Denyce Graves’s Second Act

When the curtain of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House rose for the closing matinee of Porgy and Bess in January, the boos that typically accompany the entrance of the show’s villains were a mere murmur. The nearly 4,000 people who packed the space to capacity—175 of them standing-room ticket holders who remained on their feet for the opera’s three-and-a-half-hour run time—had come to cheer.

Thirty-one years before, Denyce Graves had made her Met debut in the title role of Georges Bizet’s Carmen.