Battle's Cincinnati Connections Run Deep

(first published in The Cincinnati Post May 22, 1992)

Far from the madding crowd is a nice place to be, especially if you're as famous as soprano Kathleen Battle.

Hailed by the New York Times as one of the "singing elite of this century," the Portsmouth, Ohio, native came home recently to visit her family.

"I was in Portsmouth with my mother for three weeks, and no one knew I was there. I went to a hardware store and put down my credit card. But not until the sale was consummated did he realize, 'Are you that singer?' "

A graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Miss Battle will help open the 1992 May Festival in Haydn's oratorio "The Creation" at 8:15 tonight at Music Hall.

It's been 20 years since the late Cincinnati Symphony conductor Thomas Schippers plucked her from a group of auditioners and set her career in motion. A music education major at CCM, she was teaching music in the Cincinnati public schools.

"Without him and that fated audition, it's anybody's guess whether I would be a singer today," she said.

Schippers invited her to sing at Italy's Spoleto Festival. He also passed the word to James Levine, then May Festival music director, who signed her for the 1973 May Festival and five consecutive festivals after that.

"That was a fantastic era," Miss Battle said. "It was a heady experience for someone so young and inexperienced to have the May Festival as a platform." She had previously sung in the May Festival Chorus.

Miss Battle's Cincinnati connections are deep, she said; "they run deeper than anybody has any knowledge of, really." She has friends and family here, and she's sung with the CSO under Max Rudolf, Michael Gielen and Erich Kunzel. With Kunzel she did the Suite from "Porgy and Bess" with fellow CCM grad Dorian Harewood.

Miss Battle made her Metropolitan Opera debut under Levine in 1977 and now sings all over the world. She's a three-time Grammy-winner, and her "Baroque Duet" album with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and "Bach Album" with violinist Itzhak Perlman are No. 2 and 4 on Billboard's classical chart.

In January at Carnegie Hall, Miss Battle premiered Andre Previn's "Honey and Rue," set to texts by "Jazz" author Toni Morrison. "I was actually the catalyst for that," she said, explained that she lured Ms. Morrison by dropping Previn's name when "I hadn't even talked to Previn!"

On May 29, she will appear on "The Tonight Show" with saxophonist Branford Marsalis and pianist Henri Venanzi.

Miss Battle has some advice for young opera singers:

"Be a musician first. Be a singer first, which means singing the little songs your teacher gave you when you were a freshman and sophomore. If you can sing, a place will be found for you in opera."