[Vocalizing]
What the straw kind of shows you is where the optimal place
that your cords would be coming together, your vocal cords,
helps me feel what, uh, optimal cord closure is.
[Vocalizing]
[Operatic singing]
I think the most amazing thing about opera...
...is the fact that you've got this one solo person that's onstage,
with two tiny vocal cords that are coming together to make enough noise
that it can be heard in a 5,000-seat auditorium, over 100-piece orchestra
with no mic-ing.
Pretty good. - Yeah? Try it again? - Sure
As an Asian American singer, there have not been tons of people who have come before me.
This industry was not created for me.
It's not an easy journey.
It's a pleasure to welcome mezzo-soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen
who's in the midst of a season that is taking her to stages across the United States.
Recent season highlights for Nina have included engagements with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Anchorage Opera,
Seattle Opera, Utah Opera, Sarasota Opera, New York City Opera, and many others.
Please welcome Nina.
Doing this in person, I've been doing it over zoom for the past two years.
You are my first in-person group to meet with, it's very exciting.
Thank you and for engaging in this, you know, sometimes difficult uh conversation, thank you for having me here.
In spring of 2021, after the shootings in Atlanta, I came across a an opera company who made a social media post that said,
"We support our Asian artists." And I looked at this post that had a bunch of pictures of Asian artists,
and I thought to myself, "Wow, this is really interesting, every single person in this post"
"has been typecast into an Asian role, myself included." I wrote to a friend of mine who worked at
this company in PR and I said, "Take a look at this post that just happened. The next thing that has"
"to change in our opera industry is for us to stop pigeonholing people of color into roles of color."
So she asked me, "Nina, in a typical season, how many non-Asian roles do you sing?"
I never had taken the time to think about how many non-Asian roles I had done. And I sat down and I started counting
and in the span of 10 years, I had sung three non-Asian roles. I was like, "Something has to change."
Yes. Rhys, please jump on the trampoline with your brother after a little baseball
I'm in the middle of a lesson, thank you. -All right. -Thank you, bye
Growing up, I didn't necessarily identify as Asian. Before I was an opera singer, I would
have said I'm Southern Californian, I'm a daughter, I'm a mother, I'm a wife, and
it wasn't until I became an opera singer, and other people started identifying me as Asian
and I was showing up to these rehearsals of Madame Butterfly, that then I had to
figure out like, "What does it mean to be Asian? What does it mean to be Japanese?"
I've done a lot of really great music, but honestly the majority of it's been singing
Suzuki, the mezzo-soprano role in Madame Butterfly, which I've done over 150 times.
Madame Butterfly is an opera we would say it's in the canon
one of those, you know, top five operas I would say
And it was written by Puccini, an Italian man
who had never been to Asia, but he had this idea of what he thought Asia would be.
Someone recently asked me like, what my dream role would be,
and to be honest, I kind of was taken aback.
Madame Butterfly is some of the most beautiful music ever written, so every time I'm involved in
the opera I just stand there and I'm like, "This is glorious." Like at least it wasn't an opera that was
awful, like I've been lucky enough to to sing a glorious opera a lot of times.
But it would be really exciting to sing some Verdi, and you know, the fact that I've gone
this long without singing a Carmen? That's a role I could have done a long time ago.
But because people see me as Asian, I'm not even considered for these things
and it's not just me in my career, it's Asians across the board in our industry.
...stepping in as soon as he opened the door in the very beginning? -No, no like wait for
Yeah so if you're like here,
when you stop it, like step in, so you're on the other side of the post
I of course think about this a lot. I think about Butterfly a lot because it's a work I get
asked to direct more than any other piece, and I've realized that if I was caucasian,
people would want to hear about my art. They would ask me questions about my vision, about
the art that I'm making, and technically it would be limitless in terms of what I could direct.
I have realized, being an Asian director, that I in many respects talk more about a piece that
I don't know if I would have chosen on my own, if I wasn't Asian and wasn't Japanese.
I think companies realize that they can't just present it the way that they've been
presenting it for so long, but they don't know how to not present it that way
and they don't know what the vision could look like for something else.
And so that is where I think Asian Opera Alliance, the Black Opera Alliance, you know, individuals
like myself can step in and say, "Hey, here are some tools, this is a new vision for how I might do it."
I had multiple productions of Madame Butterfly canceled this year because people were worried
to mount it due to the violence that's been happening against Asian women in the United States
So you know my first reaction was, w ell that's great that you're trying to protect me, but
you're also taking work away from me as someone who's only sung Asian roles, and you're also
creating erasure of my face on a stage. Nothing about it has to be uncomfortable, it's only
uncomfortable if we turn these characters into caricatures. But it doesn't have to be that way.
If we have to stop we will, but I'm going to try to like just keep it moving.
And then that goes into the next scene? -Yes, into the next scenes, we're just going to like, go.
Unless people are like, "I don't remember anything," and then we'll pause. Okay.
An American Dream actually feels really different from Butterfly because I have a very deep personal
tie to the material. It digs into the story of two families, the first being a Japanese family
who are torn away from their home, forced to get rid of their belongings and sent off to
an internment camp, and their struggle and how they return. And a second family, an American soldier who
marries a German Jew and helps her escape the Nazi regime, and as an immigrant comes to the U.S.
and then occupies this home after the Japanese leave it. And it doesn't at all feel like I'm
being pigeonholed, it feels like a great gift to get to direct a work like this.
So normally in operas, um we will get an article clothing that has been worn by lots and lots
of people over the years and you know sometimes you'll get this piece of clothing that has like
a super famous singer and be like, "Oh my gosh, I'm wearing, you know, Renee Fleming's clothes"
or whatever, and so I came to try on my my costume and see whose clothes they were and look
at this it says Nina Yoshida Nelsen, Lyric Opera Chicago 2019. I'm getting to wear my own clothes.
I'm Nina. -Hi, I'm Cass. -Cass, nice to meet you. -Very nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. -So you are our... -Mama. -Mother, very nice.
The story of An American Dream was my family's story. Being fourth generation Japanese-American, my
grandparents were incarcerated during World War II. The librettist called me and she said, "Actually,
I want to interview your grandmother, and I want to base this aria off of my interview with her."
This is a picture of my grandparents right after they met, they met
actually in Poston as they were incarcerated. My grandma was I think 17 and my grandpa was 18,
and you can see the barracks um behind them it shows like the youth and the excitement
in them yet behind them you can see the stark desert where they had to live um that would be
my grandparents and my dad as a little baby, he was born right after World War II.
and then here
this is my grandma, my grandpa, my little brother, Mitchell, my cousin Billy, and me.
For the Japanese Americans, most never talked about incarceration
and it was the first time that I heard these stories from her. And now I have
so many stories that she told me that no one had ever heard, because I worked on this opera.
My grandmother grew up in Seattle, which is where the story takes place,
she left you know right before World War II and she returned for the first time
for the world premiere, she sat in the front row, and she got to see her story told on stage.
I would love to see more of these stories. That being said, there's also
a trend to write stories about tragic events. But our communities are filled with joy
as well, and so it shouldn't just be these tragic stories that are being told.
During the pandemic, I wondered a lot if I would ever work again.
After I made a social media post sharing my story, within that first week, I had offers
for three non-Asian roles, just from creating awareness about my situation.
But next year, so far I'm back to doing all Asian roles.
it's important that we keep talking about these issues. We know that one season is not
going to change anything. This is long-term work. This is stuff that we
all will be doing hopefully for our entire careers.
Above all, we just want to see diversity on our stages.
We want to see our stages reflect our society.
There have not been tons of people who have come before me,
but I can make sure that there are a lot who come behind me.
And that is a privilege of mine.