Tenor in Whiteface

In the dressing rooms of the Santa Fe Opera last week, the Metropolitan Opera's George Shirley daubed his face with a pinkish cream, molded layers of face putty across his high cheekbones and along his nose. The makeup had nothing to do with his role in the U.S. premiere of Hans Werner Henze's The Stag King. It is a ritual that Shirley, 31, performs before every opera, a mask to disguise one of his real-life characteristics--that he is a Negro.

Atonal Dream. Shirley is far from embarrassed about his race, but he is a tenor, and therein lies the problem. In recent years, Negro basses and baritones have been accepted on the opera stage in large measure because the parts available to them are almost exclusively character roles. Tenors, on the other hand, are nearly always the romantic leads, and despite the increasing liberality of audiences, explains Shirley, "they don't like the lover of a white girl played by a Negro, make-believe or not." Lest this sensitivity detract from the impact of the opera, Shirley dons his whiteface and proceeds as a most cautious paramour, careful of his touch, suggesting rather than executing an embrace.

In The Stag King, a kind of atonal A Midsummer Night's Dream, the night belonged to Shirley, costumed in an oversized crown and half mask. An in stinctively gifted actor, he also displayed a lyrical, handsomely rounded voice, which prompted one Manhattan critic to declare: "Here, at last, is a tenor who might some day aspire to the supreme place still occupied by Richard Tucker." Though Henze's modernist fantasy was received with some eyebrow-raising by the Santa Fe audience, Shirley drew a rousingly enthusiastic ovation.

Out of the Chorus. As with most Negro opera singers, Shirley's vocal talents were developed in the choir loft, initially in St. John's African Methodist Episcopal Church in his native Indianapolis, and later in Detroit, where at 13 he sold papers to pay for his first private lessons. Son of an insurance agent, Shirley graduated from Wayne State University in 1955 with a degree in music education, taught at a Detroit high school for a year before being drafted into the Army. After singing with the Army chorus for three years, he moved to Manhattan, where his rise to prominence was nothing short of meteoric. In 1961 he won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, made his Met debut in Cosi Fan Tutte as a last-minute substitute for an ailing tenor, and was promptly acclaimed the find of the season. In the years since, he has sung leading roles in Madame Butterfly, Simon Boccanegra and La Traviata, next season will portray Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville. "Fifteen years ago," says Shirley, "I probably wouldn't have been accepted by the Met. Ten years ago, I couldn't sing my favorite roles. Times are changing."

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