This interview was originally recorded on October 17th, 2018.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Ryan Speedo Green, bass-baritone 

Three-time Grammy Award-winning bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green has established himself as an artist of international demand at the world’s leading opera houses and orchestras. Since winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2011, Green has appeared frequently at the Met, singing roles such as Charles in Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Queequeg in Moby-Dick, Fernando in Il trovatore, the Messenger in Die Frau ohne Schatten. He makes his role debut as Wotan in Die Walküre during the Santa Fe Opera’s 2025 season. Green has also appeared with companies including Austin Opera, Houston Grand Opera, LA Opera, Opera Colorado, the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opéra national de Paris, and the Wiener Staatsoper.

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Opera Center. There is no mistaking this man as a bass-baritone when you hear him speak. I always start my interviews by asking: who brought you to your first opera?

Ryan Speedo Green: Who brought me to my first opera? Well, when I think back to the day when I saw my first opera, it was the Government School for the Arts in Norfolk, Virginia that took me on my first field trip to New York City. (That) was actually the reason I was so excited about opera - because of New York City, and not because of the opera. And I'd never seen an opera before. And as you'll hear about it in the book, I thought opera was this sort of caricature of a big fat white viking lady breaking windows, like the things you saw on Looney Tunes or all those kind of things, back in the day. And so for me, I didn't think opera was something that was even accessible to someone like me. And I grew up in underwhelming circumstances in low-income housing in Virginia, in a trailer park, and opera wasn't something that you hear in the streets, especially in all-Black neighborhoods. And when I came to New York and came to Lincoln Center, walking into the arches and into The Metropolitan Opera, I thought I was in a castle, like a sort of modern Roman gladiatorial theater, with the Tiffany glass and everything. I really thought "This is definitely not someplace I should be". And when I sat in the audience and started to hear the music of Bizet's Carmen, I immediately recognized that, "Oh my gosh, I've heard this before". And throughout this opera, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I've heard this before". This is on so many movies that I've seen, from the Habanera to the Toreador, and what made the opera so big for me, so life-changing and path-changing for me was that the person singing the lead role, the main character of Carmen was played by the mezzo-soprano, Denyce Graves, who's currently in Marnie at The Met, which all of you should go see. And seeing her on stage made me feel like I could see myself on stage. And the way that she made me feel all of these emotions. And they talk about how (in) opera, you don't really need to understand the languages that they sing in to really get the feeling or get the story? That is the true definition of some of Denyce Graves' performances. I didn't even look at my Figaro screen where it gave me the translation, I was so enthralled in everything that she was physically and vocally portraying to me. I didn't need it. I knew exactly what was happening.

Marc A. Scorca: You said in the book; you were talking about ovations, and it was after the Toreador Song. "I knew I wanted that feeling. Some of it was all the masculinity of the song, and some of it was the ovation, but it was also about the language, how he bridged the gap of language between me and him with the music". And I just thought it was a beautiful sense of what we want to have happen in the opera house.

Ryan Speedo Green: Yeah. Telling a story is what some of the best opera singers can do. Obviously having a great voice is a plus, but when you are singing an opera like Carmen, which has been performed hundreds of thousands of times over (since) its introduction to the world, you have to give something special. You have to give something that puts your staple on it. And I don't necessarily remember the singer who was singing the Toreador Song, but I remember the feeling of after he was done, after his entrance and singing his aria (which is his first entrance) and the bravado that happened, and the way that he just oozed out masculinity and superior athleticism and bravado, and every man on stage, every woman on stage - eyes were on him, everybody's ears were on him. It was an amazing experience.

Marc A. Scorca: And you left that experience saying to the teacher that you wanted to sing at The Metropolitan Opera.

Ryan Speedo Green: Yeah. When I left The Met, I was lucky enough to have been able to go backstage and meet Denyce Graves which was a huge opportunity at that time.

Marc A. Scorca: Who embraced you...

Ryan Speedo Green: Who embraced me...I mean, I was 15 years old; you can imagine. She's a very beautiful woman. I was in love in many ways...

Marc A. Scorca: And if you haven't been embraced by Denyce Graves, it's an experience to have.

Ryan Speedo Green: Oh, it's an embrace. And she called me her Boo and I was like, "Okay well, I guess I know what it feels like to be a man". And when I left The Met Opera, I was with my course teacher who'd become my voice teacher, Robert Brown. And I told him, "I know what I wanna do with my life. I wanna sing at The Met". And this is coming from a boy who literally five, six hours before, never envisioned himself pursuing music as a career. Yet after I saw this opera, I wanted to be on that stage with those people telling stories, performing. And luckily enough, he did not tell me that that was impossible because, at the time, I couldn't read music. I had never played an instrument. I had never remembered a line on stage. Nor had I ever sung in a foreign language, but he told me all of these things that I had to do, from going to college, to doing young artist programs, to studying instruments and practicing and focusing on this. And I took note of it. And nine years later, I had my debut at The Met.

Marc A. Scorca: That's really remarkable. Now, you mentioned Denyce, and in a way, a role model, a beautiful African American woman on stage at The Metropolitan Opera. Are there other role models for you in your career?

Ryan Speedo Green: There are, and some of the role models that I have are not even musicians. I mean, I remember in fourth grade, I was in a special ed class for the worst of the worst kids. And I had a special ed teacher named Elizabeth Hughes. On the first day that I met her, by the way, I introduced myself to her by throwing my desk at her and told her I would not be taught by a white woman. But instead of sending me away, she took away my chair and told me I can learn from the floor, and when I'm ready to learn, I can have my chair and my desk back. But anyway, one of the next things she taught me in that class and everybody in that class, White, Black, Hispanic, Muslim, didn't matter, she taught everyone the Martin Luther King Jr. 'I Have a Dream' speech. And after the Pledge of Allegiance, which we used to do back in the day, we would recite that speech, every kid in the class, after the Pledge of Allegiance. And that became our mantra and our motto for our time in that class that, in this class, you would not be judged by the color of your skin, but by the content of your character. How you treat others is how we will treat you. And that stayed with me. And so wanting to pursue a career in opera - which is not necessarily a field that has been embracing all walks of life and ethnicities and religions, since the beginning, obviously, but has been doing so in the last couple decades - I felt that I could do it. I felt like when I wanted to pursue this field, that people wouldn't look at the color of my skin, and that they would hear and see the talent and the drive that I have to be in this art form.

Marc A. Scorca: Are there other singers you reference in terms of your own career? Either you know them, you've spoken to them about repertoire, or you know what they've achieved, and you keep that in the front of your mind. Are there other role models?

Ryan Speedo Green: You know, the beauty of the internet and things like YouTube is like, I was part of that first generation that really got into YouTube. And I remember in the late 90s, in the 2000s when I started looking at opera, I had such a plethora, there was all these amazing opera fans who posted these (clips). And I remember hearing for the first time, Leontyne Price, not hearing it from a cd, but seeing a YouTube video of her farewell performance of Aida, or listening to George London sing pieces, or even listening to (currently) James Morris singing Wotan, or even now, like being able to listen to Eric Owens perform numerous amounts of roles. And so for me, I'm a bit of a modern day fan of listening to just as many YouTube videos as I can. And my love for opera singers changes weekly, because there's always some new video that pops up of someone. And I'm currently in love with Bryan Hymel's voice. I don't know if you guys know Bryan Hymel; he's one of my favorite tenors alive singing today, and I'm so excited for everything he's singing in the future, as well as Isabel Leonard, who is not only gorgeous vocally, but a gorgeous woman, an amazing personality, and an advocate for opera to the world, as well as Christopher Maltman, who's one of the greatest Lieder singers and storytellers, and artistic musicians out there today. And they're all singing at The Met now, so y'all need to go see them.

Marc A. Scorca: Part of our series of conversations when we speak with really wonderful artists is to create reference points for aspiring artists, that younger people will listen to these interviews. So, I wanted to ask you, when you are listening to a singer on YouTube or ten singers singing your rep, how do you metabolize their performances into one that is your performance?

Ryan Speedo Green: Wow. This is a very, very interesting question. I think YouTube can be a great tool to understand the entirety, like the story of the piece. When I was younger and I would get assignments for opera arias from Le Nozze di Figaro or from Barber of Seville, I have the score and I have my beautiful Nico Castel books, which if anybody's aspiring to be an opera singer, you know what those are. And I had my Italian dictionary and also had librettos to be able to see the poetic and literal translations. But sometimes it's beneficial to see exactly what's happening story-wise. And you can go and rent a DVD or something from your local library, but it's very easy to go on your cell phone and you can watch the act one of Le Nozze di Figaro right there for free. And you can see multiple people singing. You can understand why Figaro gets so upset in his first aria, 'Se vuol ballare'. Like, what brings him to that point, that he gets upset. You can actually see the happy duet to the transition into the recitativo with Susanna, where Susanna tells him that "The friend that you think the Count is, he's not actually a friend of yours, he wants to get with me". And then you see Figaro go through the process of realizing that the person that he works for and has trusted, is not actually his friend. And that could crush someone, and their first reaction could be anger. And then at the end of it, you understand that he goes from anger to trying to thwart his plans. But there's a process that happens, and sometimes it's not just easy looking at words, it's good to see the whole story.

Marc A. Scorca: Sure. So that you're not just singing the aria for an audition, but you understand where it started, and where it ends.

Ryan Speedo Green: And when you have an audition, you have sometimes, 10 to 15 minutes to give the judges, or the auditioners, or the panel an entire story, sometimes multiple stories. And if you can start that story, having every weapon at your disposal, knowing the beginning to the end, and in the middle, you have a lot more to give.

Marc A. Scorca: Getting back to what you were referring to before, where, certainly your family and your neighbors did not understand this desire in a 15-year-old to be an opera singer. And even when I had Ailyn Pérez here on the stage, and she was talking about being first generation going to college, and her family's so proud that she was going to college, but wondering, "You're going to college to be a musician? You're first generation college (should be) to go get a real job". So there, from a socioeconomic point of view, even in your closest circle, there's resistance to what you want to do. In your circumstance, where opera is perceived as the white person's entertainment, it's not only socioeconomic, but it's racial. So, is that a force that you really had to push against, as a young person moving forward?

Ryan Speedo Green: I think for me, I was lucky in a way that I was introduced to opera in an arts high school. Like I went to a magnet school for the arts, and that was apart from my home school. And so I would go to this arts high school for half the day. And during that half a day, I spent time with 20 to 35 kids whose entire desire was to learn about opera and that sort of safe haven, or safe zone, I spent four years in. Every day that I went to school, I went there as well. So, I had this sort of oasis in the desert that I could go and explore the future that I wanted to have. But of course, I had to leave there, and go to a normal high school, where my neighbor would call me 'an oreo' or make fun of me, because I wanted to be in a white man's music field, and that I could better spend my voice singing in church, or doing something like that. Or that the kids who were white in my school were like, "Oh, Speedo, you're okay, 'cause you're not like the black kids". And so I'm not only being made fun of by the kids who are in my neighborhood, but also being told that I'm less than, by the kids who are supposed to maybe not be that way. And it was tough. But again, I was very lucky that I got to be in a safe place that I could explore that. And I took that when I left, just always thought about, "I'm gonna be there in like 16 hours, so once this day's over with, I wake up in the morning, I get to only spend four hours in school, and then I get to go be where I really wanna be".

Marc A. Scorca: When you first went to The Met as a 15-year-old, and there was that reaction of 'I'm not sure I belong here'. And now it's 17, 18 years later, and you're going in the stage entrance and everyone's saying 'Good Morning' to you at the security gate. Do you feel you belong? Has belonging arrived?

Ryan Speedo Green: I'll say to anyone who has ever worked at The Met, when you work there in the beginning, you're sort of overwhelmed with not only the history of The Met, but the performances that you'll see currently on stage. And when I went there as a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions, I'll admit, literally, I was afraid to touch the walls. I was afraid that I would turn to ash because I was not worthy to be in there. But once I got into the young artist program and I spent more time there, I realized that everyone who works there, from the people at the security desk to the grandest singers on stage, it is a job, just like it's a job for everyone else, and it becomes home to some of those people, including myself. I spent three years there, 365 days of the year, learning and honing and tuning my craft, and instead of being afraid of it and nervous about it, I became enthralled and just more excited to learn another piece of the history, another piece of the culture and the people there, from the security guard to the crew in the back. I just wanted talk to all of them and figure out why they love The Met as much as I do.

Marc A. Scorca: It's wonderful because I've experienced the same thing, and you just feel that you are all kindred spirits in this ship going someplace. Let's talk about competitions. So, you won The Met National Council auditions, and most recently (and congratulations) received the Marian Anderson Award. In between, there were George London Award, Annenberg grant, Gerda Lissner prize, Richard and Sarah Tucker grants. Of course, there's economic benefit to it, but what else do competition prizes mean to the young singer?

Ryan Speedo Green: Well, two things out of this, I have to emphasize. For all singers pursuing this field and this career, never go jump out into these auditions, competitions til you're ready. And if I would've auditioned for any of these competitions, even like a year before I did it, I wouldn't have been ready. And every time I got on stage to sing for a teacher, to sing in a masterclass, to sing in a fake audition, to sing for a group of my peers, that was another sort of shaving of my barrier of not only nerves, but of comfort on stage. And to some people, including myself, auditions and competitions are scarier than performing an actual opera, because with an opera, you have not only the makeup and the costumes and the sets and the orchestra and all this foundation to stand upon to create a story, but you have rehearsal and a length of time to show everything you have. And with the competition and with auditions, you literally have 10 minutes, and not in the most amazing setting - you know, people staring down your throat, looking for every mistake you can make - at least that's what you're thinking at the time. When I started doing these competitions, I literally did them because my voice teacher at the time said, "You need to get more experience, and you need to get some more feedback other than mine. I think you're ready, but I need for you to go out there and show people what we've worked on together.

Marc A. Scorca: Was that while you were still at Florida State?

Ryan Speedo Green: Yes. It was my voice teacher, David Okerlund and he was still working with me, and he said, "You need to start doing some competitions; it's time". And I did it, not thinking I would win. I did The Met Competition from the pushing of Ellie Caulkins. I was doing a young artist program at Opera Colorado, and she said, "You do it. I'll sign you up. I know a Met voice when I hear one, and you're a Met voice". And I was like, "Okay, Miss Ellie Caulkins..."

Marc A. Scorca: And there is no disagreement with Ellie Caulkins....

Ryan Speedo Green: There is no disagreement with Ellie Caulkins. So I did it, and lo and behold, that lady knows something, because I ended up winning. So to this day - she's here, actually this week and I'm gonna be seeing her - I'm like, "I owe you the hugest hug every time I see you, for pushing me to do it".

Marc A. Scorca: How wonderful. So, you certainly develop a thick skin about going out singing for people, delivering in 10 minutes. And I guess your voice teacher was saying, "You need more feedback than mine".

Ryan Speedo Green: Yes.

Marc A. Scorca: "And if you are going out and doing the competitions, we're gonna get some feedback. Do you not place, do you win second, do you win third, do you actually win the first prize?" So you were getting some really positive feedback from getting out there.

Ryan Speedo Green: But I tell you, even after I won The Met, which was the crème de la crème for me, I didn't do those other competitions after that. I waited, I think almost a year and a half to do any more competitions, because once I got to The Met in the Lindemann program, the coaches and the teachers there informed me that I wasn't ready to go to the next level. This competition was to find voices that have the potential to be Met voices. And that's what this competition's about. It's not about having the best singer. It's not about having the most seasoned singer. It's about having singers that could have potential to be Met voices, and you have a potential to be a Met voice, but we don't want to throw you to the wolves for them to be like, "Okay, well, he still can't do double consonants". So, I spent basically a year and a half of bootcamp, preparing myself to the next level of actually having the fine-tuning to win these next-level competitions, which are about that fine- tuning, and I was very blessed. And it's about timing as well, like, who do you compete against? I imagine if I competed against someone like Angela Meade, I probably wouldn't have won all those competitions. But every year is different. And I think as a young singer, I failed more times than I succeeded, before I succeeded. Let me tell you, I bombed many, many, many auditions; didn't even get auditions, because my CDs weren't good enough. But it takes time, it takes practice, it takes failing, picking yourself up, figuring out why you failed and being better at not doing that the next time.

Marc A. Scorca: How do you keep the faith during those periods?

Ryan Speedo Green: Having a good circle of people. Your worst critic should be yourself, in my opinion. I will tell you no one beats me up more than me. And if that's not true for you, then your skin might not be thick enough to handle other people's criticism. And this is a field of opinions. It's not a field of fact, like football, soccer, baseball that people enjoy watching, they're things of facts. Music and its interpretation is interpreted by the people who hear it and see it. And sometimes, someone's gonna hear you and think you are the greatest thing since sliced bread. And that same day someone in the audience could hear you and think you sound like an old frog. And I think that's important to know that not everybody's opinion is correct, but it's an opinion, and you gotta find people in your circle whose opinion you respect, and whose criticism is going to be constructive. And it's not going to be to push you down, as to build you up. I think that's incredibly important.

Marc A. Scorca: Great advice. So you sang in Central City?

Ryan Speedo Green: I did.

Marc A. Scorca: And at Wolf Trap - and we just learned that Kim (Witman) is retiring. It's hard to imagine.

Ryan Speedo Green: I did my audition in this room for her, actually. And I remember looking at her on the panel, and she was literally so nice and so kind to me. And there was no way I could fail in this audition, because I already feel so great. Her kind of spirit and personality is going to be sorely missed, because there are few people in this world (like her).

Marc A. Scorca: Kim Witman, for years has run the Wolf Trap program, and she's just a great colleague, a fabulous person as a human being. So again, for the young singer, who is disappointed that she didn't get into the Vienna ensemble, or he's disappointed he didn't win the Met auditions - still singing at these smaller companies early in the career is very valuable.

Ryan Speedo Green: Yes. I don't give Opera Colorado enough credit, and I still to this day am so thankful that they gave me my first opportunity to do a Young Artist program. I went with them and I performed I think for over 15-30,000 children all over the state of Colorado and Wyoming singing Hansel and Gretel and Romeo and Juliet. And then they gave me the opportunity to sing Colline on the main stage with Inna Dukach who's an amazing (singer), who went on stage to The Met, I think, two years ago; jumped in and was amazing for Butterfly. I'll never forget the opportunity they gave me, and in that same opera house, I met Ellie Caulkins, who became one of my mentors and my Colorado mom, as well as meeting people who invited me to Central City to sing that next summer. And it sort of started my professional career and helped lift me up to feel comfortable enough to do something like the Met competition, and I think those kind of companies are so essential to helping young artists build towards a professional career.

Marc A. Scorca: Even doing Hansel and Gretel performances in front of school children.

Ryan Speedo Green: Because if you can sing in front of 300 10 year olds, who are screaming and yelling and laughing and still keep your composure, then heck, you can sing in front of 3000 people at an opera house who are scrutinizing every move that you do.

Marc A. Scorca: And of course, someone like Kim, in particular, she is an advocate. If she thinks you've done well, a whole lot of important people will know you did well. And that those advocates are really important, those professional advocates. Are there other people who served in that capacity for you, of really picking up the phone and saying, "You gotta hear this man".

Ryan Speedo Green: Ironically enough, those kind of people never really tell you they're doing it. And so for me, I know I have a lot of people in my life to be thankful for, that I've gotten the opportunities that I've gotten, including the Vienna State Opera and The Metropolitan Opera, and Houston Grand Opera, and all these amazing (places). From Ravinia to Tanglewood, all these amazing places I've sung at. I know I have someone on the other opposite end, who's not only my manager, (Adam Cavagnaro and Matthew Horner), but also people from the Lindeman program, maybe from my college, my professors from undergrad, maybe even a patron of the arts, who's heard me and shot my name to the director of some company. There are a lot of people behind the scenes who make opportunities for singers like me happen. And I'm gonna say 'Thank you' out there, whoever's watching if you are those people.

Marc A. Scorca: So the lesson is, 'Be nice'.

Ryan Speedo Green: Be nice. I tell young singers, having a phenomenal voice is one thing. There are a lot of people out there with phenomenal voices, but being a good colleague and a good friend to people is even better. For me, it's better in my career if people remember me as someone who was fun to work with, who not only produced good stuff on stage, but produced good stuff off stage.

Marc A. Scorca: So you were learning to sing, and here you were a 15-year-old who declared yourself an opera singer-to-be; "I'm to sing at The Metropolitan Opera". And there had to have been breakthrough moments, where suddenly it lined up differently today than it did yesterday. And "Oh, I'm getting it". Do you have recollection of a couple of breakthrough moments?

Ryan Speedo Green: Yeah. There are various variations of my breakthrough moments. I am gonna be honest with you, one of my first breakthroughs - at 15, I knew that I wanted to be a Metropolitan Opera singer, but yet I didn't know how to uh, sing. So you know, I had some hurdles to get over, and at the time also puberty, which was great for a boy tenor, and I remember I went through a transition at the Government School of the Arts where my time there was almost gonna be limited because I was struggling academically and struggling vocally. And the voice teacher who was teaching me, didn't really think that I had a future, which can happen to some students. But the man I spoke about earlier, my chorus teacher, Robert Brown took it upon himself to fight for me and say that he will be my voice teacher, even though he was the one who taught advanced students, and I was not an advanced student. He took it upon himself to make sure that I did not get kicked outta school because he knew that if I left that school, I would end up on the streets. And he so believed in my dream that he wanted to do everything he could to help me get there. And afterwards, he worked with me tirelessly. You know, we had one lesson a week, but somehow I ended up with four lessons a week, and of course I had no time for these lessons, 'cause I had school. And so he said, "You have to stay after school". But then my mother told him she could not pay for lessons, and so he is like, "Okay, I'll take care of it. You don't have to pay, you just have to pick him up". And then she's like, "Well, I can't pick him up, 'cause I have to work three jobs". And so then he's "Okay, well, I guess I'll drive him 45 minutes back to his house and then drive all the way back to my house 45 minutes away", just so I could have an hour lesson, just to get me a little bit closer to my dream. And I'll never forget my second year in the Government School for the Arts, we had a spring concert and I had been working on one aria for, oh my gosh, must have been like 11 months. And it was, 'If Ever I Would Leave You' from Camelot. And at the time, I was like a baritenor, transitioning. And I had not sung this for anybody, only Robert Brown in a practice room for months and months and months. And I get on stage and I'm so nervous, and my hands are shaking, super sweaty, and he starts playing the intro. And I call it a blackout moment, but I just sort of went on muscle memory, because I'd sung it so much that at this point, no matter how nervous I got, it just would come outta me regardless. And it came outta me, and after I was done singing, the first person I heard screaming, first of all was my mother. And she screamed so loud that I'm pretty sure everyone else had to scream. And my mom and everyone in the audience stood up and gave me a standing ovation, and I looked over and Robert Brown had a tear in his eye. And I walked off stage and he grabbed me. He's like, "You better always sing like that, boy". And that's when I realized maybe I have a chance in this field.

Marc A. Scorca: A breakthrough moment. And the whole story about Robert Brown is in the book, and it's an incredible story. In your book, you also talk about your study as a Lindemann artist, with Mark Oswald, as your voice teacher and Ken Noda as your coach. And the book details how they worked every detail vocally, every vowel, every note, and the range in every vowel. Do you still have a voice teacher?

Ryan Speedo Green: Yes. So, Mark Oswald is still my voice teacher, and I actually met with him two weeks ago to work on my recital. And every time I come to New York, I call it like a check-up. And every good singer has a voice teacher, maybe multiple voice teachers, and has a good coach to work with as well, to always keep you on track, because in this field, you're always singing different rep, at least, you hope you're singing different rep, and different rep requires sometimes different technique. And my tenure currently at the Vienna State Opera, I could sing in four or five different languages in three weeks. And to be able to do that yearly, you have to keep your vocal health and stability up. And Mark Oswald is not only my voice teacher, but he's kind of my psychiatrist at the same time.

Marc A. Scorca: Voice teachers are.

Ryan Speedo Green: Oh, they really are. And I'm sure I'm not the worst, but it's so important to have a voice teacher that you feel comfortable being at your worst. But as well as someone who you see in the future helping you not only have connections in the opera world, but someone who can have a shoulder to lean on. Because those moments when you do fail or you do have a bad audition, or you don't get that callback, you're gonna have to talk to someone about it, and you're gonna have to figure out what you can do better. And then you need to be able to go to someone like a Mark Oswald, like a Ken Noda to be able to work out those artistic problems.

Marc A. Scorca: You're still young for your voice type. Is your voice still moving around?

Ryan Speedo Green: Yeah, I mean, I'm a bass-baritone and I will tell you that my last role when I was 22 years old was Prince Danilo in The Merry Widow. And if you guys know what that piece is, it's a baritenor role. So, I've not been a bass that long. What I've been told and what I studied is that the male voice is a very interesting thing, unlike a female voice. Like in puberty, a woman always matures quicker than a male. It's the same way vocally, like a man's voice is not fully developed til he is in his late 30s and sometimes even 40s, a man's voice finally fills out. That's why some of the greatest basses and baritones we know, their prime was not their early 30s, or even their late 30s. Sometimes it's their late 40s, early 50s is when their prime is. And I'm thinking of some of the singers like Ferruccio Furlanetto and Bryn Terfel and Dmitri Hvorostovsky and these sort of singers at their prime was their late 40s, even though they've been singing since their 20s and 30s. And I'm very lucky to be able to sing at the level I'm singing, and the places I've sung at, at 32 years old, and I'm so excited for my future, and what my future will bring.

Marc A. Scorca: Voice, moving up, moving down, darkening, doing different things?

Ryan Speedo Green: I mean, I have a 1-year-old child, so my voice changes quite frequently depending on how much sleep I get. Currently I'm a bass-baritone, but after some more sleep, maybe I'll be a tenor, who knows?

Marc A. Scorca: So repertoire: you sing Sarastro?

Ryan Speedo Green: Yeah.

Marc A. Scorca: And Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville? And those are not roles that are frequently sung by the same person.

Ryan Speedo Green: No, but as well as singing those, I sing things like Fasolt in Rheingold, or I've also sung Escamillo in Carmen. But I've also since Zuniga in Carmen, so I've done both of those roles, and I feel very blessed to have versatility in my voice to be able to do things like Sarastro and things like Escamillo. But if you look at some of the greatest basses that we've had in the US, looking at Sam (Samuel) Ramey, Sam Ramey could sing some of the lowest notes that you've ever heard, but also sing things like Escamillo, higher and doing high notes with G's and A's that you'd never expect a bass to sing. So, I'm very lucky that I have Mark Oswald working with me, who was one of the great baritones that sang at The Met, working with me on my versatility, both in my low and my high.

Marc A. Scorca: Tell us what you've been doing at The Met, where I mentioned earlier in the introduction, doing Bohème and Aida. What happened there?

Ryan Speedo Green: So, one of the beautiful things about being an opera singer is the opportunities to jump in. And when people think of covering, you have to really take covering seriously. And I'm lucky that at the Vienna State Opera, I'm covering at least one role a week, as well as singing a role. I think back to my first year at the Vienna State Opera, I sang, I think, five or six roles in three weeks. And three of them were covers that I had to jump in, because the guy who was singing those three roles, had an illness. And so I had to step up and sing those three roles, which I had never sung before in my life, and sang those while singing other roles. And it taught me, first of all, that I'm capable of doing more than I thought I could. And it also taught me how to save your voice, how to sing multiple styles of singing. And I think I sang in four languages. I sang in a Russian opera, an Italian opera, a German opera. I sang in a Wagner opera, a Puccini opera, a Verdi opera, a Mozart opera and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. So, I did all of these roles at the same time. So, I've been ready for this kind of moment at The Met for a while. And so this year they allowed me to sing the King in Aida, as well as cover Colline in La Bohème, which I had sung the year prior. And I sang Aida Tuesday, and it went really well with - and I hope all of you have seen it - with Anna Netrebko and Anita (Rachvelishvili). It's amazing. And Wednesday, the singer who was singing Colline - he had a death in the family, and he couldn't sing that night, and so they asked me to come and sing it, and I was like, "Sure".

Marc A. Scorca: At what time of day?

Ryan Speedo Green: It was in the afternoon. But regardless, I was ready to go. A lot of people don't know this, but when you're going to productions at The Met, there is a green room in the artist area, and usually in that green room is the cover for every one of those singers. They sit there ready to go at a moment's notice, because on The Met stage, on any major stage, anything could happen. And The Met's one of the houses that's blessed to be able to have the finances to have a cover in-house at that time. Because in Europe, some of these houses, a singer crashes and burns, or has a sudden illness on stage, they don't have someone to come on immediately and take that part. And it can be tragic for the audience who has to go home. So I did Bohème, and then I had a full recital the next day in Washington, DC. I had my Kennedy Center debut, singing Wolf, Liszt, Mahler, Wagner, Mendelssohn, as well as Verdi, all in one recital. And Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was there. I was very excited. And then the next day after that, I had a masterclass at one of the arts high schools in DC and then the day after that, I had Aida and Bohème again. So it was a very full week.

Marc A. Scorca: Aida and Bohème, the same day?

Ryan Speedo Green: Yes. So, it was one of the most awesome weeks and fulfilling weeks musically, 'cause for me, I love it. I love the challenge and I love the opportunity to get on stage and sing, and I look for more opportunities like that in the future.

Marc A. Scorca: And I noticed that the recital, because for the Marian Anderson Award, you have to do a recital. And you also are doing recital in Dayton. And you've done a recital at Ravinia very successfully. So, what's it like for a singer who revels in the costume and the makeup and the storytelling to be alone on stage in the niche of the piano?

Ryan Speedo Green: I do miss having my blue eyeshadow, I'm not gonna lie. And if any of you have seen me as in King in Aida, you understand what I'm saying. But recital music is something that for me, has been becoming more and more exciting as my career has gone on. I did my first recital in college, and I will admit, I felt very not excited about it because I felt like I wasn't the kind of voice, or the kind of artist that could do an entire story in like two, three minutes. And also the varying styles, I felt very uncomfortable singing a Beethoven piece and then singing a Verdi piece in the same night. But as well as the stories of those characters, because when I perform, I'm so involved with that one character that I almost feel like I have no room for anything else that night. As I've gotten older, which ironically my first voice teacher in college, Joanna Levy, told me that "Recital music may not be your cup of tea now, but the effort you put into your characters in opera, if you can utilize that and put that into your art songs, you're gonna love it. And it's gonna take time. Because some of these art song pieces are experiences that you haven't had yet. And as you grow as a man, as a human being, experience life as an adult, you'll relate more to these pieces". And so I look back at the 24 Italian arts songs, (which all people pursuing voice music know about those beautiful things) with such a different idea and interpretation. And currently as I'm doing these recitals, I find myself reveling in the idea of being able to tell so many stories in such a short amount of time. I love it.

Marc A. Scorca: Stephanie Blythe, in a conversation, talked about the fact that when you're a recitalist, you get to choose your repertoire; you choose what you're gonna wear; you choose if you move a hand, or move yourself. You don't have a stage director telling you; you don't have a costumer telling you. She said that really finally teaches you how to be an artist.

Ryan Speedo Green: Yeah, though, sometimes, I'm not going to lie, my pianist probably doesn't like the fact that I run away from the piano all the time when I sing. I'm a mover. Like anything in life, I love to just run around the stage, and maybe that makes my recitals a little more interesting, I don't know. But I've now performed some of these pieces multiple times that I sing in my recital, and every time I come back with my pianist, who's currently Adam Nielsen, who's an amazing pianist, I meet with him and we discover new things. I remember recently, when we did a recital at the Kennedy Center, one of my favorite pieces, the Wolf Michelangelo-Lieder, I think it was the second piece, 'Alles endet, was entstehet', which is like this really bleak piece about the finality of death. And for some reason, I had done a little more research on Wolf at the time, and Wolf, when he wrote these pieces - these are the last pieces that he wrote before he was sent to an insane asylum. And so, I really thought about why are these pieces so different, especially this piece about death, it's so bleak and it's so different from the romantic pieces that Wolf wrote, or these adventurous pieces that Wolf wrote. And I looked at this second piece and I was like, "This time I'm going to perform it with as little movement as possible". Especially because before this recital, I do so much movement. And I literally stood there, in the curve of the piano with my hands folded up, sort of like in a coffin position. And I tried to sing this and imagine being in a coffin in the bleakness of this moment, of knowing that there's nothing after death and how this would feel. And people in the audience, literally you could hear a pin drop; it was amazing.

Marc A. Scorca: And an experiment.

Ryan Speedo Green: Yeah. People didn't see it coming. And I loved it.

Marc A. Scorca: Europe. So you've been living in Vienna. And cooking in Vienna, which I know you like to do. And it's of course given you an extraordinary opportunity to sing repertoire at the Vienna State Opera. Good casting, pretty good orchestra, good acoustics. So, what an amazing life-experience that is. And here you're back in New York. Do you have a sense of, you know, Europe is a more comfortable place for you to be in your opera work? Do you miss the United States? What's it like coming back to New York?

Ryan Speedo Green: That's a great question. For me and my family, Europe is really, as an artist, it's very awesome. The benefits that you get as an artist in Europe are unparalleled. The fact that my wife gets to go on maternity leave for two years, as crazy as that sounds, it's not too crazy in Europe. It's normal for a woman to be able to be at home with her newborn baby, but not so much here. But the things that, I have to say, keep me attached to Vienna is the performance opportunities. In Vienna alone, I think there are three or four opera houses, not to mention the amount of orchestras that exist there. And Vienna is a special place in its own right, because it is like the classical music capital of Europe. And to be lucky enough to have worked there at the greatest opera house in Vienna, I couldn't turn it down. And it's allowed me to perform operas that, honestly, I probably wouldn't be able to do like in the style that it's done. And allowing me to have the opportunity to cover some of the greatest artists, René Pape to Bryn Terfel and be able to learn from them, just by covering and being there. And the amount of times I get to do it is so different. But when I come back to the States, I'm not gonna lie, it feels like I'm coming home. And when I step into that backstage door of The Met and the security guard says hello to me, I sort of melt and I get to see all the coaches and the crew and the directors and the conductors and the singers that I've beloved, here in the United States, there's no feeling like it.

Marc A. Scorca: I'm glad to hear you say that; good for us. And you brought up your wife and a new baby, a year old, how does a busy opera singer balance family life, day of performance, rehearsal, being careful about your voice, how do you make that work?

Ryan Speedo Green: Again, this is my first child, so I'll tell you after a couple of years. But I mean, it's definitely a huge change. I remember this tenor at the Vienna State Opera. He's a Viennese tenor. He has a 7-year-old girl, and he told me, "Speedo, just be prepared to be sick a lot". And I'm like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "You know, once your kid leaves the house, and they get around other children, your immune system will be irrelevant, because there's nothing like kid germs". And he told me this, and I was like, "Oh, yeah, of course, of course, of course". And of course, my son is still living at home, so he is not really around a lot, but he came to New York and New York is full of germs. And literally the week that he got here, he got sick. And then of course, my wife got sick. And then of course, I got sick. And then my baby got sick again. And it was like a circle of sickness that happened for like two, three weeks. And so I just basically quarantined myself in a corner of my apartment, drinking tea and taking Emergen-C, but it worked and I got better. And I wanna be a part of my son's life as much as possible, and if that means sacrificing a little bit of my health and a little bit of my voice so I can be there and be the father that I wanna be, I'll do it. And for me, there's nothing more important than family.

Marc A. Scorca: What's it like having your whole life out in front of everyone in a book, on radio, on television interviews?

Ryan Speedo Green: I'm not gonna lie. When Daniel Bergner, the author of Sing for Your Life approached me about my story, I told him, "There's nothing to tell". I told him I don't really have a story. And he's like, "That's the true sign of someone who has a story". And he hunted me down, after I avoided him like the plague, and eventually convinced me to have a little bit of conversation - of course, he convinced me with food. And I talked to him, and our 45 minutes turned into three hours, turned into two weeks, turned into three months, turned into five years. And as I realized through him and through talking about it, that what I did wasn't something that is normal, wasn't something that is every day life, I became more proud of what I've accomplished. I became more focused on the fact that I have no excuse not to succeed if I got this far. And I became even more of my worst enemy, because I wanted to own up to the belief that Daniel was believing me, thinking that I was competent in something when I, at the time, didn't feel I was. So, I wanted to be the person that he thought I was, but at the same time realized that I was already that person. And it took time. It was therapeutic as well as humbling, especially to realize my relationships with the people that I love and care about were worse or better than what I thought they were. But at the same time, when people started reading the story, including my wife - she wasn't like him - but when she was reading it and seeing different sides of me, when she became more proud of me, and when people who are pursuing the art form came to me and told me that my book was so inspiring, and I really feel that my decisions were right in pursuing this career; there's nothing like that. Or when I go to speak to the young people who are incarcerated like I was, who tell me that "I didn't know that I could go to college until I read your book. I didn't know that I could have a bad home life and feel the way I feel about myself, and still be able to accomplish something in life". And it leaves you naked, you know? A lot of people know more about me than I want them to know from an initial meeting of me. But I hope that people understand the book is not only about me, but it's also about the beauty of educators, and the beauty of kindness to people. The people that really changed my life were not my immediate family members. They were strangers, who saw something in me, who saw a wanting to better myself and to be someone and to be a productive member of society. And they helped me find my path and find my way. And of course, I had to do the work to get there, but they opened the door for me to try and pursue it. And I'm very thankful and very blessed to have that.

Marc A. Scorca: Something we all have the capacity to do. We can make the world a better place as people did for you.

Ryan Speedo Green: We can.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, we have in our Opera Center tonight, a very, very special person who just has a depth of humanity and artistry that we can only admire and be inspired by. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Ryan Speedo Green: Thank you for having me.