- How do you feel about opera?
I am very, very passionate about opera, not just from the spectator’s point of view. I think it is very important that we have an indulgent art form like opera that is totally three-dimensional. It takes into account text, music and spectacle; it gives an opportunity for great dramatic acting. It is epic in the best sense.
Nowadays everything is about being real. It is about bite-sized, two-minute pieces or thirty-minute pieces of drama. People’s attention span is so short. The athletic aspect of opera is extraordinary. It is such a shame we are losing it by making shows that are artificially projected and amplified. It is going completely against what this art form is about.
- How important do you see opera now?
Opera has become very marginalised because it is a form that people don’t understand. They understand film, musicals, straight drama and big dance spectacles but they don’t understand a form that can combine all the aspects. It is endlessly interesting and expressive. The scale of emotions it encompasses goes way beyond our experiences in real life. It is wonderful to try to touch the divine, to touch the spiritual in a way that people are not allowed to in the ordinary world.
We live about twenty percent of our emotional range, perhaps even less than that.
What opera enables us to do, is to touch those extremes, it is the God-like in Man. I am not able to do it, but it is wonderful to work within it and to try to scale the heights that Mozart scaled. It is great to work with singers who can take you there.
But opera is not just about standing and singing. Otherwise we would just have concert performances. It has this whole dramatic element and singers have to engage in that because it carries information about their singing, their expression, how they touch the audience, their physical language as well as their emotional understanding of how a thing develops.
There is no reason why everyone, regardless of their upbringing, should not be able to understand opera. To me, it is one of the art forms that requires least work. Music transcends the intellectual. You do not need to be educated in opera to enjoy it. I know there are more sophisticated, difficult pieces that perhaps demand a certain level of education but the Verdis, the Puccinis and the Mozarts really should just connect with everyone.
You have to work very hard as a director or a performer to make sure that you articulate these things clearly, not in a lazy way. Otherwise people will be bored. You have to make sense of standing up there screaming your head off. You have to make people appreciate that convention. After the first five minutes, if you are doing it with conviction, they will take the convention on board and go with you. You can take them on whatever journey you want to. They pay for the ticket; they pay to be taken out of themselves.
- In your opinion, what is the state of opera producing?
It is so important to express ideas in an original way, to make them come alive and to put things together in a way that is interesting to audiences. Too often have I seen things that are just boring, particularly now in opera. I find so little of what I see compelling. It is as if directors have the same pieces and are putting them together in a different way. I can see now: they have taken a bit from this performance, they have taken a bit from that performance and they have just put it back together again. It all seems so lazy.
Producers are only inventing on a visual level. They are not genuinely looking at their operas and bringing them alive dramatically from inside. They are imposing these visual designs. “Look, this is a new production because we have no armchairs and everyone is wearing blue”.
- What would you give as a good example?
There is a small detail at the beginning of Madama Butterfly, where Pinkerton offers Sharpless a drink. Sharpless doesn’t say anything and in the text there is no reference of him taking the drink. But he must take that drink because later on Pinkerton fills his glass up again and there is a reference of filling up the glass and taking the drink.
Now, a lazy director would have Pinkerton ask for the drink, not get his drink and he would carry on with the scene. He would not recognise that there is an exchange there, that he is taking the drink. But that is important because it means that Pinkerton and Sharpless are relaxing with each other. If that isn’t the case, you would have Pinkerton on one side of the stage doing his thing and Sharpless on the other side of the stage doing his with no connection between them for that moment.
That is about being truthful to the piece, looking at it dramatically and taking it seriously.
There are those concept opera people, who wave their concept like a flag, “I hereby claim this opera for myself. This is a Peter Hall opera”, or “this is a Trevor Nun opera” and “this is a Peter Sellars opera”. Isn’t it more important for the audience to come out of an opera and think that it was a fantastic Verdi opera? I would much rather be invisible. I would have people come out being absolutely blown away by the experience, thinking, “I love Don Giovanni, it is such a brilliant opera. What an incredible performance those guys have given”. I don’t need people saying after the performance, “Iqqy is really clever, isn’t he?”
- Who is your favourite operatic composer from the point of view of drama?
My favourite dramatist is Shakespeare. I know it’s a very obvious choice but he captured all of human experience in his plays. My favourite operatic composer is probably Verdi. Just look at the range: they are interesting, vital, human, they are simple in a direct and honest way.
I love his early operas, I love Nabucco, I love Stiffelio. Then, as they develop you have that wonderful trio of Il trovatore, La traviata and Rigoletto, they are such extraordinary pieces. And then the development with Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlos. I’d love to get my hands on Don Carlos which has this huge, panoramic, epic, political aspect. It is so Shakespearean.
Verdi always wanted to write King Lear and I think he would have been the man to have done it. The father - daughter relationship is written so well. And then you get the later pieces, Otello and Falstaff, which are so totally different, sparsely written, most elegant, beautiful pieces. To me, Verdi in a similar way to Shakespeare just did it all, which is incredible.
- Is there life after Verdi?
Yes, I also love Wagner, Strauss and Puccini. I adore Parsifal. I think it’s such a fantastic piece. Parsifal is also a difficult piece to do well. Because to make five hours interesting, you have to understand why every single moment works dramatically. You cannot just allow the music to do the work for you. A lot of directors just give you a lovely picture. Their singers act paragraphs, they act ten minute sections in the same sort of way, they don’t break it down to the detail and make it interesting. They just allow the music to send people into some sort of experience. It is much more intelligent than that. You should be engaged in every single moment of those operas and then they would not seem like five and a half hours, they would seem much faster.
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I have got a recording of the early fifties with Maria Callas singing it, it’s in Italian with Boris Christoff. It is extraordinary, absolutely amazing. She has that tortured quality in her voice, yet she is able to do justice to the beauty as well. She doesn’t allow you to sit back and let the music wash over you. It grabs you by the collar and pulls you in. And that is, in my opinion, how operas should be done. They are very angry pieces, they are not calm at all. Ring cycle has so much emotional turbulence.
I think directors treat them in a very lazy way. Directors have a concept, a visual idea and they subject the whole opera to that idea. And the poor singers become pawns in their game. Singers are not treated like real human beings, but as mythological figures, without the three dimensions. They represent a type. The interested thing about Wagner’s way to deal with the myth is that he doesn’t create mythical figures, he creates real people. Wotan is a real bleeding heart. Siegfried, Sieglinde - they are all real people, you cannot treat them in a two-dimensional way. Wagner has written much more interesting pieces than what we are made to believe.
- You are working now on Madama Butterfly. What do you think about Puccini?
I love Puccini. I think he is a great performers’ composer. Singers love doing him but I think critics are slightly ashamed of enjoying Puccini because it appears too easy, too indulgent, too emotional and just emotional. I don’t agree with that. If critics catch themselves crying, it is just as if their brain has been disconnected and it’s almost as if they are ashamed of enjoying opera in that way. They prefer the more intellectual Richard Strauss and their Intermezzo and their Rosencavalier, because they can talk about it more easily. It’s very hard to put a sob into words…
- Is there an opera you would really want to do? Who would you cast out of all the great singers of the past?
Apart from the Ring cycle, I ‘d really like to do Rigoletto. It is a very clever opera, very intricate and beautifully crafted. The baritone is not just an angry man and the Duke is complicated, too. Gilda goes through a very interesting development and sacrifice. The last scene is just unbearable. I would have Tita Ruffo in his prime sing it or Giuseppe di Luca with that wonderful, smooth legato. A combination of these two voices would be ideal. Or Sherryl Milnes from the seventies. One of the best dukes I have ever heard would be Alfredo Kraus or Pavarotti. Pavarotti sings the duke so beautifully, it is so him. My soprano would be very young, Renata Scotto, combining intelligence with beauty. I love Rosa Ponselle’s voice. I’ve heard her later recordings when she was quite heavy, but I think she could sing Gilda and a nice lusty mezzo, young Cossotto, or ideally a sexy lyrical voice.
- How do you work on an opera?
I feel such a responsibility on my shoulders to do it properly. I am doing Madama Butterfly now and I could mess around with it but I feel such responsibility to make sure that everyone enjoys the work and appreciates it. There are too few people who know opera now and the numbers are diminishing all the time. It is very important to try and grab them.
While in the seventies and the eighties opera was very popular, it is not so at the moment. We have to find ways to make opera absolutely necessary to people’s lives now, educate them about it. So many don’t even understand what opera is; they think it’s big fat people on stage screaming, that it’s Pavarotti with a handkerchief in his hand, that it’s the three tenors with their arms linked, all trying to hit the high c together. That’s not what opera is!
Domingo is a great artist, not because he looks good in a tuxedo and he can hit high notes. It is because of what he does on stage. I’ve seen him as Hoffmann and as de Grieux. I rank that as some of the greatest acting experiences I’ve ever seen. He is a great, great artist.
- Would you like to be in an opera as a singer?
I would have given anything to become an operatic baritone, but I never had the money to pursue it. The range of opportunities for a baritone is just so interesting. And I don't mean getting up there, looking good and getting the girls. I mean, getting the girls would be nice, but all the journeys the baritones go on are so interesting, Boccanegra, Rigoletto…In a sense, the most interesting character in Parsifal is Amfortas, his journey is so painful. The pure form of baritonal singing would be very satisfying for me to express my feelings.
The vocal training that I have got I received much later as an actor, so whatever singing I do now - well I don’t think I’m awful… I scream along to your Sherrill Milnes and the rest of them, but basically I am self-taught.
- You are a singers’ director and everyone I know who has worked with you would like to do so again, Could you tell us how to deal with auditions?
It is so easy to say to someone: you are rubbish. If you allow it to affect you when you know it is wrong, there is no way you will have any career at all. If you haven’t got a backbone of steel… You have to know, even in your worst moments of doubt, somewhere inside there is this fire burning: I should be succeeding. I am angry that I am not getting the sort of attention that I think I deserve. You have to keep that flame alive. You have to nourish that flame.
- What are your other interests, not involved with the arts?
I studied mathematics and physics at university and I am still interested in that but I haven’t got time for it at the moment.
- What are your hobbies?
Actually, I used to be a professional cricketer and then I got a glandular fever and had it for two years. That was the end of my cricket career. But I still play it. I also play tennis and squash. I read as much as I can get my hands on. I have just completed an MA in Theatre Directing and I am just doing my dissertation on Othello.
I listen to all kinds of music, from slow and shmoozy jazz to Wagner. I love films by Ingmar Bergman and Akiro Kurosawa.
What I haven’t done, and what I would like to do a lot, is travel. No specific country. Opera directing is such an international profession. My ideal would be to go and work in a country, as the best way to get to know it.
- Your plans for the future?
At the moment my plans involve more theatre than opera. I am doing Madame Butterfly and a new play called Illustrous Corpse by Tariq Ali in Leicester at the same time. I have just finished acting a lead in The Ideal Husband and before that I directed Into the Woods, a musical by Sondheim. I would love to do more opera but I also want to be involved in directing theatre and acting.
View Iqbal's page HERE...
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