Black sopranos set to soar on Hub stage in ‘Bohème’

Victoria Cheng

When Kimwana Doner last sang the role of Musetta in Puccini’s “La Bohème” five years ago, she dubbed her character “the party girl.”

A feisty and ruthlessly flirtatious Bohemian street singer, “Musetta can do whatever she wants to do,” Doner said in a recent interview before a cast rehearsal in the gilded halls of the Tremont Temple.

As she prepares to again take on the role of Musetta — this time for the Boston Lyric Opera’s 2007 production, opening Nov. 2 — Doner hesitated to assign any easy labels to her character.

“There’s that ‘party girl’ aspect of her,” she said, “but she’s also very giving and generous and sweet.”

Fellow soprano Alyson Cambridge, who sings the role of the beautiful but sickly Mimi, placed similar emphasis on the complexity of her character.

“Mimi can’t just be this wilting flower, this dying girl, from the very beginning,” Cambridge said. “She’s full of hope; she has this energy and vitality, too.”

The plot of “La Bohème” — the second most-performed opera in North America after another Puccini classic, “Madame Butterfly” ­— swirls around the misadventures of a group of young artists struggling to fend off poverty and illness in 1830s Paris.

Penniless painter Marcello pines for Musetta, an attractive working girl leery of commitment, while Marcello’s equally destitute poet friend Rodolfo meets Mimi, a seamstress, when she knocks on his door to ask for help in relighting her extinguished candle.

If this all sounds strangely familiar, it’s because playwright Jonathan Larson drew heavily on Puccini’s opera for his Broadway musical-turned-movie “Rent.”

In taking on roles made famous by opera icons like Victoria de los Ángeles and Elizabeth Harwood and popularized by Broadway heavyweights Daphne Rubin-Vega and Idina Menzel, both Doner and Cambridge have big shoes to fill.

But the two talented young African American classical sopranos are accustomed to challenging assumptions and stereotypes — not just with the roles they sing, but also in their approach to their chosen career.

“Although there are so many African American people in the history of classical music, my profession seems very odd to some people,” Doner said. “I think because it’s not mainstream, people are a little shocked, like how did you, being an African American woman, get into classical singing?”

Doner, who grew up in Michigan, was singing before she could speak. She belted out the melodies of everything from commercial jingles to church hymns, inviting the occasional complaint from friends in her choir that “Kimwana’s singing too loud!”

Cambridge attracted the attention of a voice teacher in her home state of Virginia because she did remarkably convincing impressions of opera singers — something she started as a gag for family and friends — at the tender age of 12.

Earlier this month, as Doner and Cambridge rehearsed their parts for the production’s pivotal third act with Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) stage director Timothy Ocel, the stunt impressions of childhood had evolved into operatic virtuosity, their voices ringing loudly and unapologetically through the Tremont Temple.

Standing on a line of white tape marking the BLO rehearsal stage, Cambridge wrapped a costume shawl around her light green sweater and tossed her long, curly mane over her shoulders.

Slouching forward, she morphed from a statuesque and confident young soprano to fragile, coughing Mimi, who, because she does not want to burden Rodolfo with her illness, is about to bid him goodbye.

“Farewell! Farewell glad awakenings in the morning!” Cambridge sang in Italian, her voice lilting over the intervals of thirds and fifths that make up the well-known melody.

Urged on by Ocel, who describes the scene as “the goodbye game” where Mimi and Rodolfo realize “what they are saying goodbye to” and what they will miss, Cambridge lingered on two notes: “soli,” Italian for “lonely.”

After gaining admission to The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia four years ago, Cambridge, now 28, embarked on a fast track to operatic stardom. She won the national grand prize in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, was handpicked by Faye Dunaway for a part in a movie about opera legend Maria Callas (the movie got nixed before production began) and made her debut at the Met as Frasquita in Georges Bizet’s “Carmen.”

“It’s a crazy life,” Cambridge admitted. “I live with my boyfriend in New York, but it’s kind of like paying expensive storage to house my clothes … You don’t see the people close to you on a daily basis and that part of it has gotten very tough.”

To fend off the encroaching loneliness in real life, Cambridge brings her dog on the road with her and derives comfort from routine: She goes to the gym for an hour a day, every day, no matter what city she is in.

Doner, 33, also travels frequently, and has a routine of her own. She makes a habit of going to Starbucks to review her stage notes and text after rehearsals.

“Starbucks is the same in every city,” Doner laughed, “and it’s the one familiar thing that I have.”

Gliding across the rehearsal stage in a pair of slim-fitting black pants, her hair pulled into a neat bun, Doner evinced the grace of her childhood ballet training, flitting and arching her hands in time with the music as she trilled her part coquettishly.

In the third act of “La Bohème,” Doner’s Musetta proclaims her independence from Marcello’s jealous supervision. “My own way I mean to have,” she sings in a darting arpeggio, adding with a harsh, stage-stopping laugh, “I abhor that sort of lover who pretends he is your — ha! ha! ha! — husband!”

Doner sailed through the leaping arpeggios, but hesitated with the laugh.

“I don’t know what to do with it, but I’m trying different things,” she told Ocel, experimenting with a series of marriage-dismissing scoffs and shrieks.

Off the stage, Doner credits her husband, a drum professor at the University of Michigan, with encouraging her to seriously pursue classical singing. As college students, the pair spent their weekends at the school library, watching VHS tapes of musicians they hoped to one day emulate, including African American soprano Shirley Verrett, with whom Doner eventually studied.

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1999, Doner moved with her husband to California, where he joined the Thelonious Monk Institute and she became a fellow in the prestigious Adler Program at the San Francisco Opera.

“People always say, ‘So your job is to sing?’” Doner said, mimicking their incredulity. “It looks from the outside in like it’s really glamorous, like it’s easy.”

But as Puccini demonstrates in “La Bohème,” the artist’s life is often lived hand-to-mouth.

Doner’s mother used to ask her if she wouldn’t rather be a lawyer or a doctor.

“I’d say, ‘No, I wanna be a singer…’” she recalled. “But I understand now that she wanted me to have a job, a very secure and stable living, which is not what this is. At all.”

Nevertheless, Doner added, “this is still — in some respects, because I love it — easier.”

Cambridge also feels fortunate to be doing what she loves. Recently, while performing with the Washington National Opera, a young girl approached her for an autograph.

“She was about 12 years old, wearing a little flower print dress, and she kind of had her baby fat and frizzy hair … It was like looking in a mirror at my old self,” she marveled.

Asked if she had any advice for this aspiring young singer, Cambridge encouraged her to pursue her dream wholeheartedly.

“I told her to stick with it. Go out there, do your best and have fun — just enjoy it.”

The Boston Lyric Opera’s production of “La Bohème” premieres Nov. 2 and runs through Nov. 13 at the Citi Shubert Theatre, 270 Tremont Street, Boston. Evening performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Sunday matinees begin at 3 p.m.

For ticket cost, availability and additional information, call 617-542-4912 or visit www.blo.org.