‘A story that needs to be told’: KC’s Lyric Opera to do iconic show for 1st time
Soprano Michelle Bradley, who has performed at many of the world’s leading opera houses, had never set foot in Kansas City until arriving here three weeks ago.
The reason for her first visit is another first for her: She is making her role debut as Bess in the Gershwins’ classic American opera, “Porgy and Bess.” The Kansas City Lyric Opera’s production will open its three-show run on Saturday, Feb. 28, the final day of Black History Month, at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Bradley and the rest of the company have been rehearsing here since early February.
“This is my debut with the company, first time singing in the Kauffman Center, first time in Kansas City,” she said. “So it’s all new.”
Merely being in the show is a first for Bradley, who has never appeared in any role of any production of “Porgy and Bess.”
“My colleagues, every one of them, they’ve done their roles numerous times,” she said. “I’m the newbie.”
The newness extends to the Lyric Opera itself. Founded in 1958, it has never presented “Porgy and Bess,” although it was scheduled to do so in November 2020 before COVID-19 came calling.
Bradley recognizes the significance of the opera, which paints a powerful portrait of a neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina, called Catfish Row. The music by George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward blends jazz, blues and spiritual music with operatic forms.
The Gershwin estate requires the cast consist of all Black performers.
“It’s part of our history,” Bradley said. “I think it’s wonderful that they’re doing it during Black History Month, and I think it’s a great time to be seeing this opera, showing yet more of the contributions that African Americans have made in this country, in operatic music and in music in general.
“Now, with a lot of what’s happening in the world, and in our politics if you will, we don’t want to forget these treasures. Certain things are trying to be erased. We can’t erase things from our culture. We need this. This is what got us here in the first place. This is a story that needs to be told. And it’s a beautiful story.”
Her story is compelling as well.
Raised in Versailles, Kentucky, in the heart of horse and bourbon country, Bradley was drawn to music at an early age. But she never dreamed she would wind up on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vienna State Opera, San Francisco Opera and other bastions of the operatic world.
She never expected to make a living out of music.
“I just knew I wanted it in my life,” she said. “I just knew whatever job I end up working, I’m going to be singing somewhere. And in my case, it was most likely church. I knew I’d be singing in somebody’s choir every Sunday. That was really my aspiration.
“It was people who came into my life that said, ‘You have something extraordinary. You’re not just supposed to stay in Kentucky and sing at Polk Memorial Baptist Church.’”
A graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program in Manhattan, Bradley is best known for portraying Verdi heroines, including Aida and Leonora. She debuted at the Met in 2017 in Mozart’s “Idomeneo.”
The Met also is where Bradley saw her first live performance of “Porgy and Bess” — in 2019, when the show returned the prestigious New York opera house for the first time in nearly 30 years. She had long been intimately familiar with the show’s music through videos and recordings, however, and she had sung some of the songs at recitals.
Bradley said she knew she eventually would take on “Porgy and Bess” but wanted to wait for “the right time in my life.”
That time is now.
“I’m 43, and I think it’s the right age,” she said. “I feel like as a singer, I’m in the prime of my vocal life.
“I’m a mature woman. I wouldn’t have been able to do this when I was in my 20s. There’s a lot of pain, a lot going on with (Bess). You have to have lived a little bit to play a character like that.
“… All my other characters, I’ve played princesses and these stately women that are confined to their stature in life. Bess, she’s lost. She just goes with the wind, goes wherever the wind blows.”
Bradley is a bit of a free spirit herself.
One of her favorite pastimes is visiting karaoke bars, where most patrons no doubt are gobsmacked by her performances.
“I don’t tell them my name,” she said. “I don’t say what I do for a living. I just get up and sing, and I do have a good reaction. … I think it’s fun. And it keeps the work I do in opera, it keeps that fresh for me. So I don’t get burnt out. I want to keep that love of it.”
“Porgy and Bess”
Who: Kansas City Lyric Opera
When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28 and March 6, 2 p.m. March 8
Where: Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, 1601 Broadway Blvd.
What: George and Ira Gershwin’s quintessential American opera features “Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and other classics. Dating to 1935, it will make its Lyric Opera premiere. It will star Eric Greene as Porgy and Michelle Bradley as Bess, and will be directed by Francesca Zambello.
Tickets: $54.50-$248.50
Information: kcopera.org
