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CSOradio
Hers is the classic story of hometown gal makes good.
Janai Brugger discovered opera as a youngster in Chicago, began her musical studies in the city, went on to big success and then returned triumphantly to make her Lyric Opera of Chicago debut in 2017/18 as Liù in Puccini’s Turandot.
“I would like to think of it as my home company, because it is in my hometown,” said Brugger, who has performed in two Lyric productions. “It was a real big moment to step out on that stage and have so many friends and family out there who live in Chicago and don’t get to travel and see me perform. I love the company, and I would love to be there more.”
Her latest Chicago visit will come May 31 when she appears in a one-night-only, all-American concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Gaffigan, with the soprano performing two songs each by George Gershwin and Florence Price.
Brugger, 42, grew up in Darien, a southwest suburb of Chicago, and graduated from Hinsdale South High School. Unlike some singers who didn’t discover opera until college, she was introduced to the form by her mother, an “opera fanatic,” who listens to the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts on Saturdays and regularly took her daughter to Lyric Opera productions.
“I was very much exposed to it as a young girl,” Brugger said. “I never thought I would ever be singing it, but I was always intrigued and appreciated it.”
After earning her bachelor of music degree in 2005 from DePaul University, she left Chicago to pursue her master’s at the University of Michigan. She studied with Shirley Verrett (1931-2010), the legendary Black American mezzo-soprano who built an international career but also faced racism in the classical-music world.
“By the time I got to the University of Michigan,” Brugger said, “I knew of her status, and I was extremely excited to work with her. I admired how she was just able to command a stage — her voice, of course, and her acting ability was also very important to me.”
Verrett had high expectations for her students, but she was also “motherly” and worked hard to make sure they knew the ins and outs of the industry they were about to enter and the demands of a professional career.
“Working with her was just one of those moments I will never forget,” Brugger said. “She had a huge impact on me, and I miss her dearly. She was just absolutely incredible.”
The turning point in Brugger’s career came in 2012 when in one year she won two of opera’s most important contests: Operalia, an international competition founded in 1993 by Placido Domingo, and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (now known as the Laffont Competition).
“Winning is always fun and great because you get money and an award,” she said. “But it’s mostly about getting your name on the radar of very important people around the world who do hiring and management. So for me, winning those two competitions got my name out there.”
Later that year, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Liù in Puccini’s Turandot and was soon singing in major houses in London and Amsterdam. Her Chicago connections also kicked in right away when she performed twice in that same year with conductor James Conlon and the CSO at the Ravinia Festival, including as soprano soloist in Kurt Weill’s Die Zaubernacht.
Brugger has returned to the CSO several times subsequently, including a set of concerts in February 2022, led by Riccardo Muti, who now holds the position of Music Director Emeritus for Life. She called that appearance a “fantastic experience.”
On the first half of the May 31 program, the soprano will perform two art songs by Price – My Dream and Beside the Sea. The once-prominent Black composer, who spent much of her life in Chicago, was all but forgotten after her death in 1953, although her music has made an amazing comeback in recent decades.
In 1933, the CSO became the first major orchestra to present a work by an African-American woman when it performed Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E Minor in 1933 in conjunction with the World’s Fair held in the city that year.
The May 31 concert will be the first time that Brugger has performed any of Price’s songs, and she is thrilled by the opportunity. “I am big fan of Florence Price and her music,” she said.
On the second half of the program, Brugger will be featured in two famed songs from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess: "Summertime and My Man’s Gone Now. The soprano has appeared in multiple productions of the work, starting in 2019 at the Dutch National Opera. “I do love it, for many reasons,” she said. “I’m grateful that I’ve gotten to do it as many times as I have.”
That production was the first and only time until now that she has gotten to work with Gaffigan, an American conductor who serves as general music director of Komische Oper Berlin and music director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, Spain.
“He made such a huge impression on me and, all of us actually, working on that piece,” Brugger said. “Just his take on it, the way he worked with the singers, it was very much a collaborative effort. He is one of the nicest conductors who I have worked with, so I’m really looking forward to being able to work with him again at the CSO. It’s been too long. Also on the May 31 program is Antonín Dvořák’s Suite in A Major, Op. 98B, American, which the Czech composer wrote in the United States, as its title suggests; along with Three Dance Episodes from Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town; Gershwin’s An American in Paris and the overture to Bernstein’s Candide.
