Houston Grand Opera’s ‘Giving Voice’ gives platform for Black opera singers By Chris Gray, Correspondent Appearing in Houston Grand Opera’s production of “The Pearl Fishers” in early 2019, Lawrence Brownlee looked around him and experienced something of a revelation. “The cast was so beautifully diverse, and I just thought, ‘Wow, this is great,’ recalls the Ohio-born singer. “Houston Grand Opera has a longstanding tradition of doing color-blind casting anyway, and so to see that they were continuing that idea was something that spoke to me.” Brownlee is, simply put, one of the world’s leading operatic tenors. For HGO, he’s appeared in six productions since 2007, also including Mozart’s “The Abduction From the Seraglio” as well as Rossini’s “The Italian Girl in Algiers” and “The Barber of Seville.” Hoping to cultivate the same kind of diversity in the audience that he saw onstage, he used his connections with the company to help organize a concert titled “Giving Voice: Lawrence Brownlee and Friends Sing Opera, Gospel, and Standards.”