Doubling Down on a Life of Meaning | Juilliard Commencement 2019

American soprano Camille Zamora, alumna and co-founder of Sing For Hope, gave the commencement address at Juilliard's 114th Commencement on Friday, May 24, 2019, witnessed by a capacity audience of Juilliard graduates, family, and friends in Alice Tully Hall and viewed via live stream across the country. An edited version of her speech follows, and you can watch the video here.

Chairman Kovner, President Woetzel, President Emeritus Polisi, Provost and Dean Guzelimian, distinguished honorees, esteemed board of trustees, renowned faculty and staff, dear friends, fabulously devoted family members, and brilliant, resilient, amazing Juilliard class of 2019:

What a joy to be here to celebrate your commencement ceremony! I am giddy and grateful to be able to add my voice to your impassioned cheering section of friends and family, and fans near and far. That dazzling phrase of just a few years ago—you got into Juilliard!— now meets its beautiful counterpart: You got out of Juilliard! You did it! You’re graduating! Congratulations! What an accomplishment.

And this day is made even more glorious by the fact that it’s co-owned by so many people in your life who have walked, stumbled, and leapt with you along the way: your family, your friends, your mentors, your scene partners, your creative investors, your co-conspirators, your besties, your muses—all of these forces are gathered around you on this bright morning to recognize your great accomplishment. The concentric circles of your talent and the ripple effects of the work you’ve put in here resonate this morning far beyond Lincoln Center.

I was fortunate to be a student here from 2000 until 2004, first for my master's degree and then for my Artist Diploma in opera studies. When President Woetzel asked me to give this year’s commencement speech, my first thought was that it feels like just yesterday that I was making a running dive into the elevator to get to Ms. Cox’s ear training class on time. And I still occasionally have that recurring dream, as fresh now as it was in my first semester, that I’m back onstage at Peter Jay Sharp Theater singing the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, a role I was lucky enough to sing here for the first time. In my dream, the bliss of Mozart’s harmonies are enveloping us, and my colleagues are spinning out these gorgeous lines peppered with DaPonte’s delicious Italian twists and turns and suddenly I realize that I am singing in a language that is totally unrecognizable. And I’m stark naked. The classic anxiety dream. This place gave me one or two of those. But it also gave me the phrase—and the life lesson—in bocca al lupo.

As my Vocal Arts family here will tell you, that’s what we opera singers say to each other when we walk onstage. It’s the Italian equivalent of “break a leg.” In bocca al lupo means literally “into the wolf’s mouth.” There. Go. Feel your heart race, yes, but take that step, take the stage, bring it. In bocca al lupo speaks to the nature of courage, which is not the absence of fear, but rather, acting in the presence of fear. In bocca al lupo says that if something scares you, it’s a sign that it’s worthy of your energies. What this has meant for me, and what you’ll soon find out if you haven’t already, is that in future seasons, when you stand on the great stages of the world, when you present at the United Nations, when you face a classroom of third graders—you won’t be daunted. You’ll know that you can do it because, here, you brought all of yourself even on all of those days when you had underslept and were overwhelmed. You faced down your toughest scenes and pirouettes and fugues and fioratura passages. And in the practice room, you faced yourself. You have been forged in these flames of legacy and history, and you showed up, and you did it.

I’ve been talking to you in my head for the last couple of weeks, wondering what essential pieces of wit and wisdom I wish I’d heard 15 years ago. As a singer, I’m an interpretive artist, someone who loves to breathe life into other people’s words and melodies. For that reason, I’m deeply comfortable quoting folks wiser than myself. So, here are four quotes tied to four key qualities that you’ll be carrying out with you onto the corner of Broadway and 65th Street later this afternoon.

Quote number 1: “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer: I came to live out loud.” —19th century French novelist and playwright Émile Zola

Now, there’s no way you could have made it to this graduation moment if you weren’t living out loud, boldly, with purpose. And as you’ve likely already seen, when you live out loud, the universe hears you. You may have a crazy idea, like placing hundreds of artist-designed pianos in the streets for anyone and everyone to play, and you will carry it forth because you’ve trained yourself here to dream big and speak loud. This doesn’t mean that every venture you pursue will succeed. In my career as a singer and my work with Sing for Hope, I’ve definitely been shot down more times that I care to count. I’ll never forget the noted philanthropist who explained to me that only someone who doesn’t respect music would put instruments on the street for anyone to play. Your boldness will at times be met with blank stares. But if you stay true to your heart’s mission and keep going, you will find your people, your spiritual board of directors, your personal founders’ circle, and they will share your vision. And what you create with them will be amazing.

Quote number 2: “Art alone can sharpen the moral imagination and turn sorrow into meaning.” —American novelist and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison

Your art helps us make sense of a world that feels increasingly chaotic and uncertain. Of course, the life of an artist isn’t always rosy, and there will be those days when you want to hurl your instrument across the room—always awkward if you’re a singer. Or a dancer. Or a playwright. But fundamentally, you create art because you made a choice a long time ago to double-down on a life of meaning. You’ve made the choice to be vital in the sense of la vida, a life fully lived. As purveyors of live creative art, you’re like the slow food movement, farm-to-table—you harken back centuries in order to point us forward to a more sustainable future. You are the brilliant re-purposers of the endlessly renewable resource called creativity. You are our call to attention, the artisanal weaves of dreams, the beekeeper, the honeymaker, the wake-up call, the restorer of spirit, the generator of hope. There has never been a more important time in history for you and your art.

Quote number 3: “To be an artist, you need the skin of an elephant and the soul of a butterfly.” —Iconic soprano and Juilliard alumna Evelyn Lear

To be strong even as you are vulnerable. That’s power. And that’s what you’ve honed here. The complexities of our art forms are many, but in essence, all great art rests on simple building blocks. For those of us who are singers (and we’re all singers), our work begins and ends with the simplest of elements: breath. Vocalized breath is the first indicator of human life, as any newborn’s cry will tell you, and it connects us all. It’s this deeply connected state that we tap into when we share art, and it’s why you all—as creatives—are quite literally our hope for a unified future. You are the butterfly soul protected by the elephant skin. That is a superpower that you carry out with you today, along with your diploma.

Quote number 4, from another Juilliard alum: “I’m interested in pushing for the role of culture to have an equal place at the table with politics and economics.”—Iconic cellist and changemker Yo-Yo Ma

Enter Citizen Artistry. You all, Juilliard tribe, know this stuff well. Citizen Artistry is a vision in which artistic expression is positioned as a central part of human wholeness and societal harmony. In neighborhoods right outside these doors, in rising economies like Sri Lanka and Mexico, in places like Puerto Rico that are recovering from disaster, and all around the globe, Citizen Artists are helping to build new societies of justice and peace. They’re voicing the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, they are bringing art’s universal language to bear on challenges ranging from refugee crises to education inequality to healthcare. Sing for Hope, fostered here at Juilliard by myself and bestie and fellow soprano and Juilliard grad Monica Yunus, produces creative programming that spans refugee camps in Greece, to classrooms in the South Bronx, to the Sing for Hope Pianos that hit the streets of New York City next week. And in countries around the world, members of our Juilliard family are leading the Citizen Artist charge—because Juilliard’s ethos of excellence acts as a megaphone, a high-frequency resonance. Thinking back on my graduation a decade and a half ago, I had no idea how I would honor my sense of social justice and still sing on the level that I aspired to. I still don’t know that and I don't know so many things, but looking back to my graduation moment, I did do a few things right, and before I close, I want to share those thing with you.

• First of all: This community: you are forever part of it. The people in this room are your team. Your teachers and colleagues here are among the best in the world, and when you leave, they will still be an incredible resource for you—as you will be for them. Stay connected. Stay in touch. Nurture these relationships. Keep creating together.
  
• Secondly: Living boldly and speaking truthfully will expose you to heartbreak. Expect this, and also know that you will heal. In the end, the gain of a fully ventured life is more than worth it.
  
• And last but not least, this: Your unique talent, specific to you alone, has been cultivated to peak form here. This essence, this inspiration (what in Spanish we call duende, what could be called "soul") is completely individual, even as it connects us to something universal in our human experience. It’s your little light, to quote the spiritual that Leontyne Price sang when she was a student here. It’s the creative spark that lives in each person. The beauty and power of your spark is why you were chosen to be here. This light lives with you and you alone, and it can never be taken away. Remember this, because the world needs your light right now, perhaps more than ever. During your time here, your job has been to cultivate your light, to stretch and arpeggiate and amplify it. And now it’s time for you to get out of the way, and let it shine. That’s the hardest work of all, the work for which all other work is but preparation. And it’s the work you were born to do.

Brilliant, resilient, amazing Juilliard Class of 2019: Shine on.

Thank you.