Ravinia 2019, Issue 5, Week 9

Angel Blue made her first SroIessionDO IorD\ into the oSerD thDt sSDrNeG her OoYe oI the mXsic, 3Xcciniȅs Turandot , DSSeDrinJ Ds /i» Zith 6Dn DieJo 2SerD ODst \eDr ANGEL BLUE, A RISING AMERICAN SOPRANO who makes her Ravinia debut with an August recital in the Martin eatre, remembers exactly where she was when the opera bug bit her—hard. “ e rst opera I saw was Turandot ,” says Blue, talking with Ravinia by phone earlier this summer from France, where she sang the title role of Puccini’s Tosca in a new production at the Aix-en- Provence Festival. e four-year-old Angel heard a concert version of the opera with her parents and siblings in Cleveland’s Severance Hall. Even though the performance wasn’t fully staged, she was dazzled. “I remember all the orchestra instru- ments being on stage,” she says. “It was very dark, and the light was very bright on the woman who was singing. It was very bright and very loud. I liked the way it made me feel. It made me happy. I had a range of emotions, but the one that stuck with me the most was that I was very happy when I le the theater.” at day she told her father, Syl- vester Blue, a pastor and gospel singer who also studied classical music, that she wanted to be the woman in the spotlight. B Y ANY MEASURE, that wish is coming true for the California-born soprano, now in her mid- s. Since her San Francisco Opera debut in , her credits have included performances with the Canadian Opera Company, the Los Angeles Opera, Frankfurt Opera, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, La Scala, and the Berlin and Munich Philharmonics. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in as Mimì in Puccini’s La boh è me . A mere two years later, on September , she will reach one of the opera world’s lo iest heights, starring in a production “Without pageants, I don’t know that I would be where I am now,” the singer says. “It taught me so much about myself and comparing myself to other people. I learned very quickly not to compare myself. By the time I nished pageants and modeling, I had a very strong idea that I needed to focus on what I had to do and not worry about what other people were doing.” Growing up in Apple Valley, CA, ap- proximately miles northeast of Los Angeles, Blue was surrounded by music. In addition to her father, who died in , her mother plays keyboards. Blue’s three older sisters and younger broth- er play instruments and sing. She also plays bass guitar and piano. But vocal music was her rst love, and from the start, she reveled in the spotlight. to open a new Metropolitan Opera sea- son. She sings Bess opposite bass-bari- tone Eric Owens’s Porgy in the Met’s rst production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in nearly years. (Coincidentally, Owens gave his rst performance of that role in the same San Francisco production that was Blue’s company debut, in the role of Clara.) And Blue’s résumé includes a credit few opera singers can claim—beauty pageant winner. She was the rst Afri- can American to be crowned Miss Apple Valley (CA) and her titles include rst and second runners-up in Miss Cali- fornia competitions. She sang Violetta’s rousing “Sempre libera” from Verdi’s La traviata to win the overall talent award as California’s representative in the National Sweetheart Pageant. JONATHAN TICHLER/METROPOLITAN OPERA (OPPOSITE PAGE) J. KATARZYNA WORONOWICZ JOHNSON/SAN DIEGO OPERA ( TURANDOT ) JULY 29 – AUGUST 11, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 19