Davóne Tines didn’t grow up dreaming of opera houses. He grew up singing in a Black Baptist church in rural Northern Virginia, where music was communal, purposeful and alive. Today, the Harvard-educated, Juilliard-trained bass-baritone is reshaping what it means to be a classical artist, infusing opera with gospel fire, R&B soul and stories that center Black humanity. Currently performing in Detroit Opera’s “Highways and Valleys,” Tines has become one of the most compelling voices challenging classical music’s predominantly white traditions. From portraying Malcolm X to reimagining the national anthem, he’s proving that opera can be a platform for resistance, joy and unfiltered Black expression.
You grew up singing in the Black Baptist Church. What drew you to opera specifically?
I loved music ever since I was little. I grew up singing in the Black Baptist Church in rural Northern Virginia, took piano lessons and played violin. My grandfather realized in high school that I had a unique singing voice. Singing was something everybody did, so I didn’t think it was special, at least in my family and church family. But one day he was playing around singing opera, and I answered back in a full voice. He said, “Oh my gosh, you have something unique, and you need to pursue that.” I’d never thought before that singing was something I could work on and hone in a particular way. So I joined the school choir, auditioned for musicals, kept getting the lead. I kind of took that as a sign to pursue it. I realized that people responded when I sang, and it felt like they listened to what I had to say. I went on a longer journey of saying, well, maybe if I come up with some important things to say, or necessary things to say, this is how I could express it.
But you went to Harvard instead of conservatory. Why?
My family wanted me to go to a college that led to a job, like a desk job. So I ended up studying sociology at Harvard because I wanted to understand why people created and propagated the arts. I thought I would become an arts administrator, and I did that for a while. I was an associate producer for the American Repertory Theater, worked for a national educational nonprofit, led a small painting school. But the head of an opera company, a Black mezzo-soprano named Patricia Miller, told me, “You should really give this a real try.” She prepped me for auditions. I auditioned for Yale because the program was free. I auditioned for Juilliard because, why not? I got into Juilliard and took that as a sign to pursue this further.
Who were your early influences in opera?
As I delved more into the opera and classical world, I came to meet these people. I came to understand Paul Robeson, Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman. But these weren’t the figures at the forefront of my mind initially. I realized that I’d found my ancestors, that I have found the people that I’m in lineage of. But it all started with my initial curiosity. I wasn’t doing it to say, “Oh, I see that person, I want to be that person.” I said, “I want to say something about society and history and how it exists, and I know this is the platform I can use to do it.” In that searching, I found the people, especially the Black ancestors who have been doing that work all along. But I had to find those people because classical institutions don’t necessarily invite you into the stories of people that are more in my own lineage. Those people were kind of hidden figures from the general public, so only looking in the nooks and crannies of that world was I able to say, “Oh my gosh, we’ve been in this history for a long time.”
You portrayed Malcolm X in 2022 at Detroit Opera. What did that role demand of you?
It demanded a lot. Malcolm X is such an important figure in the world, in Black history, in various sectors of religious history. He deserves a certain respect and groundedness in telling his story because he was a person of very clear convictions. To portray that in an operatic sense, bringing it to the scale of storytelling that opera has, I felt a responsibility to do that as earnestly and honestly as possible. Aside from learning Anthony Davis’ incredible score—about two hours and 40 minutes of singing, on stage almost the entire time—I wanted there to be more ideological or spiritual preparation. I know Malcolm X is so important in Detroit. I didn’t want to just seem like some person who was coming in to do this role and act like I know who this person was. So about two years ahead of singing Malcolm X, I became the first-ever artist in residence for Detroit Opera. I made that residency about visiting Detroit every six to eight weeks for about a week at a time. I really got to know this place. I went around with Arthur White, an incredible man who does community outreach. We went to churches every single Sunday, sang for different churches, got to know different church communities. I also really wanted to focus on getting to know the broader Black entrepreneurial and arts community here. Malcolm X was a grassroots effort leader. He really ingratiated himself into and wanted to exemplify the communities that he was connected to and came from. So for my own preparation, I needed to become a community connector in my own right. We sold out every single show, one of the only shows they’ve sold out in recent history. That kind of deep footwork paid off beautifully.
How has gospel and Black musical traditions informed your approach to opera?
Completely. Aside from being the foundation, the first place I started singing, I always call back to the idea that my first musical experiences were communal. It wasn’t about being the soloist, it wasn’t about being front and center. It was about being a part of a group. Having my church family and even my family all involved in the choir meant that music-making was for a reason. We sang certain songs for expressions of joy, we sang for expressions of loss, we sang for certain commemorations or certain ceremonies and rituals within the community. That carried me through a lot of my classical training because often in the Western classical tradition, largely the white institutional tradition, the reason for why you’re singing is not always clear. It’s not always expressed that we do this for a reason. Music is some sort of expression of our lives, of our emotions. I think often music can go undervalued, at least in the classical realm, because nobody is saying why you should care about it. My music-making has been understood as being somewhat personal and with a certain intensity. It’s because I could transfer that learning within Black musical tradition of saying, if I’m singing a song, even if it’s in Italian, even if it’s from some other repertoire, I’m gonna mean these notes. I’m gonna actually say this was for a reason, and this is why you should care. There’s no music-making for me that isn’t without a clear invitation for somebody to connect emotionally.
Tell us about “Highway 1, USA” and “Down in the Valley,” which you’re performing now in Detroit.
Together these two operas make a double bill called “Highways and Valleys.” I love that these stories are about normal people in America. They’re American stories, they’re in English, the music is very tuneful, and it’s all set in the 1950s, ’60s era. It’s about family dynamics, falling in love, trying to decide you want to go one direction with somebody as opposed to another, or just how you deal with your own family members. Both operas feature Black women characters that really are the moral compass. The entire principal cast is Black. The composers are William Grant Still, who is Black, and Kurt Weill, a Jewish man who moved to America because of persecution and also understands a bit about struggle. I just love that it’s not about our Black oppression. It’s not about the degradation of the larger throes of this country, even though that is ever-present. It’s nice to just say, we can be people. We can just be on stage as our full, loving selves and have family interactions. We don’t always have to have our art necessarily say, “White people have done this,” or “This country has been wrong.” It is important to address that. I make all kinds of things that address that, but it’s really nice to be in a situation that just says, we’re gonna talk about our own stuff, our own family ideals and values.
Why is it critical for opera companies to center Black American love stories?
The operatic stage is very unique because of its scale. It’s big. Opera brings together so many things to tell a story: dance, the largeness of an orchestra. The Detroit Opera House has the largest proscenium stage in Michigan. It’s all about taking a story and giving it as much resource and largeness as possible to tell it. So this show is saying the ideas of Black humanity and the ideals of Black love deserve that scale of storytelling and honor. We deserve to be seen for our humanity, for our day-to-day existence. It doesn’t always have to be summed up from the perspective of the white gaze, which can particularly be about oppression and trauma. We are all much more than that, and we are allowed to joy in that and celebrate it.
How did your time as artist in residence shape you?
It showed me that there is a special spirit to this city. It also showed me that Blackness can be at the forefront within a city environment in terms of the leadership, in terms of the arts, in terms of the driving energy in the entire place. I’ve had the blessing and privilege of traveling around the world many times over, but not very often, or maybe never, do you see a place that is so entrenched in its Blackness. You can’t go anywhere without understanding that this city has a tie to our own special idea of cultural life and cultural progression. It also welcomed me. I felt very welcome in all the contexts I’ve stepped into, whether it’s different kinds of churches or different kinds of social communities. Even going to social gatherings recently, it’s just like, oh, there’s only Black folk in the room. And it wasn’t even promoted as a Black event. That’s just truly what’s going on. Where else does that happen? Detroit.
You’ve been described as changing what it means to be a classical singer. How do you see opera evolving?
With my own personal journey, as I’ve gained more credibility to create my own projects, I’ve gone through the process of finding the different things that I connect to in terms of musical genres, in terms of styles of singing—things that being in the predominantly white Western classical tradition had asked me to cut off from myself. They’re like, “Oh, you can’t sing in a gospel style. Oh, you can’t really bend that song with an R&B riff.” And later, in the past years of my life, I’m like, no, I can. I can gospelify that. I can say that this R&B song is just as important as this Italian aria. Bringing all the things back to myself that this larger culture has told me I can’t be a part of, and I’ve brought that into the creations that I make. I just performed a piece called “Recital No. 1: Mass.” It’s a huge orchestral piece, but in the middle of it is “Give Me Jesus.” We sang Bach, we sang Handel, but in the heart of it is a spiritual set to a full orchestra. I think part of my shifting what classical music might be up to is just saying many, many different things are allowed to have the respect that this context has the resources to offer.
How do you engage younger generations, especially from Black and Brown communities, with opera?
You have to make the idea of the story very, very clear. The thing that has shot classical music in the foot is that it has said, “This Beethoven symphony is great, and you should come and see it because it’s great,” and it never did the work to explain why. I think the loss is, it hasn’t even explained to its own people and its own supporters why it’s great. So as we get older and there’s other types of media, especially Black popular music, which is the foundation of everything that is popular in this world in a certain respect, people go elsewhere because you haven’t actually defended why it’s necessary to love this thing. In terms of welcoming younger audiences, audiences of different backgrounds to opera, you have to say, “This is why this thing is gonna change you. This is why this is important for you emotionally, or this is why we are doing this to reach you.” You have to make it as inviting as all the other things that people are being invited to. That’s the ongoing work of the classical musical institution: to say, we are actually in service of you, and we’re going to put things on and talk about things in the ways that you communicate, in the ways that you want to hear and care to be engaged, not just assume that we are great and you have to come over here.
Tell us about your album “Robeson” and your band The Truth.
Paul Robeson has been a figure I’ve been trying to contend with for a while. When I was a younger bass-baritone, people would say, “You sound like Paul Robeson. Do you sing ‘Old Man River’?” And I was like, I don’t know who Paul Robeson is, and that song seems kind of like a coon song. Later in life, I got curious. I found that Robeson is one of the most incredible figures that has existed in American history. He was a singer, an actor in Europe and on Broadway, also an NFL player while in law school, while being a top athlete in multiple sports at the same time. Can you imagine being in the NFL and going to law school? This man was crazy and amazing. He used his singing platform to fight for rights and freedom for working-class people. I grew a great respect for him by learning more about his biography. I also began to identify with him because he was someone who was persecuted, who was attacked for his beliefs, who was pushed down. Everybody has some experience of people not understanding what they’re doing. I’ve definitely had those experiences, and so I connected with him on that level. This album is about me telling his biography but also saying how our stories can map onto each other, or how I understand his experience through my own lived experience. I formed the band The Truth with two musicians I love: Kari, a bass player and experimental R&B producer, and John Bitoy, a young rock prodigy who now runs a jazz club in Chicago. In this album, we wanted it to only be songs that Paul Robeson sang, but we wanted to bring them into our current era. Some of them have 808s from hip-hop content, some of them are funk and soul.
What’s next for you?
In January, I start a 10-city tour of a program called “What Is Your Hand in This?” It’s kind of how I feel about America at 250. It’s saying there’s been a history of musical resistance in America, and how are you a part of carrying that forward so we can get to where we think we want to be? That’ll tour up and down the East and West coasts, kicking it off in Washington and Carnegie Hall. Then I’m gonna be in Paris for two months, singing a new work with the Paris Opera at the Palais Garnier. Then premiering some new works with the New York Philharmonic. That is the first three months.
Where can people find you?
My Instagram is @alsoanoperasinger. I post most everything on my Instagram. You can get to my website that way. I always look at DMs, so if you want to know anything, you can reach out to me.