Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Kendall Gladen grew up listening to jazz, R&B, pop… “My mother played everything but opera,” she says, adding that for what seemed an interminable time, Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” played continuously inside her head. The loop broke only on Sundays, when she belted out gospel songs at Greater Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church. Gospel anchored her life; she loved how heartfelt it was and how much strength it gave her.
But Mr. Thedford said it was ruining her voice.
Dello Thedford, now dean of arts at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, then taught the chorus at Roosevelt High School. Gladen had made an impression. “She had such poise and dignity, even as a ninth-grader,” he says, describing her voice as “rich, very controlled, dark in timbre, beautiful.”
Hearing her hoarse on Monday mornings, he scolded, “You’re not supposed to scream and yell. That is not the correct way, Kendall!” He started taking her to his church, where she could sing gospel in a more refined way, without straining her voice. “You could sing opera,” he informed her.
Gladen went home and listened, dazed, to Grace Bumbry in Carmen and Leontyne Price in Aida.
“Wow,” she said. “You think I could sing like that, huh?”
He did. He recommended her for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ Artists-in-Training Program, in which soprano Christine Armistead, a voice instructor at Washington University, taught the mezzo-soprano how to breathe and align her voice, then eased from technique into
basic repertoire.
“Are you sure you want to sing that stuff?” her mother asked, and Gladen nodded vigorously. For the spring recital at the end of her senior year, she chose “Minstrel Man.”
“Because my mouth is wide with laughter…” she begins, remembering every word of the Langston Hughes poem that Margaret Allison Bonds set to music.
It won her the Monsanto Prize.
And the judge, soprano Carmen Balthrop, was so stunned by Gladen’s voice that she swiftly arranged a scholarship to the University of Maryland, where she’s a voice professor.
Gladen hadn’t even planned to go to college; now she had only three months to get ready. Carol Kimball, a member of the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis Guild and Board of Directors, rounded up everything she’d need, from sheets and blankets to a bicycle. But the scholarship was only partial, and after struggling for a year, Gladen came home.
She resumed studying with Armistead, who helped her get a full scholarship to Wash. U. While finishing her degree, she joined Opera Theatre’s Gerdine Young Artists Program, an apprenticeship so select, as many as 500 singers across the country audition for its 32 positions. Three years later, she became an Adler Fellow with the San Francisco Opera.
And now she’s a full-fledged diva, home to sing Carmen with OTSL. She’s already sung the role in Berlin, San Francisco, L.A., Miami, and Detroit.
“I love Carmen,” she says. “I don’t try to be overtly sexy; I play her smart. Carmen is very manipulative and smart, and she is fearless. She’s not afraid of anything. I can’t imagine being like that in my own life. And then I think, ‘Well, maybe sometimes I am.’”
She’s in hot demand, but she’s already telling her manager to hold off on some of the Carmens; she has other challenges in mind. “I don’t know of any African-American mezzo who’s ever done pants roles like Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier or the Komponist in Ariadne auf Naxos,” she muses. “Those are roles I can sing. Most mezzos don’t have that extension where they can sing higher, and I’m thankful to God I can.”
“She has full range,” notes Paul Kilmer, director of artistic administration at OTSL. “The difference between a mezzo and a soprano is not range but color, the darkness of the voice. Kendall’s is a warm, plummy, ringing sound, and it’s a sizable instrument. You can have a beautiful voice, but if it only carries to the fifth row, there’s no point.” Resonance and richness “are ultimately physiological,” he adds, explaining that the shape of the sinuses imparts a distinct sound, just as the shape of a Stradivarius does. “But if you don’t have technique, it’s like taking sandpaper to wood: You just keep shaving that patina off.”
Or in her case, shouting it off. She misses those days in Roosevelt’s choir, “with Mr. Thedford always relying on me for a pitch. He’d say, ‘Kendall, what’s the note?’ Little things like that helped build my confidence.” So did her loving, bemused mother, who now calls and says, “Turn on PBS! Grace Bumbry is singing!” Amused she even knows who Bumbry is, Gladen will ask what she’s singing. “And half the time she’ll pronounce it wrong,” Gladen chuckles, “but I don’t care!”
