Destiny Rides Again

By Michael Walsh

Soprano Leona Mitchell's career goes boom at the Met

As the gold curtain rises on Verdi's La Forza del Destino at the Metropolitan Opera this season, it does more than unveil the first act set: it also reveals a bright new star in rapid ascent. As Leonora, Soprano Leona Mitchell, 34, sings with smoldering intensity. Each performance mingles sweet lyricism with raw-edged emotion that brings audiences to their feet, shouting bravas and tossing bouquets. From a dutiful but passionate daughter to the pathetic, penitent recluse at the end of the opera, Mitchell recalls Leontyne Price in the quality and dramatic power of her performance. Not bad for a girl from Oklahoma who didn't see her first opera until she was actually in it. Perhaps there really is such a thing as the force of destiny.

Mitchell's triumph has come just in time. In any generation, the number of sopranos who can superbly handle the most demanding dramatic roles in the Italian repertory (Verdi's Leonora or Aida, Puccini's Tosca or Madama Butterfly) is always small; these days it is minuscule. Montserrat Caballe, 49, has the right combination of fire and ice to make for a memorable Tosca, for example, but she often cancels performances. Price, 55, still makes occasional forays into what was once her strongest territory, but she wisely no longer sings as frequently as she once did. Enter Mitchell, with the vocal cords, dramatic temperament and, most important, unbounded potential to resuscitate an ailing repertory.

She almost missed her cue. The fifth and last daughter in a family of 15 children, she grew up in Enid, Okla. (pop. 50,363), a town 65 miles northwest that of Oklahoma City whose residents are usually more intent on dealing in wheat, poultry and oil than nurturing opera singers. Her father, a Pentecostal minister, played a number of instruments by ear, and her mother, a nurse, was also a pianist. Leona inherited their musical gifts, singing in the church choir and dabbling with the violin. As a senior in high school, she once learned an aria from Aida by rote, since she could not read music. To please a teacher, she auditioned for the music department at Oklahoma City University; to her astonishment, she was offered a full scholarship. In those days, she recalls, "I thought Moon River was serious music. Honey, when you're from Enid, you've hardly even heard of opera."

Mitchell was contemplating a life in the diplomatic corps when she was dragooned into a workshop production of Isaac Van Grove's The Story of Ruth, the first opera the freshman had ever seen. By the end of her senior year, she had sung in twelve student productions and had won some 35 vocal contests. Shortly after graduation, she took first place in the prestigious Merola Opera Program competition in San Francisco.

Her Merola victory in 1971 gave Mitchell a niche in the San Francisco Opera's summer apprentice program and, more important, a place in the heart of the company's then general director, Kurt Herbert Adler. Two years later, Leona sang her first Micaela in Bizet's Carmen at the San Francisco Spring Opera Theater. In 1974 she also won a $10,000 Opera America grant, and used it to move to Los Angeles to begin studies with Voice Teacher Ernest St. John Metz, still her coach and mentor.

Despite all the intensive training, Mitchell still felt unready when she was asked in 1975 to make her Met debut as Micaela, this time opposite Placido Domingo's Don Jose. "I had never sung with Domingo," she says, "and I had never seen the sets until I went onstage. God must have smiled on me." So did the audience. Mitchell was warmly received, praised for her bright, fresh voice and winning demeanor. She was invited back to sing Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, the new Prioress in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites and Musetta in Puccini's La Boheme, all essentially lyric parts that require grace and agility but not the sheer vocal power demanded by spin to roles like Leonora. When Met Music Director James Levine asked her in 1979 if she thought she could tackle Forza, she was apprehensive. Except for Butterfly, the role is bigger than any she had ever sung. Leona agonized over her decision. Her husband Elmer Bush, a Los Angeles schoolteacher, remembers a night in London last year when Mitchell sat bolt upright in bed and moaned, "I must be crazy to do this."

Others, however, had no doubts about her ultimate success. Terry McEwen, former president of London Records for whom Mitchell recorded Gershwin's Porgy and Bess in 1975, recalled, "Ever since I first heard her when she auditioned for our recording, I knew she was going to be a star." Adler, a veteran of opera for more than half a century, found Mitchell's voice "beautiful, of a first-rate quality with an excellent high register, which is important for appealing to the public." Metz, her coach, has described Mitchell's voice as a combination of Price and Italian Soprano Mirella Freni. "It's basically lyrical," he says, "but with thrust. She has that extra little kick, the power to go boom when the time comes."

In the Met's Forza, Mitchell's voice goes boom when it has to, as in the climax of Leonora's last-act aria Pace, pace, mio Dio. She is also especially persuasive in her scenes with the monks of the monastery, investing her work with searing fervor. "Religious singing is so involved with with love, and I try try to keep that in my singing," explains the minister's daughter. "It sounds corny, I know, but I brought it from my childhood."

Mitchell's success will not send her rushing in search of even more demanding roles. "I'm not about to go on a rampage and sing 500 million Leonoras next year," she says. While there is a Desdemona in Verdi's Otello later this season as well as an Aida scheduled for 1984, both in Sydney, Australia, the robust, attractive soprano will not abandon her Mozartian characters or strictly lyrical parts like Liu in Puccini's Turandot. "You have to give the voice a chance to relax," she says. "I want to last, not just make a splash." Leona Mitchell has already made her splash; one suspects that it will be a long time before anyone has heard the last of her.

-- By Michael Walsh

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