Like many classical musicians, Susan Graham maintains her principal residence in New York City, but her heart resides in her home state of New Mexico.
“This is the 20th-year anniversary of my moving to New York, and in all that time I’ve never really felt like a New Yorker,” said the internationally famous mezzo-soprano, who is one of the stars of this summer’s Santa Fe Opera season.
Graham, 45, realized how much she missed the mesas, mesquite and massive skies of New Mexico when she stayed a few extra weeks in Santa Fe after a 2002 solo concert.
She decided to visit her sister in Roswell, N.M., and while traveling the highway through the spare, subtle landscape, she had an epiphany. Instead of waiting for retirement, she wanted a second home in the state right then.
“I thought, this I understand,” she said. “I understand the vegetation, the dirt, the sky. I know what it’s going to do this afternoon. I know whether it’s going to rain or not. And I thought, I’m ready to have a piece of this in my life now.”
A short time later, Graham bought a house in Santa Fe. She goes as often as possible, including Christmas and whenever she is appearing at the Santa Fe Opera.
The New Mexican native, who grew up in West Texas, is back on her home turf, appearing through Aug. 10 in a rare production of “Lucio Silla,” a baroque-tinged 1772 opera that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote when he was 15.
Graham appears as Cecilio, a banished Roman senator. She first performed the trouser role at the Salzburg Festival in the early 1990s and was eager to return to the pleasures of its extreme vocal challenges.
“A lot of these arias are sort of Handelian,” she said. “They’re wildly gymnastic vocally, and they’re incredibly difficult. Every time there is a new aria, there is something amazing about it. It’s musically one of the most challenging things.”
“Lucio Silla” is her eighth production at the Santa Fe Opera, where she has become an audience favorite.
Her last appearance came two years ago in a hilarious, gloriously exaggerated staging of Jacques Offenbach’s mythological send-up, “La Belle Hélène,” in which her abilities as a comedienne could hardly have been better showcased.
“You couldn’t pass that up,” she said. “Not many of those (roles) come along where you can be Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball all wrapped up into an opera character.”
Graham said she has always been a ham. As the youngest of a “whole horde of Southwestern cousins,” she would dance on tables at family gatherings from the time she was 3 and do whatever it took to put smiles on the faces of her relatives.
“It’s a calling,” she said with a big laugh.
Given her extensive history with the company and her ties to New Mexico, it is surprising to learn that at the beginning of her career, she was turned down for Santa Fe’s well-regarded apprentice program – a decision the company undoubtedly wishes it could take back now.
“I auditioned to be an apprentice here,” Graham says with a playfully melodramatic tone, “but they wouldn’t have me!”
Despite that early setback, the mezzo-soprano’s career today could hardly be going better on any front. While some major performers are struggling to get one recording made, she has released four in the past 18 months alone, including an album of Charles Ives songs that won a 2005 Grammy Award.
Continuing her string of appearances in important new productions, she will appear this fall at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera in the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s operatic adaptation of “An American Tragedy.” Theodore Dreiser’s noted 1925 novel tells of a love triangle gone terribly wrong.
Graham graced the June cover of the leading classical-music magazine, The Gramophone, with an article titled “The Magnificent Miss Graham.” She has also been nominated for the publication’s prestigious artist-of-the-year award.
With all the success she has enjoyed thus far in her career, a little self-conceit might be understandable. But this most undivalike diva has a wonderful way of exuding self-confidence without a hint of egotism.
And she acknowledges that seeing her visage on a magazine cover provides a big boost to that confidence.
“I’d be lying if I said no,” she said. “It sort of makes you feel that somebody thinks you’re important enough to put you on the cover, so you must be doing something right.”
In fact, the down-to-earth New Mexico native is doing a whole lot right.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
Susan Graham
OPERA|Mozart’s “Lucio Silla,” Santa Fe Opera amphitheater, 7 miles north of Santa Fe on U.S. 84/285; 9 tonight and 8:30 p.m. Thursday and Aug. 10|$24-$142|800-280-4654 or santafeopera.org
