"Hoffmann" Puts Mezzo-Soprano in Dress, for Once

(first published in The Cincinnati Post July 15, 1992)

Mezzo-soprano Susan Quittmeyer has spent much of her professional life in pants.

Singing male roles, that is.

But that's the lot of the lyric mezzo, whose low-lying voice composers have called upon to convey the essence of young manhood.

Ms. Quittmeyer is one of the best singers doing "pants roles" today, such parts as Cherubino, the lovesick page in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," and Octavian in Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier." Pants roles are "my favorites," said Ms. Quittmeyer, a slender brunette with a radiant smile. "They are great singing roles, and the characters are truly wonderful."

But look her over in the Cincinnati Opera's "Tales of Hoffmann" Thursday and Saturday at Music Hall. Instead of Hoffmann's companion Nicklausse, which she often sings, she'll be singing Giulietta, the Venetian vamp who steals Hoffmann's reflection with a magic mirror (supplied by the evil Dapertutto, sung by her husband, bass James Morris).

"For a mezzo, it's a chance to get in a dress," said Ms. Quittmeyer, who has sung only male roles here before (Octavian in 1986, Siebel in Gounod's "Faust" in 1990). The only risk, she said, is NOT singing Nicklausse. "I told Kathy (Kathleen Hegierski, who is singing Nicklausse), 'If I sing your part, please don't be angry. It's just in my head.' "

Born on Long Island near New York City, Ms. Quittmeyer attended the opera as a child. She sang, played piano, clarinet and oboe, and always knew she wanted music in her life.

"I was thinking of musical therapy or music teaching." But she said she never would have tried performing if she'd known then what she knows now. "It's so competitive."

Ms. Quittmeyer considers herself lucky: "I had the right teachers, and at the right time, a director who said, 'I happen to know of a part that's open."'

She went directly from the Manhattan School of Music to the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, where she made her debut in 1978. She became an Affiliate Artist at the San Francisco Opera, and in 1987, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Nicklausse in "Hoffmann."

Singing pants roles takes no special training, Ms. Quittmeyer said. "Once you find the character, it seems to come. You have to keep in mind certain things that are possibly too feminine, but I find the more you try to act like a man, the more it looks false."

Singing male roles has its pluses. "For one thing the costumes are very free. You don't have to worry about how tight something is on your midriff."

The down side is being type-cast. "When I started out my career it was all woman roles (including Carmen, which she'd like to repeat). Then when you start doing pants roles, that's all you get hired for."

Still, when asked to name her favorite roles, "there's not a woman on the list." In fact, she'd rather sing Prince Charming than the mezzo role of Cinderella in Massenet's "Cendrillon." "That's not very good is it?" she said with a laugh. "You have to make sure you play a woman once in a while so you remember."

Ms. Quittmeyer is singing more females roles these days. There's Dorabella in Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte," and during the 1990-91 season she had a big success at the Met as Varvara in Janacek's "Katya Kabanova" (in Czech). Coming up is Charlotte in Massenet's "Werther."

This fall she'll sing Marina in Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" in San Francisco. Morris will sing the title role.

It takes a lot of planning to juggle their international careers, she said. Ideally, they like singing at the same opera company in different operas. "That way we can help each other. We're not both nervous on the same days, and there is somebody who can make dinner and go shopping." After that, they like working together. "Next is working on the same continent."

Traveling is "the difficult part of being a singer." After a few years of it, "all you want to do is go home."

That's exactly what the couple will do when they leave Cincinnati. They have a home in New Jersey. Actually they'll be studying for "Boris," she said. "We have a Russian coach who is going to stay with us for a week and criticize us to death so we'll be ready."