Aprile Millo backstage at the opera

For the opera fanatics among you:

Aprile Millo was chatting in Evans Miragea’s office last week at Cincinnati Opera, as she prepared to sing Tosca, in her Cincinnati debut. She was dressed dramatically in black, hair pulled back and rather heavy make-up (apologizing that she had just had a photo session). She was charming and funny.

How she relaxes: I go back (home to Los Angeles). I can actually sleep, and I end my trip at Shutters on the Beach (in Santa Monica) with a very large margarita. That Shutters on the Beach for me is amazing. They have the nicest, smoothest margaritas!
I was born in Greenwich Village, and my parents were singing at an opera club downtown. Until they finished that craziness, we went abroad, and he became the protégé of De Sabata. And he brought him to La Scala. And then he got sick, and De Stefano returned after a fight with Callas, and said, what is this American doing here? So he didn’t really get to do too much. But it was a thrill. We went all over Italy, Germany, Berlin.

A mutt with opera-singing parents: They were Giovanni Millo and Margherita Ghirosi. Mother was an orphan. I lost this blessed little person exactly a year ago. It was a big force in my life. We recently found out she is Italian, Russian and Polish. So all this time I didn’t realize why I always felt so comfortable visiting in Russia, and why I liked to sing in Poland. And Papa is Italian/Irish. So I’ve determined I’m a mutt.

April vs. Aprile: My middle name is Elizabeth. I thought, April in the U.S. is very easy. I was April Millo in high school. But when I won my first competition, a man named George Milland for the Bureau of Music in Los Angeles said Aprile Millo, and I thought, well there it is. Because I don’t want to change my name to Elisabeta. I’ll stay with Aprile because it’s so pretty. I didn’t like April.

Started singing: I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t. I was an obnoxious little kid. When we were in Rome, I took to the head of the Rome Opera, Riccardo Vitale, who was married to this woman named Natasha, who would show us how to do the ballet… I loved for him to come over. I resolved that I would sing “Casta diva” for him at age 5, in what sounded like a 40-year-old midget. As I started singing, this very adult sound came out in terrible pig Latin, but he looked at my mother pea-green with laughter. But then he stopped and said, “I’m sorry. I think she’s afflicted. She’s sick with it already, she loves it so much.”

Mama’s face: When I was younger, I always used to see my mother’s face, as you do casually in life when you do something. Whenever a piece of music from opera would come on, she got a look as if she saw the face of God. And I kept thinking, why is she looking like that? And papa too. But mother looked like she was taken somewhere else. So I followed mother’s face into opera.

On being in Hollywood when she sang “Hello Dolly” in high school: The interesting thing, Amy Philbin, the daughter of Regis Philbin, went to the same school. So he came to the show and then we did this huge, 5-minute segment, and they had me singing. And he said, “When is the last time you saw a 17-year-old who wanted to be an opera star?”

So when I was opening the Metropolitan Opera, he had me back on, and we had this little reunion. But I had calls from Allan Carr (Grease, La Cage aux folles) and from the Mary Tyler Moore people. I like to be funny, so I did a few things before I got into opera, to help my sister. “Two-by-Two” was this show we did together in LA, and we had a lot of offers for musical comedy, but I was always very snooty and said, no.

Sis and bro: Grace Millo sings, writes her own music and is a Shakespearean actress. And my brother is a punk rock legend. You go to LA, anywhere near the Whiskey or the Roxy, and mention Rick Wilder of the Berlin Brats or the Mau Maus, and they all go, “and you are -- ?” Because he’s like this underground legend. Now that punk is big again, they want to do a movie and a book.

On dream team recordings, such as Aida with James Levine, Placido Domingo, Sam Ramey, Dolora Zajick, and James Morris: Not too shabby. And the Don Carlo we did has even the celestial voice of Kathleen Battle. Can you imagine? It’s like being at MGM over there. Because I became a member of their program and fought them every inch of the way.

Very few schools for opera singers know that it’s a very rare and strange animal that has to do this. It’s like a living Stradivarius. You have sing over a symphony orchestra. You have to be heard (at the Met) in a 4,000-seat hall. Well here (Cincy) it’s not too shabby either, a 3200-seat house. With no amplification. Pray God that continues. (Knocks wood.)

Singing Mahler and channeling mother: I go to another world when I sing, which I hope I’ll be confident enough to do that night. I will talk to mother wherever I am. I don’t care if it sounds silly, it gives me a sense of peace. I asked her, mother, would you send me a program (for the Kimmel Center in Philly), some kind of thing to add to it. She sent me the Mahler.

When I sang it, I asked the public, anybody lose anybody in the audience? Have anybody cross over? I’m going to talk to my mother and father. I suggest you use this bridge, which music is, and have a chance to say hello again. Don’t kid yourself, you’re going to feel them.

You got a little bit of squirming. In America we’re not in touch that quick. At the end of the piece, you hear people sobbing in the audience. Everybody’s looking at me like, that’s not a bad idea. Music is the bridge to the unknown. If you’ve got a genius, go with it.

Philanthropies: All the AIDS causes, now colon cancer (her cell phone rings, she starts singing along with the phone) that took mom, cancer in general, Doctors without Borders. It’s incredibly important that the word get out, that colo-rectal cancer is preventable. Leukemia. I work a lot with the Estee Lauder family on breast cancer, which is also huge.

On preparing Tosca: Something that I came up with this last run, having a conversation with (soprano) Magda Olivero, because I’ve coached it with her and I’ve coached it with Renata Tebaldi. These are my great buddies. Any better than that, you can’t be. Callas, God bless her, but it’s a different kind of school.

Magda and I were discussing about the presence of God in this music. Each person comes to God in their own way. The pyramid of this opera is Scarpia, Cavaradossi, Tosca. I don’t mean to sound evangelical, but there’s so much about a connection with the other world in music that’s so important.

Scarpia doesn’t believe in God at all, but in a weird way, when you negate it, you are actually exalting it. He is swine through and through, and he doesn’t believe in God.

You have Cavaradossi, who is a painter, doing all these fantastic things, a revolutionary. He can believe in God only if he sees, feels or touches it. Typical man of that period. He’s a big strapping, wonderful aristocrat. He can bring him to you through his painting.

Tosca is the one I love the most, because she believes without seeing, feeling or touching. She just knows there’s a magic, there’s a greatness that exists, that she feels when she sings. But she feels it also, and she’s unafraid to feel.

The difference between Italy and U.S.: In Naples – if you stop on a bus, and someone bursts out crying, that bus goes nowhere, and everybody’s running -- maybe she needs something to eat! It’s bigger than life, and I think sometimes it embarrasses so many people in America, such as the people who write about opera in a distant way.
It’s going to threaten you, provoke you, challenge you. We live in an age of instant coffee, instant music, we’ve got tiny machines that we can carry our entire music library. But opera forces you back to the primitive, which is, you feel something.

Bigger than life divas: We’re always told to be quiet, look pretty and smile pretty with white teeth. I’m already a bit of an opera cliché, because today they all want the smaller bodies and the realistic people. So I walk out already with a little bit of an eight-ball. You look at the United States, there are more people like me than there are the ballerina. Mind you, I make a pledge to my art to be a better representative, eventually.

The next time you see me, it will be a whole lot less. But in a way, I like showing you, you gotta be big to get over this orchestra! This sickness, of cutting yourself to lose weight – we are getting a little bit nuts about this.

The old school: (Zinka) Milanov just stood there and sang, and you were absolutely out of your mind. Caballe too – the same thing. You could not believe she was dying of consumption, but the voice was fantastic. I’m totally old school.

I’m the absolute anti-Christ for the modern stage director, because I want the music to say something, and I want the voice to be correct. The voice is cabaret if you can’t hear it in the theater. And now all these lovely, glamorous attractive women who want to be miked – they will destroy the last bastion of live theater.

On singing “Vissi d’arte”: In the last five performances, I’ve been unable to divorce myself from trying to get a word to mother. I use the music as the bridge, but I have had such trouble getting through the music without sobbing and crying.

Favorite Verdi roles: Verdi is still God to me. My favorite is Trovatore. Forza de Destino is literally like living emotion on the stage, because it’s all there. Un Ballo. Fantastic opera. Aida, my oldest friend. I love her. She’s just in another world. I like all these crazy girls that are able to enjoy life but they have one foot in the next world.

Breaking out into Handel: The man who did the 1972 recording with Caballe, Randy Mickelson, best friends with (Joan) Sutherland, Richard Bonynge, Marilyn Horne, he’s part of that whole bel canto resurgence. He brought Rossini and Donizetti to them, and they brought it out.

He’s brought all these operas of Handel, so we’re going to do this recording of florid, fabulous Handel arias, in the way that Handel wanted it done, which meant a bigger voice, bigger orchestra, not smaller the way it’s presented today. It’s going to be very controversial and I love it.

On Puccini and verismo: I’ve been getting into La Fanciulla, Adriana Lecourvrer. I think the ability to feel without compromise is very good in this literature. Then when I want to get back into vocal medicine, I get back into Verdi.

Dream roles: Norma. Still the pinnacle. Manon Lescaut, because the music makes me cry from the very beginning, and maybe Traviata, so they hear a Traviata with the proper size voice. But more along the (Claudia) Muzio – (Rosa) Ponselle-kind of style.

On soming to Cincinnati – It’s sort of like the Godfather. When Evans invites you, you come. And really, I’ve always had enormous respect for the environment here but there’s not a lot of time. But when Evans is involved, it is class. Most general managers don’t look at it that way. The bottom line is about money. You’re an entity. It’s like Scarpia, in a way. You’re used and thrown away. With him, it’s about love for the profession. I’ve just met him, several months ago, and I would kill for him.

More later!!