10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE February 25, 2000

eveningsout

Baritone was propelled into opera by his music students

by Richard M. Berrong

Cleveland One of the visiting artists who helped create Cleveland Opera's recent lively production of George Bizet's The Pearl Fishers is gay baritone Andrew Eisenmann. I had a chance to speak with him during rehearsal, and he had a lot of interest to say.

To begin with, there was the story of how he got into singing. Unlike many professional singers, he did not start out with a dream to perform opera.

Instead, he went to school to become an instrumental music teacher-he studied trumpet-and taught high school music in several Midwest towns.

Then he decided it was time to make the first major change. Whatever it took, he decided that he needed to leave the Midwest and move to California.

And so he did, though it meant teaching music in a very small town in Northern California, which he described as a land of conservative ranchers.

The next major change was not his idea,

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but his students'. One day they told him that they realized he was not happy teaching. He loved working with the students, but he felt out of place with his colleagues and his administration. Furthermore, they told him, what he really wanted to do was sing opera.

Andrew Eisenmann

Realizing that they were right, and with no employment prospect, he quit his job in mid-term and moved to San Francisco. There, luck was with him.

He landed a position in an opera chorus, found a good voice teacher, then landed a residency at Opera San Jose and did sixteen

leading roles with them.

The rest, as they say, has been operatic history, and so far an impressive one. In just a few years, he has already sung lead roles with the opera companies in Baltimore, Memphis, Santa Barbara, and now Cleveland, exploring the French, Italian, German, and Russian repertory.

While he has already sung a wide variety of parts, he has his eye on still others, among them the sexually ambiguous Billy Budd in gay composer Benjamin Britten's opera of the same name, Ford in Verdi's Falstaff and Ping in Puccini's Turandot. He loves Puccini, he confided, and is presently learning Lescaut in that composer's Manon Lescaut.

When he is older, he dreams of doing the Wagner Wotan and Michele in Puccini's Il Tabarro.

In the meantime, he is enjoying his rapidly developing career and life with his partner. They make their home in a suburb of San Jose, but his partner is able to get away from his Silicon Valley business to be with Eisenmann for opening nights wherever they may be.

Those who saw Cleveland Opera's colorful production of The Pearl Fishers have already had a chance to see Eisenmann at his best. To keep up with his burgeoning career and see him in stills from his other roles, look at new web site, www.andreweisenmann.com.

Richard M. Berrong is a freelance writer living in Kent, Ohio.

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