Sandra Walker Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Mezzo - Soprano Sandra Walker

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Sandra Walker Brown, 75, of Augusta, GA passed away on August 3, 2022 in Augusta. Sandra was born in Richmond, VA to Phillip Loth Walker and Mary Jane Behymer on October 1, 1946. She graduated from Sanford Central High School in Sanford, NC in 1964 and from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 1969 with a Bachelor of Music in Performance. She later studied at the Manhattan School of Music where she met her husband and fellow opera singer Melvin Brown.
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While a student at UNCG, Sandra participated in a performance of 'Messiah' at the National Cathedral in Washington DC, the result of placing third in the Friday Morning Music Club competition. Fellow Augustan Jessye Norman placed first. Still, it was Sandra that National Symphony Orchestra Howard Mitchell tagged to perform with the orchestra.

Soon, Sandra, still a young performer, found herself a mezzo-in-demand, performing roles with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Chicago Lyric Opera, the San Francisco Opera and the New York City Opera where she often performed with Beverly Sills. She appeared with many regional opera companies and orchestras in the US and Canada, including the Virginia Opera, Baltimore Opera, Montreal Opera, Augusta Opera, Richmond Symphony, and Boston Symphony.

Notable roles included Micah in Handel's 'Samson' which she performed with the Chicago Lyric, San Francisco Opera, and was her debut at the Met, and Olga in 'Eugene Onegin' with Mirella Freni at the Chicago Lyric, San Francisco Opera and the Met. She also performed the title role in 'Carmen' with the New York City Opera, Bradamante in Vivaldi's 'Orlando Furioso' (San Francisco Opera) and Maddalena in 'Rigoletto' for the Met. Over the course of her career, she also performed in Geissen, Gelsenkirchen and Frankfurt in Germany where she lived with her husband and gave birth to their son, Noel.

In 1983 She was a featured performer at Spoleto Festival Italy, performing the title role in 'Rape of Lucretia' by Britten.

She continued to perform after settling in Augusta, GA in 1988, appearing in concerts and operas with symphonies and companies all over the world. At the same time, she found a new career as an educator. A celebrated private voice teacher and a member of the faculty at the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, she taught the next generation of singers, and the generation after that, the many lessons she had learned on the great stages of the world.

Those are the facts and figures - the status details of Sandra's life telling her biography in finite events and accomplishments. But Sandra's story is more than performances placed on a resume. Because although a gifted singer, singing was not her greatest gift. Blessed with a surplus of care, concern and charisma, she was a true influencer. Her approach to performance, her enthusiasm for music of all stripes and her unabashed affection for her students made her much more than merely an entertainer or teacher of technique. She was a true master of music, a rare individual who understood its power and used it to engage and often forever change the lives of others. She understood the mathematics of music, but she relished the magic.

Sandra was preceded in death by her husband Melvin Brown. She is survived by her son Noel Christian Brown, brother Phillip Loth Walker, Jr. and spouse Patricia of Brunswick, GA, brother Robert Holton Walker of Southport, NC, sister Carolyn Walker Kopcho of Fairhope, AL, and granddaughter Eden Parker Brown.

Memorials may be given to Concerts with a Cause, Music Memorials at St John UMC, the Augusta University Department of Music, or the Metropolitan Opera. A Memorial Service will be held at 11 am Saturday, August 13 at St John United Methodist Church with the Reverend Jenny Anderson of St John UMC officiating. Arrangements are by Platt's Funeral Home.

== From We Remember by Ancestry (with slight corrections)

In the fall of 1985, Sandra Walker was back in the Windy City with Lyric Opera of Chicago for the role of Micah in Samson by Handel. Also in the cast were Jon Vickers, Ellen Shade, Gwynne Howell, Paul Plishka, June Anderson, and David Gordon. Julius Rudel conducted and Elijah Moshinsky directed. [Throughout this page, names which are links refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.]

Between performances, she graciously agreed to meet me for a conversation. As we were setting up to record, she mentioned that she was ‘just’ an opera singer . . . . .

Bruce Duffie:   [Reassuringly] Oh, you’re not ‘just’ an opera singer. You’re a very fine opera singer!

Sandra Walker:   [Smiles] Thank you.

BD:   Do you like being a fine opera singer?
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Walker:   It’s hard work.

BD:   Too hard?

Walker:   No, no, but it doesn’t get easier, because as you approach each next challenge, you’re constantly stretching yourself. So there’s no resting on your laurels.

BD:   I trust you wouldn’t want a job that’s just routine.

Walker:   Oh, I could get into that. I really am a homebody. I like being home. I’ve had to force myself to keep going and to keep growing. It’s very tempting sometimes to say, “Let’s just have a nice, quiet routine kind of life for a change. I’m tired of all this traveling.” The pressure gets to me.

BD:   Do you make sure to schedule time off for yourself?

Walker:   I’m only now at the point in my career where I can afford to, where I’m in control of it, where I can pick and choose, and that’s real nice. You have to pay your dues, especially if you’re a mezzo. But I won’t have to learn a new old-lady part after I’m 40 years old because I sang them all at 18. [Both laugh] It’s great because now I’m getting to do younger and younger parts. The bigger the part, the younger you are, essentially. I got real tired of doing Marcellina [Marriage of Figaro] and Berta [Barber of Seville], and I said it was time to move on. However, there is a certain comfort in doing those non-stress roles. When you’re used to doing what we call comprimario roles, all of a sudden you feel you’re too good to be just singing those roles. You feel you should be singing leading roles regularly, not just once in a blue moon. When I was at the New York City Opera, I did mostly medium-sized roles, and only in the provinces did I get to do leading roles. I was brought in as a New York City Opera star because the provinces could afford that category of singer. I would do a leading role, but at best they would do three performances, and you cannot grow in a role in just three performances. It’s wham, bam, and it’s over, and you feel if you’d only had a chance to do it a couple more times, you would have gotten comfortable in it. So, it’s very frightening to all of a sudden be thrown into leading roles. There is a certain security in doing the smaller things, although it is death to your spirit. That’s one of the reasons I went to Europe, because I just felt in my heart that even though it was comfortable and safe, I was dying artistically.

BD:   There really wasn’t any way they would give you the big roles to sing at the City Opera? [Vis-à-vis the DVD shown at right, see my interviews with Marilyn Horne, Kathleen Kuhlmann, and Jeffrey Gall.]

Walker:   Well, I made a mistake. I stayed at City Opera too long doing small parts. So, when I did get a chance to sing Carmen, for example, it read like ‘isn’t that nice? They’re giving Walker a chance to sing Carmen.’ I had sung Mercédès too many times. The hot singers are much more exciting. They are the new faces on the scene, and I wasn’t a new face. My work was always respected, but I was thought of as a work-a-day singer. I sang at City Opera probably four times a week every week, so it wasn’t anything exciting.

BD:   It was just the job?

Walker:   No, I’m not saying that. I mean how it looked from an audience point of view. It was a great learning experience for me. When I was growing up, I always wanted to be rich and famous, but I just didn’t know at doing what. I wanted to move to New York, so the move from North Carolina was not frightening at all. It was just something I always knew I’d do, and the City Opera job enabled that. We lived in a beautiful apartment overlooking Central Park, and I could walk to work. It was great. I was there almost seven years, and it was a wonderful point in my life. For all intents and purposes, I’d made it. Anybody who’s surviving in New York has made it, and we were more than surviving on a financial level. Plus, my name was in Opera News every week, and my mother was very proud. [Laughs] She could open New York Magazine, and there was my name. But I was dying, so that’s why I decided to go to Europe. I went right after the changeover from Rudel’s regime to Beverly Sills’ regime. A lot of singers put their hope in Beverly. The house singers had been there to sing, and they felt that maybe they’ll get a chance for bigger things.

BD:   Did they?

Walker:   I don’t really know, but I don’t think anyone who was on the lower rungs really went on to do bigger roles. My problem was that I had played Beverly’s mother too many times for her to see me any other way. You’d be surprised how little imagination producers have. Once they get an idea about a singer, it’s very hard to change it.

BD:   They feel comfortable that there’s someone reliable to do those roles, and they’re happy to have them again and again?

Walker:   Yes. It’s good for them. I really couldn’t complain. I got to do really good things there, but they were not the pick of the crop. They like having good people doing the smaller parts, and yes, they do value the fact that you’re there every night, you’re smart, you learn your music, and you don’t cancel. Therefore, they keep you coming back, but in my heart I thought I can do more. I didn’t think that my potential was being used to its fullest extent. So I quit, and two months later I got an offer to finally sing Carmen there, but only after I left and stood up for myself. My husband had already gone to Europe, and had been there two years.

BD:   Is your husband also a singer?

Walker:   Yes, and my career was getting progressively better and more challenging. But the stress was also mounting. And I was having to deal with everything alone. I’m not that strong a person. I had to deal with all of the bit exciting challenges, like my first performance of the Bach St. Matthew Passion, which was at Carnegie Hall [with the American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sergiu Comissiona, April 6, 1980]. That’s heavy. I just about broke under the strain, and was having to deal with that all by myself, with no one to lean on.

BD:   Now you’re back here in Chicago doing a very major role conducted by your old friend, Julius Rudel.

Walker:   Yes. This whole Chicago experience has been a real eye-opener for me. It’s really given me a lot of self-confidence. This role is deceptively difficult. It lies in an unbelievable range. It’s not high, and it’s not real low, but it stays mostly in what we call in the break of the voice. So you’re constantly in and out of each range, and you can’t figure out which voice to use. It sounds comfortable, like a church alto part. Then you try to make it exciting, but not ruin your voice in a big theater like this. You just try to get it to carry. It has all sorts of built-in problems. I had really worked very, very hard at this part, but it was really fun for me to come back and work with Julius. It was the first time I’d seen him since I had quit City Opera, and here we are seven years later. We’re both professionals doing our jobs, but he’s not my boss any more. He has been terrific. In the way he was dealing with me, it was clear when we worked together that I’d come a long way. It made me feel really good, because I felt for the first time that he really respected me as an artist.

* * * * *

BD:   You mentioned earlier that home is now Europe?

Walker:   Yes, we live in Frankfurt, Germany.

BD:   Are you a member of the Frankfurt Opera?

Walker:   I’m guesting there quite a bit this year, and I was also there last year. But in Germany, you are under the thumb of a conductor. There’s not a lot of give and take. It’s one idea, and you follow. There’s no accompanying, but it’s what I’ve been working with for the past couple of years, so I’ve gotten sort of used to it. They’re not really too interested in a singer’s ideas about the role. It’s the conductor who really controls the ball game. It has been just such a joy working with Mr. Rudel again because he’s there for you. It’s never the same. It can’t be. I feel like I’ve grown immensely with this production.
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BD:   Let me ask just a couple of questions about your husband.

Walker:   My husband is Melvin Brown, though when they hear I’m married to a tenor, many people confuse me with Sandra Warfield and think I’m married to James McCracken. Melvin’s a lyric tenor, who also sang at City Opera for a very short period of time. But he has a small voice, and in the States it’s real hard to make it with a small voice, because we all have to sing in barns.

BD:   Have you worked together?

Walker:   Yes.

BD:   Is it better to work together, or better not to work together?

Walker:   I don’t like it because it’s double duty as far as nerves and pressure. It’s real hard for me just to get out there and do my own thing. When I’m not doing my thing, I’m doing his for him. I’m singing with him, and breathing with him, and being nervous for him as well. It’s not that I have to, but I have this thing that I’ve got to work overtime. So it’s just real hard to relax and enjoy it.

BD:   Do you have the same agent?

Walker:   No, we don’t.

BD:   If you had the same agent, they could try to keep you apart or try to bring you together. [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interviews with Thomas Wikman, and William Stone.]

Walker:   Actually, he is now winding down with the singing. He’s doing more teaching and conducting, so our careers are actually very compatible at this point, especially since we have a new baby. My husband’s becoming the major parent, the stabilizing factor, or the anchor, and I’m the one who’s going to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off. [Both laugh] But I can plan my time a little better. Up until this year, I had a Fest engagement in houses, which on the one hand is great when it comes to building repertoire and getting lots of performances of different roles that I never would have had a chance to have done. But on the other hand, it’s very limiting. [A ‘Fest’ contract means you are ‘fixed’ as a permanent member of the ensemble at that opera house for the duration of the contract.] I did have good connections prior to going to Europe, and I had lots of opportunities and offers. I have worked enough every year, and I’ve kept my irons in the fire. I did not plan to become an expatriate. It just evolved. But then when a big job would come along, you cannot get free because you have to sing Amelia in Otello. That’s the price you pay for the experience of doing good roles. Mostly they are ensemble houses where you’re also expected to do small roles, which I was perfectly willing to do for the opportunity to develop, but I can’t do that any more. I’ve reached a point in my career now where my agent here in the States has been trying to convince me to come back for these choice, good jobs, and offers that are going to be challenging and rewarding. It appears that’s the direction I need to go. So I’ll still stay in Europe to also do the roles that here they only use superstars for. That’s just the name of this game in the large houses right now. Here I’m doing B roles, although when I auditioned for Micah last year (when I was here for Onegin), even Ardis Krainik didn’t realize how big a role it was because normally it’s cut to shreds. It’s not even just the singing. It’s the standing around on my feet for so long. I felt like I had sung Carmen twice because you have to interact with everything that’s going on, and help to tell the story through your reactions. It’s such an intense piece. There’s not a lot of action, but a lot of reaction. It’s very demanding. When I auditioned for the role, they had a mockup score of what they thought it was going to be, and in that score there was only one aria of Micah’s left. I’m sure that’s what they thought it was going to be, because at that time they hadn’t all collaborated on which version they were going to use. Later, when I got the music, there were five arias! My part’s bigger than Delilah’s! Excited was my first reaction, then sheer terror was the second. Chicago Lyric Opera, my gosh. That was pressure. It’s one thing if you come out, and you’re pert and flouncy, sing one aria, and you’re finished. I can handle that.

BD:   [Gently protesting] But you’ve handled Carmen.

Walker:   Yes, but not at Chicago Lyric Opera. There’s a certain extra pressure that goes with being there. The responsibility is probably not greater, but psychologically it is. More people are watching if you fall on your face. The role is actually a male, but that’s just a liberty taken by the director. But it’s been wonderful because I can do it, and I did it, and it’s getting better and better. Jon Vickers has been just fabulous.

BD:   Has he been supportive?

Walker:   Very, and he knew I was scared to death. He said, “Tough. You just go out there and do it anyway.” So, I did. Plus, the woman who did my part in London was Sarah Walker, so I was constantly being called Sarah. I really had to fight for my identity. We also staged the opera for almost two weeks before Mr. Vickers got here, and so it had evolved very differently from what he had expected. He was expecting everything to be just the same, since it was the same settings and director and conductor. But I wasn’t asked to do it that same way. It just evolved as brand new.

BD:   Did the director look at you and see what you could do, and then build around that?

Walker:   Yes. He was very good because it’s a hard piece. You sing the same things 25 times, and each time you’ve got to find something different to bring to it. I’m really interested because I’m going to sing the piece as an oratorio in December. It’ll really be fun to experience it that way.

BD:   Where will this be?

Walker:   In Florence, Italy. It will be sung in English, and in another edition. It’ll be a whole other ball game with a completely different cast and conductor. It will probably be much more Baroque, whereas this production in Chicago is more Romantic.

BD:   Do you like singing Baroque music?

Walker:   I really do. I’m glad to see the revival, and I’m glad to have had this opportunity because it’s really my niche. I’ve always felt like I’m a specialty singer. My strength is my low voice. I sing coloratura repertoire such as the Rossini heroines, but there are a lot of people who can sing them better than I can. I force myself to sing Rossini every once in a while, but it’s not real comfortable. The Italian Girl in Algiers and Semiramide are lower. There are so many categories of Rossini. There are the high ones, and the low ones, and the middle ones, and I can sing it all. But still, I’m not a lyric mezzo, I’m not a dramatic mezzo. I’m what they call in Germany a zwischenfach [in between categories]. So I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had houses that pigeonholed me. They’ll ask what I want to sing, and I’ll say I can sing this, this, and this, but I can’t sing that, that, and that, and they say it’s okay. A lot of houses force you to sing certain roles and nothing else. I don’t care what you call me, just call me! [Both laugh] But with Handel and things like that, I can sing it as well, if not better, than a lot of people. So, I hope that with this exposure, which I’ve not had before in this repertoire, maybe I’ll get more work doing that.

BD:   Would you rather do this than Wagner?

Walker:   No, not necessarily. I just like to work doing things I like to do.

BD:   Do you like Wagner?

Walker:   I love it, and I hope I’ll get more opportunity to sing Wagner with this freelancing now, which I’ve just started doing. I’m going to have to see how that goes. If I had stayed in a Fest engagement, I would have had more opportunity to do that, because it came in the repertoire.

BD:   It would be given to you?

Walker:   That’s right. This year, I would’ve had the chance to sing Waltraute, but it didn’t work out because there was a conflict with this Samson. Waltraute is a wonderful part, and Gelsenkirchen is great, but Micah in Chicago’s better. Now that I’m freelancing, there are not going to be that many people who know I do this repertoire. So we’ll see if it evolves. I don’t know if it will or not. Here in the States, I’m sure it won’t. I’m totally tied up in Frankfurt this year doing the world premiere of a modern opera [Stephen Climax, which is briefly discussed later in this interview]. I can read music! In Germany, we have a lot of very poorly trained people, so they’re really thrilled when they find a singer who can do rather difficult stuff that they don’t have to spoon-feed them. I’ve got this world premiere coming up, which is going to take a lot of time, but as soon as that’s over I’m going to embark on an audition tour to introduce myself to the larger houses. My manager here has a lot more clout in Europe, and I will take the Wagnerian things. I auditioned in Munich just before my baby was born. I sang Brangäne, and some heavier Verdi. They were very impressed and wanted me to come back to sing, which I did after the baby was born. They wanted to wait and see if I could still sing. [Both laugh] I sang Tristan when I was eight months pregnant with Noel, so I’m sure he knows the score. Then I sang it again in a different theater three months after he was born. That was a killer, but I did it and I loved it. I got my start singing Wagner. I went from the Bronx Opera in New York City to the San Francisco Opera, and that was my first professional job in opera. I got the part through Otto Gutt (who has recently died), but he was then a coach in New York and was the main coach in San Francisco. I had just moved to New York and had been there about a year. I was coaching with him, and I got the opportunity to audition for the job. He said they’d never hire me because I don’t have any experience. How would I get experience if nobody hires me??? So, he went out on a limb and got me that job sight unseen or voice unheard.
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BD: What part were you singing?

Walker: The Rhinemaiden Flosshilde. They did the whole Ring cycle that year [1972], and I’ve worked ever since. It was like starting at the top. That was an all-star cast including Birgit Nilsson and Thomas Stewart. Then that spring, Solti was doing the third act of Götterdämmerung, so he called San Francisco to ask who their Rheinmaidens were. We got an audition, and I got the job here. [Vis-à-vis the cast-list shown at right, see my interviews with Helga Dernesch, Donald Gramm, and Martti Talvela.] That’s when Carol Fox [General Director of Lyric Opera] heard me. So it’s just the domino effect. That was 11 years ago [when Walker sang Hannah Kennedy in Maria Stuarda on opening night of 1973, with Caballé, Cortez, Tagliavini, Gramm, and Ellis, conducted by Bartoletti. Later that season, Walker was a Noble Orphan in Rosenkavalier, with Ludwig/Dernesch, Berthold, Sotin, Blegen, Gutstein, Merighi, Zilio, Andreolli, Little, Voketaitis, conducted by Leitner]. My father said, “Well, she couldn’t make it in New York, so she’s singing in San Francisco.” [Both laugh] He had no idea that if I hadn’t lived in New York, I would never have gotten that job. It took me three years, but I worked my way back. I went from San Francisco to Chicago, and in the third year of living in New York I got into New York City Opera and was there for about six or seven years. When I told my teacher I was doing Wagner, he said, “What do you want to do that for???” I had heard these horror stories about Wagner and how it ruins voices, but it just ain’t so! [Laughs] That man knew what he was doing. The orchestrations make you think you have to have such a gigantic voice, and here in the States you do because of these big houses where they have these gigantic orchestras with no cover on the pit. But for where it was written [his theater in Bayreuth], Waltraute is very intimate and wonderful, and the orchestration is so supportive. The man knew where to cut out and let the voice take over. It just sings for you. I found it so comfortable. It was challenging, and it was difficult, but once I had worked on it and found where it should lie it was just like floating. I had to get rid of this preconception that you’ve got to be old and fat to sing Wagner. I really hope I’ll get an opportunity to do it again.

* * * * *

BD:   Tell me about Brangäne. What kind of a woman is she?

Walker:   There’s a hard question. If you have heard about working in Germany, you know that everybody’s got a gimmick. If you couldn’t hear the music, you would never know what you were watching. What it has to do with the original idea is anybody’s guess. [Both laugh] They just won’t let it alone. I’ve done two productions of Tristan, and they were both very stylized, very spare, relying on the dramatic abilities and capabilities of the singing actors and actresses. That’s fine when the participants have those capabilities, but as we all know, there are a lot of singers who don’t. They just stand there and sing, and they need a little help. Unfortunately, these singers didn’t get all that much help. On the other hand, I have enjoyed working that way because you develop so much as an actress. I saw a production recently here in the States, which was Grand Opera in the grandest style, and I felt like I just wasn’t convinced of any of it. All night long, everything was just so superficial. I must say I’ve gotten a little spoiled working in Europe where they are so intense, and really work from the personal drama, the personal relationship of the characters. They forget about all this opera stuff. It’s outlandish, and it’s weird, and it’s insulting sometimes to have to sit there and watch it.

BD:   Is any of it right?

Walker:   I don’t know what’s right. We go into these productions, and we think it’s going to be a disaster, a real circus. Then the public comes on opening night for the boo-fight at the end. It’s fun when the penguins come out for their bows and the house just goes berserk with anger and rage. The production team just thinks it’s terrific. The director just eats it up. That’s what they’re out to get, just so they’re noticed. Whether it’s good or bad doesn’t matter.

BD:   They want to create their scandal.

Walker:   That’s right, a scandal. That’s what they like. But somewhere within that they put on some shows which work well.
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BD:   Some of them must be fairly close to the mark.

Walker:   Yes, they are, but you have to explain everything. In Europe, it’s all in the program notes. You can’t go into one of these operas with just the list of characters. You have to have the producer’s point of view so that you’ll know what the thinking was. It has to be explained. It does not come across the footlights. It’s all this deep symbolism which is hidden, so that it has to be written out in black and white. It’s a standard procedure that you get an overlay of the production from the point of view of the stage director, and how he has changed the story and the relationships of the characters. As I said, I don’t know if it’s right or if it’s wrong, but it certainly is a stretching exercise to do something that you basically don’t believe in. However, in order to have any credibility or any integrity as an artist, you somehow have to convince yourself to make it work. You can’t just quit.

BD:   Is that the responsibility of the producer, to convince you first so that you can then convince the audience?

Walker:   Yes. Somehow you’ve got to find a way to convince yourself, or find a meeting ground somewhere in between. But it’s not a bad thing in that respect. So when I do come back to a big opera house where it’s a real diehard traditional audience, it’s just not enough for me because I don’t believe it anymore. It’s not that I’ve become jaded, but I just demand more of myself as an actress.

BD:   Have you purposely begun turning down engagements where you know it will be too traditional?

Walker:   No, I won’t. [Pauses a moment] Coming back to the Tristan, it was fantastic musically.

BD: Who else was in the cast, and where was it?

Walker: I sang Brangäne to Pauline Tinsley’s first Isolde. She’s a lovely lady, and I enjoyed working with her. Manfred Jung was the Tristan, and the conductor was Uwe Mund. He’s a fabulous musician, and I really enjoyed working on Wagner with him. That was in Gelsenkirchen.

uwe mund

Born in Vienna on March 20, 1941, Uwe Mund is an Austrian conductor. At the age of fourteen he gave his first concert as solo pianist, and at sixteen he began his studies as a conductor and composer.

At the age of twenty he became conductor of the Vienna Boys' Choir, with which he toured Europe and America. He also conducted the Viennese Hofmusikkapelle, a court orchestra dating back to the Middle Ages. He became solo répétiteur for the Vienna State Opera, and assistant conductor of the Wiener Singverein in 1963. He was music director at Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen from 1977 until 1988, where his work and passion are considered to have defined an era.

He was music director at Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, from 1987 until 1994, and from 1998 at the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra. He was also guest conductor at numerous other (opera) houses.

He made several CD and video recordings.

What gave me a little more confidence about my singing Wagner was that I had such a high standard. My first introduction to Tristan was in New York with Nilsson and Vickers. It was an eye opener for me that especially in Europe they cast about one fach lighter than we do here. After having done that role, of course I became very covetous of it. [Both laugh] I’m not the only one who sings this role. Then I heard a broadcast where Hanna Schwarz was Waltraute, and I thought, yes, she’s good, but so am I! I put these people on such a pedestal, and finally I realized that I can do those roles, too. It was very interesting because I didn’t realize I was so musically opinionated about the role. Brangäne is a more typical mezzo part. She’s just there to give her support to the soprano when the going gets rough. She’s pretty much like Suzuki [Madam Butterfly]. She knows there’s doom from the beginning. I like Suzuki, although if I had my druthers I love sympathetic and compassionate women. I did a staging of Italiana in Algeri. In Germany it’s very rarely done, but it’s getting a little more popular. It just happens that this was the fifth production of it that I’ve done, so I came armed to the teeth with ideas. The producer couldn’t believe how creative and wonderful I was. It was only at the very end I told him it was the fifth production I’d done. But I was Wonder Woman. [Both laugh] He was getting such a complex, because in Germany directors have this thing of whenever one of the singers has an idea, they give you a pfennig, so I was getting rich! He said he was going to be broke by the time this opera’s over! [Much laughter] It was really fun. I’m basically a comedian at heart.

BD:   [With a gentle nudge] Then why are you going into Wagner??? There’s no comedy except Meistersinger.

Walker:   [Smiles] Well, you have got to have some comedy to keep it light. I will do anything... except take my clothes off on stage, which I’m called to do in this next piece. I said that we have to discuss this because I’m not going to do it. I’m playing Bella Cohen, the Madam of a whorehouse. The work is called Stephen Climax, and I thought it was called Stephen’s Climax. I even put it on a rep sheet that way [laughs].

BD:   Who’s the composer?

Walker:   Hans Zender, who is the general music director in Hamburg. His pieces have been produced quite a bit. I don’t know anything about them, but this story is taken from Ulysses by James Joyce, and it should prove to be very interesting. It should get a lot of acclaim and press, and the conductor’s totally convinced of it. He thinks it’s wonderful. It will get a lot of exposure, plus, I will be home. So I’m being paid to stay home, which is great.

Hans Zender (November 22, 1936 in Wiesbaden - October 22, 2019 in Meersburg) attended the Maifestspiele at age 13, listening to concerts conducted by Carl Schuricht, Karl Böhm and Günter Wand, among others. He took piano lessons and learned to play the organ. From 1949, he went each year to the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, where he got to know trends in new music by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen and John Cage. He studied piano, conducting, and composition (the latter with Wolfgang Fortner) at the Hochschule für Musik Frankfurt and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg from 1956 to 1959. He was trained as a concert pianist by Edith Picht-Axenfeld.

zender From 1959 to 1963 Zender was Kapellmeister of the Theater Freiburg, then principal conductor at the Theater Bonn from 1964 to 1968. In 1964–65 he attended the Second Cologne Courses for New Music at the Rheinische Musikhochschule, under the artistic direction of Stockhausen. In 1968 he was called to Kiel, where he was Generalmusikdirektor (GMD) of the Opernhaus Kiel until 1972. From 1971, he also was principal conductor of the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Saarbrücken. In 1984, Zender became head of the Hamburg State Opera and GMD of the orchestra there. From 1987 to 1990, he was chief conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of Radio Netherlands in Hilversum. From 1999 to 2011, he was the permanent guest conductor and a member of the artistic board of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, now part of the SWR Symphonieorchester.

Zender's opera Stephen Climax, with his own libretto based on James Joyce and Hugo Ball, was premiered on 15 June 1986 at the Oper Frankfurt, staged by Alfred Kirchner and conducted by Peter Hirsch. His third opera, Chief Joseph, was premiered in June 2005 at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, staged by Peter Mussbach and conducted by Johannes Kalitzke.

From 1988 until 2000, Zender taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt. Among his students was Isabel Mundry. Invited by Walter Fink, he was in 2011 the 21st composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival. Music in a chamber concert included denn wiederkommen (Hölderlin lesen III) for string quartet and speaking voice (1991) and Mnemosyne (Hölderlin lesen IV) for female voice, string quartet, and tape (2000), performed by Salome Kammer and the Athena Quartet. A symphony concert was given by the SWR Vokalensemble and SWR Symphonieorchester conducted by Emilio Pomàrico, including Schubert-Chöre, featuring Zender's adaptations of four Schubert choral works with orchestral rather than the original piano accompaniment, written in the 1980s.

* * * * *

BD:   How is it traveling with a young child?

Walker:   Actually, I’ve only done it twice. Last year, Noel was with me the whole time. He was only one year old, and I have a nanny. But this year, because I was going to be under such pressure, I decided not to bring him. He’d also turned ‘terrible two’. So, I left him behind because while he was going through such radical changes, I thought it would be better for him to stay home where he is safe, and not be put in a strange environment. He came after the premiere was over, and my parents also came to see him.

BD:   Is he being brought up as an American or as a German?

Walker:   Sort of both. He has little German play-friends, and he speaks playground German and restaurant German. Anytime I take him to a restaurant here, he’ll say danke schoen. He knows that’s what you’re supposed to say in a restaurant. Now I can control the traveling a little better. When I first came to Germany to work, my husband was in one house and I took the first job I could get. I didn’t audition all over. I just said I’ll take the first job which was offered, and then I could work my way up from here. So we were in two different houses, but we’ve always seemed to have maintained our main house wherever he was. So I was always the one running back and forth back to ‘home’. I never had a total commitment to a theater because that’s not where I lived. My sights were always about when I could go home. That first theater was in Würzburg, and as soon as I left there, my husband got a job there. [Laughs] I had already given up my apartment, so we moved back to Würzburg. I was Fest in Gelsenkirchen, which was yet further away. So I was burning up the rails again.

BD:   Did you work with Winfred Brown? [Full disclosure, Brown was the girlfriend of my brother-in-law, who was the chorus master of the Chicago Opera Theater!]

Walker:   Yes. We did Così and Otello together. She has a fabulous voice. We were ‘sisters’ for a season, and that was fun. It was a lovely production of Così. The role was also a stretcher for me. That was right after the baby was born, and it was very therapeutic. They always say that Mozart’s good for the voice, and it was a goal for me and got my voice back together after the baby.

BD:   Is Noel your first?

Walker:   Yes. We were late bloomers. It took us a long time to decide to have children. We’ve been married 10 years. But with this move to Frankfurt, and the decision to go international with my career, it seems like there’s more traveling, but actually there’s not. For the past five years I’ve been on the Autobahn. We’re a two-car family, and there was only two of us, but we always had two households. After Noel was born, I had two nurseries, and two of everything. Now I don’t have to do that anymore. For the first time in eight years we have one home, which is just heaven. Next year I’ll be in San Francisco the whole fall season, which will be lovely. I am doing Olga again. I’m now the international Olga! [When Lyric Opera presented Eugene Onegin in 1984, the production was recorded and issued on video (as shown below).]

Also, see my interviews with Mirella Freni, Peter Dvorský, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Jean Kraft, Mark S. Doss,
Pier Luigi Samaritani, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Vyacheslav Polozov, and Maria Tallchief

[Walker continues speaking about her next San Francisco engagement] I’m also doing Magdalena in Meistersinger.

BD:   She’s a fun lady.

Walker:   She is, yes, but that’s not a challenge. It’ll be a fun experience.

BD:   Tell me about Magdalena.

Walker:   I did the opera when I was at the New York City Opera. We did one production in English, and it was so poo-pooed because it was Wagner in English in New York.

BD:   Did Norman Bailey sang Hans Sachs?

Walker:   Yes, he did, and it was wonderful. But that was so many years ago, I really have lost touch with Magdalena. She was pert and flouncy, and real friendly.

BD:   Most of the people I talk to seem to think that she’s a little older than David.

Walker:   Oh, of course, for sure. She is more worldly-wise.

BD:   Do you like singing in translation?

Walker:   I don’t mind it as much as I probably should. As an actress, I really am happy when the audience understands what I’m singing. I am so proud of the actions and reactions to point up the drama, but the audience doesn’t get it because they don’t know what is being said. I really love singing Carmen in French, but if they’re going to get more of what’s happening with all this interplay, I’d rather do a translation.
walker

BD: Have you worked with supertitles?

Walker: No, I haven’t. There’s a big discussion going on about that right now. Ardis was talking to her donors today, and she said they were going to take a poll. If the audiences didn’t like them, the company wouldn’t do it. [It turned out that there was a very positive response, and supertitles have been used at Lyric ever since.]

* * * * *

BD:   Do you also like singing lighter music?

Walker:   Pop music? I do. I never had seen an opera until I was in one. I grew up being a folk singer back in the days of Peter Paul and Mary. I took piano lessons, and never had any voice training until I went to college. So when I went to audition for college and said that I wanted to sing, they’d ask what I wanted to do with my voice. At that point I didn’t know. My dad, who had driven me to the audition, would say, “What she really wants to do is shoot Mary, and jump in between Peter and Paul.” [Both laugh] I was so humiliated and so embarrassed, but that’s true. Those were my roots. I love to sing at parties. I had tickets to see Samson in London in the spring, and at the last minute I got a call that I had to go to Vienna to audition for Leonard Bernstein. I was furious that I had to do it, but you just don’t turn down that opportunity. It was a chance to audition for the Staatsoper at the same time. It was just a general audition, and I asked what I should sing, and they said to bring something from opera and something popular. So I brought O mio Fernando [La Favorita], and Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine [Showboat] because that’s my big party piece. I had to sing first for one of his colleagues who was filtering out the riffraff. Only the crème de la crème would get in to see the maestro. So I sang the aria first and then the song. This was not in the theater, but in a rehearsal room. Well, they just loved it, and said that Lenny has just got to hear you sing this. That was what got me the audition. It wasn’t that I could sing operas, but that I could sing this show music so convincingly because my heart was in it. I was really lucky that there happened to be an American accompanist who was looking for somebody in the rehearsal room. He didn’t even belong to the theater. At first, this German person came to play for me. I asked if he could transpose the song, and not only could he not transpose, but he didn’t know the song at all. So, the American guy said he’d play it for me. You would have thought this guy had been playing in bars all his life! It was a torch song for both of us. So I was really lucky in that respect. The next day I went to the hotel and sang for Lenny in his living room, where he listened to me in his bathrobe.

BD:   Did you get the parts you were working for? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Dominick Argento, Ned Rorem, Phyllis Curtin, and David Lloyd. Incidentally, when I asked about this disc, she said, “Rorem is someone who knows how to write for the voice.”]

Walker:   I wasn’t working for a part. The audition was the prize. It was for their general information, but it was a positive experience. They say he doesn’t forget, and you never know through which avenues you get different jobs. That’s also something that you learn in Europe. As I said, I set these high standards. In New York it’s the ultimate pressure that people rely so much on one-performance judgments of things. It’s got to be A-One the first time you do it, and a lot of people really thrive under that kind of pressure. I crumble. But you want to learn that every night is not going to be perfect. Being musically brought up in New York, I always got the feeling it has to be perfect. In Europe, after you’ve done your first Octavian, they’ll ask how good can that first one be? It can be good, but eventually it’s really going to be good. But that’s enough for the first time. It’s still acceptable. I did 27 Octavians when I was thinner. It’s pre-baby. I had to convince myself to give it a try. I had only seen the most fabulous Octavians. I hadn’t seen all those singers who are running around Europe doing it. A million people are singing it a hundred times worse than I can sing it, but I had only seen the great ones. They were the ones who were just perfection, and that’s an awfully high standard to set for oneself. It’s good to do that, but in a lot of ways it’s damaging. I lost my courage to try these things because I knew I couldn’t be that perfect.

BD:   Do you like playing trouser roles? Do you like being a boy?

Walker:   Yes, I do. I believe it. I’m not embarrassed about it. There’s nothing worse than seeing someone play a child’s role when they’re uptight about it, and are getting real nervous and embarrassed.

BD:   [With a wink] It’s hard to forget that you’re a woman because you’re rather shapely!

Walker: Yes, but I have no problem with that. It’s real fun to play that side of my personality, and to have it be appropriate rather than inappropriate. I do enjoy that role. I will be doing highlights of it in concert with the New Jersey Symphony, which will be fun. Ellen Shade, who is a wonderful singer, is doing her first Marschallin. It will be very inspiring to sing with her. George Manahan will conduct. He works a lot in Santa Fe, and he’s just been named conductor of New Jersey Symphony.

BD: [At this point Walker asked me about the magazines I wrote for, including Wagner News, and The Massenet Journal. We chit-chatted about a few of my interviews which had been published there, including Michel Plasson, Alfredo Kraus, and Jean Fournet. We then spoke of musicians from the older generation, including Bidú Sayão, Maurice Abravanel, Martial Singher, and Helen Jepson. Walker then mentioned that Madame Sharnova had heard the Samson broadcast, and had written her a note.] She taught here in Chicago for many, many years. It was only about a year ago that she closed up her studio downtown.

Walker:   I need to go visit her. She said our voices are very similar.

BD:   She sang many roles with the old Chicago opera companies in the 1930s and ’40s, including Fricka and Brangäne, as well as Herodias in Salome.

Walker:   Herodias is a role that I have been offered, and I said no.

BD:   Why?

Walker:   I’m just not ready to scream all night long for that. I will do that later, but not at this time. It can be difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing. Plus, I’m one who really sacrifices for the drama. It’s real hard for me to get out of my way. I can see that I could kill myself singing these women. It’s hard enough sometimes in Carmen to keep the pear-shaped tones coming when you’re saying all those ugly, nasty things. [Laughs] I let a few of ’em rip every once in a while, but my husband reminds me to be careful when I’m taking my chest voice up to high C.

BD:   In the end, though, I trust you like singing?

Walker:   I like it when it’s over or when it’s working. Last night, the fourth performance, finally I felt like that was it. After four performances everything was working. I was in good voice, I was calm, I was in control. There are just so many external things that break your concentration, but when it’s really going well, yes, then I’m enjoying it. The tempi were all just right, and it was just really, really nice. In those moments, I really love it. The other moments, it’s just work, especially in something that’s so difficult to sing, where you have to think all the time. You can get away with a lot of stuff when you’re singing loud and high, and can swish your skirt. If the note wasn’t just perfect, maybe nobody will notice. But something as intense as this Samson is so exposed. You’re naked as can be out there, and it’s very, very difficult. But as I said, when it’s working I love it. When I’m lying in bed at night after it’s over, and I’m going through that one note that I bobbled for the millionth time, and beating myself up about it, I try to think of all the good notes I sang.

BD: Performers always remember that one mistake.

Walker: Right. Last night there was a musical mistake in one of the duets. You sit there and kill yourself over that. But those things happen. We’re only human. That’s sort of what makes theater exciting. A lot of times the audience is just waiting for those moments. They love disasters. They love it when the scenery falls down. That’s a night at the theater.

BD:   Have you ever gotten clobbered with scenery?

Walker:   No, I haven’t. I did though fall off a rock in a rehearsal in the Ring, and cracked a bone. That was when we used to have to rehearse at the National Guard Armory on Saturdays, when people were coming in doing National Guard duty. They were watching us. The three little rhinemaidens who weren’t so little! [Laughs] We were rather all chubbettes, and we had to swim from one side of the Rhine to the other, which was one side of the armory to the other. There was this little scrim on our stomachs, and we were popping up every once in a while to sing beautifully. We were gasping for air because we couldn’t breathe. At a dress rehearsal. Mr. Adler used to have his thumb on everything, not to mention everyone, and he would get on the microphone in front of everybody and say, “Would the third rhinemaiden get her rear end down?” This was because every time I’d bob up, my rear end would pop up over the waves. It was only supposed to be your head, but it was horrible at the Armory because those guys would applaud! It was just terribly embarrassing, terribly humiliating. That was when I learned how hard work opera is. It’s not just standing up there looking beautiful and singing. It’s being filthy at the end of a rehearsal, sweating, with black stuff running down your face. It’s not as glamorous as its cracked up to be, but it’s fun.

BD:   I hope you continue to enjoy it.

Walker:   Yes, me too!

BD:   Thank you for speaking with me today.

Walker:   Thank you.

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This conversation was recorded in Chicago on October 23, 1985. This transcription was made in 2023, and posted on this website at that time.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.