American tenor Brian Jagde gets last-minute call to sing in La Scala's gala season premiere

MILAN -- American tenor Brian Jagde was just wrapping up Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” in Barcelona last month when he got a last-minute offer to sing the same role in La Scala’s gala season premiere this Saturday, arguably the opera world’s most prestigious gig.

Jagde’s appearance as Don Alvaro opposite soprano Anna Netrebko will mark his third performance at Milan’s storied Teatro alla Scala. He appeared twice as a substitute tenor opposite Netrebko, replacing Roberto Alagna in “Turandot” this summer, and now he will replace Jonas Kaufmann in the coveted season opener.

“I’m happy to be their guy,’’ Jagde told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

While it is not unheard of for Americans to sing on La Scala’s opening night, a highlight of the European cultural calendar, it remains a rarity in an opera house where Europeans tend to dominate.

Beside Maria Callas last century, American Brian Hymel opened the 2016 season in “Madame Butterfly” and Lisette Oropesa was cast in “Lucia di Lammermoor” but sang in a gala concert to an empty theater when the 2020 season premiere was shuttered by the pandemic.

In 2008, American tenor Stuart Neill was promoted from understudy to the “Don Carlo” opening night cast after the headlining tenor made too many dress rehearsal mistakes. Neill received generous applause from the tough La Scala crowd.

“It's definitely one of the things that every artist dreams about,’’ Jagde said. “I think it is about the artist and meeting the moment at the right time. I think that is more of what it's about than necessarily where they are from.”

Jagde said singers are drawn to La Scala's “rich tradition.”

“Every artist wants to not just perform there, but have great success there,” Jagde said. “The public is known to be a very devoted fanship — and they can love you or they can hate you. You really want to be embraced by that audience specifically.”

So far, the reviews from La Scala’s upper balconies of exacting opera fans have been positive on his previous two outings, Jagde said, adding that artists should accept all feedback.

“It’s our job as artists to embrace the fact that we are making people feel something. Whatever they feel is appropriate to them," he said.

Jagde, 45, grew up outside of New York City, and started singing in musicals in high schools and choirs in college, but never gave a thought to the opera. He started studying computer science and business upstate but then a classical music program at Purchase College closer to home grabbed his attention, thinking it might lead him to Broadway.

“I didn’t know at the time that classical voice meant opera," he said laughing. He got accepted off the waiting list, and quickly fell in love with opera as the purest expression of the unadulterated voice.

“I remember being on stage and experiencing something I had never experienced on stage before, which was a completely acoustic, magical sound," Jagde said. “This was completely natural, hearing an orchestra underneath me, and my voice carrying over that. I remember committing full-heartedly (to opera) on stage at the moment.”

His college teachers pegged him as a baritone, and he spent eight years doing auditions and artists programs in that range until he realized that “I was still warming up to high Cs and still had no low notes.”

Once he started auditioning as a tenor, the offers started rolling in. He made his principal role debut at the Metropolitan opera in 2021 in the role of Cavaradossi in “Tosca," and has sung on such renowned stages as the Paris Opera, the Vienna Staatsoper and Naples' Teatro di San Carlo.

During the 2023/24 season, he warmed up his Don Alvaro at the Metropolitan Opera House and London's Royal Opera House. His La Scala debut last spring was as Turiddu in “Cavalleria rusticana.”

La Scala general manager Dominique Meyer said his only consideration in casting an opera is whether a singer “is up to the role.” Jagde, he said, is among five or six tenors who could sing the Don Alvaro role, “and he was available.”

Jagde finished his Barcelona performances on Nov. 18, and showed up for rehearsals at La Scala the next day. Don Alvaro, he said, is a role, "that has kind of grown with me, as I have grown as an artist.”

Jagde said singing alongside an international opera star like Netrebko for the second time this year will help take some of the jitters out of the gala premiere.

“She is a wonderful colleague. She is a good person to work with, always available to you. She is nothing but smiles and fun," he said.