Critically acclaimed mezzo-soprano Susan Graham will perform her first-ever Tucson recital Thursday as part of the Tucson Desert Song Festival.
But in many ways, the event feels like a homecoming. Graham is a product of the Southwest, born in New Mexico, where she still has a home, and raised in Texas.
“It will have a certain comfort level that will feel familiar,” she said during a phone interview from New York earlier this month.
She comes here with a program rich in French repertoire, the music that inspired her as a young girl watching cartoons and seeing fantastical scenes of Paris. She remembers that every image of elegance and sophistication her young eyes viewed came with the Eiffel Tower in the backdrop.
“I grew up in New Mexico until I was 12 and moved to Texas. I always had a rich desire to travel and see exotic places,” she explained. “Maybe it’s the kind of indoctrination you get when you’re a little kid watching cartoons and the most elegant place that they can ever portray is Paris and the accordion comes on playing ‘La Vie en Rose’ and suddenly you’re instantly transported and everybody’s wearing berets and stripped T-shirts.”
Graham, lauded as one of America’s top mezzos, has dubbed her recital as “Good Girls and Bad Girls.”
“It’s sort of a survey of female characters and viewpoints from literary sources including the Bible,” explained the 54-year-old who has performed at major opera houses around the globe including the New York Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden in London. “We open the program with ‘The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation’ by Purcell. Good girls don’t get much gooder than that. We’re talking about Mary here.”
The first half of the program is devoted to similarly good girls, including Ophelia, the tragic heroine of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” The second half is devoted to the bad girls starting with the devilish Lady MacBeth.
“In these songs we try to get an idea of who they are and what their story is,” Graham said.
Graham’s recital in Tucson is her last U.S. date for several weeks. She leaves for London early next week and a series of European recitals including a concert with the London Symphony Orchestra on Feb. 5. She won’t return to an opera stage until late April, when she joins the Met for Lehár’s “The Merry Widow.”
“The thing that is terrifying about (playing a recital) is that you are the only person out there and the thing that is great about it is that you’re the only person out there,” said Graham, who also studied piano for a dozen years as a child. “The fact that there is nobody out there takes away all of the stuff that is becoming increasingly annoying to me about opera, which is having to bend to everybody else’s choices and aesthetics and interpretations. In this case, it’s just me and I can change my mind as I’m doing it.
“As I’m saying a phrase, I can change my mind. I can change the tempo. I can change the dynamic. I can change what that song means to me. You just have so much more control, and that’s a great thing. That allows for a really gratifying and intimate relationship with the audience.”
