For two decades, baritone Brian Mulligan has performed on many of the world’s great stages, but his heart belongs to San Francisco.
Now, in a full-circle moment, the internationally acclaimed singer returns to make history as one of the featured soloists in San Francisco Opera’s first-ever Pride Concert, set for Friday, June 27, at the War Memorial Opera House.
“San Francisco Opera is unquestionably the most important opera company in my life,” Mulligan, 46, told SF Classical Voice by phone from his native town of Endicott in upstate New York. “They have taken chances on me and given me opportunities that no place else in the world has done. I consider it my home opera company.”
While the baritone snagged his first professional role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2003 when still a student at The Juilliard School, he’s truly come into his own in San Francisco. Since making his debut at the War Memorial in 2008’s La bohème, he’s appeared there nearly two dozen times, singing everything from the title characters in Sweeney Todd and Nixon in China to a series of Wagner roles (mostly recently Telramund in 2023’s Lohengrin).
He is set to return in October to sing the role of Amfortas in a new production of Wagner’s Parsifal.
“I’ve had so many firsts in San Francisco,” he recalled fondly, listing his first major Verdi role as Count Anckarström in 2014’s Un ballo in maschera among them. “It’s incredible to go back and see people, faces who know me and have helped me over the years to deliver performance after performance.”
For the Pride Concert, Mulligan is slated to be joined by a few other San Francisco Opera favorites, mezzo-sopranos Jamie Barton and Nikola Printz, for a program featuring tunes by Harold Arlen and Jerry Herman, among others, as well as operatic fare by Tchaikovsky and Camille Saint-Saëns. Music Director Eun Sun Kim will share conducting duties with Robert Mollicone, while drag queen Sapphira Cristál serves as emcee.
Mulligan spoke to SFCV about Pride and his passion for SF Opera ahead of the upcoming concert. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
On the cusp of the city’s 55th Pride Celebration, SF Opera is presenting its very first Pride Concert. What does that milestone mean to you?
It’s a tremendous honor and something I never imagined — that my sexuality would be celebrated.
There was a long time [when] I felt my sexuality was a liability as an opera singer. Because almost all of the roles I play are straight people, being gay isn’t exactly a good calling card. [But] over the years, I’ve proven myself as an actor. That’s what being an opera singer is all about — portraying somebody else.
You’ve said that one of the reasons you leaned into opera growing up was because you were gay. Could you please elaborate on that?
I started taking voice lessons when I was 17, and at that age, I didn’t know or understand my sexuality. I knew that I was different, and [by] taking a step toward opera, which was also different, I was establishing my otherness — because most people don’t know or understand anything about opera.
Fast-forward a few decades to this upcoming Pride Concert. Among the tunes you’re preparing to sing are “You Take My Breath Away,” Freddie Mercury’s 1976 hit with Queen, as well as the aria “I love you, dear” from Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. Did you make the selections?
I had a hand in choosing the songs, but they were largely suggested by [the company]. They explained that they were trying to highlight gay composers, iconic gay moments in opera and theater.
[As] with any kind of recital program, it’s about the order that you sing the pieces in. I’m starting with the Tchaikovsky; that will be most technically challenging because it’s opera. After that, we’ll move to the standard stuff.
Your 2022 solo CD, Alburnum, features works by Mason Bates, Missy Mazzoli, and Gregory Spears. You’ve also sung in contemporary operas, including John Adams’s Nixon in China. What is your attraction to new music?
I often say to people, “The greatest music may not have been composed yet.”
There’s a lot of phenomenal music that’s been composed, but I have to believe that there’s music that we don’t know about yet.
I really believe that one of the biggest draws for me in performing contemporary music is [that] often, it’s written in English. I communicate best in English because it can [sometimes] be a struggle in other languages. No matter how good I get at German, French, or Italian, I’m most powerful as a communicator in English.
As is the case with most successful opera singers today, your travel schedule is something akin to a rock star’s. In the last few weeks, you were in Leipzig, Germany, before which you made your debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra. Where do you go to rejuvenate, and how do you keep it together on the road?
Because I’m working more than 85 percent of the year, a few years ago I moved back to upstate New York, where my entire immediate and extended family lives — and I actually get to see them. So I come home to the absolute country. It’s quiet. This morning, I opened the windows, and I could hear all of the birds. It’s incredible. I love living here.
I have a small Norwich Terrier, Beauregard, who just turned 7, but he’s still a puppy in many ways. He has a European passport, and he’s been traveling with me everywhere — except Asia or the U.K. — since he was a baby, so he’s completely used to it. I’ve found now that my life is centered around him, and wherever I go, I make sure it’s near a place that’s beautiful where we can walk. … He’s improved my life, and since I need to [rest my voice] when I’m not performing, it’s all silence with him.
Now for that all-important question: What will you wear? Will you be outfitted in total glam gear like Billy Porter or RuPaul?
It’s funny because I was thinking maybe I should wear some kind of glittery, sparkly, crazy Pride thing. But as time went on and I thought about it, Pride is actually more about being yourself and just owning who you are, and who I am is a simple tux kind of guy.
I’m wearing a black tux with pink accessories — a pink tux shirt for part of the show and a pink pocket square.
This story was first published in Datebook in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle.
