Lister, Marquita

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Marquita Lister

1965(?)—

Opera singer

Marquita Lister is a soprano who began her career with the Houston Grand Opera in the early 1990s and since then has stunned audiences in several lead roles. Her repertoire includes title roles in the operas Porgy and Bess and Salome, but it is as the eponymous African princess in Aida that she garnered her first serious critical attention. Boston Herald critic T. J. Medrek asserted that Lister's "voice isn't beautiful," after reviewing her in a 2001 Montreal performance of Aida, "but it's got character and a pleasing touch of gold. It's also rock-solid and large enough to penetrate the biggest ensembles. And her technique is such that she can scale it down with great poise for the lyrical passages."

Lister grew up in Washington, D.C., and was raised in a family that emphasized academic achievement. In a joint interview with famed Hispanic-American soprano Martina Arroyo that was conducted by Opera News writer Ira Siff, she recounted the first inkling of her future career. "When I was in junior high school, the choir director called my mother and said, ‘Your daughter has something kind of special, and I think you need to look into that and see if it's something she'd honestly like to pursue,’" Lister recalled. Subsequently, she enrolled in the local performing arts high school, Western High School, located in the Georgetown section of the city. She spent just a year there, however, before her parents deemed it not academically rigorous enough, and she returned to her regular school.

Entered Houston Training Program

As a teen, Lister began entering voice competitions sponsored by the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and then entered Boston's New England Conservatory of Music. It was there, she said in the Opera News interview, that one of her first mentors explained to her "that you have to develop pointy elbows to be in the opera world. What I think he meant where I was concerned was that I was the kid that loved everybody. I was the one who wanted to help everyone. And he said that there is a protectiveness that you have to have about yourself in order to pursue this career, because it's so demanding on you, of your time, your energy. Not everyone is destined to be a superstar."

Following her graduation from the New England Conservatory, Lister was invited to join a training program for opera hopefuls run by the Houston Grand Opera. In 1990 the Houston officials offered her the title role in Aida when they were planning the 1993 season. Nervous about accepting the demanding lead, she tracked down Arroyo and telephoned her to ask for advice. In the joint interview, Lister recalled that Arroyo posed several questions, then concluded that because the date was three years from then, Lister would probably have enough time to adequately prepare herself for the job.

Aida, Giuseppe Verdi's 1871 classic about a kidnapped Ethiopian princess brought to Egypt during the time of the pharaohs, was a choice opera for a soprano of color, and after Lister's debut in it in April of 1993, it soon became her signature role. She appeared in the title role again in October of 1994 at the Utah Opera and began to receive favorable notice in national publications. Writing in Opera News, Dorothy Stowe noted that Lister "displayed an ample, free soprano, never overblown or pushed out of focus," and deemed her "well suited to the Ethiopian princess physically, emotionally and vocally."

Won Accolades in Porgy and Bess

In early 1995 Lister took on another career-defining role, this one with historic resonance for the Houston Grand Opera. It restaged George Gershwin's landmark 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, twenty years since the venue had rescued the African-American-themed work from obscurity and mounted it in the original three-hour version that Gershwin had intended for it. Back in 1935, when Porgy and Bess first debuted in New York City, it created a minor firestorm of controversy, in part for its use of authentic African-American musical rhythms, but also for its depiction of life in Catfish Row, the African-American neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina. Even leading African Americans of the day objected to some of its more realistic elements, and the opera was shortened for a more mainstream audience and then largely forgotten. The Houston Grand Opera's revival in 1975 was a stunning success, and Porgy and Bess went on to a successful international tour and has since become a staple in the repertoire of many U.S. opera companies.

When the Houston Grand Opera restaged Porgy and Bess in 1995, there was a much larger pool of professional African-American singers who could take the lead roles than there had been back in Gershwin's day, or even in 1975. Lister was part of that new generation and scored excellent reviews for her portrayal. Like Aida, Bess, too, is imprisoned—but by her drug habit. She escapes her pimp, Crown, for a time, finding solace with Porgy, a disabled beggar. "Lister brought a big, lush voice and alluring beauty to the role of Bess," asserted New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini. "The man who keeps her, the conniving drug pusher Crown, as portrayed by the dashing baritone Timothy Robert Blevins, was everything Gershwin must have envisioned: hunky, seductive and dangerous."

Another terrifically dramatic part also became part of Lister's repertoire beginning in 1999 with her debut in Richard Strauss's Salome. The 1905 opera is based on a play by British dramatist Oscar Wilde and recounts the biblical story of John the Baptist, the apostle who was said to have baptized Jesus. According to one of the Gospels, he caught the eye of the spoiled, bewitching stepdaughter of King Herod, the ruler of Judea placed in power during the time of the Roman conquest of the area. Salome reportedly tried to seduce John the Baptist but he rebuffed her, and she then demanded—and received—his head on a platter after complaining to Herod. As Lister told Siff in the Opera News interview, she was initially reluctant to take the role. "Given the Christian background I came from, the idea of asking for the head of this great saint was repulsive to me. And then, in my research, realizing it was the mother [Herodias] who coaxed her into asking for this head made it a little more palatable for me." She said she also worked with the director, and "we spent a lot of time exploring her, so that she fit into my skin. Then, once I got it, I really fell in love with her."

Stunned as Salome

For Salome Lister earned some of the strongest accolades of her career. Medrek, writing in the Boston Herald, called her appearance with the Boston Lyric Opera in their production "a stunning, revelatory performance…. With a voice unleashing torrents of burnished silver, and with every bone and sinew in her body, Lister transformed herself completely into the terrible Judean princess who demands—and gets—the severed head of John the Baptist delivered to her on a silver platter." Reviewing it for Opera News, Deborah Weisgall noted that "Lister commanded the stage from her entrance to her final bizarre yet gorgeous aria," and that her "energy and conviction galvanized the entire production."

At a Glance …

Born c. 1965. Education: Studied at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Career: Began performing career with the Houston Grand Opera, early 1990s; appeared with the Opéra de Montréal, Utah Opera, New York City Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Connecticut Opera, Orlando Opera, Atlanta Opera, Detroit Opera Theater, and Opera Memphis.

Addresses: Agent—James W. Dietsch, Dietsch International, Thierschstrasse 11, 80538 Munich, Germany.

In September of 2002 Lister appeared again with the New York City Opera in a production of Wolfgang Mozart's Don Giovanni as Donna Elvira. In 2003 she had another run as Salome, this time with the Connecticut Opera in Hartford, and took most of 2004 off. In the spring of 2005 she appeared with the Orlando Opera in the title role in Aida and, later that year, with the Atlanta Opera in Porgy and Bess. A year later she closed the Detroit Opera Theater's 2005-06 season with Salome, and she then began preparing for her next major role, Lady Macbeth, for Opera Memphis's production of the classic work in January of 2008.

With Verdi's Macbeth, Lister's character—written specifically as a Scottish noblewoman—signified her first lead role to break the color barrier in opera. Opera was changing, and directors seemed more open to color-blind casting. She noted, however, that African-American tenors and baritones faced slightly more daunting obstacles in their careers. "Many of my colleagues between the ages of thirty and forty-five believe that if they are not offered Porgy and Bess or Show Boat or Carmen Jones, there is no work to be had," she told Siff in Opera News. "I've been in the Porgy and Bess circle with a lot of African-American singers on varying levels, and I think the general consensus is that black men really struggle, no matter how good they are, to have the same respect as their white counterparts."