Tag: opera Page 4 of 7

Matthew Jocelyn: Interpretation Over Illustration

On November 25, 2019

In classical, Europe, interviews, libretto, opera, production, writing

Oper Köln Hamlet Brett Dean Matthew Jocelyn Germany stage Shakespeare opera music live performance culture

Scene from the 2019 Oper Köln production of Hamlet. Photo: Paul Leclaire

Many people have mixed memories about studying Shakespeare. One of my strongest is coming to the famous tale of the gloomy Dane in high school, and an English teacher expressing shock at being able to spout lengthy scenes from memory. That awe quickly morphed into annoyance when my impatience with what I perceived to be a reductive approach made itself known in a typically boisterous teenaged way. “Would you like to explain this passage then?” my teacher asked testily. I took her up on that offer. Passion for the play would subsequently manifest in numerous essays, reviews, poems, and theatre experiences, including playing the lead myself in an abridged university production that seemed key to my calling as a theatre artist at the time.

Owing to an equal love of opera, it has always been a source of disappointment that I’d never heard a version that satisfied, or, to my mind (and heart), fully expressed Hamlet‘s beautiful, potent mystery – not until, that is, I experienced the work of composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn. Their Hamlet, with its nods to works like Berg’s Wozzeck and Strauss’s Elektra, is as much about the journey of the artist as it is about a gloomy Prince, and captures human connection (familial, romantic, inner) with every ounce of fraught complexity; the awful, awesome beauty of Hamlet‘s humanistic psychology pairing is very much a quiet, palpable force that creates momentum every ounce as much as it inspires contemplation. The theme of vulnerability – Hamlet’s, Ophelia’s Gertrude’s, even that of Claudius –runs through this 2017 work like a trickle of blood on stone. I was (and remain) as much in awe of Jocelyn’s libretto as of Dean’s score; it’s a rare if precious experience to find both exerting such equal power, in such memorable and affecting ways.

Matthew Jocelyn theatre Hamlet director writer artist

Photo: Tony Hauser

Canada-born Jocelyn is a well-known theatre figure in Europe. He’s directed numerous works, including the French-language premieres of Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel (Théâtre de l’Ecrou, Fribourg), The Love of the Nightingale and Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker (both Atelier du Rhin, Colmar), The Liar by Corneille (Stratford Festival), Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Atelier du Rhin) Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter by Tankred Dorst from his own translation, and Heisenberg by Simon Stephens (both Canadian Stage Company), as well as opera productions including Martinù’s Larmes de couteau and Alexandre Bis, Piccinni’s La Cecchina ossia la buona figliola, Boesmans’s Reigen, Gluck’s La Clemenza di Tito, Chabrier’s l’Étoile (all for Opéra National du Rhin), Chausson’s Le Roi Arthus and Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten (for Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Bruxelles), and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (for Oper Frankfurt). He wrote the libretto for La bal by composer Oscar Strasnoy, based on a story by Russian writer Irène Némirovsky; the opera was part of Die Trilogie der Frauen for Staatsoper Hamburg in 2010, which he directed and which also featured Schönberg’s Erwartung and Rihm’s Das Gehege. Jocelyn also wrote the libretto for Requiem, again with Strasnoy, and based on William Faulkner’s 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun; that work was presented in 2014 at Teatro Colón in Strasnoy’s native Argentina.

As well as being known for his directing and writing work, Jocelyn has also worked extensively behind the scenes. In 1995, he joined the Centre de Formation Lyrique of the Opéra National de Paris, where he developed and presented programming of semi-staged operas in the amphitheatre of the Opéra Bastille. In 1998, he became Artistic and General Director of the Atelier du Rhin (Centre Dramatique) in Colmar, a position he would hold for a decade until being named as head of the Canadian Stage Company (2009-2018). In a 2017 interview with theatre writer Robert Cushman, Jocelyn was asked him about the style of theatre he’d hoped to encourage; one which “gives preponderance to the human body as a holder of expression“, he responded, adding that “(d)espite appearances, I’m a classicist.”

That classicist side was given wonderful expression with Hamlet, which had its premiere at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2017, in a production directed by Neil Armfield and conducted by former Glyndebourne head honcho Vladimir Jurowski. At the time, I wrote in my review for the national Canadian newspaper The Star that Jocelyn’s reordering the narrative added a dramatic immediacy; there’s a psychological closeness that was achieved within and through his smart, insightful writing, one that blended seamlessly with Dean’s varied, beautifully complex score.

Scene from the Oper Köln production of Hamlet, 2019. Photo: Paul Leclaire

It’s an integration I suspect has deepened with Jocelyn’s own production of the opera, currently on in Cologne. Together with conductor (and composer) Duncan Ward and the Gurzenich-Orchester Köln , Oper Köln’s production (which opened on November 24th) marks Hamlet‘s German premiere. The cast includes bass Joshua Bloom in the duel role of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father and the Gravedigger, baritone Andrew Schroeder as Claudius, mezzo-soprano Dalia Schaechter as Gertrude, soprano Gloria Rehm as Ophelia, and, in the title role, tenor David Butt Philip, who sang the role of Laertes at the work’s 2017 premiere and has since performed Hamlet as well. Jocelyn and I chatted as he was in the midst of rehearsals just before opening.

How is your production of Hamlet going?

It’s going well! It’s a big opera, a huge piece in terms of its concept and in terms of its requirements. It really stretches to the limit the resources of any moderately large opera house that takes it on. So we’re stretching to the limit the resources of Oper Köln, but it’s going for the most part really well. It’s been special to see it all come together.

How much are you thinking back to the production at Glyndebourne, not just stylistically but overall? How much has that influenced what you’re doing now?

From a stylistic point of view, not at all; it was a really beautiful production and a wonderful way to discover the work in the context of opera — it went on to Australia, and it’ll be at a few more places in the coming years too, but this is a very different reading. There’s a very different series of priorities of things to bring to the fore in this production. It’s funny, I sent a note to (original director) Neil (Armfield) the day before rehearsals began here, thanking him for having created such a beautiful narrative production, because it enabled and forced me to not do that. That’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to test the resilience of the work to a more metaphorical reading, to a parable of some kind.

So this will be more abstract?

Yes, more abstract.

Scene from the Oper Köln production of Hamlet, 2019. Photo: Paul Leclaire

You’ve written libretti for other things but this feels different on a few levels; what’s it been like to direct Hamlet, and in Germany?

It’s interesting, I’ve always separated the works — the ones I did, La Paz, or Requiem for Cologne – when I wrote those, I wasn’t saying how I’m going to stage it; I was really trying to write a text that was going to inspire the composer and give the material needed for them, but this time even more so. Because it was Shakespeare and because it was Hamlet, and because I was not going to be directing it, I had a different kind of liberty in thinking things through and then offering them to Brett as material in which to work.

Doing it in Germany now… what’s marvelous about Germany is that they do, insofar as possible… there are resources that are made available. And there is a deep understanding of conceptual – more conceptual and more abstract – work. The audiences are looking for interpretation rather than illustration. And they’re looking for a clear perspective and a clear take, rather than a kind of more illustrative thing. So one feels a liberty working in Germany, in that it is perhaps more elastic than working for audiences that have a lesser habit of experiencing conceptual work.

And a famous play like Hamlet doesn’t have the same cultural baggage in Germany as it might for English-language audiences.

Definitely, the play is well-known, and for an English audience, it’s very different than for a German audience because a German audience will know a half dozen lines or so, but an English audience will know, for the most part, a hundred different lines from Hamlet – even if you don’t realize they come from Hamlet! The story will be known more or less clearly, so the way in which the libretto twists the story and rethinks things at times, that’s going to be much clearer for an Anglo-Saxon audience than for a German audience, but the objective of the libretto is not to have the audience say, “Oh look! He took that line here and put it there!” or “Oh what a funny twist there!” It’s very much its own thing as a story.

So in a way, working for a German audience is wonderful because either they get it or they don’t, whereas an Anglo-Saxon audience is often thinking, “Oh, isn’t that funny, that scene goes here in opera whereas it goes there in the play!” It can become a bit of a treasure hunt for English audiences, which is not the goal, but it can have that effect on audience members who know the text extremely well.

Photo: Paul Leclaire

So there’s a freedom working in Germany…

Yes, it’s a huge freedom to work on it here – and also a good way of making sure that the story works on its own without being compared to anything.

It’s not like you’re presenting Goethe!

That’s right!

What’s been your process working with the cast?

This is a very actor-heavy – or acting-heavy – opera and production. It really is like acting Shakespeare. You have maybe a quarter or a fifth of the text, but every singer has the full text in their minds – they’ve obviously all read Hamlet before coming into rehearsal. It does require huge dexterity with text. It’s not a text from a Bellini opera, it’s Shakespeare, and every word in the libretto comes from Hamlet except for a couple of chorus passages, so there’s a need for total versatility with language, that tasting, that love of language – the French say “dégustation” – that absolute enjoyment of the language on the tongue and in the mouth.

And because we’re working on a very bare stage, relationships are key, because there’s nothing to hide behind, so the veracity of what the singers are experiencing and communicating to each other and receiving from each other is absolutely essential. We also don’t have huge amounts of time, but before hitting the set itself we had four weeks of time in the rehearsal room to really massage out the essential elements of the opera, the essentially elements of the text, and really explore the spatial relationships and dynamics between characters. And again, time is always the most precious ally one can have when trying to deepen the relationships which will work, whether musically or textually or dramatically.

Duncan Ward conductor music artist baton podium

Photo: Alan Kerr

I would imagine Duncan Ward has been key to that also.

Duncan is one of those conductors of his generation who is most adept at contemporary music. He’s extraordinarily well-read musically and extremely sophisticated and nuanced in his understanding of the score. He was in the rehearsal room from the second week onwards, and he’s been not only a terrific ally but partner and collaborator, and he is really going to be the one to bring the show to life every evening, because he’s got a wonderful relationship with the orchestra and a wonderful relationship with the singers. He is amazing at holding all these musical textures and musical fabrics together.

The libretto and the score are very intimately linked in this work; how has that intimacy changed in terms of your approach in directing?

I think that we were very blessed, Brett and I, to come together over a piece such as Hamlet, and to have such similar tastes and such similar desires with regards to this work. There were some quite radical decisions I made as a librettist. I’d say the more radical the decision, the more great the appetite with which Brett jumped on it; he could hear it. When you’re working with a composer, your chief goal is to write things that make him or her hear music and want to create a musical universe around it – so we were blessed in that sense.

In this production I’d say there are a few things that have changed: Brett has added a few bars of music – a few passages here and there, a little bit of chorus to a couple moments – and I added maybe two lines to the text. But I did this a year ago now so it’s in the new score, but there are things I felt had been missing in the original version, and I wanted to draw special attention to them in this version. I wouldn’t say things have changed; it’s more just the joy of rediscovering and taking full advantage of this marriage of text and music you were talking about.

Scene from the Oper Köln production of Hamlet, 2019. Photo: Paul Leclaire

So not change so much as evolution…

Yes, a good evolution. This piece is now out there, and hopefully what you’ve heard in terms of an integration of text and music is also heard by other opera houses and it gets produced around the world. Hopefully now it will be part of the 21st century repertory. We’ve been very lucky and very blessed; it went from Glyndebourne to Australia, and it will also be presented by a few organizations in the coming years. For a contemporary opera to have been done with so many houses within a few years of its creation is a pretty lucky thing! Obviously there is an appetite for cracking open this old chestnut and experiencing it in a new and hopefully pertinent way for the 21st century.

Hibla Gerzmava: “I’m With The Audience”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On November 1, 2019

In classical, interviews, opera, voice

Gerzmava soprano Met opera classical Verdi music live stage Shakespeaere

Hibla Gerzmava as Desdemona in the 2015-2016 Met Opera production of Otello. Photo: Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan Opera.

Hibla Gerzmava has been a busy lady since her last appearance in Toronto.

In the time since that acclaimed 2017 concert at Roy Thomson Hall, the Russian soprano has graced the stages of Opéra National de Paris (Opéra Bastille), Teatro Real de Madrid, The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden, Opernhaus Zürich, as well as appeared at her home theatre, the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre, where she’s performed for over two decades now.

As well as a multitude of opera roles, Gerzmava has a particular gift for performing oratorio-style works, and it’s an area I hope she decides to further explore, because it allows her a perfect avenue in which she can showcase her incredibly rich tone and exciting flexibility. Her performance as part of Janáček’s immense Glagolitic Mass is a particular treat. The recording, released last year on Decca Classics and made at the Rudolfinum, Prague with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in 2013 under the baton of conductor Jiri Bělohlávek, is shining and exuberant, Gerzmava’s voice shimmering and yet laser-pointed.

A native of Abkhazia (located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea), Gerzmava graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1994 and went on to win the Grand Prize in the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition. Since then, she’s appeared on the stages of Wiener Staatsoper, the Bayerische Staatsoper, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, and Teatro Alla Scala Milan, among many others. Her annual gala concerts (called “Hibla Gerzmava Invites”), which she started in 2001, feature a who’s-who of opera; this year’s edition included bass Ildar Abdrazakov and Alexander Sladkovsky, chief conductor and artistic director of the Tatarstan National Symphony Orchestra.

At the end of 2017, I included Gerzmava’s Toronto appearance as being a highlight of my classical music year, writing then that she “melted into every single thing she sang, one moment teasing Virtuosi performers, the next, falling beautifully into a French aria. Her clear commitment to the variety of chosen repertoire was matched by a quicksilver tone and a gracious stage presence that made me keen to see her live onstage again soon.” Gerzmava’s appearance at the intimate, acoustically gorgeous Koerner Hall this coming Sunday (3 November) features pianist Ekaterina Ganelina; it’s part of a tour that sees her play Carnegie Hall tonight (1 November), before jetting off to give concerts in Rio de Janeiro and Paris. On the bill are works by Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev, Donizetti, Verdi, and Fauré. Gerzmava returns to New York later this season to reprise the role of Liu in Turandot, a role she’s done there, and at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, to acclaim; she also reprises Otello‘s Desdemona in Moscow later this year.

While I hope to someday interview her in-person (hopefully my Russian will be improved), the soprano and I recently had a translated email exchange in which she shared her thoughts on audiences, conductors, and the importance of recitals.

Turandot Royal Opera Covent Garden stage opera singing vocal Puccini Gerzmava

A scene from the 2017 Royal Opera House production of Puccini’s Turandot. Photo @ Royal Opera House / Tristram Kenton

What have your experiences in Moscow given you artistically?

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre has been my home for twenty-five years; my roots are there. Yet it is a pleasure to come to all the other opera houses as a guest. I only take on roles I have fully prepared for, and personally comprehend and embrace, whether a new or existing production. I would credit this approach to so-called directorial theatre and its long-standing history. And this is the Stanislavsky-Nemirovitch-Danchenko Theatre where I grew up and have been progressing as a singer and an actress. Many performances were put on for me, and I really appreciate and am proud of it.

When I interviewed Yusif Eyvazov years ago he said he found singing in Russian challenging, despite his using it in daily life. What’s your sense?

The music is the first and the most important for me. Text and language go after the musical material. I take very seriously any new material and seek out professional language coaches to get prepared. I mainly sing in the Italian operas and love to sing in French. As for the Russian repertoire, I do not have difficulties but a lot of responsibility. These days there are not so many singers undertaking the chamber programs.

It’s a privilege and I’m thrilled to sing Russian romances by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Glinka, and Prokofiev – it matters to me to introduce the international audience to these great works, to this part of Russian culture. This is the reason why all my recitals of this world tour throughout New York, Toronto, Paris and London start with the Russian romances. I’ll be singing arias in French and Italian in the second part of my concerts.

You’ve done Medea a few times now; where do you see this role fitting within your overall repertoire? Will you be doing more German opera?

For me Medea is a very special character. She is a Colchean Princess from the ancient Greek myth about the Argonauts – and Colchis is the ancient name of Abkhazia, so all these Greek mythical events occurred in my motherland but many years ago.

That production (of Medea) was made with me as a singer and artist in mind, and it was highly acclaimed. As the prima of this production I got awarded with the Russian theatre’s “Golden Mask”. Award. That was an incredibly complicated role; I cannot forget about it easily, it drives me to the utmost!

As for German opera, I hope I may do it in the future. Today I’m singing the bel canto repertoire. At the same time I do have the Four Last Songs by Strauss as well as works by Schumann and Schubert. Every time I sing in German I think of my father and dedicate it to him as he was fluent in German.

opera performance stage Zurich Gerzmava Puente tenor soprano Verdi Homoki staging theatre vocal

With Marcelo Puente in La forza del destino. Photo © Monika Rittershaus / Opernhaus Zürich

You have appeared in a variety of production styles, including a very modern production of La forza del destino, directed by Andreas Homoki, which was a role debut for you; how do you find these styles affect your performance?

I do recall my stay in the Zürich Opera House and collaboration with such an interesting and unusual Stage Director as Andreas Homoki – it was curious to learn and understand his ideas; he is a very deep artist and his approach is not standard.

When working with any director, even one with the most contemporary vision, I take everything with respect and do my best to get into these ideas. However, if there is some critical discrepancy with my concept or in case it doesn’t correspond to my principles, I’m not going to cope and adjust myself. It is always up to me to find a compromise with any director, and for that I would credit my home theatre, the Stanislavsky-Nemirovich-Danchenko Opera; it’s a directorial theatre and it did bring us up as good actors. I always come to any other theatre and production completely understanding my heroine, her character, her personality.

Thomas Hampson told me he wouldn’t be the singer he is today without doing recitals, that they are so important for the cultivation of both vocal abilities as well as artistry; what’s your feeling?

Thomas is absolutely right when he says that we need it to develop our vocal growth. One cannot imagine my schedule and my career without concerts and recitals. Voice presentation and concert style are very different from operatic performances; it is a very elite part of our art, which allows a singer to progress and enrich his or her experience. There is nobody else on stage except the vocalist; there is neither decoration, nor choir. There is only my voice, my energy and artistry. I am happy to perform solo both with a pianist and with an orchestra. It brings me, as an artist, closer to the spectators. I’m with the audience and more real, more like myself than in an opera.

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Hibla Gerzmava as Liù in the 2015-2016 Met Opera production of Puccini’s Turandot. Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera.

How have you found audiences across the various places you’ve performed? it seems as if the quality of listening differs across regions.

I do love all my spectators anywhere in the world. Every time I’m entering the stage in any country it is very important for me to engage the audience, to deliver my message, to earn their affection. Geography does not mean anything to me. Each continent has its own very profound, responsive listeners and those that are coming to meet me for just the first time. Believe me, I know how to approach everybody. To some extent I may say that I am even spoiled by love and admirers in the most demanding theatres like La Scala, ones that are used to booing a singer that they do not like. I love the Metropolitan Opera audience, the power of the applause is literally devouring you, and nobody is withholding their emotions. I found the audience in Toronto to be absolutely great too, they are warm and understanding. We performed there together with the Moscow Virtuosi and Maestro Spivakov in 2017. I cannot wait to see and sing for them again.

What are your thoughts on the role of conductors in relation to performance? A number of artists have told me they believe chemistry has to exist between singer and conductor from the beginning, although some have also said it’s something that can be cultivated. What is your sense?

Chemistry, sympathy and mutual understanding between the conductor and a singer are very important. The highest level of a conductor’s art is to feel the singer. I do not like dictators who are trying to impact the singer. If a conductor cannot find common ground with the cast, it can affect the directorial idea and the entire production in general. But if there is a harmony and some invisible musical link between singer and conductor, then they turn into magic on the stage. Thank God, I have been always very lucky to meet and work only with extremely good and professional conductors.

Hui He: Building Connection Through The Voice

By Catherine Kustanczy

On October 16, 2019

In interviews, opera, voice

Hui He verismo soprano Puccini Met opera Butterfly Minghella stage performance classical singing culture

Hui he has a voice one can’t help but notice, a big, juicy, Italianate sound, the sort of sound I grew up with, the sort of sound my Italian-opera-loving mother loved so much. If there’s a nostalgia in enjoying He’s voice so much, so be it; hers is a voice that very much puts the “grand” in grand opera.

He started out her studies in China at the Xi’an Conservatory of Music, and made her debut as Aida (yes, really) in a 1998 production marking the opening of Shanghai Grand Theater. In 2000 she won second place at the prestigious Operalia competition, and a year later, first prize at the Concorso Internazionale Voci Verdiane in Verdi’s hometown of Busseto. Since then, she’s become a mainstay on European stages and has appeared at a number of prestigious houses, including Wiener Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opéra de Paris, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Semperoper Dresden, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Oper Zürich; last season she made her debut at Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels) as the title role in a new production of La Gioconda. He made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2010, as the title character in Aida, a signature role she has recorded twice on DVD, in 2011 with Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and conductor Zubin Mehta, and again in 2012, at the immense Arena di Verona under conductor Daniel Oren. What with 2013 marking the 200th year of Verdi’s birth, He returned to Aida (at La Scala Milan), and also took part in a performance of the composer’s Requiem in Verona, where she is based.

It’s probably fair to state that the soprano is something of a specialist when it comes to performing the Italian composer’s music; she’s appeared in productions of Un ballo in maschera, Il trovatore, La forza del destino, Ernani, and Stiffelio, as well as the famous Aida. She’s also known for her passionate approach to verismo roles, and has appeared in productions of Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, and Tosca (the latter being a role that greatly aided in her breakthrough in Europe, starting with her performance at Teatro Regio di Parma in 2002). He ably demonstrates her immense vocal gifts (not wrongly described as “wine dark“) on her 2007 album of Verdi and Puccini arias (Oehms Classics), which is filled with a myriad of well-known gems from both composers, including heartfelt renditions of beloved arias from Aida, Butterfly, and Tosca, and imbuing each note with pungent, visceral drama. A personal favorite is her deeply expressive performance of “Liberamente or piangi” from Attila, lovingly phrased, with rich intonation and watchful dynamic control; it’s a showcase of beautiful vocal artistry. At her Lyric Opera debut in 2012 (in Aida), the Chicago Tribune noted He “possesses a healthy, flexible, warmly beautiful spinto voice backed by solid technique and fine musical intelligence. Her big voice opened up easily in the big climaxes […] and brought out the melting lyricism in Aida’s many tender phrases.”

“Melting lyricism” is a good way to describe her approach to the album’s two tracks from Turandot, performances which, over a decade ago now, offered a preview of a role she debuted earlier this year at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. She explained her slowness in taking on the part of Turandot in an interview during rehearsals for the production, noting that, outside of her vocal technique not being ready until this year, she “didn’t want to play this character so early, especially because being Chinese, I would risk that companies would only want me for this role.” (He will be performing it again at the Shanghai Opera House this December.) Another role debut earlier this year was Mimi in La bohème at the Festival Puccini Torre del Lago. The new year brings yet another role debut, as the title character in early Verdi opera Alzira at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège.

He is currently performing the role of Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly at the Met through the end of November. It’s a role she’s frequently performed in Europe (Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Den Norske Opera Oslo, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Teatro Real de Madrid, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, to name a few), at Los Angeles Opera, and in New York too; her appearance in the current Anthony Minghella production marks her third time singing the role with the house. He and I recently had the chance to chat on a quiet Sunday afternoon, even as the sounds of ever-busy Manhattan buzzed in the background.

How old when you first heard opera?

When I was 18 years old I heard La bohème for the first time. the first time I listened I didn’t understand Italian or anything, but I fell in love with the voices and the music. I decided to be a singer very late — I like singing very much but I didn’t have a musical family. The first opera I saw live was Turandot, in 1996, in Beijing. I didn’t understand it very well —or really understand what opera would come to mean for me — but really, seeing it was this amazing world. I never thought I’d be a professional opera singer at that time, but seeing Turandot… I still remember the beautiful staging.

At that time, China would only present opera a few times a year, not like now! Now it’s a completely different thing; in a very short time China grew to have a lot of theatre. But at that time, China only had classical opera, I mean, Western opera, about once or twice a year. You could see it in Beijing or Shanghai — I’m from Xi’An, the ancient capital of China. It’s a very beautiful city, and very old. I got my start singing the music of Verdi very young.

How has your understanding of Verdi’s music changed? You’ve been singing it for a long time now.

Starting out in China I had a very good feeling with my voice for Aida, that my voice was very suited to it. Of course the first time I sang it was different than it is now; my voice, my body, everything changed. My experience changed, especially when I went to Italy — now I speak very good Italian! — but it’s very different, singing it now from twenty years ago. Everything became more mature. It’s a very natural and logical progression.

Do you notice differences in audiences? That the ones in the U.S. are different to the ones in Austria and Germany and England and China?

For me audience difference is not a problem, because I think what i need to do is, just do my best for every stage, in every city. I should show what is my best, give good quality, a maximum possibility for every performance. I think the music, the language, is a very special language, it’s connects with some very special part of life. The language of music through the voice can connect people, even those who have very far-apart cultures. In twenty-one years of career, I’ve seen many different cities and countries, in the West and the East. My main stages are in Europe and America. I think the most important thing is when I am onstage, I must show the best of what I feel that day. Yes, every audience is a different feeling, but if I do my best, and if I’m enjoying the show, then the audience will enjoy the show also.

It’s been observed that Italy is very concerned with voice, and that in England and Europe there’s more focus on the theatrical aspect. What have you found?

I think this is a special thing, because Italy, yes — if you don’t have a voice, even if you’re a great actor, it won’t work — but also in Germany and England and some other places, there’s more concentration on drama. But I think as an opera singer, there are two important things: one is music, and one is acting. The audience can hear you and they can see you. You can’t say, “I’m very good vocal person and I’m a very bad actor — but I can still give a maximum performance” — no. It is always together.

You have to be a good actor, and have a beautiful voice, and have very good musicians. It’s many things together. I sing a lot of Puccini, and Puccini roles demand good acting — of course the voice is important, because if you don’t have the voice you can’t finish the opera. If you don’t have the technical basis, you can’t finish the opera. Also I’m a Verdi soprano, and when I sing Verdi, the most important thing is having good technique to sing every note musically — but acting is important too. If both things work, then you get success; if it’s only one thing, there’s no success.

Has that idea evolved in relation to the growth of Live in HD broadcasts?

I think it’s important as an actor to be aware of the theatrical aspect, but the singing is still very important. Singing well needs a lot of things: your vocal technique, your intonation, your musicality, your ability and balance, everything. This is the way we work and study every day, to be a good singer. I think for HD it’s important to be a good actor, but if the audience doesn’t hear a good sound from the voice, if there’s a problem with intonation or whatever musical problem, then they can’t accept it, even in the cinema.

The drama is very much written into the music — with Tosca and Butterfly, for instance, the drama is so palpably within the notes.

That’s true!

Often it takes the right conductor to bring it out in just the right way.

The conductor is really very important for the opera because the conductor, if they can understand singers and their sense of approach, and learn about the drama and the music during the drama, how to bridge it between singer and orchestra — yes, that’s helpful! I’ve met many great conductors, like Pier Giorgio Morandi — he’s a great conductor and he is very understanding of singers. Not many always understand the singer’s challenges. Sometimes everything has a different musical feeling or make different demands on the breath, so the conductor should be very understanding and comprehend those demands, and that leads to chemistry, being able to work together. That’s very important, because if the conductor can sing with the singer inside, and has the feeling of the music the same way, then it will be a great overall result and you will feel the chemistry in the performance. When we are together, the audience can feel that. When the conductor is not with the singer…

You feel that also!

… yes, there are problems! I have to say, there are a lot of conductors who don’t understand singers. I think really good opera conductors help singers — they should first, be a great musician, secondly, have the sensibility of the singer, and third, a person who has a big enough heart to understand and deal with a lot of different situations with everybody — good at forming and cultivating relationships.

You will be doing a role debut of Alzira next year. What’s that like to prepare? It’s expanding your repertoire.

I’m very excited to do Alzira, and now I’ve been preparing at the Met with a pianist while doing Butterfly. I feel like it’s a new world. Alzira is like an exam of technique. Earlier Verdi music is really very difficult, it’s a bel canto type thing, there’s a lot of coloratura — it’s not like singing Puccini or verismo, it’s a really technical situation — so I’m very glad my studies are going well. I’ve never sung this kind of music, or anything in a bel canto style; in italy, I immediately started with Aida, Butterfly, Tosca, Trovatore, and a little bit of later Verdi repertoire, but now I can do earlier Verdi. I’ve done Attila and Stiffelio but Alzira is really a very good opera for me right now, to help me for technique. I remember my coach told me, “Singing Verdi is like a medicine for singers, because Verdi extends the technique.” So if you’re singing Verdi well you can improve your technical situation. Butterfly is a little bit heavy, but it’s also a long role; it has a lot of various demands on the voice. I don’t want it to be low, so this is why during Butterfly I’m learning Alzira —it helps my Butterfly, it helps keep my voice in a high position, which is good.

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Photo ©️Erik Berg/Den Norske Opera

Does this mean you’ll be doing more bel canto? I’m curious what other roles might be in your future.

I haven’t done French repertoire, but I think my voice is more for Italian repertoire. I hope to debut Don Carlo, Elisabetta, and I hope I can, in the future, sing Norma, Frau Angelica, a lot of roles that would fit me. I already did Manon Lescaut — I love it very much, it’s one of my favourites — and I did Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, but I hope one day to sing Wagner. I think my voice is good for Tannhauser, Die Fliegende Hollander, and Tristan und Isolde. I hope I can enlarge my repertoire a little bit to sing different roles. I love to learn new roles, and I love learning new opera.

It makes you a better artist, to keep learning.

Of course — I like to work on different things at the same time. It’s why during this period I’m doing Butterfly but I’m learning Alzira, and I’m preparing a concert too. I’m enjoying it all!

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Marlis Petersen: “Music Triggers Your Own Inner World”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On October 10, 2019

In classical, Europe, interviews, music, opera, voice

soprano singer marlis petersen German opera lieder

Photo © Yiorgos Mavropoulos

Trying to get a handle of the scope of Petersen’s creative activities is close to impossible.

Yes, the celebrated German soprano does the so-called “classic” opera repertoire (Verdi, Massenet, Handel, Donizetti), operetta (Lehar), contemporary (Widmann, Reimann, Henze), and has performed at some of the world’s most prestigious houses, including the Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Opera de Paris, and Bayerische Staatsoper. She is one of the most celebrated interpreters of twentieth century works, with Berg’s Lulu being arguably her most famous role; she’s performed in ten different productions, in a variety of locales (Munich, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Vienna, Athens, New York), and retired the role in 2015, telling The New Yorker:

This character leaves a shadow on your soul. It is not that I play her. I have to be her, and that is a very demanding thing. I thought, after all these years it is time for me, as a woman, to let go. She rules me in a way. It is not that I am Lulu, but she is demanding. And how you act with men sometimes—is a little bit influenced by this. I have decided to let this go, and to see who, actually, Marlis Petersen is.

Petersen started out studying piano and won several competitions; from there she moved on to flute, and, as a teenager, found her voice, quite literally, in the church choir. She was given a solo by the choir director at seventeen, and the rest, as they say, is history. Along with music, Petersen made a point of studying dance, and brings a loose-limbed if varied gestural style to both her vocal style and her stage performances. This awareness of movement, in literal and figurative senses, and its seamless integration within a live setting has highlighted her agile vocality, one that can flip from warm wool to cold steel in an instant.

But Petersen is also what might be called a restless spirit, greatly interested in the peaks and valleys beyond the limits of traditional presentation, whether on the opera stage, in recital, or on recordings. Her vocal range has been highlighted through her impressive discography, with recordings of operas and oratorios by Mozart, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Haydn (including a gorgeous rendering of Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten from 2004, featuring the Freiburger Barockorchester and RIAS Kammerchor and led by René Jacobs), as well as a range of albums devoted to lieder, featuring works by Schumann, Brahms, and Walter Braunfel. She’s also done an album of works inspired by the writings of Goethe. (His writings, and their connection to music, is part of a broader topic I’ll be exploring in a future post.) it’s hardly a revelation to state that creative exploration sits at the heart of Petersen’s identity as an artist.

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via Solo Musica

That exploratory spirit is given clear expression in her series of Dimensionen albums (Solo Musica). Welt (World, 2o17), Anders Welt (Other World, 2018), and Innen Welt (Inner World, 2019). The trilogy showcases the soprano’s incredible gift for the art of song;, her range and dynamism underline a deep and captivating theatricality which runs, vein-like, throughout her considerable body of work. The songs featured on the albums move between well-known works and lesser-known pieces by composers including Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Wagner, Max Reger, Carl Loewe, Sigurd von Koch and Hans Sommer and show Petersen’s appreciation of the nature of text, sound, performance, and atmosphere, and the spiritual (dare I say mystical) ties that bind them. Last month, following a recital of works from Innen Welt, the Berliner Morgenpost observed that the singer had “kidnapped her audience into the world of elves and mermaids.” The album redirects one’s attentions (perhaps energies is a better world) to an entirely different realm; if elves and mermaids happen to be there, then so too, do a host of other, mythical creatures – and correspondingly, some very real feelings – conjured by the audience’s unique imaginings and experiences. Petersen has a unique gift for speaking to listeners on a very individual and sometimes quite personal level, using her voice and interactions with her accompanists (Stephan Matthias Lademann and Camillo Radicke) to create aural tapestries of the most beautiful and beguiling designs. The trilogy, and Innen Welt in particular, is a sumptuous, intriguing showcase of that rare gift.

The soprano is currently in Munich in a revival of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s eye-catching production of Strauss’s Salome, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, with whom she’s worked many times – including, notably, last fall, when, as Artist in Residence for the current season of Berlin Philharmonic, she was part of the orchestra’s opening concerts which marked Petrenko’s start as their chief conductor. Within the position, Petersen performs a variety of concerts, including ones next year, with the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic (in May), and with members of the orchestra (in June). She’s also scheduled to perform with the New York-based experimental chamber group Sirius Quartet, with whom she has previously collaborated and will be part of concert performances (in Munich and then Tokyo) of Jörg Widmann’s Arche, a work which was premiered as part of the opening of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg in early 2017, in which Petersen also performed. She is giving recitals of Inner Welt in Germany and Spain in June.

Far sooner, however, is Petersen’s continued work with Kirill Petrenko. The two are set to work together again next month for Die Tote Stadt, the first new production of the Bayerische Staatsoper season. We shared a wide-ranging chat recently as she prepared for her autumn engagements.

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Salome, Bayerische Staatsoper. Production: Krzysztof Warlikowski. (Photo: © Wilfried Hösl)

What inspired the Dimensionen trilogy project?

Out of the many things that get recorded, like Winterreise, which is recorded so often, it was important to do something else. I wanted to connect to the human being and to human problems — the joys, the sorrows — and to have a closer look at what we are, and who we are and where we’re going. I was so surprised to discover how many things are written and what treasures they are. It was so inspiring to mix it all: the things we know, the things not so known. They are connected; they’re not so far away. There are some hidden treasures in the repertoire of lied.

It’s been written that you have “a weakness for the metaphysical.” Do you think that’s true?

I think so, yes.

How does that inform what you do onstage and in recordings?

Let me call it the “strength” of the metaphysical and not the “weakness”! When you are on the opera stage and you slip into character, the interesting thing about that process coming to understand this person’s psychology; for example, with Salome, how does this girl come to want a head on a silver platter? How does this happen? Or with Medea, how can this happen that she’s ready to kill her children? I love to explore these things. How can people come to want something like that? It’s a dark part of us, a disappointed side of us. We are all longing for appreciation and when you don’t get it over a certain time you get depression or you become a criminal, and it’s so interesting to explore these ideas. In lied of course you don’t have that to the same extent; you can follow the character in the story or the person who has a certain emotion and go with your authentic feeling into the song.

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As Maria Stuarda at Theater an der Wien in 2018. Production: Christoph Loy. (Photo: Monika Rittershaus)

Something that’s always struck me about your artistry is this total authenticity in whatever capacity you happen to be performing in.

Let’s put it like this: when I started off doing this, it was, I think, just for the pure, unguilty pleasure of doing music. The older you get and the more mature you are, the more you think about things. So it’s a mixture of a certain natural approach I have, and a joy of music, and variety of music. You melt into something, and for me that’s a very authentic process. How can I put it? I can’t fake myself. I can’t betray myself. I have to present 100% of what and who I am.

How does that sense of self relate to your dance training?

The dancing thing helps a lot for staying very flexible and agile in this profession, not only body-wise but also, I think when you move and you dance, there’s a spirit connected to this. It keeps the brain and the whole attitude very flexible.

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In Berg’s Lulu at Bayerische Staatsoper in 2015. Production: Dmitri Tcherniakov. (Photo: W. Hösl)

That flexibility is very noticeable onstage; how much does it extend to your work with conductors like Kirill Petrenko and René Jacobs?

I think chemistry has to be present from the beginning. You realize there’s a common goal in music; it’s very important. Sometimes you don’t have that, and it’s more compromising during the period you work together, but with René, for example, he’s very unique – a very complex, sensitive person. (Chemistry) is something you have to find — you have to resonate with that, and when you find the common energy then, you are on a very good track for the work together. But again, it’s always surprising how things happen. You meet people you’ve never seen before and you feel like you’ve known them a long time, especially in music.

Does that apply to directors as well, that sense of familiarity?

Maybe it’s even more so with directors, because when you do opera, you have a relationship over six weeks together — you see each other every day for six hours and you deal with very intimate psychological things, when you try to form a character. The conductor very often comes in late —not with Rene or Kirill, and maybe that’s the reason why we get along: they’re there from the beginning. But generally then you build up everything. With a director, you go into the point, to the very centre of everything, and this is maybe an even stronger connection —for this reason sometimes you have beautiful relationships, really inspiring exchanges, or it can happen, if you don’t understand each other, you will have a distance, and you can do your work professionally but it will never have this very strong pull.

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As Medea in Aribert Reimann’s Medea (world premiere), Wiener Staatsoper, 2010. Production: Marco Arturo Marelli. (Photo: Axel Zeininger)

How does that relate to premiering a new work?

A world premiere is interesting because you are the one that kind of excavates the music really — you bring it to life. There’s no one who’s done it before, so you can’t listen to anybody. You have to be the one to create it, which is very exciting. And what is of course amazing and never happens otherwise, is that you can talk to the composer and discuss what do they mean in places, how do the want it? And maybe if there are difficult things you can ask for a change or adjustment. That is something very special, to have a person like Henze or Reimann to speak with, face to face, to talk about music — that is very touching.

You have a real dedication to lieder; how does this intimacy with stage artists relate to accompanists?

It’s very important that you have a person at your side that has the same musical approach. With lieder, you know, it’s very often the case of, ‘Here’s the singer and the guy who accompanies’ and it sounds like a 70% to 30% or 80% to 20% relationship, but for me it’s an equal force. To make music work, you must meet somebody that you really trust, that you understand as a human being also, that you have an easy exchange and also fascination with, about how they play the music. I think when a pianist plays in a way that I love, it opens a door inside me; then the music can go through that. That’s the closest work one can have.

That sounds like a rather metaphysical experience.

Yes, it is. The two pianists I have within the trilogy, they’re very different — Stephan Mattias (Lademann), who did the first (Welt) and the last (Inner Welt), is a very sensitive and fine pianist, and he is very, I think, into it with the knowledge of music. Camillo Radicke, who did the other album (Anderswelt), is a very sensitive, and I would say, even ethereal person, who comes more from the emotional side, in his approach to the music. There’s no question he’d play on Anderswelt, because (that album) for me has more crazy ungraspable little things, which I saw with Camillo immediately. And Mattias is more for the concrete and fine work in terms of musical approach.

Does your understanding of the work evolve through performance?

Yes, it moves on. Usually it’s the case that you have a theme, and then you perform, and then in the later stage, you record. With this, it was the other way around: we created an idea, we recorded it, then we performed it. That was a bit more difficult for the recordings, because you have no experience with the songs really, but, when the baby is born, it’s then a great process that can unfold, because every time you perform it, it grows a bit more, and you find new things. I think if I recorded it again now after three years, Welt, it would have some different tempi, some different moments of pianissimo. It moves on.

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Maria Riccarda Wesseling as Phaedra and Marlis Petersen as Aphrodite within Ensemble Modern in reflection, in Henze’s Phaedra (world premiere) at Staatsoper Berlin in 2007. Production: Peter Mussbach. (Photo: Ruth Walz)

And I would imagine it’s influenced by what you’re doing on the opera stage as well…

Yes, for sure.

… because it seems like such organic material can lend itself to a certain theatricality.

Can you describe that?

Theatrical in the visceral sense — there’s a lot of strong imagery on your trilogy, not just with the words but the way you phrase things, the way you use your voice in terms of color and dynamics.

So does it create inner pictures for you?

Very much.

That’s fantastic — that’s great! That’s the best that can happen. The inner world is something we only know to a certain extent. The older we get the more we open doors. We have met our moments in our lives and understand them better and better, but some things we will never understand. When you look at the scientists who say we are only using 10% of our brain capacity, well, what does the other 90% do? I think it’s somewhere ungraspable — but becomes graspable through unconscious and subconscious worlds, and this is why I like you saying you have pictures mentally when you hear it. It means the music triggers your own inner world, and that’s the best compliment.

via Solo Musica

It feels like a journey in which sensuality plays a very important role.

My intent was to take listeners on a journey, to go through dreams and feelings we have inside, things like anger or despair. And the French part was something where I thought, “This is a very unique color that points to the love emotions.” There’s an aspect of… this is something that we all go through, something eternal, some heaven, or some kind of redemption. This is a big topic we all have in our core. And for our world, with all the busy schedules and the crazy things that happen, it’s so important for each of us to have these moments of intimacy, and as you said, sensuality. For me it was important to do this trilogy for my inner growth; it was such a lesson.

How so?

There is a technical aspect to collecting songs, to searching; you never know, really, where the journey will go. On the first album it happened that by sorting the songs; the chapters came out on their own. I didn’t plan any chapter, I just suddenly found out, “Oh! This goes together with this one!” and “Oh, this group makes another topic!” — it was a direction, a gift given to me, and it was so beautiful, this idea of chapters, I wanted to keep it for The Other World and The Inner World too. Then you have to think, how do I do it this time? But, when you go into something with your full heart, there are always gifts coming in, surprises from heaven, and suddenly you have these discoveries, and you feel you’re on the right track. And this feeling of being on the right track, and doing something essential for yourself and the world, is so rewarding.

It’s often a question of being open to that happening. Sometimes people don’t open doors but build more walls which become fortified with age.

i think it’s very important that we keep ourselves open to wonder. I have many friends who are musicians, and when I talk to them about this, they are very open to trying new directions and to listening and getting lost in the journey — but the thing is, who in our age has the time to sit with a glass of wine and just listen to the album, and look at the booklet and get lost in the little trip we’re offering? If you can find the time, yes, it might make you rich in a way that you can understand something more. This was my aim, really, but maybe it’s a big aim; it needs time for people to be ready for it.

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With baritone Iurii Samoilov in Lehar’s Die Lustige Witwe at Oper Frankfurt, 2018. Production: Claus Guth. (Photo: Monika Rittershaus)

Sometimes artists are far ahead of ideas of their time.

Oh yes, and the whole business today, it has to move fast, you have to be good, you have to bring your very best quality all the time, the business is rotating very quickly in every way. So these albums are there to tell us not to hurry, to take our time. Give time for everything you want to reach; if something’s coming and you have to move quickly, more so than you can, then maybe it’s not the right time to move. Give yourself the time you need; that thing will find you.

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Andreas Homoki: Expanding The Language of Theatre

By Catherine Kustanczy

On October 2, 2019

In classical, Europe, interviews, music, opera

Photo: Frank Blaser

There’s a certain logic to particular careers beginning in particular ways, especially ones that anticipate future pathways.

Oper Zürich Intendant and director Andreas Homoki is known for his strong creative vision, so it’s fitting that his own opera career didn’t begin in an quiet way, but with a work featuring big ideas and sounds, with Strauss’ monumental Die Frau ohne Schatten in Geneva in 1992; it went on to win the French Critics’ Prize upon its transfer to Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet in 1994. As a freelancer, the German-Hungarian director went on to stage a myriad of works (by Gluck, Verdi, Mozart, Humperdinck, Puccini, Lortzing, Bizet, Strauss, Berg, and Aribert Reimann) for houses across Europe (Cologna, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, Basel, Lyon, and Amsterdam), before becoming Principal Director of the Komische Oper Berlin (KOB) in 2002; he ascended to General Director (Intendant) in 2004. Over the next eight years, Homoki, who hails from a family of musicians, helmed productions of Eugene Onegin, La bohème, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Der Rosenkavalier, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Bartered Bride, and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, as well as giving the world premieres of two works on the KOB stage: the children’s opera Robin Hood by composer and singer Frank Schwemmer, and Hamlet by composer-conductor-pianist Christian Jost.

Homoki went on to became Intendant at Opernhaus Zürich in 2012, replacing Alexander Pereira (currently the outgoing sovrintendente of Teatro alla Scala), who had been in the role for over two decades, and who’d been responsible for bringing some much-needed pizzazz to the Swiss opera scene. Pereira also famously insisted on a myriad of new productions each every season. The company grew considerably under his leadership in terms of the ambitiousness of its stagings as well as its clout within the broader international opera scene. But as I wrote in my feature on Zürich’s classical scene for Opera Canada magazine last year, “if Pereira brought a cosmopolitan energy, Andreas Homoki brings a highly eclectic one.” Such eclecticism is frequently expressed in his choice of repertoire. Homoki has made a very conscious decision for the company to heartily embrace its past, fortifying ties with the city’s artistic roots and reminding audiences of the contemporary (and in many cases, theatrical) nature of the art form. Oper Zürich is where, after all, several important twentieth century works enjoyed their world premieres, among them Berg’s Lulu (1937), Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler (1938), and Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron (1957). Der Kirschgarten, by Swiss composer Rudolf Kelterborn (based on Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard) was presented in 1984 to inaugurate the newly-renovated house.

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Opernhaus Zürich. (Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission)

Since his arrival in 2012, Homoki has staged numerous productions (Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, Fidelio, Médée, Wozzeck, I puritani, and Juliette by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů), and helmed the premiere of Lunea by the celebrated Heinz Holliger, about the life and work of 19th century polymath poet Nikolaus Lenau. (One reviewer noted the production was “one of the season’s most unforgettable, if pointedly cerebral, musical encounters. Indeed, Lunea may well set the stage for the next generation of opera.”) In May 2020, Oper Zürich presents another world premiere, Girl With The Pearl Earring by composer Stefan Wirth, which will feature baritone Thomas Hampson as painter Jan Vermeer. In addition to creative programming, Homoki has introduced pre-performance chats as well as “Opera for all” live broadcasts at Sechseläutenplatz (the largest town square in the city), an initiative he began at the start of his tenure. Homoki doesn’t so much court risk as embrace expansion. “In the arts, everything less than the maximum is ultimately insufficient,” he noted last year, adding:

We as artists are increasingly caught in a balancing act between the demands of parts of the audience always wanting to see what they cherish and parts of the specialist press and opera world calling for new interpretations. We are sometimes pulverised by the conflicting expectations. My aim is to overwhelm the audience so much with the overall experience of opera that it actually forgets it’s even at the opera. This is admittedly a maximum aspiration but nonetheless achievable.

Such aspiration has manifest not only in terms of his repertoire choices, but within the approach he takes to stagings. Homoki’s wonderfully absurdist production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (conducted by Teodor Currentzis) was a million miles away from the bleakness that so often characterize the work’s presentation, offering a vividly surreal vision while simultaneously offering poignant insights about the fraught nature of human relating. Strong reaction doesn’t seem to bother him; Homoki’s unconventional if highly fascinating take on Verdi’s La forza del destino last spring was met with criticism, to which he said that booing “is often part and parcel of an innovative production. Particularly for productions that collide with traditional views. You have to live with it.” By contrast, Homoki’s commedia dell’arte-meets-puppet-theatre vision of Wozzeck (first staged in 2015) was met with high praise, one review observing “a finely honed production that follows its premise to an absurdist conclusion with slick theatricality and dispassionate zeal.” It will enjoy a revival at the house in February 2020.

This force of his vision extends far beyond his own projects. “I don’t hire directors who are not able to surprise me,” he commented in 2018. Zürich audiences were certainly treated to surprise or two last autumn, with highly unconventional productions by Barrie Kosky and Kirill Serebrennikov. Kosky, the current Intendant of KOB, brought a highly unique and psychologically unsettling staging of Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten to the stage. Together with conductor Vladimir Jurowski, the production offered a decidedly different vision to the ones previously presented in Munich and Berlin; whole scenes, characters, and large swaths of the score were entirely excised, with the results sharply divided audiences and critics alike. Serebrennikov, the recently-freed Artistic Director of the Gogol Centre in Moscow, presented Cosi fan tutte (led by conductor Cornelius Meister) not as a romantic comedy but as a dark drama, with the male leads having been killed in battle when the production opens. Homoki hired Serebrennikov after seeing the Russian director’s staging of Salome for Oper Stuttgart in 2015 and his The Barber of Seville for KOB a year later. Last fall, Homoki strongly stood by the Russian director as he tried to helm Cosi in Zürich while still under house arrest in Moscow, telling a Swiss media outlet, “I could not let down this man I consider innocent.“

Last month Homoki and his efforts were recognized when Zürich won Best Opera House at the inaugural Oper Awards in Berlin, with the eight-member jury commenting that “(t)he director’s intuition for new, innovative directors, the commitment of the best of the established and the consistently top-class cast of singers with exciting debuts make the Zürich Opera House under Andreas Homoki a most worthy address.” The Intendant himself commented that the award was “an incentive to live up to one’s own expectations” in future. It remains to be seen if he’ll live up to those expectations this season, which promises to be a busy one, but the director seems determined to give his all. His older productions of Hänsel und Gretel, Rigoletto, and La traviata are to be staged this season at Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Hamburg, and Oper Leipzig, respectively, and his new production of Gluck’s Iphigenia en Tauride will be presented in Zürich in early February. The house will also host a raft of his revived productions, including Nabucco, Fidelio, and Lohengrin, and Wozzeck. In addition, Homoki returns to the Komische Oper Berlin, where he’s set to direct Jaromír Weinberger’s 1926 romantic comedy Schwanda der Dudelsackpfeifer (Schwanda The Bagpiper) – a so-called “ode to Bohemia” – which opens in March.

A quick note for clarity: owing to flight mishaps, Homoki and I weren’t able to actually speak on the telephone but Homoki did kindly offer thoughts via email.

A question for many leaders in the opera world has been balancing new work with old favourites. How much of a challenge have you faced in presenting contemporary works at Opernhaus Zürich?

The Zürich Opera has the great advantage of being able to produce nine new productions on the main stage per season — and entirely on its own. This allows us to offer a broad programme, which includes all periods from early Baroque to the contemporary. We therefore present at least one contemporary opera, if not a commissioned world premiere, plus usually one piece of the twentieth century. We are actually obliged by the government to commission at least one new opera for our main stage every second year, which we are happy to do!

However, we have to be aware that contemporary operas do not attract the same audience figures as major repertoire titles. We therefore program contemporary titles a little more carefully with less performances and special marketing.

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At the inaugural Oper Awards in Berlin, September 2019. (Photo: © Kathrin Heller)

How closely do you work with conductors? Does it differ between individuals? I find the dynamic fascinating because so much of the energy of that relationship is felt onstage. What’s your approach?

It is during the rehearsal process when the collaboration between conductor and director gets important as it affects the detailed work with the singers who have to merge both musical and dramatic aspects to shape their stage character. It’s therefore important to verify beforehand that both tend to a similar point of view with regards to the staging. This also refers to possible changes in the musical shape, such as cuts or special versions of certain operas. However, the conceptual work of the director is much more time-consuming. Another important partner for a director at the very beginning of his considerations are his designers, since the stage design is part of the overall production concept, which is created at least one year before the start of rehearsals.

I work with Dmitri Tcherniakov (Oper Zürich: Jenůfa, 2012; Pelléas et Mélisande, 2016; The Makropulos Affair, 2019) because I like good directors who are not only able to develop their own strong vision of a piece but are also capable of creating lively characters that interact on stage in a credible way. This may sound simple, but there are few directors who put emphasis on both.

How important has been it for you to put your own stamp on things? At Komische post-Kupfer, and Zürich post-Pereira, audiences & company personnel tend to have strong opinions about “the new person” and what they perceive he/she will bring.

I had the advantage that my two predecessors had been in office for over twenty years. The situations were due for change, which was also noticed by the media. In the case of Komische Oper, however, it was a difficult task, since the necessary changes were not only related to the aesthetics of the productions, but above all, to changes in management, such as the establishment of reliable controlling structures, modern marketing and much more. The introduction of such new structures always causes fear and resistance in a company, especially if one regards the Komische Oper as the former flagship of East German music theatre. Keeping the project on track was much more difficult than expected, but in the end, our efforts paid off and when I left I was able to hand over a much more efficient Komische Oper to my successor.

Artistically, my main goal (at KOB) was to improve the musical quality and expand the actual theatrical language of the theatre, which was previously more like a showroom of the responsible director. My approach was to form a group together with strong colleagues who all followed a similar philosophy, which, in turn, would shape a new aesthetic of the house on a larger scale. We were fortunate to have the young and promising Kirill Petrenko as chief conductor and — perhaps even more fortunate for the house — I found Barrie Kosky, who had previously only worked in Australia, as one of our regular guest directors. I was glad that, nine years later, he took over the company as my successor.

In Zürich it was more a question of restructuring production processes by reducing the number of new productions from twelve to a much more reasonable, but still quite high, number of nine productions per season. My predecessor focused more on conductors than on directors. So I was able to introduce a new and interesting group of exciting directors who had never worked here before. The directors were surprisingly well received by an audience that proved to be very curious and enthusiastic.

What’s the role of politics in art for you? Your production of David et Jonathas, for instance, has a very affecting subtext which seamlessly blends the personal & the political.

The theatre has always been concerned with conflicts between the individual and society. Even though our societies have developed strongly towards individual freedom, certain conflicts remain timeless and return with each generation.

As a director, when you try to transform the original scenery into something new and contemporary, you have to be very careful and consider every possible aspect that might lead to contradiction in your own concept. If you make a wrong decision, the work will resist. So every production is a new adventure.

Fellow Hungarian cooking question: to cook goulash in the oven or not? I do this, to very nice results.

Goulash in the oven? Never thought or heard of it, but it sounds intriguing though. I have to try it next time.

Saimir Pirgu: “Don’t Forget That You’re A Human Being”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On September 10, 2019

In interviews, music, opera, voice

Photo: Paul Scala

If there’s one quality that can be applied to Saimir Pirgu, it’s bravery, though perhaps “ballsy” is a better word.

Having left his native Albania as an ambitious teenager intent on a singing career, he graduated in singing at the Conservatory Claudio Monteverdi in Bolzano, and was singled out by conductor Claudio Abbado at the tender age of 22 to perform the role of Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Three years earlier, however, he sang for another famous opera figure: Luciano Pavarotti. And what an introduction it was. In the midst of his studies at the conservatory, the great Italian tenor, who was visiting the area in the early 2000s, had requested to hear a few of the school’s students. Pirgu launched into “Uno furtiva lagrima” from Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, a well-known work arguably made even more famous by Pavarotti’s famed performances of it. (What’s more, Pavarotti had named Nemorino (Donizetti’s famous dolt of the opera) as his favorite opera role of all time.) In a 2017 interview, Pirgu recalls Pavarotti aking with wonder at the end of his performance, “Who taught you to sing like that? Do you know that you sing very well?” It would mark the beginning of what has become a very busy career.

The tale underlines Pirgu’s no-nonsense personality and ambitious approach. With a full calendar and appearances at such renowned houses as the Wiener Staatsoper, Bayerische Staatsoper, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, Opernhaus Zürich, and Teatro Regio di Parma, Pirgu has also performed in some unique locales, including, this past summer, with the Greek National Opera at the ancient site of Odeon of Herodes Atticus at the Acropolis. Listen to Pirgu singing and you may be forgiven for thinking you’ve turned on something from another era; his flexible, mellifluous sound conjures up ghosts of opera yesteryear, and is beautifully suited to the lyrical Italian and French repertoire he focuses on. That doesn’t mean he’s a fossil, embraces intransigent historicism, or only appears in old-style productions; quite the opposite. Pirgu has appeared in some very modern productions (as you will see) and has some strong thoughts about the role of the director and singer relationship. There’s no denying his 2015 album, Il Mio Canto (Opus Arte), recorded with powerhouse conductor Speranza Scappucci and the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, is a wonderfully vivid display of the sort of old-school vocal fireworks and deep lyricism at which he excels; comparisons have, therefore, predictably been made between he and historic tenors like Giuseppe Di Stefano, but, as you’ll read, he takes it all in stride, preferring to focus on the task at hand.

Saimir Pirgu opera tenor performance stage music Naples Puccini

As Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Teatro di San Carlo (Naples), 2019. Photo: Luciano Romano

Earlier this year he appeared at Royal Opera House Covent Garden as Edgardo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, a role he previously performed at Teatro di San Carlo (Naples) and Staatsoper Hamburg. Over the years, he’s tackled a number of chewy Verdi tenor roles as well, including Macduff in Macbeth (at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona in 2016), Gabriel Adorno in Simon Boccanegra (Naples, 2017), and Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera (Parma, 2019). This is particularly intriguing, since Pirgu’s career has been so firmly centered around what might be considered the “grounding” roles for tenor repertoire: Puccini’s Pinkerton (from Madame Butterfly), The Duke of Mantua (Rigoletto), Verdi’s Alfredo Germont (from La traviata) and Donizetti’s Nemorino (from L’elisir d’amore). I’m keen to see (and hear) him tackle meatier sonic things; I want to hear his Riccardo, Macduff, Adorno live, as well as his Don Alvaro in La forza del destino, because I think Pirgu’s vocally come to a place where he not only can do it, but he should. With a dashing, old-school stage presence and remarkable vocal heft and flexibility, Pirgu is a tenor to watch, follow, carefully listen to.

Despite his bold, ballsy approach, Pirgu has been careful in choosing his roles. His move into French opera has been watchful, with past appearances in Cyrano de Bergerac, Roméo et Juliette and Werther; he closes out 2019 with a role debut as Gounod’s Faust with Opera Australia, a role he’ll be performing again in Zürich in May. His next performance is in La bohème at L.A. Opera on Saturday (September 14th) – he sings the main role of Rodolfo in the Komische Oper Berlin production – before singing Don José in Carmen at Deutsche Oper Berlin. Next year he’ll be tackling his very first Lensky in Teatro dell’Opera di Roma production of Eugene Onegin under the baton of James Conlon, with whom he has worked many times, and with whom he is currently working in Los Angeles. All of this bodes well for a tenor whose voice is exploring intriguing and beautiful possibilities.

We recently spoke about the challenges and joys of new and old productions, his thoughts on the pressures singers face within the digital realm, and why having the right conductor makes all the difference.

In Idomeneo (Styriarte Festival Graz 2008)

You’ve worked with a variety of directors, some of whom take modern approaches, others the so-called “traditional” approach. Does either approach affect you creatively? I saw the Damiano Michieletto production of Rigoletto in Amsterdam and thought it really captured what that opera is all about.

It was very intelligent, that production. I agree that people say, “Oh but it’s not the real story!” or “It’s not the way it usually is!” but… a new director who wants to say something, what he can do? He just has to experiment like this in an intelligent way, to suggest that the opera is not just one thing – it can be another idea, it can be another thought of what the story can be. I don’t like to say that I like old-fashioned or Regie or whatever, for me it’s just a case of asking, is it intelligent or not? Is it beautiful or not? And the answers depend on if the director is prepared to show something to the public. I’ve worked with both styles. When I did Don Giovanni with Zeffirelli in Verona it was this massive wonderful production with original costumes it was amazing; the colors of that production and the costumes, it put you in this old-world epoque.

But this Rigoletto from Michieletto… and the one I did in Zurich with Tatjana Gürbaca: she just had a table and we went up and down and around it. There was just one big table in the middle. It was difficult to do. It showed me the directors have ideas. You can transmit it to the singer and we can do our best to give the best to the public, but if the idea doesn’t come through, then it doesn’t matter if it’s old-fashioned or if it’s a new production – it’s always the same: it doesn’t have success. People today are not stupid; they see television, musicals, online. And in the opera world, if the production involves everybody in the overall idea, of course they have a wonderful experience. And that’s the case with Barrie Kosky’s production of La bohème – it’s between people, it’s not just showing costumes or stage design.

It underlines the human drama.

Yes.

You mentioned the competition with other media, and I wonder about digital influence. Some singers have told me the livestreams and HD broadcasts add another layer of pressure; one singer said he felt he was competing with Hollywood.

Today it’s important to look good. It’s our society. It’s not anymore about us, it’s about looking good, dressing well, so people … it’s a bit superficial – may I say that it is, yes. Sometimes a cover of a magazine is more important than a live performance, so you’re spending hours and hours and months in rehearsal, but with the cover on a magazine it doesn’t matter, it’s more important to have that image, than the real world. In the opera world, that doesn’t always work because we have direct feedback from the public; if you sing well, they applaud and if not, they don’t. So we have to be careful. The image has become very important and it’s why a lot of opera stars publishing pictures of what they drink and eat and how they dress, because they know the public now has changed, and is more like, “Okay, let’s see what the soprano is wearing at the party.” I’m sorry, for me it’s a bit superficial, but I know it is also the reality today.

In Werther, New National Theatre, Tokyo, 2019.

You mentioned audiences applauding or not, but they vary greatly, being wildly different between North America, Germany, Australia and Greece, for instance. Every audience you perform for will be different based on cultural awareness, exposure, expectations. What’s that like to deal with as an artist?

It’s not easy. In Italy and Spain they want to hear the voice first. If you’re a good actor, okay, it’s a plus, if you have stage presence, that’s okay too, but they want to hear voices, they want to hear: can you sing or not? And other parts of the world they’re more focused on acting and performance – it isn’t solely about singing. So it’s difficult to know what the public wants. I’m more concerned to sing in Italy, for example, because I know they will judge how I sing. Of course if you act very well it’s a plus in your interpretation but for them it’s important how you sing, the sound of your legato. I’m not saying for London or Amsterdam it’s not important, but they want to see a show; they see the whole performance differently. They go to the theatre to see the opera; they don’t go to see Pavarotti or Callas only. Whereas Italians will go for a specific singer. They want to enjoy that. So it’s different. The culture in Japan and other countries in Asia, they’re very nice and very silent, and really listening. You don’t understand if they like it at all until the very end when they do huge applause; they don’t want to disturb your performance.

Musician friends of mine who’s toured there have noted that the quality of listening from audiences in Japan and Korea is incredibly high; that can be both great and nerve-racking.

Yes, it is. And the lines after the concerts are huge! You may have sung a three-hour opera but people are willing to wait an hour or two for an autograph or at a CD signing. It’s a different culture. You have to be prepared.

That preparedness has shown itself in your careful choice of repertoire over the past while. What has it been like to explore, and where do you want to go with French and Italian work?

I’m enjoying my lyric repertoire right now, i have the feeling the voice is stable in that repertoire and every time I do it I’m getting better and better. It gets good feedback too. I’d like to do both French and Italian repertoire for as long as possible – first, because i like it, and second, because it’s the healthy thing to do. You keep going when you have wonderful results. So why not? I will not move to other big repertoire – I’ve always been careful about moving around with rep – but I’ll keep doing it too. It’s the only way I know, and it’s what gives me success, so why change?

Within that repertoire, your version of “È la solita storia del pastore” at Wigmore Hall was really special. Would you do more?

I think I will be doing more this year. It depends how you book yourself and if you have a new program and … it depends. It’s time now to do a series of concerts, I am thinking that, it’s just a question of timing. It takes all of time and it’s a lot of stress for a singer to do a recital series around the world. You sing a lot of arias and you get tired very easily.

But I would imagine there’s something satisfying about it artistically that is different than being in an opera.

Yes, it’s a different mentality of singing. You need to have stamina to last through all these arias! You sing more than ten or twelve of them, not including encores. You have to be prepared, and you need a lot of stamina. It depends on the repertoire of course – between lieder and arias, it’s a different scale entirely.

And sometimes that scale involves comparisons. There have been comparisons between your voice and Di Stefano, for instance.

It’s very human – when (Tito) Schipa was singing people would say, “Oh, Del Monaco is better, or Corelli.” It’s human to compare. But the thing is, if you are god in our business, there’s a reason you’re working. Nobody gives you anything for nothing in this business, especially the public.

With conductor James Conlon.

Chemistry powers so much in the industry too. What kind of a difference does it make to have that quality with a conductor?

I’ve worked a Abbado, Muti, Harnoncourt, all of whom are completely different, but because I was a violinist before, it made it much easier to understand what they wanted. The conductors can treat the singers sometimes like an orchestra, not all the way, and not all of them have the knowledge of the singing, they read the score and say, “Okay, you have to sing what’s in the score,” and then you have some conductors who aren’t listening to the singers, and a lot of conductors who do listen to the singers, down to the last second. So it depends who you have in front of you, and it depends of course on how good those conductors are, but all the legendary conductors have to spend a lot of time studying singing, piano, violin, orchestration — they’re full with knowledge, so it’s odd if they come to singers unprepared. I’ve been blessed to work with so many great ones, and I’ve learned a lot about music. The most important thing is to be patient, and to listen, not to say something, because always you will learn something with them. Being an artist means there’s a lot of energy inside us, and you have to deal with that, it’s part of your business, but don’t forget that you’re a human being; that helps a lot in terms of other relationships in the theatre.

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Bode-Museum, Berlin, statue, sculpture, man, woman, assault

Essay: “She Had A Choice”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On August 13, 2019

In classical, music, opera, personal

Today’s news about Placido Domingo was shocking to some and not to others. I spent much of the day pouring over various reactions, curious to take the temperature of the online classical world. What was and is most striking throughout various forums I read has been the divisive nature of the comments, sharply moving between “finally” and “bunch of lying opportunists.” Addressing this in writing offers a rumination on something I’ve not commented on very much publicly. I’m not one to shriek about anything on social media (those who know me know I do that enough in-person over anything I feel strongly about), but with news of one of the most famous living opera figures being accused of sexual harassment, the time feels nigh, and so.

I met Placido Domingo as a wide-eyed child who was pulled out of school to attend a record store one blustery Toronto afternoon. My mother smiled graciously when it came to be our turn. I only later understood the looks exchanged between the tenor and my starstruck (if very beautiful) mother. He told me to “study hard” and off we went. Years later my mother and I would watch Three Tenors concerts now and again, and after her passing, I got to see Domingo myself, in a concert version of Thais at the Salzburg Festival, and later in Macbeth at LA Opera. In any business the reality of transaction is part of overall functionality; scratch my back, I scratch yours. Within the arts world there exists, with equal if not greater presence, a spirit of what I’d call relationality, where the bonds of positive relationships power much of what is experienced within a live performance, in opera or in concert. Those relationships are, quite often, sacred things, creating webs-within-webs of connectivity between artists, administrators, musicians, designers, directors, managers, dramaturgs, répétiteurs, and the many, many others who help to make classical things happen. Transactionality, and more vitally, relationality, create a frequent blurring between art and life, a blur which often manifests itself in some of the most magical and unexpected ways, but within that world, there are barriers people (professionals, that is) know not to cross. Others – those in positions of power – step over the lines without a second thought; they know they can. Power affirms a feeling of impunity, entitles poor behaviour, highlights narcissism. When your norm is applause and adoration, you don’t care about blurring lines, because the rules don’t apply. This, of course, is where abuse happens.

Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission. (Collection Bode-Museum, Berlin)

Those who’ve been shrieking about opportunistic ingenues tend to point directly at Instagram as evidence of their claims, and while one might suspect any number of young artists would happily go to some effort to meet such powerful (and obviously useful) men, in this age of carefully curated selfies and meticulously groomed feeds, yes, sex sells, and always has; the classical world is not immune. (In working on a story about Instagram and opera last year, one friend commented that the platform has become “one giant competition to see which ingenue can pout the hardest –never mind the singing.”) It could be reasonably said that young women in the arts are more empowered than ever when it comes to presenting the image they wish the world to see; there are others who claim they’ve experienced instances of ingenues coming on to those in power (directors, conductors, major leads). I would argue such instances are perfect examples of women feeling they need to play into a male-gaze game for professional advancement. But, you may say, isn’t that how the world works? My question is, why should it have to be in 2019?

In my own younger days, I was agog at any attention from men whose work I enjoyed; they were indeed gods to me. (One of Domingo’s accusers speaks of him in similar terms.) Yes, it’s dangerous to put people on pedestals, but it happens with predictable regularity in the arts world, and it can be hard to see our heroes as fallible beings who are capable of screw-ups, let-downs, and generally terrible behaviour. When I was the receiving end of some flirtation by a famous man in my 20s, I remember being flattered, stunned, bewildered (“he’s paying attention to little old me?!“) – it was a sort of high I didn’t want to come down from. I did not possess the maturity or self-confidence to be able to discern whether or not such attentions were appropriate or sincere; I only knew it was exciting, addictive, and good at quelling the blizzard of negative inner voices, all of them crying for validation. If such validation happened to be coming from the object of worship… what better thing? I felt I was getting ahead; I felt, as a twenty-something stuck in a series of dead-end jobs, I was finally progressing. I felt the true me was being heard, seen, accepted, celebrated. Of course, it wasn’t the “true me” at all that was being recognized but the part handy to the powerful man. I gave away a version of myself, quickly and freely, in exchange for the validation I thought I needed, the feeling of advancement conflated with acceptance and affection with equal determination.

Altes Museum, Berlin, sculpture, naked, couple, man, woman, sex, face, stone, art

Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission. (Collection Altes Museum, Berlin)

It’s tough when the only arena in which you might hope to experience intimacy (or its fantasy-laden pastiche) is a transactional one. Some powerful men will, quite purposefully, sing a siren’s song to one’s doubting inner voices, a song that promises success, wholeness, joy, that says “I can give you all this…“. Attention, flirtation, the promise of success: narcotics for a young woman with a shaky sense of both herself and her worth. It’s hard to say “no” to all of that. It’s hard to say “no” to someone you idolize, who is powerful, who says he’ll help you, who convinces you that he thinks you’re talented and sexy and brilliant. It’s hard to say “no” to the attentions of a powerful man when you, as a young woman in a far less advantageous position, feel you need those attentions, and you need to accept them to climb the ladder of success. You don’t recognize you’re being groomed because you don’t have the tools for that, much less to refuse and walk away. And even if you do recognize the predatory nature of the attention, what “choice” do you actually have? Would it be right to call it “consent”?

The use of that word has been widespread in today’s online discussions. I take particular issue with its misuse because it begs the question: from which environment — mental, emotional, intellectual, societal — does that consent arise? From which vantage point? From whose history? From which influences? A woman’s history with that word, and its power in her life (to say nothing of the culture in which she was raised), may have taught her to think of it in ways that are the precise opposite of its true meaning and lived application, thus leading to a deep internalization of patriarchal notions of power – who holds it, why, how. So I ask again: whose consent? In what spirit was such consent made and given? Was it even a conscious decision, made with the full faculties of reason, rationality, maturity, and experience? “Consent is consent!” some may argue, “Stop twisting things!”

Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission. (Collectiion Bode-Museum, Berlin)

But the situation itself is twisted, because current ideas of who holds power and why have been internalized to the point of a total blindness that does not and literally cannot allow for empathy (which extends to much of the current political discourse as well). The perception of what true consent actually is, in and of one’s self, is (and was) a ridiculously complicated (though it shouldn’t be) matter when one is starting out in a notoriously difficult industry which, in itself, is adverse to change and evolution. A woman may be “consenting” because she feels there’s no other path. She may be “consenting” because she truly believes this is just how things are done, and have been done, in the industry. She may “consent” because she was raised in a culture that says men are always horny, always the boss, and always have more power than you. She may be “consenting” because the idea of courting rejection from someone she idolizes is too painful to bear, her sense of self being so closely tied up and twisted with the person she’s presented – and it may well be career suicide to say “no.” From what I’ve read today there are a number of people who simply don’t comprehend the vast power of someone like Placido Domingo – though there are just as many who do; there isn’t real “choice” in dealing with someone who has sat so high, for so long, on the throne of his own classical kingdom. Failure to recognize this constitutes the worst form of ignorance, willful or not. The exercise of choice within such a context is illusory at best. A powerful man can sometimes be very clear about the sex-in-exchange-for-opportunities thing, and so a young woman’s choice (so-called) between offering sexual favors to ascend professionally, and not having any professional opportunities at all, is hardly a climate in which any human should be expected to operate. It certainly isn’t one in which the notions of choice and consent can be freely exercised.

Bode-Museum, Berlin, della Robbia, face, art, painting, fresco, round, circle, doubt, expression

Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission. (Collection Bode-Museum, Berlin)

I want to believe that human evolution is moving far past a place where sexual transactionality within the classical industry is perceived as normal and fine and even (good grief) empowering for women. I believe serious damage – creative, emotional, spiritual – is being wrought through the perpetuation of a casting-couch culture, a damage only felt decades down the line, as women face the fallout of their perceived choices, ones made for reasons wholly unconnected with true advancement. New worlds are opening up as more people feel emboldened to come forwards and say: I don’t accept this as our system. This is not the key we should play in; this is not the aria we should continue to sing. This tempo stinks; let’s rewrite the whole thing together.

It takes a lot, to risk saying this in public, much less living it –to risk being perceived as a flake, a golddigger, a finger-wagger, an apologist, a malicious figure of angry embitterment. One must continually acknowledge that we operate within a system that’s been set up with the most strict and narrow conventions (of race, sex, opportunity), but we love the classical arts enough to push for change. It is a risk, and areward, to be truly heard, seen, recognized, accepted for who one is, without the thousand masks we wield on a daily basis to please our respective audiences. To the ladies who spoke up: thank you, and encore.

Vasily Petrenko: “You Have To Be Very Brave”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On May 15, 2019

In classical, interviews, music

Photo: Svetlana Tarlova

“Life is full — I’m not complaining!”

Vasily Petrenko was between sessions when we spoke recently, juggling recording all the Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and pianist Boris Giltburg (for future release on Naxos Records), with new season announcements, an upcoming London performance, and recent news of his Met Opera debut this autumn.

The chatty Saint Petersburg native is indeed busy. He has many titles: Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra; Chief Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; Chief Conductor of the European Union Youth Orchestra; Principal Guest Conductor of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia. In 2020 he steps down as music director of the Oslo orchestra (a position to which he was appointed in 2013-14); a year later, he leaves his position with Liverpool as well, though his long-standing relationship with the RLPO (he will have been with then fifteen years by then) will continue with Petrenko becoming Conductor Laureate. All of this movement is very much done with purpose: at the start of the 2021-2022 season, Petrenko becomes Music Director of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He’s set to lead his first concert with them since the announcement was made of his appointment last July; a highly-anticipated program featuring the music of Brahms and Strauss unfolds next month at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

With numerous accolades, awards, and a sizeable array of acclaimed recordings and appearances, Petrenko is, and has been, a man on the move since his early days in Russia, studying at the St Petersburg Conservatoire and participating in masterclasses with conductors Mariss Jansons and Yuri Temirkanov. The winner of numerous international conducting competitions (including First Prize in the Shostakovich Choral Conducting Competition in 1997), Petrenko received the prestigious Young Artist of the Year Award from Gramophone in 2007; a full decade later he was awarded their Artist of the Year (voted on by the public). He won the Male Artist of the Year at the Classical Brit Awards in 2010, and has appeared with a range of prestigious orchestras (including the Gewandhaus Leipzig, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, NHK Symphony Tokyo, to name just a few), and festivals, including the BBC Proms, Edinburgh, Aspen, and Ravinia. Tomorrow and Sunday evenings (May 16 / 19), he leads his Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) in a series of concerts with cellist Alban Gerhardt featuring Russian repertoire (Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Glazunov, Tchaikovsky, Khachaturian, Kabalevsky), before jetting off to Norway for concerts with soprano Veronique Gens and the Oslo Philharmonic featuring the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel, and Respighi.

Photo: Svetlana Tarlova

Lest you think Petrenko’s output is limited to symphonic work, think again. He has over thirty operas in his repertoire; in 2010, he appeared at both Glyndebourne (Verdi’s Macbeth) and Opéra National de Paris (Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin), but more recently conducted staged productions of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at the Bayerische Staatsoper (2016) and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at Opernhaus Zürich (2016-17). Concert performances have also been plentiful — of Verdi’s Falstaff with the RLPO (in conjunction with the European Opera Centre) and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel (with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra; both 2017). In November, Petrenko will make his Metropolitan opera debut conducting Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, with a stellar cast which includes soprano (and 2015 Operalia winner) Lise Davidsen, with whom Petrenko has previously worked.

The maestro’s warmth and dynamism are palpable whether onstage, in recordings, or indeed, in conversation. His reading of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2 with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2018 glowed with bold strings and ripe, round phrasing that warmly captured the work’s dancelike underpinnings; likewise his appearance last October at Cadogan Hall with the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia (“Evgeny Svetlanov”), where he led energetic if densely-woven performances of works by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, the latter’s Symphony No. 2 being, as Bachtrack’s Mark Pullinger rightly notes, “as brooding, as melancholic, as passionate an account as you’d wish to hear.” Elgar’s Chanson de matin was the encore that evening, which was perfectly fitting, considering Petrenko’s recordings of the English composer with the RLPO (in 2015, 2017, and 2019; Onyx) are genuinely excellent. Petrenko’s reading of Elgar works gave me a whole new insight into a sound world I had always felt closed off from; there was something about the composer’s output that always seemed cold, distant, impenetrable. How wrong I was, and how deeply grateful I am for Petrenko’s readings; they brim a lively, warm energy, a keen forward momentum, effervescent textures and poetic nuance, underlining the joy, drama and humanity so central to Elgar’s canon.

Photo: Onyx

Released in March of this year, Petrenko and the RLPO’s recording of the Serenade For String Orchestra, Op. 20 (together with the famous Enigma Variations) boasts gorgeous modulations, with an intriguing emphasis on the lyricism of the sparky cello and bass lines in the first movement (Allegro piacevole); the interplays and contrasts with a silken violin section that swells with operatic grandeur in the piece’s Larghetto, delicately swirling and swooping around a songlike cello section. It’s all so conversational and engaging, so dynamic and thoughtful, so casual and smart, all at once… rather like the conductor himself.

Between recording Beethoven Concertos, Petrenko recently offered a waterfall of insights on everything from the new seasons in both Oslo and Liverpool and the importance of new works within orchestral programming, to growing up in Saint Petersburg and thoughts on his Met debut later this year.

The 2019-2020 seasons for both the Oslo Philharmonic and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic certainly offer a lot to chew on.

We do have a lot — in Oslo it’s the orchestra’s centenary year, so we have a lot of projects related to the anniversary, including outdoor concerts for 20,000 people and tours to mainland Europe and other places. We also have concerts which reflect the past, so there will be one exactly mirroring the orchestra’s first concert – we’ll perform what was performed in 1919. And there’s plenty there with Liverpool too, like with the Mahler cycle starting from January 2020. So that’s a lot of symphonies!

Oslo Philharmonic CEO Ingrid Røynesdal said the the centenary season had been built around the theme of “Yesterday / Today / Tomorrow” and will feature fifteen new commissions; what role do you see new works playing within future programming?

I think for audiences it’s a matter of trust for conductor and orchestra, that even if the public does not know the name of the composer on the poster, they are still coming because they trust it’ll be great music. Here in Liverpool when I started to perform Hindemith for the very first time, people didn’t know the composer and didn’t turn out. Some asked, “Who or what is a Hindemith — is it a skin disease?” Later I was insisting he be performed — I really admire his works, and think he deserves much wider recognition. It isn’t contemporary music but it’s music of the 20th century. And later the audiences started to pack the house, even for contemporary works, including his pieces. We did a few different things — chamber works, choral works. It’s a matter of trust. I tried to put other names back on the map, and did so, quite successfully.

Photo: Mark McNulty

It is, for a conductor and an orchestra, a duty; it’s a must. I feel really obliged to perform as much contemporary music as I can, especially contemporary music of the local place where the orchestra is based, so in Liverpool English composers, and in Oslo, regional composers of Scandinavia; if we won’t give them a chance, who will? If the piece is not performed, nobody knows if it’s good or bad, it stays virtual — but time and the public will tell which will be a masterpiece, which will be neglected or forgotten. I think the vox populi will decide over the years which pieces of music become masterpieces, but to give them a chance to decide, we have to perform them, so I’m always up to do new commissions and also to perform a piece a second or third time. Contemporary music is so often performed once and under-rehearsed at that — and then of course it’s not given a second chance, a second look; it can just go to the trash bin, which is not what it deserves. So for me I’m trying to find a way where you’re not performing a new piece for 200 people who think they’re gurus of contemporary music, but for a full house. To program that you have to be very careful; it’s just one item of programming which will also include a famous work, so the main and general public will come and then they can discover something new and be moved.

This is not even in the very contemporary vein, but this past January I did Sibelius Four, which is one of the less performed symphonies by him. It’s very dark and very profound and much more difficult to absorb rather than the First, the Second, or the Fifth; it was the main piece, and we were expecting that it would not be full, but a lot of people came, and they said it was the best concert of the season! So you have to be very brave, and believe in contemporary music, and in yourself, and do it as much as you can.

That echoes something Johannes Moser said to me recently, that very often the public’s exposure to contemporary works is linked to a mediocre performance, so they assume that’s how all of it sounds.

If you look into the history of many pieces which are now considered as masterpieces, their first (presentations) were not big successes. It’s only after the second or third run, when the orchestra is more familiar with a new piece, and it feels more musical and less technical for them, that they can they recognize it as good. I should confess to the marketing department that I’d like to perform a contemporary piece twice in same concert: once at the beginning; then whatever music in the middle; then again at the very end. That may give quite a different perspective for the public. It’s challenging because of the general strategy but maybe that’s how you can program (contemporary music) better than how it is done now.

Cadogan Hall. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.

That brings to mind something you’d said to The Scotsman last year in relation to your new role with the Royal Philharmonic about using various London venues for various types of repertoire; that seems important within the broader context of shaping public perceptions of certain works.

With the Royal Philharmonic, we will be quite lucky, performing quite extensively at Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, and Cadogan Hall. London does not have an ideal, let’s say, concert hall, but those three venues, they can cover different pieces. Royal Albert Hall, of course, is perfect for big symphonies — Strauss and the Don Juans, big Bruckner works, Elgar, Mahler, oratorios, and various potentially semi-staged operas — it’s a coliseum, it’s made for that. Then Royal Festival Hall is probably for the main romantic and post-romantic things, like Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Britten, that kind of thing can be done there. And then Cadogan Hall is for pieces written earlier, like the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, ideally, or after, like neo-classical, contemporary music, with relatively small orchestras — that can work there very well also. So I think the variety of different pieces of music is related to the size and abilities of each hall.

And performing at a variety of venues is good for community-building, something you’ve been incredibly committed to throughout your time in both Oslo and Liverpool. For the RLPO, you told The Guardian in 2015 that you wanted to see the kids in the youth program become full-fledged members of the RLPO.

Yes in five or ten years — ideally, yes. I think for any orchestra to go into the society of the place they’re based and to be part of that community is very, very important. It’s a thing I’ve done here in Liverpool and I’ve done it in Oslo too — the orchestra and I are coming much more frequently into universities and such, sometimes I’ve done things like lectures, which they appreciate, and also I do all the pre-concert talks there before every single concert, either offstage or onstage, which brings people an understanding. It’s something which we always need to remember with any orchestra: we are there for the public; the public is not there for us.

Photo: Mark McNulty

Where did that come from, that urge to connect with community? Was it your background in Russia, and the way culture seems to be so woven into everyday life there?

I guess part of it came from Saint Petersburg, or Leningrad, which, in the 1980s and 1990s, growing up there was this sense of living in a very big village. It’s a huge city, five million inhabitants, it’s a city where every citizen used to know at least, how to get to a certain street, they knew the city extremely well and were ready to help each other, and literally were ready to talk to each other on the streets or wherever else, and that was also reflected in Philharmonic programs and at the Mariinsky and Kirov Ballet programs. Culture is a big part of Russian and Soviet society, and I’m quite glad that nowadays it’s sort of returned back, slowly, to the level of how it was in Soviet times.

vasily petrenko svetlanov cadogan douglas

With the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia and pianist Barry Douglas at Cadogan Hall in October 2018. (Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission)

You know, you can say a lot of bad things about the Communists, but the attention they directed toward culture was huge — in a good and in a bad way — but the profession of musician in the Soviet Union was one of the most prestigious professions of all, for many reasons — huge competitions, relatively good salaries by Soviet standards; it was highly prestigious. People were respecting a lot of the artists, the singers and the musicians; all the people of art. That had been neglected (after the fall of Communism) partly because it was much more business-oriented, but now it seems to me this way is being brought back slowly, so the Moscow Philharmonic, as an umbrella of organizations, they sell an incredible amount of tickets, something like 500,000 subscriptions or something. Those in Moscow and Saint Petersburg are very active in culture; it is a part of the common life to go to the theatre or the Philharmonic Hall and to other concert halls, to the opera — literally almost every citizen tries to go at least every other week, and it is a very knowledgeable public, a public who understands the values and the essence (of art), and I’m really glad that it’s continued.

So yes, probably, (the awareness of community) came from that point, the understanding that culture itself can improve the quality of life of everyone, of every individual — there’s a message that we are there to improve your quality of life, mentally, emotionally, physically, all sorts of things.

I’m not sure opera is perceived that way in some places, though. You’re in NYC in the fall, making your Met Opera debut with Pique Dame (The Queen Of Spades) — what ideas or approaches do you bring with you from Oslo, Liverpool, Petersburg…?

People quite often ask me, “What’s the difference between conducting an opera and conducting a conducting symphonic orchestra?” and I say: when you conduct an orchestra, you’re driving a car; when you conduct an opera, you’re driving a truck. You have to think about the size and your responsibility when you’re conducting opera, and how it’s different. Your ability is obviously different when you have just a small car; the maneuverability is bigger, of course you can turn and twist immediately. With a big truck, you have to think about where it will move, and you also have to think about others; however, with a big truck you can bring more goods. And so of course the difference is that you are in charge, probably, if not indirectly in opera, of many other people — not just singers, not just dancers, but for instance light engineers, curtain makers, you have to acknowledge and know many more things than just the music. It’s also about physics — where the choir is, how they’re moving — everything can affect the performance. On the other hand, with the music plus the visual aspects, you can have a huge emotional impact on the public, all of the visual details are much more direct than just the sounds, to your mind and to the minds of the listeners, or the viewers.

Inside the Metropolitan Opera. (Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.)

The Met is a very big house too.

It is a big house, and I’ve heard from many people — and this is what I’m saying to singers and to orchestras in other places which are big —that even if the house is big, quite naturally you start to play or sing louder, which is not necessary, because it leads to too-loud performances. So for me I want to find the balance and delicacy of the score, and in Pique Dame there are many delicate, quiet moments; probably the main climaxes happen in the quiet moments rather than the loud moments — the psychological climaxes — and so, we’ll work on those moments. If there is coherence between what’s going on visually onstage and what it says in the music, that can make an incredible effect.

Thomas Hampson: “We Make The Human Experience Audible”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On April 27, 2019

In classical, interviews, opera, voice

Photo: Jimmy Donelan

Midway through our recent conversation, Thomas Hampson paused, trying to find the right word relating to a musical concept.

“You speak German, don’t you?”

He couldn’t see me, but I wanted to crawl under my desk with shame. Here I was speaking to one of the most celebrated living opera singers in history and my wall of Anglo-Canadian linguistic ignorance was as glaringly solid as ever. Hampson, ever the gentleman, patiently (dare I say enthusiastically) explained, expanded, and engaged, as is his custom in both life and in art.

The American-born, Austria-living baritone is currently in Houston, having just opened The Phoenix by composer Tarik O’Regan and librettist John Caird, playing the role of the elder Lorenzo Da Ponte to bass baritone (and real-life son-in-law) Luca Pisaroni’s junior. The project marks the second world premiere Hampson has been part of this season alone, having performed as Hadrian in the Canadian Opera Company’s new work of the same name (by Rufus Wainwright) in October. With four decades of singing under his belt and engagements with every major house (Bayerische Staatsoper, Teatro Alla Scala, the Met, Wiener Staatsoper, Lyric Opera Chicago, Opéra National de Paris, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Salzburg), you’d think he’d be content to rest on his laurels — but as you’ll read, that isn’t who Thomas Hampson is. His voracious artistic curiosity often makes itself known, through keenly dramatic approach to his various roles (and they’ve included all the goodies: Don Giovanni, Scarpia, Eugene Onegin, Werther, Amfortas, Macbeth, Boccanegra, Figaro) as well as through his extensive recital work, albums dedicated to song, and intense teaching time. Dame Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, whom he met during his student days at Merola, once called him “the best singer in Europe.”

Thomas Hampson and director Peter Hinton in rehearsal for the Canadian Opera Company’s Hadrian, 2018. Photo: Gaetz Photography

It was at a performance at the Metropolitan Opera in 2017 when I fully understood and appreciated the true depth of Hampson’s artistry. Verdi being an absolute mainstay composer in my childhood household, I knew is works inside and out musically, and had heard many different version of many different roles, among them Giorgio Germont in La traviata. Despite the vocal grandeur of many performances, the reading of the role always, without fail, left me cold, whether on vinyl, compact disc, or live; the character seemed little more than a stiff cliche, barking on about honor and family. Hampson’s interpretation of the role in Willy Decker’s production, however, changed all that. Similar to my experience of Pisaroni’s Leporello in Salzburg in 2016, it was a bold, beautiful opening that made me rethink not only the opera and the composer, but my relationship with each, as with music and art. Hampson’s Germont was, by turns, angry, exhausted, overwhelmed, a deeply moving portrayal of a man in full awareness of his obsessive, possibly ill son, trying to balance his own sense of guilt with a seething fury echoing that of Alfredo (apple, meet tree). Hampson’s portrayal was just as much vocal as it was physical; his watchful, smart modulation and timbre were not meant to be pretty, graceful, smooth — all the things I’d grown up hearing. His Germont was, put simply, beautifully human, and it remains one of my all-time favorite performances on the stage to this day.

As Germont in La traviata, Metropolitan Opera, 2017. Photo: Marty Sohl

There’s a true and highly committed work ethic behind such performances, and it’s one Hampson has been recognized for often throughout his career. He has a load of honors to his credit: they include a Grammy for his role as Wolfram in a 2003 recording of Wagner’s Tannhäuser (done with Daniel Barenboim); six Grammy nominations; Male Singer of the Year at the 1994 International Classical Music Awards; five Dutch Edison Awards (including one for Lifetime Achievement); four Echo prizes; a Grand Prix du Disque, and many, many more. He has worked with so many great conductors (Leonard Bernstein, Antonio Pappano, Maris Jansons, Andris Nelsons, Christoph Eschenbach, Fabio Luisi, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Franz Welser-Möst) and always has kept firm commitments to both to the art of song as well as to contemporary works; next season he performs the role of Jan Vermeer in Girl With The Pearl Earring (Stefan Wirth, 1975) at Opernhaus Zürich but before that, next month, he sings Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, a work Hampson is known (and rightly celebrated) for.

Another famous thing Hampson does is concert tours with Pisaroni, playfully called No Tenors Allowed, which makes a stop at Toronto’s Koerner Hall this Tuesday (30 April). A mix of opera, operetta, and showtunes, the evening is a showcase of the baritone’s flexible vocality, theatrical vividness, and serious approach to his work. Even if he’s singing a Broadway number, it’s easily discernible just how much Hampson means every single word — and that applies just as much in conversation, in teaching, in rehearsal, in life, as it does in voice. Art and life fuse in a beautiful, passionate co-mingling with an artist such as he, and it’s that integration which, for me, powers his charisma, his artistic commitment, and that insatiable curiosity, which, as you will see, is such a palpable cornerstone to who he is, as artist and man.

Thomas Hampson as Hadrian in the Canadian Opera Company’s world premiere production of Hadrian, 2018. Photo: Michael Cooper

You have an immense artistic curiosity — what fuels that?

I’m just like that! How can I say this? In what I do, I’m a musician; my life and my mind as a musician is, every day, every hour, I’m exploring ways we express ourselves in a language we call music, and when that is coupled, especially in the song world, with the metaphor of our imagination through words, I find that it’s an incredible adventure into why we do what we do, who we are, how different people think of different things. That’s a grandiose answer to your question!

Something was written two years ago, or two hundred years ago, or twenty minutes ago, can, in some ways, not be the determining factor — it simply has been attempted. Of course, we to try and capture how people do what they do in a musical language. The story of Hadrian is fascinating, the story of Da Ponte is fascinating, the story of Scarpia is fascinating, the story of Boccanegra is fascinating, just to name some big characters; why do they do what they do and who are they? Some have a bit more to do with the value of humanity and the value of life, but to know a Scarpia is to understand how desperate and tyrannical humans can be to one another — and how dangerous humans can be. Tosca is just as contemporary today as the day it was written. These are things that fascinate me.

In terms of specifically new music, I feel very strongly that new opera must be supported — that sounds like more of a drudge that I mean it, but we have to give our composers the chance to become great. Verdi’s first three or four operas were not exactly amazing but they showed an amazing potential, and they’re probably all worth some kind of performance. There’s an awful lot of pressure on new opera productions today because people come, sit there and fold their arms and say, “Okay, am I going to experience greatness?” But I think that’s missing the point completely. Are we engaged in human beings? That’s my question and certainly, we were with Hadrian and certainly we are here with The Phoenix.

Thomas Hampson as Lorenzo Da Ponte in The Phoenix, Houston Grand Opera, 2019. Photo: Lynn Lane

What does that give you then, as an artist?

Everything.

A lot of people in your position would be content to rest on their considerable laurels.

That’s not who I am or who we are as musicians. Bernard Haitink doesn’t keep conducting at 90 because he is trying to stay employed and wants to remember who he is. This what we do in the morning, this is what we live for, it’s our lifeblood, whether we play for three or 3000 is not the point — it’s what gets us motivated, what motivates us in terms of being musicians. It’s not about a gold watch and 30 years service.

hampson manhattan school of music teaching

Teaching at the Manhattan School of Music. Photo: Brian Hatton

Does that feed into your teaching work? Chen Reiss said in a recent conversation that teaching gives her a lot as an artist.

Yes, and It gives me a great deal too. I’ve taught a lot in the last 25 years — I’ve learned a lot about it over the years and I’m thankful. When I teach for a couple days, or walk into a masterclass, just having to articulate the fundamentals or rearticulate the whys and wherefores to young colleagues, somehow reinforces your own; it’s like giving yourself a voice lesson. I thank my colleagues for letting me take the time to give myself a voice lesson! Now that I’m more extensively involved in pedagogical activities, and planning them, I see it as a wonderfully healthy way to pass it on. I’ve had some wonderful instruction since the heydey of my career — I was very fortunate; they gave me inroads into how to study and how to prepare that have stood me well. I’m confident that, at the very least, I can be a help to my younger colleagues in an experiential way, so I can say, for instance, “That’s not a path you want to go down.” In the last five or seven years, in my more concentrated studies, I’m very active in keeping abreast to pedagogical thought and to keeping it simple, and helping young colleagues truly mature into young professionals. It’s a passing-it-on situation, and it gives me a great deal of energy. To be part of someone else’s “a-ha!” moment is very intoxicating.

Keeping that “a-ha!” moment in mind, you’ve worked with some great conductors, and continue to. How much do you still find yourself surprised at learning from them? Everybody has a different style, different personality, different ways of adjusting.

That’s a good question. When I was singing a great deal of Mozart, bouncing between Harnoncourt, Muti and Levine, that was, talk about different styles and personalities! Everyone is on the same mountain, the mountain is the clarity of human emotion in musical language, and the different glaciers you might be on have different challenges. Yes, you do not sing, in a phraseology sense, the same with a Muti as with a Harnoncourt, but those are not absolutes. Both of those men are deeply dedicated, experienced musicians, and great conductors don’t happen by accident — they’re some of the greatest musicians musical minds. The best conductors have a direct and kind of uncanny ability to initiate other peoples’ making of music in a collective way, and that’s an extremely important talent. To learn from these really wonderful musicians is a privilege; having someone like Jansons feel you are the one he needs to make that musical decision or choice of repertoire viable at that particular concert, it’s a great validation. For him to want to do that with you is great — I don’t feel so engaged by him as invited to participate because we can go to this or that level with this or that piece, and that’s very important. Michael Tilson Thomas — I’ve learned so much from him, he’s so damn smart. I don’t have the musical training these people do, or the musical talent; I have a musicality and an instinct that can keep up! Bruno Walter said that about Lotte Lehmann; she was an amazing singer, she moved people enormously and was a great pedagogue, but he wrote the forward to her book, “Lotte’s curiosity has always informed her instinctual knowledge.” I think that’s a wonderful thing.

Photo: Mark McDonald

That relates to your dedication to lieder and the art of song — it seems like another symbol for your artistic curiosity. Why song, why now?

That’s a wonderful question. I’m not into a particular fach, or niche repertoire. I’m not trying to help keep the song alive because I think it’s a “cool” thing. As humans with have two options to express ourselves: we can either verbally articulate it, or we can write it. Whether that’s in a hieroglyphic or a scratch on a cave wall, or a fine use of the language any one person would call their own language, it doesn’t matter — the point is to get the experience, the emotional and intellectual experience out of your head and leave it like a footprint in the sand, and say, “Okay, this is what I thought.” Poetry has a little bit more focus to that in that someone is deciding in a particular linguistic structure to express thought and emotion at the same time. This is a wonderful source of inspiration for people whose antenna is essentially musical; these two antennae are somehow trying to figure out a way to articulate what Copland said, the moment of being alive now. And the composer fleshes out, in a musical language, more the emotional context of what that poem is about as well as participating in the intellectual side of the narrative, and that’s to think about what this or that chord represents, this or that harmonic structure or harmonic rhythm, whatever the tools of that musical composer are which indicate they’re fleshing out what they perceive that poem was about.

That’s what I feel is the alpha-omega of singing. This is what we do: we make the human experience audible, in a language called music, inspired by words, which is for the purpose of us as a community experiencing that particular moment of humanness, if you will. And I don’t think that’s a hobby, I don’t think that’s a fach, I don’t think that’s genre; I think that’s the beginning and the end of everything we do as singers, period. The idea there’s a concert fach and a lieder fach and an oper fach, “he’s this or that type of baritone” — I just think that’s a very dangerous and un-useful thing to think for singers within their own particular development.

Also, it’s not an idea to give our audiences, that we are jobbing. I think the arts and humanities is far more important than the idea that “Oh, it’s a job.” It is more than that. What we provide in the evening, what a classical concert is about, if you will, is the privilege and pleasure of any human to stop the clock just for a second. It might be three minutes or a forty-minute movement; we stop the clock for the privilege of going inside and asking ourselves, as listeners and performers, who are we? Why are we here? What does this all mean? How can we make a way forwards from this experience ? If that’s not the thrust of the classical music industry, the privilege and pleasure and the inroads of audiences we provide for their own human living development and experience, we’re in a lot of trouble. You can’t market or brand that. It has to be understood as part of the process of us asking, how can we be better human beings?

Operetta gala in Baden-Baden with Annette Dasch, Piotr Beczala, and Pavel Baleff conducting the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Photo: Michael Bode

Stopping the clock doesn’t have to be limited to serious music, either. As Barrie Kosky and I discussed last year, it can happen in operettas, a genre you perform in and make part of your concerts.

It’s like making fun of opera plots — talk about low-hanging fruit! But I don’t think opera is about plot; I think opera is about dilemma. Whether the door was opened or the sun went up or five years passed or whatever, it all gets condensed —the point is that a trio of people might come together to explore who they are. When the composers are gifted and the language of character is so apparent in their music — i.e. Verdi, i.e. Mozart – then I think we all go home happy. If you take that in another way, to the operetta world, yes they’re simpler but why not? The thing about operetta that fascinates me, as well as musical theatre, is that the distance between emotional language and the language of the music so much closer. And the believability factor is instantaneous with an operetta; If they don’t believe every word, you’re dead, forget about it. If you feel for a minute it’s about you and your voice, they’ll walk away. That’s not quite true in opera. It’s an experiential dimension, a wonder of what’s happening as much as why. It’s all healthy, and part of the enriching human experience of the theatre and the power of the musical language.

But we have a completely different sensibility to the language of music than the era from which a lot of these pieces were written; Bellini is not Mozart, Verdi is not Mozart, Puccini is not Verdi. I think these questions are important. As an example, Verdi, as great as he was, was vociferously criticized for the vulgarity of the beginning of Otello when he wrote it. I don’t know any conductor, esp Italian, who don’t feel the mantle of Verdi’s spirit on their shoulders. Yet all of the instruments are different — the strings are steel, the clarinets are plastic — the decibel possible out of an orchestra pit in a house now is something people in Verdi’s time would have never experienced, let alone the sheer size of the houses now. What am I trying to say? I’m saying when we do these performances, we need to be sensitive to the context in which they were performed; a forte piano in Schubert is different than a forte piano in Stravinsky I don’t care who wants to disagree with me — it’s just different. As musicians. it’s our job to flesh out the reality, to make it audible, so that the experience is contemporary, regardless of when the piece was written.

As Scarpia in Tosca at Bayerische Staatsoper. Photo: Bayerische Staatsoper / Wilfried Hösl

Part of what makes your performances so visceral is that you are such a believable stage presence. Luca and I spoke about how he prefers being known as a singing actor over being known for just his voice alone.

I know he’s said that before, and he’s right. What I would like is to be remembered as somebody you believed when you saw or heard him in the theatre. “Whether a Winterreise or in an opera or in recital, Hampson always made audible that which he was singing.” Luca’s right — in the theatre context, in an opera context, I certainly want to be thought of as a thoroughly professional singer; I don’t think that’s different than being believable in an acting sense. I think what makes Luca special is that his believability factor is so high. He searches for that dimension of understanding of why the music is saying that, and incorporates making it physical as well as audible.

A lot of my colleagues are extremely preoccupied with being remembered as a special or unique or great voice. I mean, Callas was unique in her generation, unique in several generations, with records that are still selling — people want to listen. Why? It’s not just the amazing agility and color and timbre. It’s the believability factor, giving it up to music — I believe what I do on stage has, this is going to sound incongruous, but it ain’t about Tom Hampson, it’s about what Tom Hampson can do to make that which he’s singing audible, believable, inhabitable, for the people who are experiencing that performance. Now, does that mean it’s not about me? Of course not. It’s my abilities to do that, but my whole effort is about the Schubert moment ,the Mahler moment, the Verdi moment, the Wainwright moment, the O’Regan moment.

In concert at Ingram Hall at the Blair School of Music. Photo: Vanderbilt University/Steve Green)

Those moments have to be infused with authenticity.

Yes, you have to do your homework. You have to work to do that. it’s a tremendous amount of study and detailed sensitivity. People who talk about the spontaneousness of this or that performer onstage simply don’t understand the dimensions of performing. Of course we want to be thought of as spontaneous, there’s nothing more miraculous than someone saying, “It sounded as if he was composing it as he sang it!” That’s one of the greatest compliments, but that is only possible with the minutest, most detailed sensitivity and homework.

And sometimes it’s nice to experience artists where you can see the gears turning, you can feel them, you can smell them. I love that.

Yes! I must say, I am not preoccupied with what people think about me. I’m preoccupied what what I think about me. It’s one of the things I talk about with my young colleagues: if you go onstage like a golden retriever, wanting people to like you and think you’re the cutest dog ever, you’re going to be a nervous wreck. I am not concerned with what people think about the Winterreise when I sing it; I am concerned that I achieve what I believe Schubert was trying to achieve in that cycle. I cannot convince anybody of anything from the stage. The energy in a concert hall or opera house is not from the stage to the audience, it is from the audience to the stage. And if you embrace that, and you know your technique and you know why you’re standing there and go into your zone as quickly as you can in that public context, as a performer your nerves will be more controllable. If you go out thinking the applause-o-meter is important, or “Oh God, there’s blank faces in the first few rows” … I mean, I don’t know who’s in front of me; I don’t want to know. That’s not why I’m there.

Photo: Catherine Pisaroni

There’s a real intimacy with singing — you don’t have an instrument; it’s just you, your body, the space, and sometimes conductor or accompanists, and the music. There’s something vulnerable about that.

Yes, for sure.

It’s a real pity when you see singers who’ve lost that vulnerability.

Yes, that’s so true — and their sense of wonder. I do this piece called Letters from Lincoln by Michael Daugherty, and it ends with him signing a letter,”Yours very sincerely, Abraham Lincoln.” I mean… wow. You have to sing it a few times not to get emotional.

The German phrase “stehen für” means “represent” but it doesn’t quite grasp things— it means someone who stands in place of someone else. That’s what I feel like when I sing the great music I’m allowed to sing; I am there at their service. The only megastars are the composers and poets, in my opinion. I know Pavarotti felt the same way. We all come and go. You do the best you can. My responsibility is a final link to the greatness of thought and captured in a language called music.

Photo: Jiyang Chen

And that includes fun music.

Yes, there’s different constellations. With the concert performances, yes it’s clever, we’re family, “no tenors allowed” — that’s a total tongue-in-cheek joke, it has no validity to our tenor colleagues or anybody else, it’s just a smirk and a hahaha. What is in these programs is Mozart. Bellini, Verdi, Massenet, then we get into Lehar, Kalman, Cole Porter, Gershwin, and our last encore is Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, which is the precursor to Verdi. This is great music, these are great moments — admittedly some are lighter, but audiences will take this roller coaster ride, from a Don Giovanni duet, which is brief but white-heat kind of stuff, to this enormous contemplation of freedom and self-determination with that Don Carlo duet, to ending with “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better”. I defy you to put a brand on that evening. It is interesting, some of the reactions we get, but audiences get it completely, they go with us. Most people respect who we are but some have had to chew on this: what is it? A vanity evening?

“That isn’t real opera!”

Yes, and I think that’s missing the point of a duet evening, this bouquet of great musical moments of human experience. Is it the Winterreise? No. Is it Don Carlo? No.

Wolfsburg concert. Photo: Andreas Greiner-Nap / Soli Deo Gloria

But it doesn’t have to be.

Exactly! Something in the back of ours minds is, maybe it’s the first time some of our public is introduced to some of this great work. We could’ve programmed nothing but duets — I did a record with Sam, I love duet evenings, I’ll do one with Opolais and another Gheorghiu this year. I think it’s a big evening, it demands everything from Luca and I — it is not a walk in the park. We are out there on the line, but we believe the program is very user-friendly and has a lot of value as well a big enjoyment factor for all of us. I want to believe some of that snobbery is because I’ve not had a chance to talk to the naysayers and offer a different perspective.

Maybe No Tenors Allowed in itself already offers that perspective?

That’s what our hope is!

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Luca Pisaroni: “The More You Are Exposed To New Things, The Better It Is.”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On April 26, 2019

In classical, interviews, opera, voice

Photo: Catherine Pisaroni

The last time I spoke with Luca Pisaroni, he was in Toronto with his beloved Lenny and Tristan, preparing to sing title role in Maometto II. The 1820 Rossini opera is a musically extravagant showcase of high-wire vocalism, demands which Pisaroni met with both cool panache and white-hot intensity. The Italian bass baritone has a knack for combining the hot and the cool; artistic passion is combined with technical meticulousness provide a genuinely authentic and very visceral live performance experience. What could be merely a cliched “Latin heat” is, with this artist, a genuine intensity of purpose, infused with palpable intelligence and grace. It’s one of the many reasons Pisaroni is so busy, and why he was recipient of a 2019 Opera News Award earlier this year.

Known for his stellar Mozart interpretations, Pisaroni is also ace with German and Italian repertoire, and has embraced the work of French composers in recent years. The Venezuela-born, Italy-raised bass baritone trained in Milan, Buenos Aires, and New York, and has worked with some of the world’s most celebrated companies, including Teatro Alla Scala, Opéra National de Paris, Bayerische Staatsoper, Wiener Staatsoper, the Salzburg Festival, the Rossini Festival, The Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Sante Fe Opera. He is especially known (and rightly celebrated) for singing the work of Mozart, having appeared in La clemenza di Tito, Die Zauberflöte, Cosi fan tutte, and Don Giovanni. His Leporello in a 2016 Salzburg revival of the latter (directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf) remains not only my favorite performance of that role, but one of my all-time favorite opera performances all around, authentically human and very theatrically satisfying. I’m not alone in this sentiment. In 2015, Opera News writer Fred Cohn wrote of Pisaroni’s Glyndebourne Festival performance as Leporello (in 2010) that it was one which “demands that you focus on the character, not the voice. This Leporello is both thoroughly likable — sometimes goofily funny — and morally ambiguous, a willing conspirator in his master’s cruel schemes. He is bound to Gerald Finley’s Don in a relationship that’s almost startlingly intimate but still immutably governed by the power inequity between master and servant. Pisaroni achieves this characterization with an integration of music and movement so complete that you’re hardly aware that he is singing — or acting, for that matter. You’re aware only of the dramatic moment.”

As Don Pizarro in Fidelio in Milan, 2018. Photo: Teatro Alla Scala/Brescia-Amisano

Pisaroni got the chance to be the Don himself earlier this year, in a Met opera revival. He’s also added roles to his regular repertoire, not Mozart works, but French ones (and one German) — both Berlioz’s and Gounod’s Mephistopheles, the villains of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, Golaud in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Don Pizarro in Beethoven’s Fidelio. Tonight (26 April) Pisaroni adds a brand-new, never-before-seen role to the list, that of Lorenzo Da Ponte (librettist to Mozart, among other things) in The Phoenix, by composer Tarik O’Regan and librettist John Caird, at Houston Grand Opera. Pisaroni plays the younger version of the Italian-American writer/impresario/scholar, with baritone Thomas Hampson (Pisaroni’s real-life father-in-law) playing the elder Da Ponte. In addition to being partners in the new production, the pair are presenting No Tenors Allowed at Koerner Hall in Toronto on Tuesday (30 April), a program they’ve toured to great success, featuring a mix of classical works and show tunes. Later this year he’ll be touring as part of an in-concert version of Handel’s Agrippina in Luxembourg, Spain, and the UK, returning to Golaud at the Staatsoper Berlin and the villains of Hoffman at Wiener Staatsoper, doing an in-concert version of Don Pizarro in Fidelio (Montréal), and performing lots (lots) more Mozart (Figaro, Guglielmo, Leporello as well as his boss the Don) — in New York, Paris, Munich, and Zürich.

I spoke with both Pisaroni and Hampson separately; my interview with the baritone is here. What was so rewarding, coming away from each recent conversation, was the thoughtful nature of the respondents. Neither Hampson nor Pisaroni are interested in giving pat, tidy, soundbite-sized answers; they’re keen to explore various aspects of an ever-changing art form, the cultural/social/historical ideas that mingle with and transform old and new concepts of voice and theatre, and where, how, and why they fit into it all. It’s true, they are both low-voiced singers, they are family, they work together, their approaches are equally meticulous — but they’re rooted in entirely individual identities. Such uniqueness is what largely powers their real and ever-unfolding onstage chemistry. Each artist is so smart, so passionate, and very much an ambassador for their art form. Here Pisaroni muses on being an Italian singer doing a new work, vocal demands, his next (rather famous) role debut, why No Tenors Allowed is so special, and why it’s important to be more than a pretty voice.

With Thomas Hampson in The Phoenix, Houston Grand Opera, 2019. Photo: Lynn Lane

What’s it like to be part of a new project?

I would say it’s unusual for an Italian to do this. There is a tradition of people doing contemporary music but it’s like a niche; they just do that, they normally don’t do anything else. When Patrick (Summers) asked me if I was interested in playing Da Ponte, I said, “Hell yeah!” It’s such an interesting character, and he had such a fascinating life that I thought it would be really fun to play, and so here I am. The big difference is that Thomas has done quite a lot of new work and this is my first one — this is my first contemporary opera. I did a couple of modern pieces, like “Miserere” by Pärt (in 2016). It’s exciting to be able to create something that nobody has done, and have the chance to talk to the composer and be part of the process.

How do the vocal demands differ?

I try to sing it in the most natural way for me — it’s well written for the voice, but it’s definitely a challenge because it’s very rangey; it has a lot of high stuff and low stuff, high and lots of jumps, and so in that sense, yes, it’s a challenge. But I have to say it’s really well-written, and it doesn’t push my tessitura to an extent that it’s uncomfortable, so I just had to get used to it. In the beginning, the main issue was to learn the language of the composer, and that’s what takes a little bit of time — one needs to adjust. Eventually when you know it, you get it, and it’s really nice to be part of. Tarik (O’Regan)’s writing is amazing — there are some really unbelievably nice moments. At the first musical rehearsal, when we heard everybody else, the chorus and everything, we all went “WOW… “

As Lorenzo Da Ponte in The Phoenix, Houston Grand Opera, 2019. Photo: Lynn Lane

What do you think doing The Phoenix gives you as an artist? Do you come back to your more known repertoire with a different perspective?

That’s a good question. I don’t know! I’m going to do another world premiere in a couple of years, and I have to say, I actually enjoyed doing this; I’m surprised because I thought initially, “Well, I’ll try it once and see how it goes” — but it’s an interesting process, and it’s nice to be part of a creation. It gives you a good feeling. The most amazing thing is the fact the composer is there. I wish that every time I do something I could have the chance to talk to the composer and say, “What did you have in mind here”? But I think I will keep doing (new works), if they are offered it to me. It’s an exciting process.

Thomas said a project like The Phoenix feeds curiosity, a quality he feels is vital for artists.

That’s true. I always thought, the more you are exposed to new things, the better it is. For me (curiosity) is natural, though probably for some people, it isn’t. I have always tried varied things — songs, French and German repertoire — because I think it’s part of being a musician, to be curious, to try other things and explore the repertoire, to try as many styles and as many different types of repertoire as I can. I think it’s normal for a singer to try out things — and to remember that not everything you do is going to be successful; that’s absolutely normal, and it’s part of the game. Also, you may not like everything you do, but until you do it, you can’t judge. It’s like watching a bad movie and then saying you will not watch movies anymore; you watch ten, and nine are great but one is terrible. Are you never going to watch movies again?! This happens also with repertoire: until you sing it, you don’t know if it’s good, but you have to try. Only then can you say, “Okay it’s a role I won’t do again” but a priori, at the beginning, to say, “It’s not for me”, it’s not the right attitude for somebody who’s a singer / artist / musician who wants to try and evolve all the time.

Luca Pisaroni as Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust, Vienna, 2017. Photo: Michael Pöhn / Wiener Staatsoper

Part of your own artistic evolution has included French opera.

It’s amazing! This repertoire is just mind-blowing!

It takes a special attention and energy to do French music well; the things it often demands are things other repertoire doesn’t.

I agree. First of all you need to care about the language, and work on it. When it comes to Pelléas, it’s really the climax of French writing — it’s more like a play with notes than an opera. Music and words have absolutely the same importance; the combination is perfect. It does take a lot of work, but it’s a repertoire that I’ve found incredibly fascinating, and it’s written for my kind of voice, because it’s not really for a bass, it’s not really for a baritone, it’s right in-between, and I feel very comfortable with it. The tessitura is not constantly so high like it would be for a baritone. I’m happy I get the chance to do it, and I hope I get to do it all the time because I really really enjoy it.

But you’re also going to be doing your first Escamillo this summer, in Barrie Kosky’s production of Carmen at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It’s an opera that tends to come with a lot of baggage, musically, historically, culturally, for a lot of people. What’s it like to step into? Some artists refuse to do it because of that baggage.

That’s why I haven’t done it earlier either — it has a lot of baggage, for sure, and there’s a lot of preconceived notions about the piece. I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with it. The fact I haven’t done a production before, and I’ve never sung the role, will definitely help.

Thomas Hampson and Luca Pisaroni. Photo: Jiyang Chen

There may be some people who aren’t familiar with all of the music you and Thomas do in No Tenors Allowed — Mozart, bel canto, Verdi, show tunes. Why this kind of concert, now?

I remember when I was studying at the Conservatory, I bought the CD Thomas had recorded with Sam Ramey, ”No Tenors Allowed”. I think too often the repertoire between two male voices is kind of neglected, or not known as well as repertoire for soprano and tenor, but it’s so dramatically interesting, and it gives you a different perspective on the duet world in opera. To go from Puritani to Don Carlo and Don Pasquale and then to Broadway, I just think it’s interesting. We’re giving people a broad stroke of repertoire — we have fun doing it, and the audience have fun listening. It’s been a great project. Everywhere we go people say it’s fun to see us onstage, there’s such a connection. I’m happy to come back to Toronto for this. We’re singing one of my favorite duets, which is the Don Carlo duet — one of the best duets ever written. It’s just so powerful and so Verdi — so well-written and, dramatically, so intense. We try to give a dramatic sense to what we do, and to hear the reaction of an audience… it’s really gratifying. I do an Italian song also — after all, I am Italian! — and we do American stuff; I’m a huge fan of Cole Porter and Gershwin. It’s a really lovely evening and it’s very entertaining. There is such a range of emotion. There’s a little bit for everybody to enjoy.

As Caliban in The Enchanted Island, NYC, 2012. Photo: Metropolitan Opera / Ken Howard.

The drama within some of those duets reminds me of something you said a while back, that you weren’t interested in being known as a pretty-voice singer, but in being a singing actor.

When people come to an opera, they need to experience something that is not a voice lesson. Don’t get me wrong; the basis of being a great singer is that you should have a good voice and great technique. But our job as interpreters is to give somebody a dramatic experience and to tell stories and to make them go places within the opera they didn’t think they could go — and this is not just about singing pretty. I think a great voice without emotional connection is really… it works if we’re talking about Pavarotti; that voice was amazing, he didn’t have to act much because of that voice. But it’s one voice that exists in every 100 years. If you are not that kind of a voice, you need to tell a story. Even if I had the voice of Pavarotti, it would be the most important thing for me to tell a story, because without it, it’s not what we as performers are called to do. I just want to go onstage and tell somebody else stories; it’s not about me, it’s about the stories I’m telling. When I did The Enchanted Island at the Met, people didn’t even know it was me — I had to tell them. That was the best compliment I could have received.

There’s authenticity in that approach.

It requires, I don’t want to use the word “courage” because it’s not that, but it requires this desire to try, to risk. Sometimes it doesn’t work, because people might not get it, or your reading is not what people expect, but every time I’m onstage, I want to be somebody else, not me. It’s like when you play Don Giovanni, you don’t have to be a Don Giovanni in real life — but when you’re onstage, you have to think like him, act like him, and ask yourself: what would he do? You have to let yourself go and try to be somebody else. When I did Golaud onstage for the first time, a castmate said later, “My God, you looked really scary in that moment!” — I’d looked at him with such hatred — but it was the character. You have to push boundaries and try to tell the story. This has always been my target, and my desire. My idea of hell would be to do the same characters, the same roles, in the same way, every time. The great thing about this art form is that every night is different. You can have a fixed idea about the character, but you can also say, “Okay, I want to try something else”— that’s what makes this art form incredibly enjoyable, because every night you don’t quite know what’s going to happen.

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The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded. If you would like to make a donation, please go here.

The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded. If you would like to make a donation, please go here.

The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded. If you would like to make a donation, please go here.

The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded. If you would like to make a donation, please go here.

The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded. If you would like to make a donation, please go here.

The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded.
If you would like to make a donation, please go here.

The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded.
If you would like to make a donation, please go here.

The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded.
If you would like to make a donation, please go here.

The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded.
If you would like to make a donation, please go here.

The Opera Queen is entirely self-funded.
If you would like to make a donation, please go here.