When Denyce Graves was 13 years old, she heard a voice that set her on a path to reach the world's most prestigious opera houses. That incredible voice belonged to soprano Leontyne Price, the first Black opera singer to perform in a leading role in a televised opera.
"I had never heard many other genres of music and certainly not opera. That was as foreign and as strange as anything could possibly be," Graves said in recalling that day she spent listening to Price recordings hours on end with a friend.
"But also to see this woman who looked like us, who looked like a queen... and we heard this type of singing that just split you in half... I was forever changed the moment I heard her."
Now, at 61, Graves is bidding farewell to the stage, taking her final bow on Jan. 24 at the Metropolitan Opera, in her turn as Maria in the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.
It's a secondary role in an opera composed and written by white men, filled with demeaning stereotypes of Black life. The nearly century-old work has also historically served as a platform for African American singers who otherwise struggled to make a break in a white-dominated industry.
Race problems aside, the mezzo-soprano sees this swan song as coming "full circle" since her very first professional contract was for Porgy and Bess in 1985 at the Tulsa Opera.
The Met "is considered the pinnacle for all opera singers," she told Morning Edition host Michel Martin at NPR's New York studios. "There's no other place quite like it... where you find the world's greatest artists — from directors, designers, choreographers, costume people, you name it."
Graves has portrayed some of the most beloved heroines of the operatic canon, including the seductresses Dalila — in Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila — and Carmen — from Bizet's eponymous opera, which marked Graves' Met debut in 1995.
Outside the U.S., she has performed at opera houses from Paris, London and Munich to Vienna and Zurich. The Emmy- and Grammy-winning artist also won the Marian Anderson Award, given to her by the renowned singer.
Graves says she started seeing signs that the time had come for her to finally bid adieu to the stage.
"The body changes, the voice changes, your life changes," she added. "I've done the things that I've wanted to do."
She's planning to focus on teaching, stage directing and leading her foundation, which supports young artists and champions the work of African American artists like Sissieretta Jones and Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield whose contributions she says have historically been "intentionally left out of the telling of the story."
A Washington, D.C. native, Graves is directing the upcoming production of Scott Joplin's Treemonisha at the Washington National Opera, premiering March 7. It will be the company's first performance since splitting from the Kennedy Center earlier this month.
Attendance has dropped since President Trump took over the performing arts venue that's a living memorial to one of his slain predecessors, named himself chairman and more recently had his name added to the building.
Treemonisha, in a new adaptation by composer Damien Sneed and playwright Kyle Bass, will instead be performed at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium, where the WNO held its first production some 70 years ago.
"For people who have been reluctant or who have actually drawn a line, I hope this will reengage people who enjoy really alive theater to come out and support this work," she said.
"Music can be an agent for peace... I'm interested in that transformative power that can transcend everything — race, socioeconomic status, language, you name it — and that's what I'm choosing to lean into to create."
Julie Depenbrock produced the broadcast version of this story.
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