Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacalyn Kreitzer.
Hi Jacalyn, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I spent my professional life as a **dramatic mezzo-soprano**, specializing particularly in the great Germanic repertoire—Wagner, Brahms, Bach, Schubert, Schoenberg, Mahler, and others—as well as major works by Verdi, Mozart, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and many of the great composers of the operatic and symphonic repertoire.
That career took me from Bend, Oregon, where I graduated from Bend Senior High School in 1974, to many of the great opera houses and concert stages of the United States and Europe. I performed with the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Los Angeles Music Center Opera, New York City Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, and companies and orchestras in Prague, Geneva, Dublin, Spoleto, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Minnesota and many other cities. I made my Carnegie Hall debut as Brangäne in Wagner’s *Tristan und Isolde* with Lorin Maazel and the Pittsburgh Symphony and spent four seasons with the Metropolitan Opera.
I was fortunate to sing with extraordinary artists—including Montserrat Caballé, Christa Ludwig, Jessye Norman, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Leonie Rysanek, James Morris, and many others—and to work with conductors including Simon Rattle, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Pierre Boulez, Kent Nagano, James Conlon, Jeffrey Tate and Valery Gergiev. I recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Chandos, Teldec and Claves and performed more than forty operatic roles.
But what mattered most to me was never simply where I sang or with whom I performed. **It was what the music had to say.**
Much of the repertoire I was drawn to is inseparable from great literature, poetry, philosophy and the search for meaning. I had the privilege of spending my life inside music inspired by writers and thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Heine and others, and in the profound musical worlds of Wagner, Mahler, Brahms and Schoenberg. Again and again, these works confront the fundamental questions of human existence: love and loss, suffering and redemption, courage and fear, good and evil, and our seemingly endless human struggle to move out of darkness and toward the light.
That is what set this repertoire apart for me. Singing was never simply about producing a beautiful sound. **The voice was the instrument through which I could communicate the text, the character, the composer’s vision and something larger about what it means to be human.**
My own musical heritage also profoundly shaped me. My longtime teacher, Herta Glaz, was a Viennese singer who fled Europe following the Nazi annexation of Austria. Through her I became connected to an extraordinary generation of Viennese musicians and intellectuals. Maria Altmann, whose remarkable life later became known through *Woman in Gold*, helped support my early recitals and auditions, and I had opportunities to work with musicians connected directly to Arnold Schoenberg’s musical tradition. That lineage gave me a deep respect for the responsibility of passing musical knowledge from one generation to the next.
Perhaps that is why, when I look back now, **what I am most proud of is not a particular opera house, role, review, award or recording. I am most proud that music became a continuum in my life.** First I was fortunate enough to receive extraordinary teaching and mentorship. Then I became a performer. And eventually I became a teacher and mentor myself.
For 24 years I taught Applied Voice at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo and founded and produced Cal Poly Student Opera Theatre in collaboration with OperaSLO. Today, back in Central Oregon where my own musical journey began, I continue to teach master classes, adjudicate young singers, consult with OperaBend, and work through the Sunriver Music Festival to support young artists and music education.
I am especially passionate about bringing classical music to children. Through my work in music education, I have helped promote **Mindful Music Moments**, which introduces elementary school students to classical music while incorporating breathing, mindfulness and other tools that can help children begin their school day centered and ready to learn.
There is something wonderfully circular about returning to Central Oregon after a career that took me around the world. I began here as a young student whose life was transformed by exceptional teachers and by access to music in the public schools. Decades later, I have the opportunity to help give that experience to another generation.
**That may be what I am proudest of: I was given the gift of music, I carried it with me around the world, and now I have the privilege of passing it on.**
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Deciding to go for a professional classical singer/opera career is a big step. One must not only be an excellent musician and have a strong and healthy mind, soul and body, one must manage all the business details of a career. Money was always an issue until I was hired for larger and more stable orchestra and opera companies. Illness in my family stalled my career for a time-although I never struggled with the fact that I had to stop and help my family member-it was clearly the right thing to do. Maintaining travel, engagements, auditions, a university teaching career, and family commitments was very tough. But the rewards and joy of delivering music that held deep meaning for me over rode any difficulties.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I was a dramatic mezzo-soprano who specialized in the works of the germanic composers-Wagner, Brahms, Bach, Schubert, Schoenberg, Lizst, etc. I was hired to perform with most major opera companies in the US and Europe-Los Angeles, San Francisco, Metropolitan, Chicago, New York City, Prague, Paris, Berlin, London, Geneva, Ireland and many others. The repertoire of the composers I sang and the larger companies, enabled me to deliver music with texts and libretto by some very philosophical and expansiver poets-Goethe, Rilke, Mahler, Wagner, Heine and Schiller. The content generally was about the struggles of being human, and mankind, and the struggle to overcome evil and turn to the light.
What were you like growing up?
I did not grow up in circumstances that would ordinarily point toward an international career in classical music. My father never finished high school, my mother struggled with chronic illness, and there was very little money. There were no resources for private lessons or the extensive preparation normally associated with a professional singing career. I paid for my own college education and, in many ways, had to educate and prepare myself for the life I wanted.
Looking back, I think I was extraordinarily tenacious. I had vision before I had opportunity. I was determined, resourceful and intensely curious, and I understood that education could open a door into a much larger world. When I didn’t know something, I tried to learn it; when I didn’t have an opportunity, I tried to create one. I simply would not give up.
Perhaps what sets me apart is that my career was not something that was prepared for me—it was something I built. The distance between the young girl I was in Bend and the woman who eventually sang at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Châtelet in Paris and major houses throughout Europe and America was enormous. Crossing that distance required talent, certainly, but talent alone would never have been enough. It required imagination, discipline, education, courage and an almost unreasonable belief that another life was possible.
I had vision before I had opportunity.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jkreitzer.com
- Instagram: jkreitzer.com
- Facebook: KreitzerArts
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/dN43jrE56j8?si=i0iK8zBm2DwLQeNE
- Other: https://youtu.be/8rBLGMxKP64?si=dAuF4nH3xRfzh1GX
