Photographed in New York by Dario AcostaGrooming by Affan Malik / shirt by Diesel / watch by Movado
© Dario Acosta 2011
Opera News - December 2010
Sound Bites: Keith Miller
By F. Paul Driscoll
Keith Miller, who sings Ashby in this month's Met radio broadcast and Live in HD transmission of La Fanciulla del West, got "blown away" by opera when he was a college football player and took a date to a performance of Phantom of the Opera. The thirty-six-year-old native of Ovid, Colorado (pop. 350), put aside a promising career as a fullback — he played for the University of Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl and the Cotton Bowl and carried the Olympic torch for the 1996 Atlanta Games — to become a bass-baritone, essentially teaching himself to read music before beginning serious study at Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts less than a decade ago. Miller made his Met debut on opening night of Peter Gelb's first season, as the Commissioner in Anthony Minghella's staging of Madama Butterfly. "It was wild. Big new production, new era at the Met, lots of hype — I couldn't let any of that be a distraction. It was my job to show up and lock in."
© Dario Acosta 2011This year, Miller, whose smoldering presence and sharp, booming delivery have made him an artist to watch during his five seasons on the Met roster, makes debuts at Washington National Opera (the Bonze) and Seattle Opera (Sarastro); next summer he is Escamillo in Anne Bogart's new staging of Carmen at Glimmerglass. Most rising artists get pigeonholed into lighter repertory, but that doesn't seem to be the way Miller's career is headed: "Sure, I want to sing more Mozart, I want to sing more Rossini to keep the voice healthy and agile. But on first look, I guess I have a kind of intimidating presence — which suggests darker, heavier things to the people doing the casting."
He credits the Met's structuring of his experience — the gradual move into assignments of increasing importance — with allowing him to feel calm and confident onstage. "There are roles that I've been given here that allow me to take risks — to learn things during performance — because they are protected vocally. Take Jago in Ernani. There's one passage where he has about a dozen F-sharps. You can try those notes out every different way, because you're protected by the eighty other guys singing onstage with you. With each show, I try to take more responsibility for what I'm bringing to the table. But it's hard. You're always under scrutiny, which is natural — a company like the Met has a lot invested in its singers. Even on a night when something doesn't go perfectly — and that happens a lot — you've got to stay in the moment. You can't think about the note, you can't think about the bad rehearsal. You've got to be there, onstage in the music — crisp and alert, but calm. You've got to stay frosty."
F. PAUL DRISCOLL
