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The Sunday Forum, March 2, 2008 Singing from Faith |
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Sunday Forums
Sunday Forum On-Demand:
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Sunday, March 2, 2008, 10–10:50 am Singing from Faith a conversation with internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves
Graves was raised in a very strict religious family. As a young girl growing up in Washington, D.C., she performed in a family singing group called the Inspirational Children of God. Graves also belonged to her church “bus ministry,” visiting neighborhood families to encourage parents to enroll their children in Sunday school. As one of her responsibilities, Graves sang to the children on the church bus. Faith undergirds Graves’s career as an opera singer. Her career, her efforts to be sincere, the direction of her life, “All of that came from my upbringing in the church,” she says. “I too am greatly affected by the music that passes through me.... One of the challenges is for me to just get out of the way and allow the music to speak through me.”
About the GuestDenyce Graves is an internationally acclaimed opera star, solo recording artist, and interpreter of spirituals and popular songs. She has starred in many of opera’s greatest roles, including Carmen, Delilah in Samson et Dalilah, Emilia in Otello, and Judith in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. She has performed with many of the most famous opera houses around the world, among them the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera-Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera, Opera National de Paris, and the Washington Opera. Her popular record Denyce Graves: A Cathedral Christmas was recorded at Washington National Cathedral in 1997. In 2003, she developed the recording Church, featuring African-American female singers inspired by their common upbringing in the church. Ms. Graves is a native of Washington, D.C., where she attended the Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts.
(also listed in Cathedral worship service leaflets) For more information, please contact Deryl Davis at (202) 537-6382 or e-mail ddavis@cathedral.org. |
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Denyce Graves, mezzo soprano, joins Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III to
talk about her career and her faith. 
Dean Lloyd asks about the use of God’s gifts in performing more
secular musical works. “I knew that’s where we were going,” Graves
chuckles. She tells of a time early in her career, when her mother
traveled to see her sing the role of Carmen. The performance embarrassed
and shocked her mother, who protested, “I raised you to be a good Christian
girl!” Graves had some difficulty convincing her mother that the role
was acceptable. The singer asserts that all uses of one’s gifts are to
the glory of God. “Music is a language, she says. “It is the language of
the soul.”
Many people remember Graves’s rendering of the Lord’s Prayer at the
Cathedral service following the attacks of September 11, 2001. At the
time, it was not widely known that she had withdrawn from performing and
undergone voice surgery. Graves agreed to sing at the service despite
trepidation. She prayed for God’s help as she prepared to return to
singing at such a somber time in the nation’s history. “I was praying
all the time as I always do,” she says. “There has not been a day of my
life that has been without prayer, not one single day.”