In a Youtube video, the late great soprano Jessye Norman sits on a spinning camera platform as a film crew captures her powerful performance of Schubert's Erlkönig — the famous ballad of a boy, on horseback with his father, being pursued by a supernatural force, the Erl-King. With her trademark voice, Norman seamlessly sings the parts of all three characters in the epic tale. It's a mesmerizing and memorable piece. For Savannah Gordon '18, it was life changing.  

"She was the first person of color that I saw sing opera," says Gordon, who was a music student at a community college in 2014 when she first saw the inspiring video. "And I was like, I didn't know that we could do this!"

Ten years later, in 2024, Gordon made her Metropolitan Opera House debut, in not one, but two productions: Terence Blanchard's historic Fire Shut Up in My Bones — the first staged opera at the Met by a Black composer — and Orfeo ed Euridice, where she was part of the 100-person chorus that the New York Times described as 'mighty.'

Bowing at the Met is just one of many impressive accomplishments  that Gordon, who graduated from UAlbany with a bachelor's degree in music,  has added to her growing oeuvre that includes productions with the Harlem Opera Theater, Moon River Opera, Romanza Lyric Opera and a role in the world premiere of Omar, an opera written by two-time Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning singer/instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens.

"It's been a fever dream. It's been a surreal moment," says the Clifton Park native, who also sang the national anthem at Gov. Kathy Hochul's inauguration in 2021. Her recent career success, Gordon says, had not been without hardships: The constant and grueling travel to various cities for auditions and the mounting expenses required, having to hold two additional part-time jobs, and the ever-present rejection one faces.

"And that's just something you kind of have to be OK with. Not everyone is going to like you," Gordon says. "It's not even really anything personal if they already have a season lined up and your voice doesn't fit what they have programmed, then you're not go to get the role."  

Fortunately for Gordon, her voice has been the right fit and it's a blessing for which she is humble and recognized can be fleeting.

"Now that I've been [on the Met stage] and I've been in this place, I don't want to leave," says Gordon. For now, she won't have to; she's been invited back to the Met for its 2025 season. Looking at her official Met Opera ID card, Gordon is giddy about the legacy that she is part of: "I'm singing on the same stage that Jessye Norman has sang on and Shirley Verrett and Leotyne Price and Grace Bumbry and just all these fantastic Black voices have been on this stage and it is mind-blowing!"

Listen to Savannah perform and check out other alumni working in the music industry in our UAlbany Magazine Music Mini!

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