How did it all begin?
When I was a child, I wanted to be an actor. It was my great ambition. My Dad used to sit me down on a Sunday evening, about six o’clock, he’d put the record player on and he’d play classical music on it. Over a number of years, I grew to love classical music. He used to listen to opera, which I used to absolutely hate. To me, it was just loud male and female voices, screaming off in some language I didn’t understand. I didn’t have a clue what it was all about. But I guess, gradually, it just sort of filtered in. And by the age of 15 I realised my own voice was developing and that was when I really started getting interested in opera.
I watched opera at home on T.V., I remember a Turandot broadcast from Verona. I loved the music. The music was glorious. I didn’t have a clue what they were singing, but it sounded really good. I suppose I was about twelve or thirteen at that time. I really enjoyed it. Gradually, I got more and more into borrowing my Dad’s old records and exploring for myself.
What was your first opera at the opera house?
I was 15 years old, we were living in Lincoln at that time, and we had an opera company called Opera 80 come to our school. As I was studying music as an O-level, I was asked to learn some music and take part in a workshop with the artists. The performances were at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln, which is a tiny theatre, where the audience is very close. The performance was in English, so we all could understand it. The music was wonderful, and I thought, “Yes, that’s what I want to go into”. They did Rossini’s Cenerentola. The bit of music that we learned during the workshop was one of the choruses. It came in very handy later on, when I did Ceneremtola at Grange Park Opera (he laughs) .
Do you think opera in England should be sung in English?
Not all the time, no! I think there is a place for English opera, it depends how big the company is, really. It attracts audiences. It often attracts people who have no idea what opera is about. But I think there is also place for doing opera in the original language, if you’ve got the money to provide surtitles, or translations, or whatever it is that helps people understand. You could say that a part of the responsibility of the audience is to show up prepared, but if they don’t, there is place for opera in English because that is readily accessible.
What did you like about opera when you first got into it?
I think I learned to appreciate the human voice, how it can soar and make you feel so emotional, like no other instrument can. I started listening to the Romantic opera, verismo, Puccini. With that amazing, luscious orchestration beneath, that’s what opera is still for me: it’s the ability to say even more than you can with words, and present drama on stage, with the added bonus of wonderful music. It’s like the films: you have the wonderful drama and the score underneath. Most films don’t work as well without music.
My taste has changed as I got older and I’ve grown to like a lot more than when I started. Puccini is still a favourite and I would certainly not turn down Scarpia in Tosca. I’ve done Colline in La Boheme. That’s really good, but it was surprisingly difficult to learn. It was much harder that I thought, considering how well I knew it.
I guess my favourites now are Verdi and Wagner. But I have a much broader appreciation of the whole genre now, from Monteverdi to Menotti, and beyond that. I also learned to appreciate other music through performing it. Take Monteverdi. First time I heard The Coronation of Poppea I thought it wasn’t even an opera. It was only because I had to do it, I learned to appreciate it. Now I actually listen to it, I understand Monteverdi; the power of drama is so integral. You understand more through the performing, I think.
Which of the Verdi operas is your favourite?
My favourite Verdi opera has to be Don Carlos, all versions. I haven’t heard a piece of music from Don Carlos that has bored me or that I haven’t liked, and it doesn’t matter which version it is, the French, the five-act Italian, the four-act Italian… As an opera, it’s a wonderful story with wonderful music. Verdi’s got it absolutely right. It has four or five fabulous operatic roles. Even the smaller character roles, like the Inquisitor or the Monk, offer a real chance of good singing. They’ve got nice chunks of decent singing and easy opera, whereas the other five are on stage permanently, constantly screaming away (he laughs) . I think Don Carlos is by far Verdi’s greatest work.
Wagner – for me, it’s the whole of The Ring Cycle. The sheer scope and size of the piece is amazing, and so is anyone who performs that on a regular basis. They can go from one night to another, doing Rheingold, Die Walkuere, and the sheer stamina they need is incredible. Musically, it’s just fabulous. I have never seen the Ring on stage, I only have seen T.V. productions. But I love the music and every five or six years I sit down and listen to the whole lot in big chunks. I spend the whole day doing that.
I think a lot of people forget that Wagner’s music was specifically written for Bayreuth. The dimensions of the stage, and the fact that the orchestra is completely hidden are why Wagner wrote forte fortissimo. He knew what he was asking. But when they do it in a concert hall, with the singers just in front of the orchestra, who are playing forte fortissimo, tuba, trumpet or Wagner-tuba, it’s going to drown the singer out. That’s why it’s so hard to sing Wagner, and that’s why Wagner singers want to sing it in Bayreuth, simply because it’s the best way to appreciate Wagner.
What do you like about Wagner?
I think it’s the whole thing: the thrilling sound of the orchestra, the drama. There is nothing like 60 – 80 instruments blasting away underneath, giving this cushion of sound to a singer who is expressing huge emotions. Sometimes it’s the story that grabs me, the mythology. There’s a lot of serious information you can get from that. We don’t teach the legends at school, people have vaguely heard of them, but we don’t really know the true mythology. Opera keeps them alive. You can go and do your own research, read more about the character afterwards. Yes, sometimes the characters have bits from several stories in them, put together to make a drama, but so what? Do your own research and find out about it. For me, it’s a wonderful thing.
Often professionals claim they have no favourites, that every composer they work on is their favourite…
I don’t think it’s unprofessional to have favourite composers. You can have your favourites while you are willing to learn about other composers and not trying to exclude them. You can still have those composers who resonate deeply within your own soul and you respond to what they’ve written, recognising a kindred spirit.
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What annoys you in the world of opera as a singer?
Auditions annoy me (he laughs) . That is, what they do to most singers who have to audition. You always tend to be busy doing something else at that time, so 90 per cent of the auditions you actually cannot attend. It’s about balancing how you find new work, which you obviously need to continue singing, and being able to continue working whilst doing the auditions. It really bugs me that when there is no work, there are also no auditions to go to. You are constantly asking people when you can audition, and they come back and give you exactly the time when you cannot possibly do it.
I noticed you also do acting.
It’s good to be on the books of someone who deals with other performing arts, not just opera. Acting has always been something I wanted to do. I’ve only ever done acting roles on stage either within musicals or opera. I have no experience of working in film or television.
What are you doing at the moment?
I’ve been touring with Pimlico Opera, doing The Barber of Seville, I have just done a charity concert in St John’s Smith Square, Les nuits d’ete by Berlioz which I shared with a counter tenor, and in November I go off to Norfolk, to do the Thursford Christmas Spectacular. It is a big Christmas show, I did it also last year, with a lot of opera singers. It’s indescribable. It’s a mishmash of Christmas songs, pop songs, oldie favourite songs, dancing, and the odd classical song. They have about a hundred thousand people coming to see this show. There are 72 shows, to be done in about a month. It’s on this big stage, long but narrow, and the audience see it through five bays on the stage. You mostly run on and run off, changing costumes and getting ready for the next number. But it’s great fun.
You are a bass-baritone. This type of voice has to wait to mature…
Yes, it does. My voice is now going towards a Verdi baritone, the heavier Verdi stuff. I’ve been looking at Don Carlo aria with my teacher. It is now absolutely right for my voice. The other roles will probably be Macbeth, Yago, Simon Boccanegra. This year I’ve done Father in Hansel and Gretel and Henry VIII in Anna Bolena. It’s been a good year. I’ve learned eight roles in a twelve-month period! When you look at it, you almost fall down. You think, “How did I do that?!”
Are you a fan of modern productions?
Some productions work extremely well; with others, you think what on earth is going on. Those that work well don’t get in the way of the story, they allow for the story to be told. The productions that hinder the story leave the audience not knowing what it was all about. I remember seeing Lohengrin at the Met, directed by Robert Wilson. It got in the way of the story. It completely ruined it! Because nothing was happening onstage, there was just this blue background, bars of white coming in, lighting up, staying lit for then minutes, going off and disappearing. We were just left there, bewildered. We knew roughly what he story of Lohengrin was, but that production did not enlighten me one iota about the director’s vision of what Lohengrin is. To me, Wilson doesn’t know what Lohengrin is about. There is nothing in this production which enables the story of Lohengrin to be told.
And yet, there was a wonderful, modern Don Giovanni, which I’ve got on DVD, which has Don Giovanni going through different stages of time, in different sets of costumes, starting, say, 16th century and ending in the 19th century. It added a whole different feel to what Don Giovanni, the opera, is about. So even though it was something that puzzled you at the beginning with the costume changes, there was cohesion. These events had a time scale. Don Giovanni is an archetypal character - although these events may not have happened in one person’s lifetime, he eventually gets his comeuppance.
What’s the best and the worst thing about singing?
The best thing has to be the high you get after a performance, when you know that the audience have enjoyed it. Not just your own performance, but the whole performance, the fact that they’ve really enjoyed everything about the show. Then you think that all those months of rehearsals and hard work were worth it. You’ve gone on stage and you’ve given your best. That buzz you get from knowing that somebody’s gone away thinking that you’ve done a good job!
The worst part is leaving home, I think. Being on the road, travelling, not being able to share as much time with your friends and your family as other people can. Well, that’s something opera singers have to put up with.
What are in your opinion the important things an opera singer should know?
I think self-awareness is very important; it’s the key to success. If you can’t listen to yourself objectively and be aware of what your voice does, what it does well, and how it feels when it does that, then you’ll get into a lot of trouble later on.
What do you do in your spare time?
I like travelling, visiting new cities, just relaxing, socializing, spending time with friends. I like photography and cinema. I like being at home; I consider it quite precious. I like reading as well. I like researching the roes I’m doing. When I sung Henry VIII, I wanted to know what the real Henry VIII was like, not just the operatic portrait, but the real character. You can present different sides of a character if you know more about them, even if the opera is very constrained by musical and dramatic demands.
I love gardens but I have black fingers (he laughs) , so if I go near a plant, it’ll start to wither. At home, I have a lovely garden, but none of the work can be credited to me. I’d like to have a dog, but the kind of life that opera singers live, being away from home a lot, is not really fair on the dog...
VIEW Ian Wilson-Pope’s page HERE.
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