Paulo Szot

Opera singer Paulo Szot (b. 1969) made his Broadway debut as Emile de Becque in the recent Lincoln Center Theatre revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic musical South Pacific (see photo below). He earned a Tony award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance, and his name came to the forefront of operatic and Broadway baritones as a result of that career-changing role, which he played from April 2008 through August, 2010. Since that time he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera and returns there next month to perform in Massenet’s Manon.

The baritone’s background is Polish-Brazilian. Both his parents were born in Poland, and that’s how he landed a last name beginning with “SZ” (by the way his name is pronounced "shawt") They emigrating to Brazil during WW II, so Portuguese was his first language. He lived in Poland for many years after he turned 18, so he considers himself both Polish and Brazilian. Szot studied voice at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and began a singing career in 1990.

Szot originally trained to be a ballet dancer, but was never on stage professionally, because he injured his knee while training and had to quit, thus opening the door to a career in music. In his early years he had learned to play piano and violin. Fast forward to 2010, and the world was delivered of an opera-turned-Broadway singer who seems the physical reincarnation of Errol Flynn, down to the pencil moustache.

Szot is openly gay, but came out in a quiet fashion. His sexual orientation was simply added to his Internet biography after an inquiry was made of his management. Szot has been in a long-term relationship, but does not mention his partner’s name. He simply states that his lover is “in the business,” and that he is not from the United States. Szot shares a house he built on the edge of the Brazilian rainforest with his partner and 4 Weimaraners. When he's on the road (which is most of the time), he talks with his dogs via Skype.


This Nearly Was Mine (South Pacific)

Of his performance in South Pacific, Ben Brantley of the New York Times said the following: "When he delivers 'Some Enchanted Evening' or 'This Nearly Was Mine,' it's not as a swoon-making blockbuster (though of course it is!), but as a measured and honest consideration of love."




The Nose (Shostakovich)

Paulo Szot made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the 2010 production of The Nose, the first ever staging of this opera by the Met. The unlikely crowd-pleaser, based on a story by Nikolai Gogol, is a fantasy about a Russian bureaucrat who wakes up to find his nose missing. When he finally tracks down the runaway facial feature, it's become a high-ranking official and celebrity. I’m not making this up.

Dmitri Shostakovich was only 22 when he wrote the angular, dissonant, percussion heavy score, but when the opera was first produced in Leningrad in 1930, the satiric tone ran afoul of Stalin's repressive government, and it was banned in the Soviet Union until 1974.

In an interview Szot related, “I was extremely nervous my first time on the stage, because it’s the Metropolitan Opera. As a first-time ever Brazilian male singer there, I had my whole country on my back, representing a new generation, so it was a heavy thing for me.”





In 2011 Szot returned to the Met to sing Escamillo (Carmen), and next month (March 26) he returns to the Metropolitan Opera in the role of Lescaut in Jules Massenet's Manon. It is interesting that David Pittsinger, who alternated the role of Emile de Becque with Szot in Lincoln Center’s South Pacific (so that Szot could fulfill previously secured opera commitments), will also be in the cast of Manon at the Met. I was fortunate to see South Pacific with both Szot in New York and Pittsinger (a gracious, talented straight man) at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, in the national touring company of the musical.

When the show’s run was extended on Broadway, Szot had to cancel performances in three opera productions in Brazil. He was amazed that he was cast in South Pacific in the first place, which came about when he answered a casting call from Lincoln Center. They were looking for an opera singer, and Szot was in the U.S. performing a Mozart opera in Boston at the time.

“First of all, I didn't think they would give me the role. I was just doing one of the many auditions I do whenever I am in town. I didn't think it would be very probable to hire a Brazilian man to do a French role in the United States on Broadway, you know?”

Szot photographed holding his Tony award next to presenter Liza Minelli (at left).

There are parallels to Ezio Pinza’s creating the role of Emile de Becque in 1949, when South Pacific first opened on Broadway. Pinza was also an opera star who crossed over to Broadway, but Pinza had retired from the Metropolitan Opera a year earlier. Szot has done the reverse – retiring from a Broadway production to make his debut at the Met. We can hope that Szot continues simultaneous careers on Broadway and in the world’s great opera houses.

Power Couple Fred Hochberg & Thomas Healy

Chair of the U.S. Export-Import Bank Fred Hochberg and partner Thomas Healy, a poet and public servant, share an art-filled apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Hochberg (b. 1951), one of the highest ranking business leaders in the Obama Administration, is heir to the Lillian Vernon mail order business, a company he began managing for his mother, transforming it into an international publicly traded direct marketing corporation described by Forbes as “one of the great success stories of American entrepreneurship.” He was appointed deputy administrator for the Small Business Administration during the Clinton presidency. President Obama nominated Hochberg to be chairman and president of Ex-Im Bank in 2009, and the U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination by unanimous consent. Hochberg has dedicated himself to community service and philanthropic involvement in civil rights, education and the arts. He served as chair of the Human Rights Campaign, and Out Magazine ranked him the 15th most powerful gay person in America.

Hochberg has been active in Democratic politics. In 2004 he was a delegate from New York to the Democratic National Convention. He raised $100,000 for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential run and did the same for Hillary Clinton during her campaign for the presidential nomination in 2008. He later gathered a similar amount for Obama after he won the Democratic nomination. After the November 2008 election, Hochberg was selected to serve on Obama’s transition team, tasked with overseeing transition at the Small Business Administration as co-Lead of the SBA Review Team. He has served on the Board of the Democratic National Committee and is one of the most senior openly gay members of the Obama Administration. As a couple, Hochberg and Healy (below) attended Obama’s first state dinner at the White House in 2009, one of three out gay male couples invited.

Tom Healy (b. 1961) is a polymath – a poet, public servant and art gallery owner; he was one of the first to open a gallery in Chelsea. Healy also directs arts programs at Columbia University. In 2011 President Obama appointed him to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, which later elected him to serve as chairman. Under President Bill Clinton, Healy was a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. Healy has played an active role in the New York City arts scene; after the September 11 attacks he served as president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, where he led rebuilding efforts for the downtown arts community. In 2006, Mayor Michael Bloomberg awarded him the New York City Arts Award, the city's most prestigious award for achievement in the arts.

Healy took a respite from the art gallery world to become a poet. His first collection of poems, What the Right Hand Knows, was published in 2009 to great acclaim. Healy frequently hosts Wilde Boys, a roving salon for gay poets, at his Fifth Avenue residence. Trivia: Healy grew up on a farm and flies airplanes.

Virgil Fox

A few decades ago, if you asked people on the street to name famous concert organists, they could tick off maybe three: J.S. Bach, E. Power Biggs and Virgil Fox (1912-1980) These days, younger people have likely never heard of the latter two, but those who were attending organ concerts in the 1950s-60s-70s will never forget Virgil Fox. I was just starting to study classical pipe organ when Fox’s career was ending, but his legacy endures decades after his death.

In addition to having prodigious talent and technique, Fox was an outrageous showman who alienated purists right and left – and he loved every minute of it. Virgil wore a red satin lined cape and a beret while performing, and he drove a pink Cadillac. The heels of his organ shoes were embellished with rhinestones. He insisted on being visible to his audiences (tough, if not impossible in most churches back in those days). He was also temperamental and demanding – organ tuners dreaded working for him.

Virgil Fox was the Liberace of the pipe organ, and the comparison is apt, because both were attacked for having lurid taste – in clothes, repertoire, personal flamboyance and performance practice. Fox was in-your-face gay and didn’t care who knew it, and his over-the-top, camp personal style was often at odds with the staid church where he performed. It was his practice to speak to the audience from the stage, discussing the music and thus bringing a new dimension to recitals. All that said, few people were neutral about Virgil Fox. You either loved him or hated him. His arch rival was English-born E. Power Biggs, a conservative historically correct performer who was the antithesis of Fox’s personal and musical style. Both were known for their performances of music by J.S. Bach, yet their interpretations were light years apart.

From 1946-1965, Fox was organist at Riverside Church in New York City, where he presided over one of the largest pipe organs in the world. His lover, Richard Weagly, was the Choir Director, and the acrimonious end of their relationship was played out in front of everyone. Worship at Riverside Church was often merely an accessory to the star of the show, which was Virgil’s organ playing, especially his flamboyant hymn interpretations. His fans showed up in droves on Sunday mornings. In the mid 1960s, however, Fox was asked to resign from his job at Riverside, because he had gotten “too big” for the church.

Virgil then took the pipe organ outside the church, going on countless tours with an electronic organ he called Black Beauty, playing recitals in concert halls, schools and on television, replete with light shows, smoke machines and mirrors. No lie. His shows at the Fillmore East, a NYC rock concert venue, were legendary. It was not uncommon for 2,000-3,000 people to show up for his live performances, and often hundreds were turned away. I kid you not.

Fox loved his audiences and would spend hours greeting his fans after every performance. He called everyone “honey” – men and women alike – and loved giving autographs. While seated at the organ console he once greeted a staid Riverside Church dignitary, “How good to see you, Lawrence, honey." The shocked and offended man replied, “I'm not your honey, and kindly never address me that way again.” Fox was not the least bit intimidated.

His records sold like hot cakes, and Capitol signed him to a lucrative six-album deal (a pipe organist!). Sixty recordings were to follow, and many of them are still available as reissues. Fox earned enough from concertizing to buy a 26-room mansion in Englewood, N.J., complete with swimming pool and – you guessed it – an organ whose pipes filled the attic, sun porch and basement. When a much younger lover, David, moved in, alienating many of Fox’s friends, fans and managers, Fox made no apologies. After receiving an honorary doctorate from Bucknell University, Virgil insisted on being called Dr. Fox, claiming that he got better service from hotels and airlines.

I first heard Fox in the late 1970s, when he played an electronic organ at Wolf Trap (outside Washington, DC) to an audience of more than 6,000. In a concert at the Kennedy Center in 1978, I witnessed his pipe organ and harpsichord recital of French music played in alphabetical order, arranged by key: from A-flat major on down to G-minor; he called it “A Gallic Gamut.” Some of the overflow audience was seated on the stage.

Fox spent his last months at his estate in Palm Beach, FL, Casa Lagomar, where he died of prostate cancer in October, 1980. He was 68 years old. Virgil had performed in public just six weeks before his death, and the New York Times obituary estimated that he had performed before more than six million fans during his 50-year career.

Perpetuum Mobile for Pedals Alone (Middelschulte): the video quality is crap, but this gives an accurate representation of Virgil’s technical mastery and flamboyant style. The composer, a brilliant German organist who lived most of his life in Chicago, was Virgil’s teacher. Fox frequently played this show-stopper as an encore.



Toccata (final mvt.) from Symphonie Concertante by Belgian composer Joseph Jongen. The last 40 seconds of this clip are thrilling. Fox often performed his own organ solo transcription of this movement at recitals.



A one-man symphony orchestra, Fox was known for his transcriptions of symphonic music for solo organ. Here he performers Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 on the huge Wanamaker organ inside Philadelphia’s downtown Macy’s department store.