Ravinia 2019, Issue 7, Week 15

Chicago audiences finally got to see their “homegrown” star Quinn Kelsey inhabit the title role of Rigoletto in 2017, a decade after his final bows in the Lyric Opera’s young artist program, where onlookers quickly divined that the baritone was destined to reign in the role of Verdi’s jester. The long- awaited appearance came alongside fellow Lyric alumnus tenor Matthew Polenzani (right), then just the third appearance together by two of the most highly sought singers in the world, their first being in Ravinia’s 2005 concert performance of Otello , with Polenzani singing Cassio and Kelsey as Montano and the herald. That genial young man was Quinn Kelsey, and he still seems like a guy you could down a beer with. Except he isn’t a prom- ising young singer anymore. Kelsey is now on the short list of honest-to-God international opera stars, and he is the posses- sor of an exquisite, russet-velvet baritone voice that boasts the rarely heard combination of sonorous power and fluid ease in the upper register required by the music of Giuseppe Verdi. Not that this has gone to his head; Kelsey is warm, laughs easily, and discusses his formidable art without a whiff of pretension. K ELSEY WAS BORN on the island of Oahu. His mother is a classically trained soprano who enjoyed a considerable reputation in Hawaii. His father is an English professor with natural musical talent who sang in madrigal groups and was the lead singer for a local rock band. “My sister and I developed a healthy exposure to music in gen- eral,” Kelsey recalls. “Music has always been the one constant in our family. Even after my sister and I both left home, music is the thing we can always count on to connect us all.” Everyone in the family was a chorister with Hawaii Opera. Kelsey remem- bers a Carmen in which his mother sang the role of Frasquita; he and his dad joined the men’s chorus, and his sister sang in the children’s chorus. “As soon as my sister and I were old enough to carry a tune, Mom had us in choir with her, so to be singing opera in a chorus wasn’t a big deal at all. She never dragged us into a practice room. We absorbed musicianship in choir. It was so the right way to do it. My parents just left the door open. It’s like so many things in the world; you can’t force children; you have to wait for them to be inspired. And look what happened.” After college, Kelsey joined the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco, spent some time at Chautauqua, and finally landed a three-year stint in Lyric Opera’s young artist program. Even in those formative years in Chicago, his destiny was ob- vious. Audience members would regularly hear him in minor roles and muse that he should be singing the lead. Rumor had it that the next Verdi baritone was incubating. “I am glad they all knew, because I can enjoy that vicariously without sabotaging myself. But there was still a measure of uncertainty,” Kelsey says. “Mozart and Rossini, sure; French lyric baritone stuff, yeah. Ob- viously, the bel canto rep was where the voice needed to go. But what about this other 10 or 15 percent? The music-staff types, the clinicians, knew they shouldn’t blurt out ‘Verdi’; they knew one of the hardest things would be to get me to understand that I needed to wait .” Kelsey covered (the operatic term for understudying) Rigo- letto and Aida’s Amonasro during his apprentice years and knew that any number of smaller companies would have snatched him up to sing the roles then and there. “I thank my lucky stars every day that I had people along the way who knew there was potential for something bigger, and beat it into me that ‘if you do this right, you can have a healthy career so that you can de- cide when you’re done, and the voice doesn’t decide for you.’ I understood I wasn’t being smacked in the face. People were saying, ‘Look, kid, we understand the potential you have, but you need to realize the responsibilities.’ ” Kelsey speaks of his progression in Verdi rather like building a house on top of a solid foundation. “That is actually a good analogy,” he says. “Back then, I could learn a role and sing an AUGUST 26, 2019 – MAY 9, 2020 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 17