Lawrence Brownlee: Charlie Parker, opera and breaking new boundaries

Next Friday will be the European premiere of the opera Yardbird, about the life of the wonderful jazz musician, Charlie Parker, at the Hackney Empire. I’m singing that role. It’s an exercise in crossing boundaries: I’m a bel canto opera singer and this is an opera, but it’s about a virtuoso saxophonist.

I’m black, and so was Parker, but the composer, Daniel Schnyder, is Swiss and white. It goes to show the futility of cultural boundaries. When I performed this opera in Chicago and Harlem, the audience was predominantly black, whereas for most of the operas I sing in, the audience are overwhelmingly — 80-90 per cent — white. I’m hoping that this production will reach everyone.

What Yardbird does is explode the impoverishing idea of cultural appropriation — which is everywhere right now — as indeed does my career: my background is in black gospel choirs but I’m an opera singer and I sing the works of 18th- and 19th- century Italians. My favourite roles are in Bellini’s I Puritani, Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore and, above all, the title role in Rossini’s Le Comte Ory. I have been invited to sing in Rossini’s Otello, but the awkward fact is that the title role is wrong for my voice, and the role that’s perfect for it is Roderigo, a white part. Maybe one day I can make it work. Conversely, when I was at college I heard two strikingly good gospel choirs … from Sweden and Korea.

We always need to strike a balance in these things. The reason I was given the part of Charlie Parker is because he’s black, and it’s clear I am a black man, and that’s fine; it makes me credible. I’d be less credible as, say, a Scottish king. Similarly, someone seven-foot tall playing Napoleon wouldn’t work either. But neither can we be wholly restricted in fictional parts: otherwise the only people who’d ever play Madam Butterfly would be 15-year-old Japanese girls (they never are).

Of course, if a black audience identifies with me, that’s great. I think opera is cool, and I think it can be cool for all of us. But it doesn’t mean if you like opera, you can’t like other music that’s completely different.

You can express human relationships through opera and tell the human story. In the case of Charlie Parker, his story had two elements: virtuosity and addiction. He won my heart. This is not a black opera, it’s an opera about a legendary, black jazz musician. It can speak to everyone … come and see it.

Charlie Parker’s Yardbird, a co-production between Opera Philadelphia and the Apollo Theater Harlem, runs at the Hackney Empire June 9-17 as a collaboration between English National Opera and Hackney Empire.