‘They Know That I’m The Real Deal’: Transgender Baritone Makes Opera History

VPM | By Ari Shapiro and Dave Blanchard

Published May 30, 2019 at 8:26 PM EDT

Updated April 15, 2024

Lucia Lucas, with cast mate Hidenori Inoue, in a dress rehearsal for the Tulsa Opera's 2019 Don Giovanni production. — Lucia Lucas, with cast mate Hidenori Inoue, in a dress rehearsal for the Tulsa Opera's 2019 *Don Giovanni* production.

This month in Tulsa, Okla., opera singer Lucia Lucas made her U.S. debut. She also made history.

At the Tulsa Opera, Lucas sang the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Mozart’s character is a ruthless, macho womanizer. Lucas is a transgender woman with a rich baritone voice and is the first known trans woman to sing a principal role on an American opera stage. In a conversation with NPR’s Ari Shapiro, Lucas said she doesn’t want her performances to be entirely defined by this historical marker.

“It’s meaningful because any time something happens for the first time, it’s meaningful,” she says. “But it shouldn’t be meaningful. Trans people shouldn’t have a barrier to entry, except for just talent.”

But in the beginning, Lucas says, she was fearful that living as a woman would jeopardize her ambitions in opera: “I was concerned that it would be too uncomfortable for me to present as a man onstage, to sing with my baritone voice onstage.” Her discomfort took hold immediately after coming out, when she had to face a week of performances.

Lucia Lucas in Don Giovanni. — Lucia Lucas in *Don Giovanni*. Shane Bevel Photography / Tulsa Opera

“But instead of questioning these things and thinking about how it would psychologically affect me, I decided to just do it,” she says. “And so I did the next week of performances and said, ‘Oh, I can do this. This is fine. As long as I don’t have to pretend offstage, I can pretend onstage.’ ”

As far as talent goes, Lucas is confident that her craft speaks for itself. She says she’s unconcerned about being pigeonholed as a trans opera singer, as opposed to simply an opera singer: “When people hear me, they know that I’m the real deal.”

Lucas spoke with All Things Considered about her experience; hear the full conversation at the audio link.

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Ari Shapiro

Ari Shapiro has been one of the hosts of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon newsmagazine, since 2015. During his first two years on the program, listenership to All Things Considered grew at an unprecedented rate, with more people tuning in during a typical quarter-hour than any other program on the radio.

Shapiro has reported from above the Arctic Circle and aboard Air Force One. He has covered wars in Iraq, Ukraine, and Israel, and he has filed stories from dozens of countries and most of the 50 states.

Shapiro spent two years as NPR's International Correspondent based in London, traveling the world to cover a wide range of topics for NPR's news programs. His overseas move came after four years as NPR's White House Correspondent during President Barack Obama's first and second terms. Shapiro also embedded with the campaign of Republican Mitt Romney for the duration of the 2012 presidential race. He was NPR's Justice Correspondent for five years during the George W. Bush Administration, covering debates over surveillance, detention and interrogation in the years after Sept. 11.

Shapiro's reporting has been consistently recognized by his peers. He has won two national Edward R. Murrow awards; one for his reporting on the life and death of Breonna Taylor, and another for his coverage of the Trump Administration's asylum policies on the US-Mexico border. The Columbia Journalism Review honored him with a laurel for his investigation into disability benefits for injured American veterans. The American Bar Association awarded him the Silver Gavel for exposing the failures of Louisiana's detention system after Hurricane Katrina. He was the first recipient of the American Judges' Association American Gavel Award for his work on U.S. courts and the American justice system. And at age 25, Shapiro won the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize for an investigation of methamphetamine use and HIV transmission.

An occasional singer, Shapiro makes frequent guest appearances with the "little orchestra" Pink Martini, whose recent albums feature several of his contributions, in multiple languages. Since his debut at the Hollywood Bowl in 2009, Shapiro has performed live at many of the world's most storied venues, including Carnegie Hall in New York, The Royal Albert Hall in London and L'Olympia in Paris. In 2019 he created the show "Och and Oy" with Tony Award winner Alan Cumming, and they continue to tour the country with it.

Shapiro was born in Fargo, North Dakota, and grew up in Portland, Oregon. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale. He began his journalism career as an intern for NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg, who has also occasionally been known to sing in public.

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