With Richard Danielpour’s new opera, Margaret Garner, based on the true antebellum story of a black woman who murders her children rather than see them enslaved, baritone Gregg Baker shines as a rarely seen character in grand opera. As Margaret’s husband, Robert, he is a black male romantic hero, full of principle, pride, vulnerability and a fierce capacity for love.

A good deal of the critical praise that greeted Danielpour’s opera was centered on Baker’s deeply felt, visceral performance. This month, he will repeat the role when Margaret Garner comes to Opera Company of Philadelphia, one of the three companies, along with Michigan Opera Theatre and Cincinnati Opera, that commissioned the work.

Yet in spite of this triumph, Baker, now fifty-one, continues to negotiate a terrain in opera that is rougher for the African–American male singer than for any other artist. While African–American women in opera have consistently been welcomed since the breakthrough days of Anderson, Price and Bumbry, black men have not. Tenor George Shirley and bass-baritone Simon Estes are among the few African–American men who have made successful careers in opera, and though Baker counts himself fortunate to be among them, there are still incidents that make him wonder whether the progress of the past several decades is giving way to a return to pre-civil-rights discrimination.

Recently even in Europe, where black artists used to go to escape race problems, Baker has been appalled at the lengths to which some company administrators will go to keep African–Americans out of productions. In Baden-Baden, Baker was hired to sing Rigoletto opposite a white Gilda, and after three weeks in town and almost no contact with the company (save a single staging rehearsal), he learned that a white singer had been asked to sing the role.

Baker had been hired by the director, but at first sight, the Intendant had other ideas, and Baker’s contract was bought out. “It finally leaked out that I was fired because of being black,” Baker said. “Their line was that they wanted ‘consistency.’ The problem I had was that no one was man enough to come to my face and tell me anything.”

Even when Baker is hired, it’s no easy ride. A physically imposing black man (6’ 6” and with an athletic build), he must take care to harness his power to make others — particularly white male opera administrators — feel at ease. “That was the thing about Gregg that moved me the most,” says mezzo Denyce Graves, who starred as Margaret Garner. “Watching him play the politics, the dynamics of the work situation. There are so many egos, it’s sad that you just can’t do the work. You’ve got to do the dance. I’ve watched him swallow a lot, and I wanted to tell him, ‘I see you, and I respect you. I see what you are having to go through just to get down to the work.’”

In fact, Baker’s own struggle with the complex plight of the contemporary black singer nearly led him to turn down the role of Robert in Margaret Garner. Baker had spent much of his twenty-year career avoiding operatic servitude; the inevitable Porgy and Bess typecasting of African--–American singers (notwithstanding Baker’s door-opening portrayal of the rakish stevedore Crown in the Met’s 1985 production) has plagued many a career. To Baker, the plantation world of Margaret Garner seemed to lie only a stone’s throw away from the barge-toting, bale-lifting world of Catfish Row.

It was Richard Danielpour’s powers of persuasion that got Baker to change his mind. Addressing the typecasting issue, Danielpour insisted that Robert was not just another strong black man emasculated by an evil system. “I told him, ‘This is not what you think it is. This is the role for you, and it will change your life.’”

Baker heeded Danielpour’s words. The result was a performance that evinced a pride worthy of opera’s great heroes, along with a vulnerability that, contrasting with his towering presence, matched his heartbreaking circumstances. One scene in particular cut through Baker’s heart; he physically cringed while watching his wife, Margaret (played by Graves), ordered to don a fetching dress and ‘serve’ at the pleasure of the slave master, while he, Robert, was rented away to another plantation. It was a personal trial for Baker, who identified strongly with Robert’s devastation. “Ain’t I a man? Ain’t I?” Robert pleads helplessly, and Baker understands.

“It is the hardest moment onstage,” says Baker. “It hurts to know that every man under this system had to realize that his wife is going to be raped, and that he has to accept that. It was an extremely painful moment for me, and it sometimes makes singing difficult after that, because of the amount of rage in me. To know that not even your wife is yours is a truth that Caucasians cannot understand.”

“He takes it extremely personally, what happens to me,” says Graves. “He wanted to be able to express his anger. There were times when I wanted to say, ‘Come on, Gregg, it’s an opera. If you get angry, the audience won’t get that — they will get the ‘angry black man.’”

“The subject matter lies not far beneath the skin of every black person,” says Baker. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as tired from any other piece I’ve done, because of what it stirs in me. I relate to this man very much. My reaction, my emotions, are quite real to me — my commitment as an artist is such that it’s not so difficult for me to call upon the emotions and feelings that are relevant. For me, it makes it sort of an experience rather than a performance.”

Baker grew up in Chicago, the son of a hospital cook and a truck driver, with a serious passion for football. When a knee injury forced him to trade his NFL dreams for a career in acting and singing, the young Baker landed a role with a WMAQ show called New Performers, produced by Bob Newhart, which had featured artists such as Mandy Patinkin. Later, he teamed with actress Colleen Zenk (As the World Turns) at age fifteen for his first TV commercial to “bring Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats to the world.”

At the encouragement of a teacher and friend, Pat Terone, Baker auditioned for and was hired by the Chicago Symphony Chorus. It was because of Terone and her family, all opera-lovers, that Baker “jumped in with both feet and diligently began to embrace classical music.”

In time, the jock in Baker succumbed to the artist. With Terone’s encouragement, Baker auditioned for one production after another and was never turned away. He once won a role as Walter Lee Younger in the musical Raisin when he was overheard arguing vehemently with a policeman who was ticketing his car. A stage manager for the production rushed out to see who belonged to the deep baritone voice, auditioned him the same day and hired him.

From the beginning, Baker had what many opera singers would pay handsomely for: presence. It wasn’t just his height and athlete’s physicality, nor his leading-man look. Baker also possessed a lustrous, lyric baritone, harboring a silky pathos with an edge of steel, and a veteran Broadway actor’s ability to express a panoply of emotions.

When Raisin’s tour ended in Los Angeles, Baker came to the attention of Geoffrey Holder, who hired him for a small part in the Broadway-bound Timbuktu, featuring Eartha Kitt and Melba Moore. It was a modest success, running for 221 performances, and it left Baker in a position to stretch his talent further; few African–American male singers have resisted the pull of Porgy and Bess, and Baker was no exception. He was cast as Crown by Michigan Opera Theatre, Houston Grand Opera and Radio City Music Hall.

Word of Baker’s Crown — soulful, sexual and sinister, with a “Red-Headed Woman” that stopped the show — spread like rooftop flames and reached the desk of James Levine at the Met. Baker’s audition for the company’s 1985 Porgy was beyond casual. “I was wearing a Members Only jacket and some jeans, and I sang about eight bars,” Baker recalls. Thus began Baker’s career in grand opera.

After two seasons of Porgy, Levine took Baker aside, suggested intense training for opera and offered more roles. Baker’s stock continued to rise in proportion to his artistic growth; he made his debut in Vienna as Escamillo and sang ten seasons at the Met as Escamillo, Samson’s High Priest, Belcore, Donner and Silvio. A film of Trevor Nunn’s Glyndebourne production of Porgy and Bess drew praise for Baker’s portrayal from around the world; he also garnered nominations for a Laurence Olivier Award and a Grammy. In recent seasons, with the help of longtime friend and coach Joe Smith, Baker has defied critics by taking on the textured, demanding roles of Verdi, including Macbeth, Amonasro in Aida, Rigoletto, and Renato in Un Ballo in Maschera. “Because of Gregg’s imposing physical presence, it is understandable that opera companies have been very ready to offer him macho, blustery roles, like Escamillo,” says Smith. “But really, he has even more to offer in the Verdi roles. He can sustain the high tessitura, he has a very long breath and a beautiful feeling for the legato line.”

Now enjoying the prime time of his artistic life, Baker may no longer be what Danielpour once dubbed him — “arguably the most underrated baritone singing today.” Professionally, he looks forward to adding more and more roles to an already impressive repertory. Personally, he will add another dimension to his life when he marries British singer and actress Debra Michaels.

If the past twenty years have taken him a long way from Porgy, the next decades may offer an equally interesting journey. “There is a force behind my life,” Baker says. “I don’t try to read into it. I just go with it — and try to be as true to myself and my beliefs as I can."

ROSALYN M. STORY is a violinist with the Fort Worth Symphony and the author of And So I Sing: African–American Divas of Opera and Concert (Warner Books, 1990).

Send feedback to Opera News