Mezzo-soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen has graced the stages of major opera houses across North America and Europe. Her musical path started at Boston University where she studied violin performance as an undergraduate, but her love of singing and encouragement from her voice teacher led her to their Master’s program in Opera.
Recently, nelsen has embraced a new role off stage as a prominent advocate for arts equity. Alongside her musical pursuits, she serves as President of the Asian Opera Alliance, which she co-founded in 2021, and as Artistic Advisor at the Boston Lyric Opera where she has helped to rework Madama Butterfly to address issues of Asian stereotypes and cultural appropriation.
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Have you always been drawn to
music? When did you know you wanted to become an opera singer?
When I was in 3rd grade, my parents asked me if I wanted to play an
instrument and I answered “Yes! I want to play the violin!” I added
flute to the mix in 4th grade where I began playing in marching band
and in high school, I added choir to my life.
When I graduated from
high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do for my career, but I
did know I wanted to move away from Southern California, where I
grew up. I went to Boston University where I studied violin and
psychology. While I was in college, a philanthropist from my
hometown gave me a small scholarship to use toward voice lessons.
She had heard me sing a solo in my high school choir and thought I
should explore my voice.
After undergrad, still not knowing what I wanted to be “when I grew
up”, I applied to grad schools to study psychology, thinking I would
study how to help people with performance anxiety. My voice teacher
kept telling me I should apply for a master’s degree in opera, but I
didn’t think that was what I wanted to do for my career.
Finally after months of pressure, I auditioned for Boston University
and much to my surprise, I got in, with a pretty hefty scholarship.
I figured I’d give it a shot, thinking I could always go back and
study psychology, but I might never get another chance to study
voice. I deferred my acceptance to the psychology program and
quickly started my path toward opera.
I’d love to say I never looked back, but that’s not completely true.
There have been many days that have been really difficult to be an
opera singer, but the good has always outweighed the bad. And
getting to be on stage sharing my gift while emotionally moving
thousands of people at every performance is pure magic to me.
What has been your favorite role to date and why?
I have different favorite roles and reasons behind why they are
favorites. I have performed Suzuki in Madama Butterfly
close to 200 times. She has been my best friend in my career. I
found out I was pregnant with my first son (Rhys) while singing her,
traveled the world with her, and made my career because of her. I
even got to perform with Rhys playing the child while singing her.
Getting to perform with him is my absolute favorite experience on
stage to date.
I also often perform an opera called An American Dream in which
the aria I sing was written for me after the librettist interviewed
my grandma about her experiences as a Japanese American incarcerated
during WWII. Even though my grandma is no longer with us, I get to
share a part of her every time I perform the opera.
I am performing my very first Carmen this fall. This is exciting,
because it’s my first time singing the title character. Having the
whole show ride heavily on my shoulders is a lot of pressure, but
it’s also really exciting to think that I get that opportunity.
All in all, I just love performing. Every time I’m on stage, I think
about how lucky I am to get to do what I do with my life. My
favorite moment on stage comes at the end of an opera. There is
usually a moment of silence before people start applauding. The
tension in that silence is deafening, and it’s one of the most
incredible experiences.
In the TIME documentary Beyond Butterfly you
stated that when you posted on social media about only receiving
Asian roles, non-Asian offers came in. The next season, however,
it went back to only Asian roles. Why do you think that was and
have things changed since?
Often I think the work being done to diversify the arts is
performative. And I think this has often been the case for Asians,
post Anti-Asian hate. When I started the Asian Opera Alliance in 2021, we
started to make some noise in our industry. People took notice and
tried to quickly right the wrongs. But systemic racism is built so
that the system resets unless we have enough people disrupting the
system long enough to create lasting change.
Right now, we are in a time where a lot of “quick fixes” have been
made, but lasting change has not yet happened. I honestly believe
that the work I do, although it will benefit my career a little,
will not actually be realized until a generation from now. And this
is okay. It feels really great knowing that what I get to do is open
the door so that many others can follow behind me.
Can you tell us about the Asian Opera Alliance, which you
co-founded in 2021, and the kind of work you do with them?
After looking at my career and realizing I had almost exclusively
performed Asian-identifying roles during the past decade, a
colleague of mine encouraged me to start speaking up about the
pigeonholing happening in our industry. She asked me “do you realize
that pigeonholing is a form of racism?” And honestly, I had never
before thought about it that way. It was then the Asian Opera
Alliance was founded. We immediately sent a “call for change”
email to all general directors of American opera companies. In
it we introduced ourselves to the industry as a resource and stated:
We have identified
several points of intervention – items that we can address together
to combat institutional racism, tokenization, and the dearth of
Asian representation within the opera industry.
1. Cast us. Strive for better representation by
hiring Asians for both Asian and non-Asian-specified roles of all
sizes onstage. Normalize and value our role as interpreters of both
edgy new works, and the operatic canon. Until we regularly become a
part of your seasons, performing in roles of all sizes, we will be
relegated as “other."
2. Include us. Normalize seeing Asian people at
every level of production. Administrative and artistic positions.
Seek out Asian donors and board members. Invite us into your DEI
initiatives.
3. Pursue us. Dedicate resources seeking out Asian
talent and mounting new and contemporary works that uplift Asian
composers, stories, and voices, or that reimagine established works.
4. Consult us. Madama Butterfly, for
example, is the quintessential example of an operatic masterwork
that perpetuates harmful stereotypes; however, as the opera world
grapples with issues related to racial justice and anti-Asian hate,
the solution cannot be to excise Madama Butterfly from our
repertoires. In effect, this eradicates two of the few starring
roles for Asian women, roles that in the past have gone to non-Asian
women in yellowface. When you produce Butterfly, we recommend
identity-conscious hiring practices: hire Asian singers, creatives,
educators, etc., to bring this masterpiece to life with the care it
deserves. Companies must also be aware, though, that hiring Asian
singers to portray Asian-specified characters can lead to
pigeon-holing and tokenization. The best way to circumvent this is
to make a conscious decision to cast the same artists for
non-Asian-specified roles in future seasons.
Since then, we have consulted with many
companies. We’ve also started researching and reporting industry
demographics, we reported casting demographics over the past two
seasons through social media, and just completed a "pipeline study”
looking at the demographics of top university/conservatory programs.
In addition to that study, we interviewed professional opera
companies, asking them to share what they consider when casting, and
who makes casting decisions.
We firmly believe if we are talking about diversity, we must have
numbers to track our progress. Our aim is to serve as a resource to
our industry and help in any way we are needed.
Boston Lyric Opera’s The Butterfly Process worked to fix the
problematic parts of Puccini's Madama Butterfly by
reclaiming the narrative and having it led by Asian and Asian
American artists. What was that process like and do you think it
can be easily applied to other productions?
Boston
Lyric Opera is a company creating lasting change with the work
we are doing. There have been few other companies who have invested
the time and resources into a project like The Butterfly Process, then
taken the findings and put them on stage.
Madama
Butterfly will never be completely free of problems.
But most operas are a bit problematic. Butterfly is a
divisive opera in the Asian American community. Some people think it
should never be performed again, but many of us also think it would
be a horrible loss to never again experience Puccini’s glorious
score.
So what BLO has done is not just talked about the problem, we’ve
worked to create a way forward for the opera. Phil Chan, our
director, brilliantly asks the question “what else could it be?” We
really look at this experience as an opportunity to make the opera
appeal to a wider variety of people in the multiracial society in
which we live. We are an American opera company telling an Asian
American story based in fact, rather than the traditional
Orientalist fantasy we often see on stage.
I think what we’ve done in Boston CAN be applied to other
productions, but it is not easy. What we’re doing takes a lot of
time, resources and creativity. Resources are scarce in our
industry. Companies are often looking for the cheapest way to
produce opera – because opera is extremely expensive to produce. If
we’re lucky, our ticket sales cover about 25% of what it costs to
put an opera on stage. We also don’t get a lot of funding from the
government, which means that the majority of our funding comes from
individual donors. I think if we’re able to get new donors with
like-minded views on board to help fund reimagined problematic
works, there is a lot of opportunity for our industry to ask the
question “what else could it be?"
Is there a childhood memory that
shaped who you are today?
I don’t think there’s any one specific memory that I can say shaped
who I am today. I would say that where and how I was raised is the
biggest contributing factor to who I am as an adult. I grew up in
the mountains overlooking Santa Barbara, California. My mom is an
artist and my dad was a teacher. We spent lots of time outdoors,
playing at the beach and finding ways to think creatively. My
parents raised us to think independently, be kind, and work hard. I
spent a lot of time with the Japanese American side of my family,
and through my grandparents I was taught about resilience.
Resilience, hard work, kindness and independence are all a huge part
of who I am today.
Any advice for those wanting to follow in your footsteps?
I often tell young singers it’s important to learn honest and
respectful ways of communication. We are independent contractors and
never know where our next job will be. We always have to be thinking
about how anything and everything we say will possibly influence our
careers.
It’s crucial to know how to respectfully speak up in uncomfortable
situations. I also think it’s really important to know as much as
you possibly can about our industry. As singers, we are often just
taught about singing, acting and languages. But an understanding of
the business as a whole is invaluable. Learn about marketing,
budgeting and management. Talk to union reps, stage hands and
production managers. The better we know the business, the more we
are able to contribute to it.
Most importantly, learn how to ask for help when you don’t know
something. So much of what I do in my advocacy work comes from my
ability to ask others for their advice. It is okay to not know
something. In fact, asking others for input and advice is what gives
us the ability to see different viewpoints and expand our own
thinking.
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Performances of Boston Lyric Opera's Madama Butterfly start September 14 and run through September 24. Limited tickets are still available.
