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Meet the Porgy and Bess Cast: Marquita Lister plays the role of Bess
by Mike Telin
Today we meet soprano Marquita Lister, who will play the role of Bess in next week’s Akron Symphony productions of Porgy and Bess. We talked about how her perceptions of Bess have changed over time, and how she first decided to become a singer. We also spoke about the two seasons she spent at the prestigious Houston Opera Studio, her works as spokesperson for the Negro Spiritual Scholarship Fund as well as her battle to overcome Polymositis, an auto-immune disorder that left her unable to sing. We began by asking her how she first came to perform the role of Bess?
Marquita Lister: It is actually kind of interesting because in 1985, I began my journey with Porgy and Bess as Clara. The reigning Bess at that time was suppose to go to England, where we were scheduled to perform a concert version of the piece, and for reasons that I still don’t know, she was no longer singing the role. John DeMain, the conductor, told me that he was going to teach me the role, and that he wanted me to go on as Bess. Of course I was honored, but mortified at the same time, because I knew that Bess was a tour de force, not just in terms of vocalism, but also in terms of the dramatic intent; she is a very intense character. But, because it was such a success for me, it caught on like wildfire, and before I knew it, I was being asked to perform the role of Bess all over the world.
Mike Telin: Did performing the role of Bess so often limit your ability to take on other roles that interested you?
ML: The vocal demands of the role of Bess are not what I would call ordinary demands of the operatic voice, so it meant that I would need to carefully pick and choose the other roles. For example, when I was on tour I would sometimes do an Aïda performance here or a Tosca performance there, but I had to be very careful, because Bess takes some of the flexibility out of the voice.
The thing about Bess is that it is all about the dramatic intent. I don’t know of another operatic role where you have this kind of speech-type singing. Some people call it Sprechstimme, and some simply say it is a recitative style, but because you are singing in a dialect, you have to pay very close attention to that so you get the flavor it is suppose to have.
MT: Have your perceptions of Bess changed over the years?
ML: I have grown up with Bess, and the Bess that I did ten years ago is not the Bess that I do now. I think when I first got started I saw Bess as a very troubled woman. As I began to perform her over and over again, I realized that Bess is the most fractured spirit on the stage. She is truly broken in so many different ways. The Bess that I see now is very close to the Shug character in The Color Purple. I think there is a part of Bess that is very spiritual, but she is a person who is broken, and she looks for love in all of the wrong places. I think that is why it is so easy for her to be swayed by the three men that she plays with, Sportin’ Life, Crown, and Porgy. All three represent a different kind of love for her. But the true love is the one that she has from Porgy, and that is the kind of love that she doesn’t really understand.
MT: Isn’t is amazing how timeless the themes in the opera are?
ML: Absolutely, and I say that all the time, because even though it came from the 1930’s, the point is that all we know women like Bess. She’s a junkie, she drinks too much, she has this abusive love thing with Crown. Then you have Sportin’ Life, who is her dealer, and a pimp as well. Then there is Porgy, who just wants to love her. So she’s torn because she has too many monkeys going and she doesn’t know how to tame them, and keeps running back and forth between the three. So she does have a very complicated thing going on in her head.
MT: What you’re saying is beginning to make me wonder what kind of pleasure portraying Bess brings to you?
ML: OH!! I like the bad girls of opera, and because of that, it is a dramatic and emotional stretch. It gives me the chance to delve into those characters in a way that I would not delve into women who, in my opinion are very one dimensional. But when you talk about women of complication, which for me in some ways is like real life, it means that you have to reveal yourself in a way that you don’t necessarily have to if you are singing Manon Lescault. I say to myself, so, I have never been addicted to drugs, but I think we all know what it is like to love somebody who doesn’t love us back. We know what it is like to find yourself in a situation and ask, should I stay or should I go? I’m scared to go but I hate staying. It does make it a real woman thing for me.
MT: I know that you grew up in Washington DC and you attended an Arts High School, but what made you want to be a singer?
ML: Remember the Texaco Live from the Met broadcasts? Well my mother used to play those every Saturday, and that is when I became acquainted with the great Leontyne Price. I don’t remember what she was singing, but I do remember hearing her voice and telling my mother; I can do that. I was already singing in the church choir, and my mother, being like most mothers, said of course you can darling, you can do anything you put your mind to. But I don’t think she ever thought that I would catch the bug the way that I did. Shortly after that I started to get involved in the school musicals and doing more singing at church. I started taking voice lessons when I was about 14, and doing the NATS competitions, and then ended up going to the New England Conservatory and the rest is history. So I was smitten in the worst kind of way, so to speak. I refused to be denied to opportunity to get up and sing, because I loved it so much.
MT: Was your family musical?
ML: I grew up in a very interesting house; my mother loved classical and gospel music, and my father loved jazz. So I really was immersed in all forms of music.
MT: Tell me about your involvement with the Negro Spiritual Scholarship Foundation.
ML: I started my work with them in 2000, and I did because I have a wonderful relationship with their managing director, Father Rudolph Cleare. It’s funny because when he first called me, he said Hi, you don’t know me, but my name is Father Rudolph Cleare, and we would like to you come and perform as our featured artist, and we would like you to sing this year’s commissioned spiritual. So I was listening, and I kept thinking that I have no idea what he is talking about. So finally I said OK, all of this sounds interesting, but I need to know a little bit more about your organization. What really grabbed my attention was when he said that one of their missions is the preservation of the Negro Spiritual Song. Then I thought, now that is really interesting to me because that means that they are dedicated to preserving part of my heritage. We give scholarships to college bound high school students. Part of the requirement is that they must compete in a competition, and in that competition they must sing the arranged spiritual of that year, as well as one of their choosing. It cannot be gospelized and there can be no improvisation. It must be sung as written. This is to teach them the discipline of learning music correctly. It is all very fascinating to me.
MT: What impact did your experience with the Houston Opera Studio have on your career?
I really loved being in the Houston Opera Studio program. It prepared you for things that you could not imagine. It was interesting to see how the great singers who came in handled personality conflicts on the stage, like musical differences between them and the conductor, or the director. It was also interesting to have access to those people so that we could talk to them about what it was like to have all of the travel, and to have fatigue. What do you do if you have a cold? What do you do if your child is sick? What do you do if you have a spouse who doesn’t like the fact that you are gone so much? For me, it was really great in that sense. It was also great, because there is a difference between being a singer, and being an artist. You can make beautiful pear-shaped tones, but it means nothing if there is no emotion behind it. When have the emotion, and you can take people on the journey with you, you become an artist. I think the coaching that I had there helped me to understand how important that was. I think that it is through that kind of intensified coaching, which of course is very expensive when you have to pay for it yourself, that you learn to make characters your own. This is why I loved the Houston Opera Studio program so much.
I was also very grateful, because I knew how steep the competition was, and to be chosen to be part of the program really humbled me.
MT: If you don’t mind talking about, how did your illness change things for you? And congratulations on your recovery.
ML: I have to say that for me, that was a real learning experience as well, and I now have a newfound respect for people with illnesses. Being sick is not for sissies — I’m going to tell you that right now. It takes a real mental fortitude to get through that. When I became ill, it attacked a great deal of my pulmonary system, so it meant that I had to rebuild my voice note by note. It was a real arduous process. So being able to get back and perform is really incredible. I had always been known for my athleticism as a performer, and I had always been know for being shapely and sexy, and here I was, one hundred plus pounds overweight. It has been a real growth producing experience. But then again, I learned so much. I learned about myself and I learned about what a wonderful life I had had up until that point. I realized that I would not have done anything differently then I had, and that’s good to know, because we don’t always take the time to look back and say; have I really done what I wanted to do? Have I come as far as I had hoped I would? Probably not, only because I am ambitious, but I do think I went much further then I thought I would. And that is very exciting for me.
Coming on Thursday: Alvy Powell plays Porgy.
Published on clevelandclassical.com April 6, 2011
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