I'm not interested in you trying to sound like older or like anybody else. I think this could be a great role for you, and I think this would be a good place for you to try it out". And, you know, then I spent 15 years doing The Ring for Speight Jenkins at Seattle Opera.

Marc A. Scorca: And it was such a great role for you.

Stephanie Blythe: Well, it was a wonderful role for me, and then we also added Second Norn and eventually Waltraute, which I adored singing.

Marc A. Scorca: So there you have, Handel and Wagner, Gluck and Verdi. Very few singers - I think of Christa Ludwig, who did that range of roles - how did those ends of the repertoire speak together to make you a better artist?

Stephanie Blythe: It wasn't so much what they did for me musically, as what they did for me emotionally. I think that if we ignore that side of what this art is, we're kidding ourselves. And the roles that I have sung speak to me psychologically. There's something about them, and there's something about the action of singing them, that gets my motor racing. And that really has been what has pulled me in so many different directions. Now, not everyone would agree with me, and that's fine; not everyone has to agree with me. My voice agreed with me for a very long time, and now it's moving into even different pastures, which is fine with me. I loved singing all those roles, and some of them I still sing, and very happily and well, but I think that there was just something about it that appealed to me as an artist, and as a human being, and I enjoyed it. So, that would be it.

Marc A. Scorca: That's phenomenal. I quote you, perhaps erroneously, but we'll talk about it, from before we opened the National Opera Center, you and I had a conversation when we were testing out the concept of conversations with great artists. And I asked you about your work as a recitalist, and said, "I learned how to be an autonomous artist as a recitalist, because I choose the program, I choose what I wear, I choose where I put my hands". And I don't know whether I am misremembering that, but it just was very powerful how the recital stage gave you agency as an artist.

Stephanie Blythe: I think that's the perfect word, 'agency'. I think that's what it is. I think one of the things that singers desperately want, more than anything, is a sense of agency. Well, all artists want that; what am I talking about just singers? All artists, human beings, for God's sake: we all need to feel that we have some sort of quality control, and when we don't have that, we're just miserable. Over the years, and working with a lot of young singers now, I've learned that, in particular singers are in constant state of waiting. And when they start out singing, they're waiting to find a teacher, for that person to tell them what to sing, what kind of voice they have, where they might go. It's constantly, "What do you think, Stephanie? What should I do? What do I do next? What do I do?" And the thing is, is that eventually a singer has to take the step of saying, "This is what I'm gonna do", and "This is who I am", and "This is what I want", and we have to be able to find those things within the parameters of the theater and all of the things that we have to adhere to, that we have no control over. But when I'm doing a recital or I'm doing a cabaret, I have the opportunity to sit down with my pianist, or my music director, and say, "This is what I wanna say, so let's figure out what we can do together to make this point, or to tell this story". And we're fortunate enough to be chock-a-block with music to do that. So, that's one of the reasons that I really enjoy that so much. And also, because I feel like in the moment of recital, you are interpreter and you are creator, and you're creating in the moment. And what's so fascinating is, and I was talking about this with Leon Botstein just yesterday, and he reminded me of this - the audience is what finishes it. The audience finishes a recital, not us. We learn it, we put it out there, and it's caught by the audience, and that reception, that moment - that's what finishes the piece. And being able to have that moment; to share that with another human being or group of human beings is...it's wonderful.

Marc A. Scorca: And to give to the audience members their own narrative as they leave the theater and digest what you've given them. And suddenly 2,000 people have left your presence with their own stories to go home with.

Stephanie Blythe: Exactly, exactly. And if I'm lucky, when I'm in the middle of performing it, I catch some of that.

Marc A. Scorca: How does that come to you on the stage? How do you catch that?

Stephanie Blythe: You catch it by looking at the audience. You have to make contact with them, and in some cases it's physical, in some cases it's spiritual. Anybody who's on stage will be able to tell you. Anybody who has had the experience of performing, knows that there is a palpable connection that we form with the audience. And you can tell immediately. Listen, I've been on both sides of it, where you're just receiving love, love, love and then other times where you've been in shows that were real stinkers and the audience did not like them. You know, not my shows, of course - different operas and things like that, but very, very few. But 25 years, there's gonna be something in there, and you can feel that. When the audience isn't happy, man, you can feel it. You don't have to wait for the boos.

Marc A. Scorca: It's fascinating but frightening, and when you first explained this to me, I hadn't really focused on the fact that the opera singer - you're given the score and every word and every note in it, and the stage director is going to sort of tell you where to go, and the conductor'll tell you what the tempo is, the costumer will tell you what to wear. And, despite the fact that you are this important artist, you are being told by everyone what to do.

Stephanie Blythe: Yes.

Marc A. Scorca: But in the recital hall, you are making those decisions. And as you say, in that recital hall, the lights will probably be up to a different level. You can look at the audience and see them; they're closer. They don't have the orchestra pit there. Really fascinating.

Stephanie Blythe: It is; it's wonderful. Just to go back to The Ring Cycle in Seattle, one of the things that was so amazing about doing that, was that that was one of the few pieces I've done in my career, because by virtue of the fact that we did that production so many times, and that I was in it, in every iteration, and several of us had been in it from the beginning, we ended up owning it. The artists owned it, and that takes time. It takes time to do that. It takes rehearsal to do that. It takes talking to do that. And with very few exceptions, in a lot of the places where I've worked, you don't have that luxury. There's no time. You don't sit around and talk about character; you go over here and you do this, and then you go over here and you do that. Then you go over here and you do this.

Marc A. Scorca: Now, once you've experienced agency on the recital stage, does it make you feisty as a colleague when you're back in the opera house and suddenly you know what it's like to make up your own mind?

Stephanie Blythe: No, not really. I will say it allows you to release some of that energy. I will say though, that I really feel for, and at this moment, I would like to take the time to apologize to directors with whom I have worked, where I have come with my feelings firmly intact and wanting to do what I wanted to do. I've had certain opinions about Fricka for a long time, and I've had a lot of opinions about Quickly for a long time, and it's very difficult for somebody to tell me how Quickly feels, 'cause you know, I know how she feels. I've done it enough.

Marc A. Scorca: The chat room is lighting up with people who are accepting your apology. Now, Carnegie Hall has been filled with the sounds of the American Songbook, thanks to you. And you have as special a relationship with that American Songbook as anyone for a generation or two. How did you get into it? How did you discover it? What does it mean to you, that American Songbook?

Stephanie Blythe: Well, I discovered it very early on. As I mentioned before, my dad didn't play a lot of vocal music in the house, but he did have some recordings. And also, whenever I saw my grandfather in Pittsburgh, my grandpa always had vocal music on, always. And so I know that I heard a lot of this music there, and he had a great love for the American Songbook. And he wasn't a musician. My grandpa had a business hanging Sanitas; he put up drywall and wallpaper, but he loved singing. And he had a nice voice, as did my dad. My dad actually had a beautiful voice. I found a cassette recording of (Dave) Lambert, (Jon) Hendricks and (Yolande) Bavan (who was subbing for Annie Ross on this particular album). And I started listening to them singing, and I just got so turned on by the rhythm, and the words, and these great voices, and the things they could do with them. Then I started listening to more popular singers and Kate Smith snuck in there. And that's really where it all started for me - Kate Smith, when I was in college, I just started listening to her singing. And I was turned on by the voice and by the songs, and by the fact that this was a fat woman, who had a big career singing songs for people, and they loved her. And I loved seeing that; I identified with her. And then, it kind of went by the wayside when I was studying more. And when I started making the transition from college to The Met, and my friend Alan (Louis) Smith, who wrote 'Vignettes: Ellis Island' for me, we decided we were going to do this piece. And of course, Ellis Island Vignettes is taken from a collection of interviews of folks who came through Ellis Island in the twenties. And it's a wonderful, wonderful biographical piece. You get to play 26 different people, it's about 35 minutes long. It's just a tour de force of music and emotion and joy and pain. And we were thinking, "What do you program with something like this?" And so we talked about, "Well, why don't we sing songs that they would've heard when they came to America?" And that's when Alan introduced me to a lot of these Tin Pan Alley songs. So, it's the first time I really started singing Irving Berlin, who was the first bug that bit me. But songs like 'Coax Me' and tunes by Henry Kramer and Turner Layton and (Buddy) Bud DeSylva and Ray Henderson and Lou Brown, and all of these really amazing Tin Pan Alley composers that just wrote this charming music that I adored singing.

Marc A. Scorca: And when you sing it, it is so gripping, so compelling. They are some of my favorite moments when you're doing your concert work. It's just amazing, Stephanie.

Stephanie Blythe: Thank you.

Marc A. Scorca: I'm waiting for you to play the Café Carlyle; I want to be there for that.

Stephanie Blythe: Eventually, eventually. Thanks to my very good friend, (Sanford) Sandy Fisher and the Mabel Mercer Foundation, I was able to do a 54 Below cabaret a couple of years ago and enjoyed it unbelievably, and getting to spend time with the cabaret community and sing this music has been such an honor for me. I just adore the Mabel Mercer Foundation and everyone involved there and Sandy, who's produced several of my cabaret shows, including the Kate Smith show. And then of course, it introduced me to my cabaret partner, Craig Terry, and Craig and I have had just the most incredible time together, and we continue to do that. So, it's wonderful. And what I love most about doing those shows and singing that music is the people who come up to me afterwards and say, "You brought my mother back to me. You brought my father back to me. You made me remember something that I thought I'd forgotten". I can't tell you how many times that's happened, and to me, that is the reason to do it. That's the reason.

Marc A. Scorca: Because those songs do make us nostalgic for a place many of us have never been. They make it nostalgic for a time and place that is in our national mythology.

Stephanie Blythe: It sure is, absolutely. And for me, nostalgia is like a pillar in my life. It's one of the most important things for me. And it's so interesting because my nostalgic mind, and my forward-thinking mind sit in two little egg cups right here, and they work together really beautifully, which is what makes me very happy.

Marc A. Scorca: Oh, that is so wonderful. Now, we've talked about Handel and Gluck and Verdi and Wagner. We haven't spoken much about Puccini and we understand that you're taking on a new Puccini role, and it's not Mimì or Musetta.

Stephanie Blythe: Can you imagine?

Marc A. Scorca: Yes, but Gianni Schicchi, and it's not Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi, but instead of singing 'O mio babbino caro', you are going to take on the title role of Gianni Schicchi.

Stephanie Blythe: (sings) 'Addio Firenze'. I can't wait.

Marc A. Scorca: And this is perhaps the first time on earth that a contralto is singing a bass/bass baritone role in Puccini's opera. How did this idea occur to you?

Stephanie Blythe: Well, I'll tell you the real reason.

Marc A. Scorca: We're only streaming this nationally and recording it, so you can tell me anything.

Stephanie Blythe: One of the reasons is, I have sung in Gianni Schicchi since I was 19 years old. Zita was the very first operatic role I ever sang. And I will never forget how long it took me to learn the very first entrance - just to sing 'Povero Buoso!' at the right time, only it was 'Poor cousin Buoso!' So, I've sung this piece a lot, and I adore it. And I've heard some amazing people sing the role of Schicchi. And the last time I did Schicchi was with Plácido Domingo in the New York production. And we sang along with him all the time. And I just thought, "Gosh, this music is so beautiful and what a terrific role this is, and wouldn't this be interesting?" And when I had originally talked about doing it with Dominic Domingo - we started chatting about it during the Dallas Vocal Competition, which we were both judging, and originally I thought about doing the role as a mother, singing it as a mezzo-soprano, and just changing it to Gianna Schicchi, which would've been interesting too, except that my voice is much happier singing it as a baritone. And so, I made the suggestion that I should sing it as a man. And I've been doing a lot of gender play in my singing over the last four or five years, and it made total sense to me. And Paul Curran, who's directing it, also thought that it sounded really interesting, and we decided that was what we were gonna do. And, as I said before, I'm sure that there will be people who are horrified by this, but the times, they're changing. Something's blowing in the wind.

Marc A. Scorca: And we do suffer from taking ourselves too seriously.

Stephanie Blythe: Good God, yes.

Marc A. Scorca: You're not singing the Grand Inquisitor; the opera is a comedy.

Stephanie Blythe: For goodness sake, it's a character role. What I love about him is that he's everything. You know, he's everything, and I've watched different singing actors take this on, especially the great Alessandro Corbelli. Ah! I just fell in love with him in this role. And there's something about this character that he can wink at you, he can play along with you, manipulate you. He can be unbelievably conniving and downright evil. He can be loving and generous. And I just thought this would be an amazing challenge. So, I'm very grateful to San Diego Opera and David Bennett for giving me this opportunity. And I am overwhelmed at the chance to do this.

Marc A. Scorca: I cannot wait to be there. So, in your bio, who is Blythely Oratonio?

Stephanie Blythe: Who is Blythely Oratonio? You know, he's asked himself that many times in the deep dark night.

Marc A. Scorca: The name looks a little bit like yours, but it's not quite.

Stephanie Blythe: Blythely Oratonio is a 50-something dramatic tenor, who's at a point in his life where he just says what he feels, and gives license to Stephanie Blythe to say what she feels, through him as a mouthpiece, which is kind of nice. And Blythely Oratonio is an operatic rock and roll disco king/queen. That's what he is? He's whatever you want him to be.

Marc A. Scorca: He first appeared in Philadelphia, I think.

Stephanie Blythe: Yes. He's the brainchild of myself and John Jarboe of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret in Philadelphia. He came about, because I was in the middle of doing a Mahler Eight with The Philadelphia Orchestra, and David Devan had come backstage to say hello to me, as did Dito van Reigersberg and John Jarboe. Now, Dito is the son of Stephanie and Fernando van Reigersberg, who are my surrogate parents. They were my family that I lived with when I was at Wolf Trap Opera in 1995 and 1996. And Dito was a brilliant actor and just a phenomenal performer, and also is the cabaret performer, Martha Graham Cracker. And I had seen Martha, never live, but always on YouTube - please go look, because Martha is unbelievable. Beautiful singer, great raconteur, just makes people feel good. And so, I'm standing there with these three incredible human beings, and I said, "You know, David, I have a dream to do a show to benefit Philadelphia Opera with Martha Graham Cracker. Can you make that happen?" And he said, "You know, I think I can". And almost a year to that date, we did our first show at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia. And it was absolutely life-changing for me. Blythely is...he's my Onymous. He's someone who's been in me for a long time, and thank goodness is finally out, so he gets to do his thing. And through him, I get to sing music that I've always wanted to sing, and perform with people that complete me as a human being.

Marc A. Scorca: Wow. And it's not a story for here, but in my years working with Beverly Sills, when we were alone, and she'd just be singing to herself, she would sing tenor arias. She loved the tenor arias and always regretted that she couldn't sing them herself.

Stephanie Blythe: Well, the thing is, you know, if she wanted to do it, she could have.

Marc A. Scorca: The times were different.

Stephanie Blythe: Can you imagine? It would've been amazing.

Marc A. Scorca: It would've been amazing.

Stephanie Blythe: I would've paid big bucks to hear that.

Marc A. Scorca: I went to the Gran Scena Opera with her to see the hostess Sylvia Bills. And it was wonderful to be sitting with Beverly Sills watching Sylvia Bills.

Stephanie Blythe: Wow. Amazing.

Marc A. Scorca: So, let's go back into the academy; enough of this frivolity. You were just appointed the head of the Graduate Vocal Arts program at Bard. So, you get to teach. Do you enjoy it?

Stephanie Blythe: I love it. I've just begun my second year there, and it is an unbelievable program, and everyone that I work with, I absolutely adore. I know it sounds like, (gestures 'too good to be true'), but it's not; it's completely real. Just to be somewhere, where the goal is to give young singers the best skills possible, and to help them become autonomous. To take that step and say, "These are the things that I want to do". And to be informed and to be just really well-trained, but also to provide a place where people can take risks as artists, and not worry - that is an amazing thing. It's been a terrific opportunity for me; Bard is the kind of place that breaks the rules. It's not your usual school. Not that they don't understand the rules; they do understand the rules, but they want to create people who think for themselves, and I think we are in desperate need of that. And I love being a part of that, and I love the curiosity, and the joy that comes from it. And I adore the students; they're just incredible people.

Marc A. Scorca: Stephanie, what do young singers, aspiring singers not know, that you feel they most need to know?

Stephanie Blythe: You know what I think they need to know more than anything? I think they need to know that they know more than they think. I think that every single person who gets involved in the arts does so because there's something in them that says, "This is what I have to do; this is what I'm made to do". People who go out and do this? This isn't something you're like, "I'm gonna go and I'm gonna be in a really risky business". God knows, we all know how risky it is right now. There's something in artists that is a calling. It's a spiritual thing, and that is born of instinct. And artists have it. And somewhere along the line, too many of them have it beaten out of them. And I think it's important for singers to recognize that, no, it's not about saying, "Well, it's my way or the highway". It's about being informed. It's about knowing something about what you're doing, and then taking the risk of saying, "I'm going to try this. Even if it doesn't succeed, even if it's not a huge success, I'm gonna try it and see what happens". That kind of curiosity, I think, is not encouraged because it can't be controlled. And I love to see the instinct. I love it. When I hear a singer try something and watch them recognize that they've made a decision on their own and it's paid off, that's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. And we'll go right back to where we started - full circle. It's about agency. But it's informed agency.

Marc A. Scorca: Not crazy decision-making.

Stephanie Blythe: Not saying, "Well, this is the way I'm gonna do it, 'cause that's the way I do it". No, there's reasons why we choose to do things, but I think that at a certain point, singers have to recognize that they know something. And the thing that they know more than anything is this (points to throat), 'cause they're the only ones who actually feel it. So, it's about learning. It's about getting a technique. It's about learning how to use it. It's about living with it. It's about being able to anticipate what's happening with it. It's about being able to turn on a dime when something goes wrong. And taking that instinct and using it to make something exciting.

Marc A. Scorca: Are you teaching in person? Are you teaching by Zoom?

Stephanie Blythe: I teach part live and part Zoom. I do my coachings online, but I teach classes in person.

Marc A. Scorca: Before we came on, we were talking about teaching by Zoom, and that it winds up not being the disaster that people were scared it would be.

Stephanie Blythe: No, it's not a disaster. I think the thing that's most difficult about Zoom is that it's a lot more tiring, amazingly. It's a lot more tiring. It's exhausting because, when you're teaching all day (and students suffer the same exhaustion), it takes more energy, 'cause you feel like you have to do more to get something back, because you don't feel the energy in the room. When I'm teaching in the room, I can feel the energy in the room - just like if I'm singing, I know the audience is giving me energy. When I'm teaching or I'm coaching the people I'm working with, we're giving each other energy. We can't feel that the same way; it exists, but it's not the same.

Marc A. Scorca: And you do have to just put out so much more to try to be heard through the camera.

Stephanie Blythe: Yeah. But I've had the experience, and you and I discussed this earlier, and many of my colleagues have the experience that we learn different things from Zoom. You get closer in some respects than you do in the classroom. And you see things differently, and you listen differently. And even though we cannot feel the voice the way we feel it when we're sitting in the same space, there are things that you learn. And I can say unequivocally, that every student that I've worked with in the last eight months has improved. They've improved. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that they are self-correcting, because they are in the room with their voices, and they're becoming more cognizant of their own instruments and how they feel. And I think this is a very interesting development. It means that they are giving themselves in many respects, better agency.

Marc A. Scorca: I was just going to say that, back to the agency question. There are lots of questions in the chat room, and I've been sort of just beginning to work my way through them in this conversation. But all of this also says, it's very difficult right now; performances have been canceled, left and right. But if you are a young singer with that urge to sing, it's still worth studying, worth applying to school, worth putting in the hard work, because we will perform again in theaters and elsewhere, and we'll perform on stage and on screen. So, you would say to young singers, it came up in the chat room, "Keep going. Apply. Keep going. Don't hesitate".

Stephanie Blythe: I would absolutely say that, if only for this reason, you'll never have this kind of study again, God willing. You'll never study like this again, and you're gonna learn something different, in a different way than you ever would have before. What I've seen is, it makes students become very organized, in a way that they weren't before. The thought processes are different. And it's very exciting for me. I think it's something that is a good byproduct of the pandemic. It makes people think differently. I just think it's going to teach singers - I use the word 'skillset'. It's gonna teach a different skillset. And I really believe with every bit of my being, that one of the biggest byproducts coming out of this, is that singers, is that artists, all artists are going to become the arbiters of art. We are the ones that are going to become the ones that create the things that happen. We're going to have to make our way for a long time. Things will never go back to the way they were, which is another reason why you need to keep working. We can't give up, because all that's gonna happen now is things are changing. They're just gonna change. We're in the middle of an evolution, and it happens to be happening so fast that we're watching it happen. That's kind of exciting.

Marc A. Scorca: It is the artists who are leading us into a new generation of creativity.

Stephanie Blythe: Absolutely. And that's the thing that's so exciting for this next generation, because you are the ones who are gonna make the decisions. You are the ones who are gonna create the next great art, you know? And people will say, "Well, that's the way it's always been". No, it hasn't. No it hasn't. We are there and we are the ones that are used; we're the vessels. We're not the creators. We are going to become, and we are becoming the creators. We are going to be the ones with the ideas. So, get going and start creating right now. Don't wait; right now. And one of the things that this time has done for me - well, I would say probably the last five or six years, maybe with Blythely, I don't know? Maybe with Cabaret, I don't know? But I have become very aware of all the things that make me an artist. All of the things. And it's not just this (points to throat). There's a lot more to me than just being a singer. And just being a singer is great; it's wonderful. But there are many layers to who I am, and I'm not afraid of exploring them. I'm not. What a waste of time to be afraid of that. And all of us are like that. We all are multi-talented. We all have these brains that can go in eight gazillion different directions, and we're all incredibly interesting and deep and wonderful and thoughtful and generous, and when we tap into that, man, that's when great art happens. And there's so much that can happen now; so much, we cannot limit ourselves. We have to think outside the box. Everybody says it now. They say, 'Think outside the box' and 'Unprecedented'.

Marc A. Scorca: You've answered another question that was in the chat, because the questioner said, "Do you teach any of the business side? Are there the business side of opera questions that you wish you had known more about when you were a younger person?" And in a way, you've just answered that, in that you have to think it up, create it, do it. You may have to produce it. You may have to convince your friends to participate in it, but you are in charge. And don't set any boundaries about what you do.

Stephanie Blythe: The day that singers would sit and wait for something to happen to them is over. It's over. It was already starting before the pandemic happened. It was already starting. The pedal's just been put to the metal. And I think there's a lot of really great information out there. And yes, I do work with my students on that. And our second year students right now are working on some incredible projects that they have developed on their own. And not just your typical recital projects. We're talking about stuff that means something. The kind of recital projects that are things that could be taken across the country, that could be done by a myriad of singers and pianists. And it is a wonderful, wonderful thing to think about.

Marc A. Scorca: They're so lucky to have you. They're so lucky.

Stephanie Blythe: There are all these things that they can do, all these wonderful things we can do. You're only limited by your mind.

Marc A. Scorca: There is a question that came in early on. Is there any singer of yore, singer of yesteryear, you wish you could bring back through the operatic Ouija board to work with?

Stephanie Blythe: I'm gonna say (Rosalind) Ros Elias. Ros gave me this. This is my favorite scarf, and Ros gave it to me when I was 26 when we worked together for the first time. I think I'd like to do something with Ros Elias. I think we would've done a great duo recital together.

Marc A. Scorca: Wonderful thought.

Stephanie Blythe: I would've loved to have traveled the country doing a show with Ros Elias. We would've had a blast. I miss her. I miss her a lot.

Marc A. Scorca: Wonderful person. Across the spectrum of repertoire, from Boris Godunov to Queen of the Night, are there any roles that you're interested, beyond Gianni Schicchi, in tackling?

Stephanie Blythe: I've never made a secret of the fact that I wanna sing Cavaradossi. I want to sing it. That's what I want to sing. If I could get somebody to hire me to do that, happy girl.

Marc A. Scorca: I hope there's some general directors listening to this conversation. They should send their contracts immediately.

Stephanie Blythe: Listen, I'll strap 'em down; we'll have a good time.

Marc A. Scorca: Stephanie, you are on a pedestal for me, not only as an artist, but as a human being. You are so connected to your humanity and to the human condition with loving generosity. I just cherish every minute we get to spend together. Thank you.