Julia Migenes

There is something rich and deliciously exceptional about Julia Migenes.

She’s the operatic sensation starring in Diva on the Verge, currently enjoying a return limited engagement at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles through Jan. 9.

Although she is an opera star and actress of the highest caliber, upon meeting her you’ll find she’s devoid of the usual pretentious celebrity trappings. Spend a little more time and you’ll notice she has an immediate likeability, an intangible “something” that hollers “special” and a sensibility that is both palpable and intoxicating.

Migenes is a world-renowned soprano with the voice of an angel but she never listens to any of her 20 albums (Vienna, Man of La Mancha, Caterina Cornaro and more). She loves the arts but doesn’t go to the theater. She’s reportedly given more than 6,000 performances and received innumerable accolades and praise from theater critics but never reads reviews. She has a vast, impressive and classy website but has never seen it. Her bio paints a flattering picture about her career achievements but she’s never laid eyes on it.

“It’s like I don’t exist,” explains Migenes. “I think I don’t look at those things because I want to be just how I feel. I don’t want to be how people see me. I don’t want to walk in and be the diva.”

For Migenes, it’s important not to let outside opinions influence her. “I don’t want to forget where I come from or have a set of friends based on who I am,” she says. “I don’t listen to my music because after I record it, I’m done. Don’t get me wrong, I think having good reviews is nice and lovely. I mean it’s ok but I can’t live in my past.”

Today, Migenes is dressed in a casual, beige outfit, accented only by gold hoop earrings and soft, red tresses dangling lightly over her piercing, seemingly perceptive eyes. At 5’2” her stature belies the powerhouse vocals that lie in her golden throat.

If you ask her age, she’ll smile but she won’t reveal the digits. “I never tell numbers or sizes,” she laughs. “Once you do, that’s how people see you. You just be and are and don’t tell. You’re not trying to be younger or any of that. You’re just trying to be you.”

Julia Migenes

Although she’s a native New Yorker, Migenes instead lives in Los Angeles because there aren’t as many pedestrians. “When I’m driving there had better be none,” she jokes. “Cause I’m not very good. I like Los Angeles because I could only live in a place that has many artists, even if I never see them. I feel them. I couldn’t live in New York because I don’t like the fact that unless you’re up very high, you never see the sky. You can live in a high rise, open up your window and only see another high rise.”

Migenes is a fascinating personality whose immeasurable operatic talents are outweighed only by her inner strength and genuine humility. And while she could legitimately be a diva on wheels, she is one of the most un-Hollywood, well-adjusted stars you’d ever meet.

“I’m a diva but I’m not,” she begins. “It’s about having a sureness of knowledge. There’s a fine line. I have certainty about what I do. Not too many people can mess with that. But I don’t have the beingness of a diva. They are the center of attention. I don’t have that.”

THE SHOW

Migenes, sitting in a booth at Greenblatt’s Deli recently (one of her favorite neighborhood haunts), waxes about her cheeky one-woman show that blends monologue and opera, often poking fun at opera’s rigid reputation.

“This is the shorter version of Diva on the Verge,” explains Migenes as she sips her Fiji water. “The longer version is two acts but this is about one hour and 20 minutes without a pause because that’s what I do with an orchestra, so why not do it here?”

Written by Migenes in 1998 (with additional text by Bruce Villanch) and first performed in France in 1999, the show, featuring Victoria Kirsch on piano, is a send-up on the unyielding world of opera and the divas who inhabit the genre. Through songs and satirical stories, Migenes, who displays an infectious sense of humor, puts her own hilarious spin on an art form that has a reputation for being sterile, solemn and stiff.

Julia Migenes

Migenes has performed on some of the most prestigious and famous stages in the world including The Met, Opera de Paris, La Scala in Milan, Broadway and the Vienna Opera House. “Although I’m singing very difficult music, it doesn’t have to be a difficult experience for the audience. What I do may look effortless to them. However, during the show, I never shut up. I’m either talking or singing. That is difficult on my vocal cords.”

Migenes, who grew up on New York’s Lower East Side before eventually moving to the Bronx, has performed Diva in French and Spanish and is now translating it into German. She wrote the show because she wanted to draw back the curtain on the world of opera, warts and all.

As the show opens, Migenes, dressed in a slinky, black spaghetti stringed dress with black leggings and black kneepads, peeks around the corner offering a seductive “good evening.” From there, the show takes off as she portrays various female characters and performs several famous scenes, singing sections of classic arias and then translating for the foreign language deprived.

On this opening night, Migenes has the audience in the palm of her hand for 90 minutes. In a send-up on Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, she talks about the super titles above the stage in some opera houses and how audiences are so involved looking at them they forget about what’s happening on stage. “The audience is asked to suspend disbelief when they look at Juliet, who is supposed to be a petite 16-year-old but is played by a very mature woman weighing in at 200 pounds,” says Migenes whose first biography, Mémoires d’un oiseau rebelle (Memoirs of a Rebellious Bird), was published by the Editions du Rocher in France.

Also unable to escape her jabs are the middle-aged divas who sing the roles of a young Salome and the Japanese teenager in Madame Butterfly. Not to be missed is her take on the characters who sing death arias. The irony is that the singers/actors are required to be in perfect health even though the characters are dying of consumption. Her example in the show is her Manon, who appears to be dying but manages to crawl from one end of the stage to the other – all the while singing at full tilt and taking what seems like an eternity to draw her last breath. In January 2011, Migenes will travel to France where she will perform Diva on the Verge with the Symphonic Orchestra of Lyon.

PUTTING IN THE WORK

Julia Migenes

Migenes’ career is impressive. While studying at the New York School for Performing Arts, she was chosen by Leonard Bernstein to be a soloist in his Young People’s Concerts. Amazingly, soon thereafter her Broadway career began when she originated the role of Tevye’s daughter Hodel in the original cast of Fiddler on the Roof. She also interpreted Maria in West Side Story and gave a Grammy-winning portrayal of the title role in the film Carmen opposite Plácido Domingo.

She has also appeared in Broadway to Brecht, Peter Eötvös: Angels in America [the opera], Franz Schubert: His Letters and Music, Dale Wasserman’s Man of La Mancha and more. In 2009 she played Aldonza in the Reprise production of Man of La Mancha.

She has sung for Bill and Hillary Clinton, Princess Caroline, Prince Charles and Lady Diana. She had a private audience with then President of France Francois Mitterrand and last year sang with Placido Domingo for the King of Jordan. “You work hard and suddenly you go from being poor to singing for royalty,” says Migenes. “I don’t take that lightly. It’s amazing when I think about where I’ve come from. I don’t think about it while I’m doing it but when I step back I understand it’s an amazing path and leap I’ve taken. It speaks to what people can do with their lives. It’s a great validation of one’s inner strength.”

HER JOURNEY

To understand how and why all of this is a major achievement for the little girl from the Lower East Side, you have to go back to Migenes’ childhood which she describes as “harsh and violent.”

Her journey is intriguing and very personal but with a modicum of prompting Migenes, who is Greek, Irish and Puerto Rican, begins to bare her soul about everything from her childhood, to her family, her career and four failed marriages.

Julia Migenes

The stories she tells are shocking, interesting, provocative and enlightening. Her battle scars are tucked neatly in her memory, evidence she made it through combat and emerged unscathed and victorious.

She spins her tales like a master storyteller – each incident more sensational than the last as if she were playing “top that tragedy.” She grew up poor in a neighborhood where you had to “have eyes on your ass” to survive.

Migenes had four siblings, her mother and an alcoholic and violent father. According to Migenes, who was the youngest, her grandmother gave her mother away to work in a kitchen when she was only seven years old. By the time her mother was 14, she had already given birth. By 16, she had another child. Her mother had two children with her husband and three with a next door neighbor. Migenes is a product of the neighbor who often had run-ins with her mother’s husband after he figured out who had fathered the children. She remembers vividly the time her father went after her mother with an ice pick which resulted with her mother throwing boiling water on his legs. Unfortunately for Migenes, incidents like this were all too common.

Her home was often filled with tension, so much so that she and her siblings never cultivated a loving relationship. “We were never close,” says Migenes. “We all didn’t get along. We never sat down and had a meal together. It just didn’t happen.” Migenes has a daughter Martina by a Ukrainian ballet dancer she never married.

Although she started singing in kid shows at the age of three, Migenes, whose family was on welfare, didn’t go to school until she was 10. “I was this little kid with curly hair,” explains Migenes. “I would dance and sing. By the age of 10, I had to go to school. I couldn’t read and could hardly write but I had a good mind. School was extremely difficult. It was so regimented. It was tough in school and at home.”

To escape the drama at home, Migenes sought refuge in music. She was a self-described loner who was wary of people, lived “in a bubble” and had “no outside friends.” One day while walking to school, she heard sounds coming out of a building and decided to follow the melody. It was the first time she had heard classical music. She was instantly hooked.
No one told Migenes she could sing. “They didn’t have to tell me,” she says. “I’m Puerto Rican and Greek, everybody sings and dances. I sang to escape.”

Without the support from her family, Migenes taught herself how to pull up her own bootstraps. “I had to take the position that things were going to work in my favor,” says Migenes. “If you start feeling victimized you open a door to be less strong. If you don’t feel victimized and say ‘that’s life’ you can follow a dream.”

Migenes, who admittedly doesn’t “think a lot,” but rather “follows an instinct and not something logical,” acknowledges it’s an interesting perspective on how to deal with life’s little bumps in the road. “The only fight you have in life is with yourself,” explains Migenes. “You’re fighting yourself, not the situation. You have to figure out, how do I strengthen myself to get out of this? It happens to work for me.”

About five years ago, Migenes had to test her resolve when all four of her siblings died within a 12-month period. “I thought I was hallucinating,” she remembers. “It was an incredibly tough time but I had to tell myself I could get through it. Depending on the strength of your inner core, nothing can bother you.”

Despite her tough beginnings, Migenes has never wanted a “do over.” She says, “No. It would be nice to have it easier but then I wouldn’t be who I am. I’m whole. I’m hard on myself. That’s the only way you can get somewhere. You can pat yourself on the back but don’t live in it, keep going.”

Maybe that adage is why Migenes has the French word “Sortie” (Exit) posted over her bed. “I put it there just in case,” she says with a huge smile. “That way, I know that’s the way to go.”

Spoken like a true “Diva on the Verge.”

Diva on the Verge, produced by Beth Hogan, continues Thur.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 7 pm; except Sun., Dec. 26 at 2 pm (no performances Dec. 23, 24, 31 and Jan. 6); through Jan. 9. Tickets: $25-$30. The Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd, Los Angeles; 310.477.2055 or www.odysseytheatre.com