Opera has not traditionally insisted on exact physical verisimilitude from performers. It was totally possible for Luciano Pavarotti to make one of the starving young artists from La Boheme a signature role even as he entered ample middle age: As long as he blasted that climactic high C into the rafters, it didn’t matter that he didn’t look much like a guy who couldn’t afford a loaf of bread.

That’s decidedly not the approach the bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green took to play the boxer at the center of the jazz opera Champion, which opened in a new production this week at New York’s Metropolitan Opera (and will be broadcast live in movie theaters on April 29). The show, which was composed by seven-time Grammy winner and longtime Spike Lee collaborator Terence Blanchard, tells the true story of Emile Griffith, a closeted bisexual champion who kills an opponent in the ring.

An early number asks, “Where’d you get that body, man?” It’s a good question. When Green drops for a set of push-ups, his biceps make it clear that he’s been working out even if you’re up in the cheap seats. But Green was not always a fitness nut. In fact, in the early days of the COVID pandemic, he found himself out of work, depressed, and sedentary. Leading Champion is just the latest step in a fitness transformation that started with extremely long walks.

For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and other high performers about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.

GQ: I wanted to start by asking you about the physical demands of opera. If you’ve only seen it in Looney Tunes, it’s hard to translate, right?

Ryan Speedo Green: I had the same Looney Tunes preconception when I was younger. I thought opera was that big Viking lady, with the helmets, breaking mirrors and windows. I was lucky enough that the first opera that I saw was Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera. Carmen is one of the most accessible operas, but it's also one that breaks all the preconceptions of what opera is. Carmen is a sensual, powerful, independent, holds-nothing-back kind of female role. Then you have Escamailo, the toreador, also big personality, and has one of the most iconic arias in all of opera. At the same time it's a lot of dance numbers and rhythm. You can't have someone who's sedentary performing these roles.

I had my first big Escamillo two seasons ago at the Washington National Opera. And when I showed up the first thing they asked me was, “Can you ride a horse”? I was like… “​​I can learn!”

So I had horse lessons for mounting and dismounting off of a horse while singing. It's hard enough to sing in front of 5 or 10 people, right? So imagine singing in front of 2 or 3,000 people, on a horse, with an orchestra, in a super-tight matador costume. It was an experience.

Can I ask you about costumes, because you're six foot four, right? Do you usually have to get things custom made? How does that work?

It depends on the level of the opera house. For any production at the Metropolitan Opera, they have multiple. So for instance I was in a new production of Porgy and Bess. (That one won a Grammy for Best Opera Recording.) In that case, I was the first person to be dressed for the show, so for that they made the original costume based off of me. But then every person who sings any role at the Met has a cover, and I was 330 pounds, so they needed multiples. I say was—I’m not 330 pounds any more.

I want to hear about that.

You know, it was sort of a blessing in disguise when COVID happened. I was living in Europe, working at the Vienna State Opera. I'm married, and my wife was pregnant with her second child. And then a lot of people lost their livelihoods, including myself. And I went into a huge depression because of not being able to perform. Performance is not only a job, it's therapeutic, you know? And my amazing wife, who was studying to get her health and nutritionist certification in Europe, saw me sitting on my butt on the couch, just staring at the wall, told me if you can't work on your voice, if you can't perform and be on stage, then work on something else. Go take a walk.

At the time I think I was like 340-something pounds. But I just took a walk outside. I think it was close to a thousand steps when I started huffing and puffing and turned around. But I started doing this every day because at the time there was literally nothing you could do. You couldn't go anywhere in Austria. So I started taking walks. After a month I was doing 5,000 steps. After three or four months, I was doing 10,000 steps, 10,000 steps turned to 20,000 steps. And then I find myself walking for an hour and a half, two hours, just nowhere, just walking and then walking back, walking until I couldn't walk anymore, and then walking all the way back.

Then I started asking my wife, who always took care of her nutrition and her health, and just never got in the way of what I was doing to myself—I finally sat down with her like please teach me about eating. Teach me about cooking. Let me be your Guinea pig.

As that was happening, the world started coming back to life. The vaccines came out. I ended up coming to the Met to sing one or two shows. But because of the different COVID vaccines and the restrictions at the time, a lot of Eastern European singers couldn't get into the U.S. So I had a lot of opportunities thrown into my feet. I ended up jumping in for three different roles at the Met because I was there and I knew the roles already from being in Europe. I think I performed in something like 19 performances in one month.

Most Popular

GQ RecommendsThese Gym Equipment Sales Will Help Your Crush Your ResolutionsBy Tyler Chin

WellnessWhy It's Time to Embrace Hybrid TrainingBy Tom Ward

WellnessHow to (Actually) Burn Off Belly Fat—and Why It MattersBy Dean Stattmann

That's a lot!

I ended up doing five different shows in three months or something like that. I think I made a huge impression with the opera audience of New York City, as well as the administration at the Met. Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, came to my dressing room and was like, Speedo, are you ready to take on a lead role? If you can sing three roles back to back, I think you can sing one lead role.

Let's go.

He's was like, your charisma? You've earned it. Would you be interested in performing the lead in Terence's opera that we're going to be putting on next season, Champion?

I was like—I'm not a boxer. I'm looking at myself like I don't even know how to hit a fly, how am I supposed to hit a person? But I went home to discuss it with my wife and my manager. I said, this is my opportunity to not only prove to myself what I'm capable of as a performer, but shatter the preconceptions of the audience members. Not only the regular person who may not think a boxing opera can exist, but also the opera lovers—to shatter their preconceptions of what they consider what is opera, who can sing it. My entire career, my entire life, has been about breaking shattering preconceptions.

So I got a gym membership. [Laughs] And in the process of joining the gym I saw that there was a punching bag. I asked the receptionist at the gym: “do you guys have a boxing trainer or classes?” They said, “Yes, we actually have a beginner's boxing class once a week at 6:00 a.m.” My first thought was: 6 a.m.?

Oh no.

I was like: the only time I get up at 6:00 is to hang out with my children.

But I went to my first beginner's boxing class the next week. I met Joseph Witherspoon, who is very good looking and he's probably 160, 150 pounds wet. I was like, okay, how's this guy gonna teach me about boxing? And then I saw him move and shadowbox as he was explaining to us the different punches. And then I thought, if this guy hit me with any of those punches, I would not wake up the next day. I was like, this is the guy I need.

The class was me and five women. Mind you, a lot of these women had been to it multiple times. So they already know how to do the wraps and the combinations and everything.

They’re mean mugging you, like who’s this guy?

You have no idea—no idea. These are tough finance ladies, you know, lawyers, doctors. They're waking up early, and a lot of them have even worked out at 5 a.m. and then came to this class for their second workout.

Early morning workouts in Manhattan are intimidating.

After one or two classes, I mustered up the strength to ask Joseph if he wouldn't mind training me, so he started training me twice a week. I went to his class every Thursday, and he would train me twice a week. He started training me in how to use the gym, because I didn’t even know how to use the gym. So Joseph was my trainer and my wife Irene was my nutritionist.

Most Popular

GQ RecommendsThese Gym Equipment Sales Will Help Your Crush Your ResolutionsBy Tyler Chin

WellnessWhy It's Time to Embrace Hybrid TrainingBy Tom Ward

WellnessHow to (Actually) Burn Off Belly Fat—and Why It MattersBy Dean Stattmann

In the span of a month or so, I lost another 20 pounds—to 275, something like that. His training method became teaching me how to train myself, because I don't live in New York—I live out of my suitcase. Almost every month I’m in a different city, sometimes a different country. I needed to be able to do the workouts myself. So he taught me how to do calisthenics, how to run, how to do interval workouts, how to do kettlebells and free weights when I have a gym.

You know how fancy gym, they have those machines where you stand on it and you hold these things and it can tell you your, like biometric stuff? Currently I’m 246 pounds, with 124 pounds of muscle and 13.5 percent body fat. So that’s 30 more pounds and only 4 pounds of muscle.

Wow.

Me and Terence Blanchard, the composer—we talk a lot about how we want to portray the character. We decided obviously, because I’m 6’4”, to make Emile Griffith a heavyweight rather than a welterweight.

I connected with one of Terence's friends, a former heavyweight champion of the world, whose name is Michael Bentt. He was the heavyweight champion of the world in the 1980s, and when he was the heavyweight champion, he was around 240, 250 pounds at around 6’2”. So in my mind I'm basing my physique on something more like Michael Bentt, like a 1970s or 1980s heavyweight boxer.

But my goal for this opera is also to really encapsulate what it means to be an opera singer, because an opera singer is a kind of athlete, a vocal athlete. A athlete with stamina. Because to be able to phonate at the the decibels we have to phonate at, over an orchestra with no microphone, with just natural amplification? That's not normal.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

More Great Wellness Stories From GQ

The Only 6 Exercises You Need to Get a Six-Pack

You Should Be Doing Hamstring Stretches Every Day—Here’s Why (and 7 To Try)

The Many Stealthy Ways Creatine Boosts Your Health

Flexibility Is a Key to Longevity. Here’s How to Improve Yours, According to Experts

How to Actually Build Muscle When You Work Out

Not a subscriber? Join GQ to receive full access to GQ.com.

Chris Cohen is GQ's Deputy Site Editor. He joined the magazine in 2020, after working as an editor at Saveur, Lucky Peach, and Outside magazine. Chris edits features and runs the Wellness section—and runs marathons, enjoys cooking, and generally tries to practice what he preaches health-wise even when away from... Read moreDeputy Site EditorXInstagramRelated Stories for GQReal Life DietMusicWorking Out