A native of Bauxite, Arkansas, soprano Susan Dunn (born July 23, 1954) is completely American trained, having studied at Indiana University in Bloomington and then at the University of Illinois privately with the renowned coach and accompanist John Wustman. During the final years of her studies, Dunn began to attract the attention of the music world and also to win prestigious awards: the D’Angelo Young Artist Competition, the Metropolitan Opera National Council Award and the Opera Company of Philadelphia/Luciano Pavarotti International Vocal Competition, and then in 1983 three major honors – The Richard Tucker Award, Chicago’s WGN-Illinois Opera Competition and the Dallas Morning News-G.B. Dealey Award. During her career, Dunn has achieved international success in Verdi, Wagner, Strauss and recital singing. She has demonstrated her gifts on the world’s most challenging stages: La Scala in Milan, where she made her debut in Aïda, New York’s Carnegie Hall, where she created a sensation in a concert performance of Act I of Wagner’s Die Walküre; at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall where she appeared with the New York Philharmonic in the Verdi Requiem and Strauss’ Four Last Songs; with the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Leonora in Verdi’s La Forza del Destino; at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall in a concert performance of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra; at the Vienna State Opera as Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera and at the Australian Opera as Desdemona in Otello. She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Il Trovatore in February of 1990. Dunn has recorded an album of arias for London/Decca Records with Riccardo Chailly conducting. She sings Tove in London’s recording of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and appears on that label’s recording of Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied, all with Maestro Chailly conducting. In addition to Act I of Die Walküre (with Lorin Maazel conducting) recorded for the Telarc label, Dunn is also the soprano soloist in their release of the Verdi Requiem. This recording, with Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony, was awarded the Grammy as the Album of the Year of 1988. Her staged performances of Giovanna d’Arco and I Vespri Siciliani from Bologna, again with Maestro Chailly, are also available on video. Susan Dunn is Professor of the Practice of Music and Director of Opera in the Duke University Department of Music. Susan Dunn at Lyric Opera of Chicago 1987-88 - Forza del Destino (Leonora), with Giacomini, Nucci, Kavrakos, Sharon Graham, Andreolli; Conlon, Maestrini, Samaritani, Schuler 1988-89 - Aïda (Aïda), with Giacomini/Lamberti, Zajick, Nimsgern, Giaotti; R. Buckley, Joël, Halmen, Schuler, Tallchief Susan Dunn with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra [Both concerts also featured the Chicago Symphony Chorus, directed by Margaret Hillis] October, 1988 - Simon Boccanegra (Amelia), with Nucci, Aragall, Estes; Solti July, 1989 [Ravinia Festival] - All Beethoven Concert Ah! Perfido and Symphony #9 with Mentzer, Heppner, Cheek; Conlon --  Names which are links refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.  BD

This interview took place in January of 1988, during her first visit to Chicago.  As shown above, she would return for more Verdi, and a Beethoven concert at Ravinia.  

Our conversation was held in a dressing-room backstage, and was both serious and jolly.  She seemed pleased with the questions, and answered thoughtfully and honestly.

Here is that chat . . . . . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:   Leonora in La Forza Del Destino is one of the large Verdi roles.   Do you enjoy singing the big Verdi heroines?

Susan Dunn:   Oh, I love Verdi.  It’s my very favorite thing to do.  This one is a little more difficult that most of the others that I’ve been undertaking right now, but I’m still enjoying a lot.

BD:   Why is it more difficult than Aïda, which seems to be a bigger part?

SD:   Aïda is longer, but the pacing is the difficult part about Forza, because the most important part of my singing comes in what we play (here in Chicago) as the first act, which is really the first and second act as it’s written.  Then there’s a long rest where you can gather forces again, and do ‘Pace’ in the death scene.  But it’s very difficult.  There are ten high Bs.

BD:   Those hold no terrors for you?

SD:   They’re difficult in the approach to them.  You’ve been singing for a long time, and singing in a difficult part of the voice, and then suddenly you have to pop out high Bs.  It’s difficult, and that is the scary part of Forza.

BD:   Do you ever wish that Verdi had written it a little differently?

SD:   Sometimes!  [Both laugh]  No, it’s very beautiful the way it’s written.  It’s very effective.

BD:   You do not sing at all in the middle act.  Do you let the voice cool down and rewarm it, or do you keep it going in the dressing room for all that time

BD:   Do you sing differently from one house to another?

SD:   No, I don’t think so.   That’s a dangerous thing to do because we don’t hear our voices the way people out in the auditorium do.  Sometimes the feedback that you get from the house can be deceiving.  For instance, sometimes it’s a house where you don’t get a lot of your own voice back.  If you don’t hear it bounce back, you feel that you’re singing into a pillow, and then, if you try to push harder to make a bigger sound, you can really hurt yourself.  One of the early lessons that you learn is if you’re singing correctly, then you sing the same way wherever you go, and you don’t try to make any sort of adjustments for acoustics, because that’s really not a problem with your voice.  You can’t make acoustic adjustments because there’s a problem with the house that you’re singing in.  That’s vocal suicide.

BD:   [With a gentle nudge]  And you’re looking for a long career...

SD:   Well, I hope so!  [Both laugh]

BD:   You don’t make adjustments for acoustics.  What about the size of the house?

SD:   Acoustics and size are, in my mind, the same, because in a smaller, more intimate house you’ll have the tendency to pull back on the voice more because you have the feeling that you’re really bouncing it off the back wall.  In a large house, you might not get all the feedback, but if you’ve been in an audience in a larger house, you’ll understand that what you hear coming back to you from out of the house is not necessarily the same thing the audience hears.  It’s difficult to learn that you cannot gauge what your voice sounds like from standing on the stage.  The audience really hears a totally different thing.  It’s an important lesson to learn, but a difficult one to learn.

BD:   What about the actual stage environment

  Of course, if you heard it six months after you recorded it tomorrow, and you’d say the same thing!

BD:   You’ve just got to live with it?

SD:   Yes, and be happy that you do think you’re getting better all the time.  Maybe that’s the nice thing about it.

BD:   You’ve recorded the Verdi Requiem.  Is that an opera, really?  [Vis-à-vis the recording shown, see my interviews with Diane Curry, Jerry Hadley, Paul Plishka, and Robert Shaw.]

SD:   I don’t think of it that way.  It’s very intensely religious for me, but I know that lots of people refer to it as his greatest opera.  Certainly, people who do not necessarily enjoy operatic works are less likely to enjoy the Verdi Requiem if they’re going to it thinking it’s an oratorio.  It’s very dramatic, but I always feel that it’s also very religious.

BD:   You’ve also recorded the Beethoven Mass in C [photo shown above].  How do those two religious works compare?

SD:   The Mass in C is much less dramatic, and it has much less work for the solo voice.  It’s a bit like most of Beethoven for the voice, as far as having a quartet that sings together as an ensemble, and then a choir that sings large pieces of it.

BD:   So it’s like a concerto grosso?

SD:   In a way.  The Verdi Requiem is very much full of solo work, duets, trios, and in that sense it is very operatic.

BD:   I understand there is also a solo recital also coming out?

SD:   Yes, I believe it’s in August of this year.

BD:   What’s on that?

SD:   Verdi arias, Beethoven’s Ah! Perfido, the Tannhäuser aria, and two pieces of Sieglinde from Die Walküre.

BD:   Do you see yourself moving gradually into more Wagner?

SD:   [Thinks a moment]  I must admit it holds an interest for me, but right now I don’t really feel that my voice is going in that direction.  Maybe ten years down the road I’ll change my mind, and decide I would really like to do it.  Right now, I’d really like to concentrate though on Italian, specifically Verdi, for the next few years.

BD:   Let’s talk a little bit about Wagner and then we’ll go back to the Verdi.   You’ve sung the first act of Die Walküre in concert.  Is that a satisfying thing to do?

SD:   I really enjoyed it.  It’s also very dramatic music, and moves quickly.  It’s a beautiful part.  That, if anything, would draw me to singing Wagner.  I’d like to do Sieglinde on stage someday.

BD:   You had no trouble doing the concert, even though you hadn’t sung it on stage?

SD:   No, we had adequate rehearsal time.  I’ve done a lot of things first in concert and then transferred them to stage, so that’s not a really new experience for me.

BD:   Is that, perhaps, a good way to get all of the music down before you work on the staging?

SD:   You have to certainly be more sure of yourself if you’re doing it first in concert, because usually you don’t have the leisure of two or three weeks of rehearsal beforehand, and you don’t have what I call

BD:   In opera, where’s the balance between art and entertainment?

SD:   I would hope that for the singers the art is the most important part.  Obviously, the audience has to be entertained, but that’s a difficult question.

BD:   Does the balance, perhaps, shift from some operas to other operas?

SD:   That’s a possibility.  If you mean in the sense of the artists taking it very seriously, and trying to be more interested in recreating these roles and doing the things the composer intended, and being true to the art form, then I would say art always comes out on top.  The term ‘Entertainment’ has bad connotations in our language, and I don’t necessarily think it should.  Something can be full of art and also entertaining without making it cheap.

BD:   What do you feel is the purpose of opera in society?

SD:   As with most art, the purpose is to uplift, to teach us something, to make us feel better of ourselves.  When people are feeling bad, I hope they can come to the opera and go away feeling good about something

[At this point, another singer could be heard warming up in the dressing-room next door.]

even when it’s toward another singer.  Audiences around the world show their approval in different ways.  That’s the main thing you have to get used to.  If you go to a place where they’re not quite as ready to whistle, and shout, and stamp their feet, then sometimes you’re not quite sure that they liked it as much as the people who will assure you that they did like it a lot.  If you’re used to being in a place where people really clap, and stomp, and yell, and cry out your name, sometimes that can affect you a little bit.

BD:   Do you ever feel that opera’s becoming a contest in those places?

SD:   [Laughs]  Oh, I hope not a contest, no!  Maybe it’s not the opera that’s the contest, but the singers are in competition with each other.  [More laughter]  No, I really don’t think that’s it.  They’re only on competition with themselves.

BD:   Do you ever feel you’re in competition with recordings?

SD:   No, because I probably have heard more recordings than I’ve heard live performances.  But most people that listen to recordings and have gone to a lot of performances realize there is a big difference.  Most times, performances will be more exciting because you never know what’s going to happen.  That’s the excitement.  You’re pretty assured on a recording that it’s going to be a perfect performance in the sense that no one’s going to blow a high note, and the orchestra is always going to be with the singers, etc.  This is not the way it always happens in the house.

BD:   Are records sometimes too perfect?

SD:   No, I wouldn’t make that criticism of them.  They do, however, set up unreal expectations.  As I walk on stage, it’s sometimes difficult for me to accept that I cannot do an absolutely perfect performance.  It’s not that I’ve never done one, or ever will do one, but they’re never going to be on the same level as a recording of the same piece would be.  It’s much easier to sing something once through without stopping and having to do a phrase in the studio fifty times in a row.  You just can’t maintain that same sort of energy.  No one can.  The orchestra can’t do it the same way every time, and the conductor can’t conduct it the same way every time, with the same sort of feeling.  You reach a point where you’re just too tired to go on.

BD:   What about on television?  Do you think the opera works well on the small screen?

SD:   I don’t have much experience with that.  I’ve always enjoyed those things that I’ve seen on television.  Sometimes I do think it’s an art form that’s a little big for such a small television screen.  [Both laugh]

BD:   Might it work better on the

BD:   Another of your characters is Elena in The Sicilian Vespers.  Tell me a bit about her.

SD:   She’s a hostage in a foreign country, and has been through the death of her brother at the hands of a tyrant.  She’s most bound up in vengeance for her brother. and maybe because she’s in love with Arrigo, she’s adopted the country of Sicily as her own, and functions as an insider.  She’s constantly trying to get the Sicilians to take charge of their own affairs, rise up and throw out this foreign government.  She’s a little hot-headed, and tends to do things without thinking them through very thoroughly.  Considering the rather precarious position that she’s in, she gets herself into a lot of trouble to the point of almost having her head chopped off.

BD:   Does she get massacred at the end along with everyone else?

SD:   She doesn’t die at the end, actually, which is maybe her tragedy.  She knows what’s going to happen because Procida has told her that as soon as the wedding bells signal, there’s going to be an uprising, and all French people will be killed.  Since Arrigo has claimed Montforte as his father, he is now considered French rather than Sicilian, although he’s half French and half Sicilian.  So, she realizes that he will be included in this group of people who will be killed, and tries to get them not to proclaim the marriage.  Of course, the bells do ring and everyone’s killed, and she’s left standing with all these dead people at her feet.

BD:   Does she wish she was among the dead?

SD:   Somehow, I think of her as the real winner.  She’ll walk away from that tragedy and go onto something greater.  It will stop her for a while, but she’s strikes me as being a strong enough person to overcome that.

BD:   Is she a Calamity Jane, that wherever she goes she’s going to cause massacres?

SD:   [Laughs]  Oh, I hope not!  That would be really sad.

BD:   When you’re on stage, are you pulling for these women?

SD:   Yes, I do, because I think they’re all worthwhile people, and they really are doing the best they can in difficult circumstances.  I am hoping every night that something different happens, and Leonora doesn’t, in fact, get stabbed by her brother when she goes off stage, or maybe the wedding bells misfire and Elena doesn’t have to stand midst of all this massacre.  In the end, I suppose the opera has to be like it is, because without the conflict the opera has no meaning.

BD:   You couldn’t have a happy opera for a while?

SD:   I suppose we could, but the

© 1988 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on January 27, 1988.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB a few days later, and again the following fall, and in 1994 and 1999.  This transcription was made in 2019, and posted on this website at that time.  My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.  To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.