Niles native fills leading role at the Met
It was a memorable night for the tenor, Gary Lehman.
YOUNGSTOWN — As an opera singer, Gary Lehman always dreamed of getting a chance to sing at the Met.
He got that chance last week, in a performance of “Tristan und Isolde” that was more memorable than anyone would’ve expected.
Lehman, 44, is a Niles native and a graduate of Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music.
He was the understudy for acclaimed tenor Ben Heppner for a six-performance run at the famed Metropolitan Opera in New York. Heppner came down with a virus and canceled the first four performances.
Lehman was told Thursday that he would be singing the lead role of Tristan in place of Heppner for Friday night’s performance. Lehman got the nod after the first understudy, John Mac Master, struggled in the opening performance March 10.
Things were going smoothly for Lehman until the second act, when soprano Deborah Voigt, in the role of Isolde, suddenly became sick and had to leave the stage.
The curtain came down and the show was stopped for 15 minutes before resuming with Voigt’s understudy, Janice Baird, as a substitute.
It was a history-making night, with two singers making unplanned Met debuts together in the lead roles of one of the most daunting operas.
It was also a night that Lehman will never forget. How did he stay focused when his co-lead ran off the stage with stomach distress?
“I don’t know if I was brave or stupid enough to not be scared,” Lehman told The Vindicator. “I put blinders to try to block out what was going on on the Met stage and to concentrate on my singing.”
The five-hour “Tristan und Isolde” is one of the most demanding operas, and one of the hardest for a tenor. The role of Tristan includes two hours of singing, including a 40-minute duet.
It was during that duet that Voigt became indisposed and rushed off the stage. The orchestra nervously continued to play for a few moments, and then the opera was temporarily halted until Baird was ready.
The heroic efforts of Baird and Lehman didn’t go unnoticed. The audience gave them a standing ovation. And Associated Press opera critic Mike Silverman had this to say in his review:
“Both of Friday’s substitutes made it through the rest of the evening with aplomb. Lehman was particularly gripping in the long soliloquies of Act 3, when the dying Tristan ruminates about his troubled life and has delirious visions of Isolde. ... For the most part he sang the role as written — no mean feat.”
The Met rewarded Lehman by giving him a second chance to perform the role tonight (Voigt will return as Isolde). It has not yet been announced who will handle Tristan for Saturday’s performance, which will be broadcast to theaters around the world as part of the Met’s Live in high-definition series.
Lehman’s Met debut also was the first time he sang the role all the way through.
What was going through his mind when his co-lead left the stage?
“It was like ‘what happened?’ Boom. You are in a groove, then you have to stop, and then crank it up again,” he said in a phone interview from New York.
Voigt, Lehman said, was visibly distressed. “She looked green through the makeup.”
Lehman graduated from Niles McKinley High School in 1982, and YSU in 1987, where he was a student of professor David Starkey. He attended Indiana University and was later accepted into the Chicago Lyric Opera training program.
While in Chicago, he met Susan Foster of Cortland, a Lakeview High School graduate, who also is an opera singer. The two married and moved to New York in 1993.
Although they grew up within 10 miles of each other, Lehman and Foster had never met before they moved to Chicago.