Kresley Figueroa on Generational Voices and the Denyce Graves Foundation

Puerto Rican soprano Kresley Figueroa, fresh from the Cafritz Young Artist Program at Washington National Opera and appearances with Teatro Nuovo, the Metropolitan Opera and the Aspen Music Festival, has joined Generational Voices, the young-artist initiative of the Denyce Graves Foundation. OperaWire interviewed her about the experience.

The foundation, founded by the opera star Denyce Graves, honors trailblazing musicians, music educators and composers of color through community engagement programs, concerts, new works and young-artist training.

Figueroa came to the program through mezzo-soprano Aundi Moore, who is involved in the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, which Figueroa had won the year before. "She told me that she felt I would be a great fit for the program," Figueroa said. The application required a musical theater selection — "which a lot of opera folks would balk at, but which is very much in line with my career and interests as a multi-genre performer."

What has she learned from Denyce Graves?

"More than anything, she has shown me that a career and an organization like hers are possible," Figueroa said. "Representation truly does matter, and seeing a woman of color forge the path she has will endlessly fuel me to pave my own, and look gorgeous doing it."

She described Graves's team as people who "care deeply and lead with humanity and empathy without ever compromising on excellence." Graves, she added, "understands what it means to be a singer: to be very human while doing something superhuman."

What does Generational Voices offer in practice?

Figueroa summarized the program as being "for singers with a strong artistic value system, identity, and work ethic, who deliver exceptional results and have something inside them they need to share honestly with the world." Its concrete support includes:

• Performance opportunities
• Funding for lessons, coachings and audition expenses
• Active pursuit of outside opportunities, "speaking our names into rooms where they otherwise might not have been mentioned"

That financial backing matters once a singer leaves school or a Young Artist Program, Figueroa argued: "It means the financial pressures of today's economy don't stand between us and the consistent training we need to stay in top form, especially in an industry that likes to drag its feet when it comes to giving new talent big opportunities."

She was direct about access in opera. "Access in this field has long favored those of a certain background," she said. Of Graves: "She has walked that road, and now she's widening it for the rest of us."

What happened at the Chautauqua launch?

The program launched with a two-week Chautauqua Residency. On its final night, the fellows performed arias with orchestra in the Chautauqua Amphitheater and each received a standing ovation. The celebration continued at Graves's house past midnight — and then, after a demagnetized key locked Figueroa out of her room, with laughter in the common area from 1 a.m. until 4 a.m.

The next morning, scheduled one-on-one exit interviews were scrapped in favor of a group brunch. "It was the best way to close out our launch and commune as the new family we had become over those two weeks," Figueroa said.

She closed with a verdict on the program's effect: "We're tested and challenged, but it comes from such a place of love that you can't help but feel the fire to achieve more and be more." She expects to emerge from it "not just as a more insufferably authentic singer, but as a different and more insufferably authentic person than I was before."