91����

When tenor Tshombe Selby, MM ’22, walks through the doors of the Metropolitan Opera House, no role is too large or too small for him. Whether he’s taking a solo bow on stage or guiding patrons to their seats as an usher, Selby takes pride in the job.

On a summer morning, workers have lowered the massive chandelier that usually shines over the grand staircase and its crimson carpet. Selby, 41, pauses and looks down to see how it’s going.

“People take more pictures with the chandeliers than they take with the stars of the opera,” he notes. “That’s their opportunity to be a part of the Met. So, when I was able to touch every one of those crystals and clean them, I was proud.

“When I was an usher, you didn’t mess up in my area. There’s no talking. You will not have your cell phone out. You’re going to have respect for these people, respect for this house, respect for my section, respect for this art form. The same respect I have wearing my usher uniform is the same respect I have when I put on my costume: This is my opportunity. I’m going to do my job.”

***

Growing up in Manteo, North Carolina, Selby sang in church and in school. He enrolled as an undergraduate at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) with plans to become a high school principal and sing in the choir. School administrators start off in the classroom, so he thought he’d begin his career as a music teacher. At the time, he couldn’t read music.

At ECSU, Selby strengthened his fundamentals and soon mastered an aria for the first time: La donna è mobile, a famous showcase for tenors like Luciano Pavarotti, from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto. It’s well known to American audiences from commercials for products ranging from pasta sauce to Axe body spray.

“I was listening to YouTube, and I heard Pavarotti singing the cadenza,” Selby remembers. “I went back to my teacher, and I was like, ‘I want to try this one.’”

From that time on, Selby chased a dream of becoming an opera singer. He continued to travel back and forth to school after his father suffered a stroke, and when he took time away from classes after his father died, choir director Billy Hines allowed him to continue singing with the group.

He always hoped to make his way to the stage.

“I found my love for grandeur in church,” Selby says. “The choir would march in, that’s very grand. We’re Southern Baptists, so it was a lot of ceremonial things, something you don’t do every day. … And opera is not something you do every day. It’s make-believe, but it’s real lives. It drew me. I didn’t want to do something that everybody could do. So, I wanted to become an opera singer.”

That drive powered Selby through a period when he traveled two hours each way for voice lessons, and eventually took him to an outdoor theatrical production called The Lost Colony, which tells the story of the first attempt at English colonization in America.

Through his work in the cast of The Lost Colony, Selby met opera coaches Carol and Nico Castel, as well as theater director Charles Massey and his brother Bill Massey, an arts administrator. A team of friends and mentors encouraged Selby to go to New York to advance his career and Charles Massey helped him land a position as an usher at the Met in 2013 through a friend.

By 2015, Selby had his debut at Carnegie Hall. He kept improving his craft, performing with the Delaware Valley Opera in the Catskills and Opera NUOVA in Canada.

While working as an usher at the Met, he met Elinor Ross. She was in her late 80s by then, but Ross had once been a powerhouse soprano.

“I befriended her, and she was so kind to me and gave me guidance,” Selby says.

Ross introduced him to Joseph Lawson, then the assistant chorus master at the Met. Lawson turned out to be a longtime friend of Carol Castel and agreed to coach Selby. Soon he had an audition and landed a spot in the chorus of Porgy and Bess.

One day, as he was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike, he received a call from the Met asking if he would like to be in ��ö�ٳٱ����ä��������ܲԲ�, part of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle.

“I said, ‘Oh yeah, I do.’ They said, ‘Well, be at rehearsal tomorrow.’ So, there I went one day from being an usher to being on stage, being in rehearsal at the Met and being a singer,” Selby says.

In one sense, he wasn’t that nervous: He had already spent so many hours in the building. But walking on stage for rehearsal evoked a new feeling.

“My legs were like jelly because I was walking where Pavarotti and Leontyne Price walked,” Selby remembers.

***

Selby’s career was starting to take shape at this point, but he was still searching for intellectual validation. That’s what brought him to the Master of Music in Opera Program at 91����, where he received a Clifford D. Clark Fellowship.

Selby describes Christopher Bartlette, an associate professor of music, as a “theory god” who helped him strengthen his understanding of the technical and historical elements of opera.

“He worked with me and really catered to every student’s strong points,” Selby says. “And then, in their weak points, he would cultivate that so it wouldn’t be so weak anymore.”

Thomas Goodheart, associate professor of voice at 91����, remembers Selby as an exceptionally upbeat student, a hard worker as well as a leader.

“He really had a profound impact on our vocal program in the two years he was here,” Goodheart says. “He was a very positive, very supportive person. That’s also how he was in our lessons and in performing.”

Selby’s time on campus coincided with the pandemic, so he did not have a traditional student experience. Still, he performed with Tri-Cities Opera in The Elixir of Love and did coursework in diction, foreign languages and history in addition to vocal lessons.

Goodheart has worked with other 91���� students who went on to success at opera’s highest levels, notably soprano Caitlin Gotimer ’15 and mezzo-soprano Lindsay Kate Brown, MM ’16. He says it’s not enough for a performer to have a great voice; drive and dedication as well as other qualities can help singers stand out. Selby, he notes, brings a pathos and understanding to his roles and somehow retains a kind of vulnerability on stage.

“Yes, he has a lovely voice, but he expresses everything he has experienced in his life through his singing,” Goodheart says. “That’s not something you learn. That’s something you have in your personality. Listening to him sing is different. You’re drawn to that.”

***

Before Selby had finished his last class at 91����, he returned to the city, where he performed at the Met in two Terence Blanchard operas: Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Champion.

Selby also continued working as an usher, which is where he met Philip Volpe, a master electrician who offered him a job running the opera titles. (Opera titles are like subtitles for a foreign film: They’re projected above the stage and allow the audience to read in English and follow the storyline while performers are singing in another language.)

“That’s how I became a stagehand. I ended up in the titles booth,” Selby says. “And then last season, I needed some more work. So, I also became a spotlight operator.”

Through it all, Selby remains positive. One season, he was in 11 shows; the next he had parts in just three.

“I was running the spotlight, and I had a moment to think,” he remembers. “I said, ‘You know, I’m working the spotlight now that was shining on me.’ And in that moment, you could feel like, ‘Oh, I’ve really downgraded.’ But I’m working.”

Whatever the task, Selby says, he asks questions and stays humble. Just as he spends time reviewing a score for a performance, he has taken rope home to practice tying knots to improve his work as a stagehand.

“People in the Met sometimes call me the mayor, because I’m always around just doing everything,” Selby says. “There is not a job that I won’t try, because work is work. And there’s nothing wrong with making an honest day’s wage.”