ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 6, 1996 TAG: 9612060058
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
It took awhile, but Southwest Virginia's opera star is finally coming to the Star City.
After spending the last six years in the New River Valley, Clarity James - whose performance credits stretch from San Francisco to Vienna - will appear in Opera Roanoke's "Sundays in the Atrium" series this weekend.
Her first Roanoke performance, with pianist Caryl Conger, will feature the music of Franz Liszt, Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppi Verdi, Gian-Carlo Menotti and Gordon Myers.
James left a star-studded, New York-based singing career to come to Radford University in 1990, primarily to wrestle with health problems, she said. A native of a tiny town in Wyoming, James also loves being someplace "where the trees outnumber the people. People don't believe me, but I got off the plane in Roanoke and said, 'Yes!'''
Since joining the music department at Radford in 1990, James has performed at several faculty recitals in the New River Valley but never in Roanoke.
Nothing personal, she said. "Craig [Opera Roanoke's artistic director, Craig Fields] and I have had a couple of talks about it. With my schedule, it just hasn't worked out.
"What I would love to do is sing with the symphony," she said with a laugh. "But I ain't been asked."
James was born 50-some years ago in tiny Sunrise Valley, Wyo.
She never saw an opera as a child and originally planned to be a teacher. As James put it: "One of your choices when you grow up in Sunrise, Wyoming, is not to become an opera singer."
Attending a performance of "The Barber of Seville" in college changed all that.
James, a sophomore at the University of Wyoming when she saw the touring production, also saw her future. "To me it was the epitome of everything. Music, theater, architecture - you've got it."
At the time, she was majoring in education. She soon switched to music. "I wanted to spend my time learning how to sing."
Her family was supportive - in her father's case, somewhat dubiously so. "He said, 'I think you're crazy, and I don't understand why you're doing this. But I understand your wanting to,''' James said.
Those striving in the table waiting/flat-sharing/soul-crushing basement of the New York City arts scene might gnash their teeth hearing how smoothly it all went for her from there.
James performed first with a summer opera festival in Colorado, while still an undergraduate. She later served an apprenticeship at the Santa Fe Opera Company. Other offers came in their wake.
Meanwhile, she finished her undergraduate degree in Wyoming and then a master's degree in music from Indiana University. Eventually, teaching music at the University of Iowa, with the roles still coming her way, the proverbial light blinked on above the singer's head.
"I still couldn't commit to just go to New York," she said. But - like a skittish bather testing the water - she began giving new opera world contacts the telephone numbers of friends who lived in the Big Apple already and passing them off as her own. "I pretended that I lived there long before I did," she said.
When she finally moved, James said, the transition was smooth. After a few high-profile recitals, she landed a position with the New York City Opera. She never waited tables or mixed drinks. Never vowed in despair to do or die.
"I wasn't driven," James said of the beginnings of her opera career. "It just kind of happened."
She has performed with dozens of opera companies in this country and abroad and with symphony orchestras in Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.
She performed in the premier of Leonard Bernstein's opera, "A Quiet Place," conducted by Bernstein himself.
In fact, a photograph in a recent New York City gallery exhibit on the opera's Vienna premier includes a close-up of the legendary composer/conductor and James together. Bernstein is giving James an enormous kiss.
A mezzo soprano, James said she made a career out of often-earthy character parts - as opposed to the dainty heroines (typically sopranos) who walk away at the end with the leading man.
"Witches, bitches, mothers and clowns. That's what mezzos do," she said. "Playing the kind of villainous types is really great fun. It's good therapy to yell and scream and do all the things you normally wouldn't do."
James, chatty and accessible about her music career, keeps her private life largely private. On the topic of her health (much improved) and her first name - which she changed to "Clarity" in mid-career - she has little to say for the record.
Ditto her love life. James has never married.
"It's the soprano who always gets the guys anyway," she joked, "so it's no surprise I didn't get one in real life."
She came to Radford, she said, both because the position was available when she needed it and because it was a place she wanted to come to.
"I kind of think it was meant to be," she said. "A lot of my life is like that."
Sunday's concert "starts off traditional," James said, moving from several short pieces by Liszt through parts of Donizetti's opera "Daughter of the Regiment," Verdi's "Il Trovatore" and Menotti's "The Medium."
It closes with an off-beat piece by American composer Gordon Myers that includes quotes from famous Americans ranging from Benjamin Franklin to Phyllis Diller.
The singer also will give a recital at Radford University in January. That recital is open to the public as well.
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Operatic singer Clarity James of Radford: She likesby CNBbeing "where the trees outnumber the people. People don't believe
me, but I got off the plane in Roanoke and said, 'Yes!''' color.