Soprano Karen Slack Named Lyric Opera Artist-In-Residence
Soprano Karen Slack Named Lyric Opera Artist-In-Residence
By Tia Carol Jones
Karen Slack discovered Opera while attending the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. Her high school choir teacher played opera every morning and she fell in love with it. She heard singers like Jessye Norman and Maria Callas and recognized a similarity with her sound.
“Watching Denyce Graves when I was 16 sing Carmen at the Opera Company in Philadelphia really made a difference for me, as well, to see a Black woman, who is up there singing Opera, who looked like me. I just knew I wanted to do it,” said Slack, who is a Philadelphia native.
Slack is the Lyric Opera of Chicago Lyric Unlimited’s Artist-in-Residence for the 2024-25 Season. The program was created to work with an accomplished artist who is committed to enhancing the city’s cultural scene through performance, advocacy, community service and civic engagement.
Slack’s accomplishments include winning the Rosa Purcell International Competition at 18 and doing the young artist program at the San Francisco Opera, before singing professionally. Opera has taken Slack all over the world to perform. One of the only places she hasn’t performed is the continent of Africa, which hopes to do one day.
Her favorite opera is Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca,” because it is the perfect opera, the Soprano plays an opera singer. She also thinks the melodies are beautiful and Puccini is one of the greatest Opera composers. Her favorite composer is Richard Strauss, because she said he is a quintessential Soprano composer. Slack said her experience as a Black woman in the opera space is beautiful.
“Historically, there have been many Black female opera singers who have done quite well. I think there’s a certain sound, a certain carriage that we have that not everyone has. When you think about Denyce Graves or Leontyne Price or Grace Bumbry, all the great Black opera singers who come before me, I don’t think it’s such and anomaly as maybe seeing Black men sing,” she said. She added that when she is allowed to go into the space in her fullness, wear what she wants to wear and sing what she wants to sing, it is beautiful.
With the Lyric Unlimited Artist-in-Residence, Slack will perform at Sunday in the Park with Lyric Concert at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park on August 25th. She will participate in a series of recitals, masterclasses and artist talkbacks.
“I’m just eager to get to know the Chicago audiences, to share some of my own programming I’ve done in my own career, to get to know not just the opera community, but the Black community in the city,” she said.
Slack said it is a benefit for opera companies to embrace artists of color, Black artists, to come in and share, because that is how she got into opera, by seeing artists who looked like her. Slack will also bring her Kiki Konvos, a show she created where she interviews artists in the industry on Facebook Live, as part of her residency. She found out she had a gift and talent for interviewing people because she loves conversation and asking questions that lead to deeper conversation.
“Always my desire is for people to see artists beyond their gift. People only see you as the singer, the conductor, the journalist, the whatever and everyone thinks they know you until they see you outside of your element, your craft,” she said. Slack added that she hopes people come out and support what Lyric Unlimited is doing. She is also looking forward to supporting the community.
Afton Battle, Vice President of Lyric Unlimited and Artistic Operations at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, said Slack was chosen because she is an artist with a well-known career and has a passion, a creative way of collaborating and artmaking and an artistic vision that aligns with Lyric Unlimited and its civic engagement activities.
“Knowing of Karen’s work to amplify female composers and female creatives, the work that she does to amplify artists and creatives of color, especially Black artists and creatives, really resonated with the mission of Lyric Unlimited and this program,” Battle said.
Battle knows the power of representation of Black women singing opera. She was introduced to Kathleen Battle and it encouraged her to seek out more artists who looked like her: Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, Marian Anderson, Leona Mitchell and Grace Bumbry. She said for the Black community to see Slack as the Lyric Unlimited Artist-in-Residence, it will open a gateway for imagination and it will encourage and inspire them.
For more information about the Lyric Opera of Chicago, visit www.lyricopera.org.
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