Mezzo revels in variety
DeShong expands repertoire in a revival of Rossini’s dramatic opera Semiramide
When Elizabeth DeShong NEW YORK comes onstage and sings her bravura opening aria in Rossini’s Semiramide, audiences at the Metropolitan Opera may be scratching their heads trying to recall when they’ve heard her before. Indeed, her list of previous credits in the house make up a bewildering variety of styles and roles, from Suzuki in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly to Hermia in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the First Norn in Wagner’s Goetterdaemmerung.
“I’m always being a surprise to people, and I get a kick out of that,” the U.S. mezzo said in an interview at the Met last month. “I like that I can be that chameleon, that I can give people something different every time.”
As Arsace, the Assyrian commander in Rossini’s 1823 opera, DeShong has by far her highest visibility and most challenging role to date.
“You need a combination of adrenalin and sort of a fighting spirit,” she said. “You know you’re in for a long evening ... and you just try to connect with the audience and give them the best product you can.” Hearing the bravos that greeted that first aria on opening night, she said, “gave me the energy for the rest of the evening. I felt like I had won the Olympics at the end, so it was good timing.” Though it’s her first leading role at the Met, DeShong has performed major bel canto roles elsewhere (Rossini’s La Cenerentola in Vienna and Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia in San Francisco, to name two), drawing acclaim for her burnished tone and agility. Her virtuosic talents will be on display, alongside soprano Angela Meade in the title role, on Saturday when Semiramide is broadcast to movie theatres worldwide, including select Cineplex theatres in Canada.
The vocal fireworks required of a Rossini singer seem to come naturally to DeShong, and she gives much of the credit to her early training as a pianist, which made her comfortable writing her own ornamentations.
“I figure out what makes sense for the intention of the character,” she said, “so it’s not just embellishment for embellishment’s sake. It has to be personal. Just adding notes with so much to remember, if you don’t have a reason why you’re singing that at the moment, then it’s just noise.”
DeShong made her singing debut in Grade 3 in a school production of Snow White. It wasn’t a complete success, she recalled with a laugh: “I sang Whistle While You Work, but I can’t whistle, so that was a shame. The dwarfs had to whistle for me.”