Opera Singer

He stopped his singing career for about a decade after listening to criticism about his body weight. A random performance gave him the confidence to return to his passion.

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Limmie Pulliam was born into a family where music played an important role. His father was a church pastor; his mother was a homemaker. At the church, songs were frequently sung during each religious service, by the choir and by the parishioners.

CHILDHOOD INTERESTS PREVIEW ADULT CAREER

As a child, LP sang in the church’s youth choir. “It was my introduction to how my voice affected people.” But another early, personal characteristic would also make a significant impact on his eventual adult career: LP was a (very) big child who grew into a (very) big adult. Some might say: ‘obese.” 

Editor – Picture the largest lineman in the National Football League; then add even more weight to your mental image. No NFL player has ever played while the same size as LP. But weight, at least for LP, has not interfered with either his voice or ability to move around a stage to perform as a singer / actor during a several hour show. 

EDUCATION COORDINATED WITH TALENT FOR SINGING

LP’s first exposure to classical music was in the middle school choir, where he sang and was classified as a bass. “I didn’t have the technical know-how to access my upper range, but it was there,” LP recalls. Confirmed, no doubt, by his imitations of pop singer Steve Wonder, to the amused appreciation of LP’s friends. 

A high school choir director was the first to correctly identify LP’s voice part and point him to opera, specifically to “Una Furtiva Lagrima,” from Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amour, with which the young singer won a Missouri state singing competition, which was enough to land LP a spot at Oberlin College and implant with himself, the motion of a career in music. 

UPON STARTING HIS CAREER, AN IMMEDIATE CHALLENGE – BODY SHAMING

Soon after starting his career path as an opera singer, LP became disheartened at rejection after rejection for classical singing roles. LP concluded that there were so many requirements heaped on artists to not only sound good, but also look a certain way – i.e. not significantly overweight as defined by music critics directors with the authority and discretion for who they hired to sing. 

Early on, LP vowed to himself that if he was not having fun as a singer, he would quit and find another career. After so many rejections, he quit his first career path as an operatic singer. 

ONE INDUSTRY’S NEGATIVE (IMPOSING PHYSICAL SIZE) MAY BE ANOTHER INDUSTRY’S POSITIVE

Since LP needed to earn money to pay for his basic living expenses, he found a job making telephone calls to debtors on behalf of a debt collection agency. Said LP, “I was not one of those who would call and berate the customers. I was very nice and basically just called and had a conversation with people the way I wished those who called me about my unpaid bills would have done.” 

During the first part of his singing career, LP met a concert producer, to whom LP mentioned his need to find work outside the music industry. LP’s imposing physical size was a benefit: the producer envisioned LP in a security role, appearing as a potential menace to potentially mischievous patrons. With no alternative employment options pending, LP accepted the job offer as a security guard, thus continuing to avoid seeking singing roles and what he assumed would be continuing rejections.

After several years of employment within the security service industry, LP decided that he had learned all he needed to know about the security business – at least enough to start his own security business for which he already had contacts within the music concert industry, to commence his self-employment with an early stable of clients to manage their security personally and for special events.  

RANDOM OPPORTUNITY REKINDLES INTEREST IN HIS FIRST CAREER

After taking a leave of absence from the security firm he had created, to accept a position of field organizer with the Missouri leg of then Senator Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, LP was coordinating some political events. For one political rally, the local beauty queen had been scheduled to sing the national anthem. But at the last minute, she was too nervous to appear, so LP’s supervisor said to him, “I remember on your resume that you used to sing opera. We need you to sing the anthem!” 

At first, LP hesitated to sing the national anthem. It’s not an easy song to sing, it had been a decade since he had sung for an audience, and he didn’t what to embarrass himself with a less than excellent performance. But his boss insisted, and LP was soon pleased to realize that while singing the anthem, he began to notice changes in his voice; it had gained a “certain warmth. It had matured. And it had taken on a much more burnished, darker quality that I felt really kind of set me apart from anyone that I was hearing in the industry at that time.” 

So, once his political job ended with the election completed, LP began to work privately on his own, nurturing and trying to build “this voice with the help, luckily, of videotapes from lessons I had saved from my high-quality music performance training at Oberlin College.” 

Encouraged by self-assessing his progress, LP entered the National Opera Association’s vocal competition, which he won. That started him back on his original path to operatic singing. 

Through social media, a tool LP had mastered while working within the recent political campaign, LP was able to get his name and voice on the radar of far more presenting groups than ever before. Indeed, it was on YouTube that LP was discovered singing Otello with the Livermore Valley Opera.

LP also discovered that he wasn’t always the only person of color on stage anymore. Noting that there is still much room for improvement in the hiring of Black opera singers for lead roles, LP believes that equity in classical music is markedly better than it was in the mid-1990s. Not only are there more young artists of color, there’s also an older generation of mentors. 

DEALING WITH PERSONAL STRESS TO CONTINUE HIS RESUMED CAREER

While now being offered leading opera singing roles, LP has had to cope with tragedies within his family. First, his father died, which was followed immediately by his debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, singing “Otello.” Then his eldest sister died, which happened just before his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. 

Said LP about balancing his career with family concerns, “I’ve tried not to put more stress on myself than necessary. I know that I’ve done the work to be prepared to sing my opera roles. I am pretty good at compartmentalizing once I’m on stage, but it’s in those moments afterwards where those thoughts might creep in. With my Met debut, I was able to push those thoughts back until it came time for the curtain call at the end of my performance. I began to think about the importance of this moment and how much it would have meant to my dad; how much it would have meant to my sister. As artists do, we constantly allow ourselves to be vulnerable in front of our audiences. So that night, I dissolved into tears. Later, my brother told me that I would have made dad and sis very proud.”

CAREER SATISFACTION

LP’s advice to others: “If you have a dream of achieving something – go for it. In the going, be persistent. Be consistent. And do the necessary work. My mantra has become: if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. You never know when that phone call may come, whether it’s a performance or an offer for a particular role or any other type of job opportunity. But do the work to be prepared when that call comes.”

This career story is based upon multiple sources including news reports: a published interview by Scott Simon, a host on NPR (National Public Radio); also, an article written by Javier Hernandez, published within the NYTimes on 1/24/23 plus internet research.