Kathleen Battle

Singer

• Born: August 13, 1948
• Birthplace: Portsmouth, Ohio

Opera singer

American soprano Battle has enjoyed a lengthy career, appearing in the world’s greatest opera houses. She has performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Zurich Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. She has recorded numerous CDs for companies such as Deutsche Gramophone, EMI Classics, and Sony.

Areas of achievement: Music: classical and operatic; Music: spirituals

Early Life

Kathleen Deanna Battle was born in Porstmouth, Ohio, in 1948. As a child, she sang at the local African Methodist Episcopal church. After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Battle attended the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied with voice teachers Franklin Bens and Italo Tajo. She completed her bachelor’s degree in music education in 1970 and earned her master’s degree in that field in 1971. From 1971 until 1973, Battle taught music at an inner-city school in Cincinnati.

Battle made her professional solo debut singing Johannes Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, on July 19, 1972, with conductor Thomas Schippers. During the next few years, she continued to sing concert works with orchestras in New York, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. She was awarded a grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music in 1973 to assist her in advancing her performing career. She was introduced to conductor James Levine by Schippers in 1973. Levine hired Battle as soprano soloist for Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Cincinnati Symphony at the May Festival in 1974. This marked the beginning of a long collaboration between Battle and Levine. Battle made her stage debut on Broadway in a production of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha in 1975. She then made her professional opera debut with Michigan Opera Theater singing the role of Rosina in Gioacchino Rossini’s Il barbieri di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) in the same year. She debuted with the New York City Opera in the role of Susannah in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) in 1976, and at the Metropolitan Opera in the role of the Shepherdess in Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser in 1977.

Life’s Work

Battle’s agile, light, exquisite voice, coupled with her physical beauty and stage charisma, catapulted her to the peak of the operatic world. Through the 1980s and early 1990s Battle appeared regularly at the Metropolitan Opera. She sang roles in more than 150 performances of thirteen different operas. She also appeared at all of the world’s major opera houses and music festivals, where she specialized in the lyric coloratura repertoire. She performed Adina in Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore in Zurich, Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, and Oscar in Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at Chicago Lyric Opera. She frequently appeared at the Salzburg Festival, where she performed the roles of Despina in Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte, Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Susannah in The Marriage of Figaro. Her concert repertoire has included Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Exsultate, jubilate, Great Mass in C Minor, and Requiem; Gabriel Fauré’s Reqiuem; George Frideric Handel’s Messiah; Joseph Haydn’s The Creation; and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 4, and Symphony No. 6. In addition to Schippers and Levine, she has worked with conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Riccardo Muti, and Kurt Adler.

Battle’s recording career has included recordings of full-length operas, arias, concert works, art songs, African American spirituals, jazz, and popular music. Her debut recording in 1977 featured the soprano singing Johann Sebastian Bach’s Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten (Wedding Cantata). She has recorded thirteen full-length operas. Between 1986 and 1992, Battle received five Grammy Awards for her recordings Kathleen Battle Sings Mozart (1986), Salzburg Recital (1987), the opera Ariadne auf Naxos (1987), Kathleen Battle at Carnegie Hall (1992), and Handel’s Semele (1993). In concert and in recordings, Battle has championed African American spiritual music. She collaborated with soprano Jessye Norman and conductor Levine on the 1991 recording Spirituals in Concert. Battle also has collaborated with jazz and pop musicians including Al Jarreau, Grover Washington Jr., Bobby McFerrin, Janet Jackson, Alicia Keys, and Queen Latifah.

Despite this success, in 1994, Battle was dismissed from the Metropolitan Opera, reportedly for "unprofessional actions" during rehearsals for the production of Fille du Regiment. In addition to removing her from this production, the Metropolitan Opera's general manager announced that she had been removed from all future production schedules and plans as well. Battle immediately released a statement claiming that she was not at all aware of the concern regarding any "unprofessional actions" and was therefore extremely disappointed by the dismissal. While she did give recitals, this decision meant that she essentially did not perform on the opera stage again for the next twenty-two years. However, the company announced in April 2016 that it had invited Battle to return to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time since 1994. With her performance reportedly scheduled for November of that year, reports detailed that she would be giving a recital of spirituals called Kathleen Battle: Underground Railroad—A Spiritual Journey; she had already put on the recital in Baltimore, Detroit, and Philadelphia. According to New York Times reviewer Anthony Tommasini, Battle's performance before a sold-out audience was worth the wait.

Significance

Battle emerged as one of the greatest African American opera singers during the late twentieth century, and her legacy is documented in dozens of audio and video recordings. Her stature as an operatic star serves to encourage other young African American singers and musicians. Battle has championed the music of the African American tradition through her recording and concert programming of spirituals, folk songs, and jazz.

Bibliography

Cooper, Michael. "You're Unfired: Kathleen Battle Is Returning to the Met after Twenty-Two Years." New York Times. New York Times, 4 Apr. 2016. Web. 15 Apr. 2016.

Huizenga, Tom. "Is Battle Fatigue Over? The Met Rehires a Banned Soprano." NPR. NPR, 5 Apr. 2016. Web. 15 Apr. 2016.

Lyman, Darryl. “Kathleen Battle.” In Great African American Women. New York: Gramercy, 2000. Print.

McCants, Clyde T. “Kathleen Battle.” In American Opera Singers and Their Recordings: Critical Commentaries and Discographies. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004. Print.

Nash, Elizabeth. Autobiographical Reminiscences of African-American Classical Singers, 1853–Present: Introducing Their Spiritual Heritage into the Concert Repertoire. Lewiston: Mellen, 2007. Print.

Tommasini, Anthony. “Review: Kathleen Battle Returns to the Met after 22 Years. It Was Worth the Wait.” Review of Kathleen Battle: Underground Railroad—A Spiritual Journey. The New York Times, 14 Nov. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/arts/music/kathleen-battle-returns-to-the-met-after-22-years-it-was-worth-the-wait.html. Accessed 21 July 2021.