Football star turned opera singer highlights Lyric’s ‘Show Boat’

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Morris Robinson (as Joe) sings Old Man River during the piano run-through of Show Boat Sunday February 5, 2012 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. | TOM CRUZE~Sun-Times

Updated: May 10, 2012 8:51PM

The young woman sitting on my left crossed her arms, grasping herself by the elbows and shuddered, enough to catch my attention. I leaned forward.

“Are you shivering?” I asked.

“Every time — when he takes his voice down an octave,” said Christina Myers, 25, a mezzo-soprano from Jackson, Miss.

“He” is Morris Robinson, bass, former three-time All-American offensive guard for the Citadel, graduate of Boston University’s Opera Institute, and current Joe in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of “Show Boat,” which opens Sunday.

The shiver-producing song was the show’s signature number, “Ol’ Man River,” an ode to weariness and struggle and a life that just keeps rollin’ along. Robinson is a big man — 6-foot-3 and heavily built — and the song rumbles out of him as if issuing forth from the depths of the earth.

“Show Boat” is not actually an opera, which no doubt has some Lyric stalwarts harrumphing in disapproval. But those of us who consider opera to be just about any great music sung by great voices in an opera house, are happy with the stretch.

“At the end of the day, music is music,” agreed Robinson. “I definitely feel like I’m stepping out of the box.”

An important appeal of “Show Boat” is its attraction to the young, he said.

“The people who think this is sacrilege are people who are fading out,” he said, with refreshing candor. “The people who find this attractive are coming in, and we need to encourage that. In common terms, it’s putting butts in the seats.”

During a break, I asked director Fran­cesca Zambello the same question. Why is the Lyric putting on a 1920s musical?

“The subject matter makes it operatic,” she said. “We can argue about the semantics of music until we’re blue in the face. This is what I would call a big story — the emotions, the history, the sweep from the mid 1880s to the mid-1920s. You’ve following one character, Magnolia, yet you see this sweep of American history whirling around her and it parallels her own change and her own tragedies.”

I wanted to talk to Robinson because the world of opera is so intimidating to some — many people can’t even bring themselves to consider going — how was it to come from a football background and not only attend operas, but perform in them?

“I found the leap challenging,” he said. “But I also found in opera the discipline I had coming from the military academy, coming from an athletic background of high achievement, and that of corporate America, that level of discipline, certainly helped the transition. It was never going to be easy to go from being a normal guy to singing in Italian and German.”

“Normal guy” might be erring on the side of modesty. The son and grandson of Baptist ministers, Robinson grew up in Atlanta in a musical family.

“Music has always been part of my life,” he said. “All my sisters sang.”

The other beef about “Show Boat” is that it is racially charged, a notion usually strongest among those who have not actually seen it and assume, from the Mississippi River setting, that it is practically a minstrel show, which it is not. Still, there are black and white choruses, and racial slurs not heard in polite society are hurled on stage.

“Obviously, there’s some racial overtones,” said Robinson. “I have some friends who find it disturbing.”

Oddly, no one brings this up when he performs other roles.

“What’s really funny is when I’m Osmin, in Mozart’s ‘Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail,’ ” said Robinson. “He’s black. He’s a Muslim. All I talk about is hanging people, burning them, skinning them alive. And nobody questions me about playing Osmin.

“Joe is one of the more wise figures in the show,” Robinson added. “He passes on some very cerebral things, a lot of wisdom, and as far as playing this type, I’ve played kings, gods, fathers, high priests, all these roles of dignity and hierarchy. But this role — a ship worker — is artistically challenging. I had to find things I never had to find before. That’s the beauty of it. You have to enjoy the music, realize there’s some history, but step out of all that stuff and realize it’s art.”