Interview with Samuel Ramey as he makes his début in his home town

Samuel Ramey, a meat-cutter’s son, came from the high plains of north­w­est Kan­sas. Now he’s per­form­ing at Kan­sas City Opera, his début with the com­pany which turned him down early in his career.

Ramey, who will be 70 next year, talked to the Kan­sas City Star; here are his words:

On his origins

“I think about being a kid grow­ing up in Colby, Kan­sas, and I think about all the places my career has taken me and some­times find it hard to believe.”

On Timur

“I did it a bit in my early years at the New York City Opera in the mid-’70s, then it went out of my rep­er­tory. It’s not a big lead­ing role, but then the Met asked me to do it a few years ago — I think it was in 2007 — and so that’s all. He’s a very sym­path­etic char­ac­ter. It’s not a big part, but it’s an import­ant role. He gets to do some very nice lyric singing. Mostly, I’m just look­ing for­ward to com­ing to Kan­sas City.”

On his musical roots

“My fam­ily was sort of musical. All my broth­ers and sis­ters sang to a cer­tain extent, and my mother was always an appre­ci­ator of music, and she always encour­aged me to pur­sue music.”

On his repertory

“Through my career I became well-known for play­ing the devil in vari­ous operas — ‘Faust’, ‘Mephis­topheles’, ‘The Dam­na­tion of Faust’, ‘The Rake’s Pro­gress’ — these became my sig­na­ture roles. Com­posers seem to feel that the low voice was best for por­tray­ing evil. I don’t know why.”

On music­als

“In col­lege one sum­mer I did Curly in ‘Oklahoma!’ and I did record a few Broad­way shows — ‘Kismet’ and ‘Carou­sel,’ ” he said. “I did a part on a record­ing of ‘Man of La Man­cha,’ but I’ve never got­ten to do a Broad­way musical onstage. I always thought it would be fun. I think I could still handle some­thing like ‘South Pacific’ or ‘Man of La Man­cha.’ We’ll see. Who knows?”

On dif­fer­ing productions

“‘Faust’ is prob­ably the opera I’ve per­formed the most through­out my career. I’ve done more than 20 dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tions of it. I’ve always found it inter­est­ing to go into a new pro­duc­tion. You know, it’s just get­ting dif­fer­ent dir­ect­ors’ approaches. I’ve never got­ten bored doing an opera over and over, and I always look for­ward to get­ting new ideas from dif­fer­ent directors.”

On his 8-year-old son

“My only child. I waited until I was 61.”

Photo: Samuel Ramey by Chris­tian Steiner

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