Armstrong Proves a Soubrette Also Rises

Operatic Los Angeles remembers Karan Armstrong as a young soprano from Montana who worked in local opera--such as it was in the mid-1960s--won the Western Regional auditions of the Metropolitan Opera in 1966, then went to New York, won the finals and joined the company. Later, she sang with New York City Opera from 1975-78.

But the Karan Armstrong who returns to Los Angeles on Saturday for her first appearances with Music Center Opera in the title role of “Kat’a Kabanova,” though she looks a lot like that earlier incarnation, isn’t the same.

“I began as a soubrette. Then, I was a lyric soprano. Now, as the voice has matured and darkened, and especially after the birth of my son four years ago, even heavier roles are possible. But I’m in no hurry--I’m in this for the long haul,” Armstrong says, giving a quick survey of her vocal history.

At the very least, it’s a controversial history. Even when she took top prize in the Western Regional Met auditions, there were those who said Armstrong’s voice was better suited to musical comedy than to opera.

Later, as she has expanded her operatic horizons, going from “Traviata” to Mozart to “Wozzeck” to even-more-recent operatic works to more Verdi to “Tote Stadt” to Janacek, a certain amount of criticism has followed.

Since Armstrong’s marriage in 1979 to stage director Gotz Friedrich (who is staging “Kat’a Kabanova” here as he did in Paris in February), the naysayers have added the N-word, nepotism , to their whisperings.

“At first, that bothered me a lot,” the soprano recounts. “Then, when I realized that some people are always going to be jealous, that it’s just human nature, I began to put such talk in perspective. I know who I am and what I can do--I can’t always worry about what other people think.”

Still, it’s a long way from Susanna in “The Marriage of Figaro,” which Armstrong sang in Laguna Beach 20 years ago this month, to Isolde in “Tristan und Isolde” at the Paris Opera, a role she assays in December. Did she take years preparing her Isolde?

“No, I’m learning it now. But I did have a chance to try it out, in a concert version, with Jesus Lopez-Cobos, earlier this year, in Japan.”

Is this the kind of role Armstrong’s first California mentors--the late Lotte Lehmann, then Tilly de Garmo and her husband, the late conductor, Fritz Zweig--envisioned for their protegee? Did they predict she would finally take on these heavy parts?

“No. They predicted that I would sing some of the Strauss heroines, and the lighter Wagner roles. But the rest has been a surprise, to me as much as anyone. The voice has simply grown.”

The uphill road to the heroic German repertory has been a gradual one, Armstrong insists. One of the first plateaus was her first Salome, in Strasbourg, in 1976.

“That came about simply because (conductor) Alain Lombard was impressed when I sang Desdemona for him in Florida. He asked me to look at the role of Salome, and I did. It felt good.”

But it did not lead her down a garden path, she says.

“That first ‘Salome’ was very successful--I weighed 95 pounds at the time, and my looking good was part of it. Immediately, I was offered roles that a Salome might take. I said no to all of them. It’s never easy, turning down engagements, but I knew I wasn’t ready for any of those parts.”

Now, she may be ready. Informally, she has begun “looking at” Wagner’s Brunnhildes.

“I have sung the ‘Siegfried’ Brunnhilde in concert. Now, I’m studying ‘Walkure.’ As you know, the ‘Gotterdammerung’ Brunnhilde is the hardest one. I’ll try that last. After I know them, I’m going to wait a year. Then I’ll sign the contracts.”

In the meantime, she continues to perform the kind of gutsy, singing-actress roles with which she has long been associated, like the title character in Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of the District of Mtzensk,” Strauss’ Salome and Janacek’s Kat’a Kabanova.

About Kat’a (which will be sung in Czech at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion), Armstrong says, “I love the character for the different facets I find in her in each different staging. I just sang three performances in Berlin, in German, in the staging by Gunter Kramer, who makes Kat’a much more introverted than you will see her here. Each approach has its points. Vocally, it’s much easier to sing in the original Czech than in German--Janacek was, as we all know, a genius at putting words and music together.”

Armstrong says the past decade has produced in her private life the kind of fulfillment the stage offered, earlier. “We are a very happy family,” she says, describing a life style centered around her husband and their son, 4-year-old Johannes Gotz Amadeus. The younger Friedrich is, of course, bilingual--when his parents met in Stuttgart 11 years ago, neither spoke the other’s language.

“And we fought. We did not hit it off at all. But at least he saw I was a workhorse--I can rehearse 8 or 9 hours a day and never complain--and came to respect me as an artist.” Two years later, the couple was married.

Today, Friedrich, who is Intendant of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, and his wife, who sings regularly there, make their home in Berlin, though Armstrong considers the Vienna Staatsoper “my home house, and I keep an apartment there.” With a preschool age child, the Friedrichs have been able to travel as a family in the last few years.

“I love working with my husband, and we have a firm rule: On the stage, he is the boss. At home, I am.” Her infectious laugh does not reveal how much of the statement is humorous.

“But, of course, there are many engagements we both have that we do separately. It’s just more fun when we can all be together.”