Opera star Denyce Graves’ global compassion in red, white and blue

A recent guest on Amplify, the celebrated countertenor John Holiday, told us that his dream of a singing career was sparked when, as a young choirboy, he met star mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. “She was so beautiful and elegant," Holiday writes for Opera America. “And then she opened her mouth and this amazing sound came out. I thought, ‘Whatever it is she’s doing, I want to do that.’”

Holiday isn’t the only one who’s fallen under the spell of Denyce Graves. She’s thrilled audiences everywhere, from the world’s great opera houses to the White House. She’s won a Grammy, an Emmy, and a shelf-full of other prestigious musical honors. Hers is the kind of A-list career that might shuttle you from airport to stage door to gala reception, cocooning you from the realities and priorities of the everyday world.

But Denyce has kept it real. From the beginning of her own career, she’s worked tirelessly as a teacher, mentor and cultural ambassador, active within a long list of institutions, from the Ellington School of the Arts in her native Washington, D.C., to the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists program.

She loves her students with a fierce “mama bear” energy. She listens to them, cooks for them, worries about them, believes in them and learns from them. It was from one of her students that she first heard about Mary Cardwell Dawson, the trailblazing Black opera singer who founded the National Negro Opera Company in Pittsburgh in 1941, fostering the careers of hundreds of young Black singers during an era of institutional racism and segregation. It took no time for Denyce to spring into action. She spearheaded fundraising efforts to restore Dawson’s historic building and collaborated with the Glimmerglass Festival to produce and premiere a new musical play called The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson.

That’s just one example of the passion-into-action that drives Denyce and her Foundation. As a U.S. Global Music Ambassador, she pursues projects that can repair our world through the power of music. She gives back with a generosity that comes from pure gratitude, noting that because of pioneers like Dawson, “I have had a career for over 40 years because of the work this woman did.”

Decades ago, when she invited little John Holiday into her dressing room at the Houston Symphony, she also showed him the truths upon which he ended up building his own extraordinary career: that dreams can come true, that grit can be wrapped in glamour, and that our greatest gifts are meant for giving.