Can you tell us about your background?
I always sang in church. My father was a church musician. I would always sing in church choirs and school choirs when I was a child. I’ve always had an interest in music. I had piano and violin lessons. My father was a singer, so he had a lovely collection of LPs, which I would mess up… That’s how I discovered singing. I would hear old recordings of Mario Lanza, and Leontyne Price, and Jon Vickers, wonderful singers. I got into opera through listening to that. The first thing I got my hands on was Leontyne Price’s recording of Aida. I think that’s what hooked me. It grew from there.
I was born in Alabama but grew up mostly in Florida, in Orlando. We had a small opera company in Orlando, which would do two or three productions a year. They would get fantastic singers there, like Richard Tucker and Jessye Norman. The very first time I was in an opera was singing in the chorus in the Orlando production of The Daughter of the Regiment, with my dad in the chorus as well.
Then I went off to college, the University of Southern Mississippi, and that’s where I began my vocal training. I also trained in Kent State University in Ohio. We were not far from New Orleans when I was at college, so we would go there. They had a great opera company. I heard lots of terrific singers there. One time, the New Orleans Opera came to our school and they needed some extra men to sing in the chorus. I sang the whole season with them. It was nice. I did the little one-liner role in Traviata and in the Girl of the Golden West. After school I worked in Nashville, Tennessee, then I moved to San Francisco. It was trying to decide whether it would be San Francisco or New York. After one day in San Francisco I knew it was it, it was so beautiful, and also had a big opera company. I auditioned to sing in the opera chorus and worked for nearly a dozen years there.
We had two or three months off in the winter time which gave us the opportunity to work for the smaller companies in the Bay area. I did a lot of Verdi roles there, Rigoletto, Luisa Miller, Traviata, Otello. It was nice to build the resume. There was a Pocket Opera in San Francisco, who did everything in English, in a marvellous translation by Donald Pippin, who’s had this company for over 25 years. If you’re a singer in San Francisco, you will sing with Pocket Opera, at one time or another (laughing) . Then I moved to London…
… and of course you regret leaving San Francisco, my favourite city?
No, not at all! I’ve had my California experience. I’ve done it. I wanted to do something else with my singing. I thought about going to Berlin, but then I met my partner and ended up in London. It can be difficult not having gone to school here and not being the youngest kid on the block. I’ve been here a few years and I’m still getting my name around. The first thing I did in the UK was Ford in the production of Falstaff for New Sussex Opera. I have done Tobias and the Angel, the voice of Neptune in Idomeneo and a recital for them as well.
I’m doing a production of Boheme at the moment. I just finished another Traviata…
…for which you got yet another set of excellent reviews …
… and I don’t have to do young men in those any longer (laughing). And then I’ve got another production of Traviata coming up in France.
Has Giorgio Germont become your calling card?
Well, it seems to be. I think this is the fifth one. With the one coming up in July it will be three of them in a year: Longborough Opera Festival, Riverside Opera and Opera de Bauge. It does fit my voice very well. I enjoy singing it. I learned the role when I was 20 years old. My teacher told me to learn it because I would sing it one day. Actually, I would encourage young singers to learn some big roles like this, some standard repertoire, because it would serve you 20 years down the line. Don’t sing it on stage, just learn it now in order to know your way around it.
What other roles are there in your repertoire?
I would like to do Rigoletto as I’m at the right age to do it now, Nabucco, Simon Boccanegra
- because I feel my voice has settled in that slot. Not in the biggest house in the world, but in a medium size house I could carry it off very well.
Rigoletto has it all. The character is marvellous. Like Germont, it’s a believable character. That’s the hard thing about Germont: he’s a real person. Even though Rigoletto was a creation, there’s still a lot of humanity in that. And the music is incredible. There are four great American singers on Youtube: Robert Merrill, Richard Tucker, Reese Stevens and Roberta Peters, doing the quartet from Rigoletto. It’s just marvellous music. It’s fantastic music. Then there is Un ballo in maschera. I covered it a couple of years ago for Castleward Opera.
Is Verdi the best composer for the baritone in your opinion?
Verdi wrote so intelligently for the baritone. The aria "Di Provenza in Traviata", besides being a great thing, is a lovely vocal exercise just to sing on a neutral vowel and to warm up on it, because it encompasses your range. But you should never limit yourself to one thing. I love Donizetti, Mozart, Handel. It’s also nice to do things that aren’t so well known in a particular place. We performed the American recital several times and it’s been very successful. We hope to do it again. Besides American song composers I love Schumann, Schubert, Brahms and Faure. There’s marvellous music by Samuel Barber and John Duke. But I keep coming back to wanting to sing Rigoletto and Nabucco (laughing).
Have you got a favourite composer?
I would say, to sing it's Verdi. I’ve always had an affinity with his music. But I’m also passionate about Wagner. I like Verdi’s story. I like his complete Italianness. I think he is synonymous with Italy. I like his practicality. I like the passion, the excitement, the wild stories like Trovatore and Forza, they are just off the wall. I like the small stories like Traviata and scenes from Rigoletto. I think what he did with Otello was miraculous. I like the way his music developed, from the early operas to the late operas. It also mirrors the trends in the late 19th century. I think sometimes it gets a bad rap, because some things would be not so sophisticated either orchestrally or with the textures compared to what he achieved later. And yet there was something in every single Verdi opera that would appeal to you, be it just a snippet of a soprano aria from Il corsaro or a bit of the baritone aria from Due foscari. Even in the early operas he’s creating characters, his worlds on stage. He’s taking things a step further each time on the line of development.
The craziest thing I ever did was a Verdi concert. I had sung Verdi roles around the San Francisco Bay Area and I thought it would be a good idea to do a duet concert, starring me (laughing). So I got together the people I had the operas with and I came up with a programme of six duets. As it happened, it was in the Verdi year 2001, the 100th anniversary of Verdi’s death. The concert just happened to follow my birthday, so we had a celebration. Attila, Nabucco, Traviata, Luisa Miller, Otello and Don Carlos. We closed the concert with "Va, pensiero", sung together with the audience. That was the encore. The craziest thing I ever did in my life (laughing). There were a lot of people from the opera in the audience, so the sound of the encore was marvellous. Then we all had cake and champagne afterwards. I’d love to do something like that here.
Then there is Puccini. How can you not like Puccini? My professional debut as a solo singer was in Gianni Schicchi, I was 19, it was with the Mississippi Opera Company in Jackson. It was terrific to do. I also absolutely adore Richard Strauss. Elektra, Frau Ohne Schatten are just marvellous. I like the big trashy Italian stuff like Ponchielli and Boito. I’m very fond of Jonathan Dove. I find his music very accessible. It’s lovely stuff. Then also Samuel Barber, Giancarlo Menotti, Donizetti.
I’m not so big a fan of Mozart. I know that it is unholy to say that, but if I see another production of Cosi fan tutte with cellphones, I’m going to scream (laughing) .
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I’ve just seen a Handel production with every dance move imaginable and every costume variety known to man…
I think it has to be done because it’s there, like Everest needs to be climbed because it’s there. Productions like that are not honest to the music. I think there seems to be a lack of honesty today. As if a piece of music cannot stand on its own, as if it has to be gimmicked to death. I’m all for fabulous things on stage. I’m all for huge, big productions with big technical things – as long as they’re within the spirit of the music itself. I think sometimes you find more theatrical truth in smaller companies and smaller productions than you do at the big houses. Like the Macbeth that’s been done at Covent Garden. Yes, it was very arresting visually, but did we really need the big, golden spinning bed for them to sing on? Or the production of Nabuccoat the Deutsche Oper a few years ago with all the bees.
What would you change in the world of opera?
Rossini said it: voce, voce, voce. That’s what opera is. The emphasis should be on the voice and on the music, not on the pretty picture on the stage. There is room for the pretty pictures on the stage. As much as you pay for an opera ticket, you’re there to be entertained. But you’re also there for musical truth.
I think sometimes theatres also play the star system to the detriment of the composer. Sopranos that shall remain nameless couldn’t have got away 20 years ago with what they do now.
There is also a great emphasis on the way people look now. In other words, there seems to be no room for the fat lady in opera anymore. Which is ridiculous! In the forties at the Met you had Helen Traubel, a big lady with a big voice. And was absolutely marvellous. There was nothing unbelievable about this large woman singing Brunnhilde. Nowadays Brunnhilde has to be like a fashion model. Not to say that they cannot sing, of course they can sing that. But I think a larger voice has a larger body behind it. Slimming down happens to the detriment of voice. When I first heard Debbie Voigt in San Francisco as Sieglinde the singing was stunning. It was obscene that a person could sing so well. She stood there and the silvery sound just poured out of her throat and filled in every crevice of the opera house. You were nailed to your seat. It never entered your mind that she was a big girl. Then she had that radical surgery and it diminished her voice. What’s the point of that?
To me, it’s an alarming trend. Yes, opera is show business because you’re going to see a show. But it’s not show business like Broadway or the West End. Part of me is maybe stuck in the past, I don’t know. But I make no apologies for that. Richard Tucker was not an attractive man in any way, but when he opened his mouth to sing, you didn’t see that, you saw the character and you heard the stunning tenor voice come out of him. Now the tenor has to look like he is off the Italian Vogue… (laughing)
You’ve got such a wide experience of the American opera and now of the British opera circuit – how do they compare?
There is a great deal of smaller work here with a very high standard. Companies like Longborough, the smaller Glyndebourne-like companies, do really lovely stuff with a really high standard. I like that. Even in the community companies, like Riverside Opera, there is a very high standard of music. You don’t find that so much in the States. Unfortunately the globalfinancial situation made several mid-size companies fold. Baltimore Opera and Orlando Opera just folded, to name a few. I’m hoping that doesn’t happen here. In Britain, it seems to be more private donors that keep the boat afloat.
Living in London of course we have the luxury of two really big opera companies to choose from and it’s exciting to go to Covent Garden and to ENO. It’s expensive to go to both, but it’s also expensive to go to san Francisco Opera. I like the fact that in England and in Europe Opera is much more a part of life than it is in the States. Your next door neighbour is more likely to go to the opera than in the US. That’s a broad generalisation of course, but to have "Nessun dorma" as a football hymn? (laughing) I find that marvellous. The fact that the guy gets up on Britain’s Got Talent, sings "Nessun dorma" – and everyone knows what it is!
What do you think about singing in English?
I feel that comedies such as The Barber of Seville or Cenerentola work very well in English, and Mozart in English is pretty standard here and in the US. Some large companies perform entirely in English, and that's great. Some of the big Russian and Czech operas work particularly well in English.
Supertitles have largely made original-language productions the world standard, and I feel that to truly honour the intentions of the composer the work should be performed in the language of its composition. But for many of the smaller companies English-language productions are the norm, which encourages attendance and sells tickets.
As for translations, most are well thought-out. If a particular word or phrase is awkward, we can work out a change during rehearsals, as long as the music is served. Having just done Traviata in English, the difficulty for me was not think of the next line in Italian!
What are your plans?
I’m singing Germont for Opera de Bauge in July and August. We’re talking about Rigoletto next year for Opera Brava. I’m singing an opera gala concert at the Little Venice Music Festival in October.
What do you do in your spare time?
I love to cook. I’m fairly fierce in the kitchen. Being from the Southern United States, you grow up cooking for people. You always cook for people. I’ll do a Creole or a Cajun dish and I like to cook Nigel Slater recipes.
I also have a mad collection of Christmas ornaments. It’s off the scale. The first ornament I ever found was an Egyptian mummy. I asked the seller what it had to do with Christmas. “Because it has a hole in the top where you put a hook” (laughing) . That can be a philosophy of life, can’t it?
VIEW Robert Presley’s page here.
Robert's Germont review:
La traviata.
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