HGO Spotlight on: HGO Chorister Wes Landry

Houston Grand Opera chorister Wes Landry laughs when asked what he does in his free time. For Wes, performing is both a profession and a passion—he even found a husband among his fellow HGO baritones. Music permeates his life. When he isn’t participating in productions at HGO, you can find him singing with Houston’s smaller opera companies or teaching voice lessons.

Landry was born in Arkansas and grew up as a self-proclaimed "military brat." He lived in California and Australia, but his formative years were in Omaha, Nebraska. After finishing his undergraduate degree in vocal performance from the University of Nebraska, he left for the University of Houston to hone his craft at the master’s level. Soon after graduating, he had his first big audition with HGO.

Landry is now entering his twentieth season with the company. But driven by his curiosity, his all-encompassing love affair with the art form has only deepened over the years. “Curiosity just begets curiosity,” as he puts it. We caught up with the baritone to talk about his jam-packed recording, performance, teaching, and rehearsal schedules.

How did you know you wanted to pursue a career in music? 

My first endeavor into higher education was at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota for biology, but I was bad at chemistry. I was planning to go into veterinary medicine because I love animals. Yet, my love of theater was still there, even as I pursued my biology degree.  

While in college, I decided that I should audition for The Fantasticks, and I played The Boy. I remember during tech week I was in the theater until midnight on a Thursday night, and I had a chemistry test at 8 a.m. the next morning. I hadn’t studied enough, so I had to choose: to stay up all night and study for this chemistry test or go to sleep and have a voice for the show. You can probably guess which one I picked! I got a 43% on the chemistry test...   

Within about two weeks of that experience, I called some friends from my high school who had gone to the University of Nebraska to become music majors. They immediately said, We told you that you should have been here in the first place! I switched my degree and haven’t looked back.

What drew you to HGO?

When I came and auditioned for the University of Houston in 2003, I saw Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio at HGO. I thought, Man, wouldn't it be cool to sing up there someday?! Little did I know that, two years later, I'd be in my first production at HGO in the chorus of Boris Godunov standing next to Sam Ramey! It was a pretty stellar introduction to the professional opera world. And the rest is history. 

What does it take to prepare for an opera?

It’s a lot of rehearsals. Being a professional musician is 98% rehearsal, and performance is two percent of what you do. It’s a lot of learning music, the language, the rhythms, and how all of those things interplay with one another to create the work of art that we call opera. 

Maestro Richard Bado, HGO's chorus director, is great at leading the chorus in music rehearsals and giving us all the little details of trivia that make it easier to understand. He often says in rehearsal, we are Houston Grand Opera, and part of what makes grand opera so grand is a big chorus. The chorus is its own character in opera, and it's great to be an acting partner to the principal singers. 

In a busy season, we’re here five, six nights a week in the evenings, often rehearsing two completely different shows at the same time. This past spring, the men’s chorus was rehearsing Tannhäuser, which is a big, Wagnerian, 19th-century Romantic epic, and Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves, a gritty 21st-century opera. They had a lot of similar themes, but were told in completely different styles. Coming to work and finding that kind of variety every night is exhilarating and exhausting, but it never fails to keep you on your toes.

What do you do when you’re not rehearsing?  

The chorus is a part-time gig, so I have several part-time jobs. I am a music director at United Methodist Church in the Heights, I teach private voice lessons, and I recently started narrating audiobooks. I’ve got half a dozen or so book titles to my name.  

My husband and I love to hike, which you can’t do much in Houston, so we travel. Every time we go on vacation, he or I wear one of our HGO shirts. And it doesn’t matter where we go, someone will stop us and say, I’ve been to HGO. I saw this show back in the ’80s. I was a principal oboist in the ’90s.  

I also find time to do other roles with other companies, which means I’ve learned nine different operas in the last 12 months. Just this last season, I sang in Rachel Portman's The Little Prince at Opera in the Heights. I also sang with HOPERA, which is a brand-new company that does opera at local breweries and community centers around town. It was started by one of my good friends, Megan Berti, who’s also in the HGO chorus.  

She and I were a two-person team with a string quartet for the Houston premiere of Laura Kaminsky's As One, a transgender-themed opera that’s gained a lot of traction in the community. And then these past two summers, I’ve taken one of the principal roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston’s productions of Ruddigore and Iolanthe.

How did you and your husband Matthew Neumann meet? 

It was a chorus love story. It was during Rigoletto in 2009. We are both baritones, so we were seated right next to each other. It was Matthew’s first production and my fourth or fifth season. I just remember there being sparks right away. We often tease Maestro Bado about being a matchmaker because there are a dozen couples in the chorus who have gotten married. We just celebrated our three-year wedding anniversary, and 15 years of being together.

What word best describes you? 

I would say curious. One of the great things about being a musician—and an artist in general—is there’s always something different to find and spark your curiosity. Curiosity just begets curiosity. I’ve done so many productions here at HGO that I would have never sought out on my own, just from a listening standpoint. But some of those have become my favorite shows. That’s just opened the door to finding more things—not only in the music world, but also in the art world. It just keeps you curious.

For more of the HGO Spotlight Series check out: HGO Spotlight on: Associate Director of Community and Learning Kiana Day Williams