Masses of singers audition for you; can you recognise who will have a wonderful career?
The percentage that drops out, according to Dame Janet Baker, is 90. The drop-outs are often fantastic voices and yet they don’t get through. Who comes through and why? Great voices are probably going to make it but may not. The opportunities are unfortunately terribly limited in this country. There are one or two top baritones, top tenors etc. who get all the work and also an awful lot of people left hanging around.
It’s not only about the voice, is it?
No. Determination is very important; the decision that, come hell or high water, I’ m going to make it. Good looks are very important, with a wonderful voice and great musicality.
How do you define good looks?
I think people like seeing good looking singers. Do you remember Katia Ricciarelli when she was young? She was a beautiful woman. I think that helps. When there is great competition, you’ve got to have everything. Or you’ve got to be fantastically good.
When you think of Callas before she thinned down, she may have lost some of her wonderful voice, but she was more of a figure on stage; she became a very attractive woman. Maybe a bit of wobble in the voice, but she gained a lot as a woman and a stage personality. How could she have done Tosca if she wasn’t terribly attractive? People laugh in the audience when their Traviata is enormous and sings that she has an hour to live.
I like good looking people, both women and men. Both my Nemorinos are very good looking. It’s got to be credible! Especially if you’re as close to the audience as we are. The men have to fancy the women and the women have to fancy the men, and you’ve got to win over the audience.
You’ve got to look right. When a Carmen is coming out, you know even before she opens her mouth whether she’s going to be any good or not. It’s sexuality, you have to have it to be Carmen. There are certain roles, like Traviata and Carmen, which are very obviously type-cast. You have to choose the right person. 90% of the success is casting.
Have you ever gone wrong?
Wrong? (hesitating) I would like to think I have not made any mistakes with casting. I’ve been conducting and choosing singers for eight years now. I always ask people if they’d like to have feedback. I’m nobody compared to the great conductors, but what I hear is what I hear. With 20 years of experience, mostly in Italy, I have heard the great voices. I’ve rubbed shoulders with Pavarotti, Leo Nucci, Dimitrova. I’ve heard all the top people on the circuit. It’s sort of osmosis.
Often singers don’t know what they are because you cannot really hear yourself. I am like a therapist who can analyse you in seconds. Orchestral players also know if a singer is any good within the first five seconds.
At the audition the choice of your arias is vitally important. Make the impact fairly early on. The panel make their mind in the first 30 seconds.
Do you think luck is overrated?
I think, and I have to be careful here, who you marry or the family background is important. I have lived so long in Italy, where either you’re born into an important family, or you marry into an important family. In England it’s less obvious, but there are strong lobbies.
You mentioned the lack of opportunities. Are you creating them in your company?
I am trying to create opportunities for young singers, and they are all under 30, to do the repertoire in the original language. Translations are not the same thing as the original. I feel that what you lose in total comprehension of every word, you gain in the spirit and the flavour. The “Alberto Erringo” they did in Italy just doesn’t work.
I am very tough on my singers. I’m not here to be loved. It’s not about being loved – well, perhaps by the public but not by the people you work with in the music world. It is hard. It is tough. I give them hell. One singer walked out during the break. I’m sorry - I’m not putting on rubbish. Of course, in Glyndebourne they do it a thousand times better, but what we do is local, small, intimate and cheap. And it’s accessible!
I am offering singers a chance to work on main roles in the original languages in their own country. A singers’ life is very hard. The frustration of going to coaching and singing lessons, learning the part, going to the auditions and not getting the part - how many times can you do that? Five years? It is so frustrating not to be able to put it into practice. You can't not sing. It is like a drug, without the harmful side-effects. It’s like being in love. You just cannot stop yourself. It is almost like a religion to me. You don’t do it for the money. It’s a passion. And it’s so tricky.
I’m bringing in people from the Royal Academy to play in the orchestra. They are very enthusiastic – and don’t mess you around. The standard of playing in this country is generally very high. We have a reduced score for a 12-piece orchestra.
What are your favourite operas?
I’m terribly boring but I like most of the repertoire. I like the one I am doing at the very moment. Looking over what we’ve done: Fidelio, Falstaff, Elisir, Le nozze. I tend to avoid the Russian repertoire as I don’t speak Russian, although I adore Onegin. As a conductor I have to know the language I am working with reasonably well: you cannot be convincing if you only rely on the language coach.
I have a problem with Gilbert and Sullivan. It’s an extraordinary English thing – perhaps like Italians in San Remo. You cannot understand why. I’m sorry, I just cannot get into it. I’m sure it’s wonderful and people adore it. It’s just I have problems with G&S. I’ll leave it at that. If you’re going to spend three months of your life rehearsing, I insist that what you rehearse is a masterpiece. Otherwise it’s a waste of time. If you learn a role, it has to be useful to you internationally.
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Who is your favourite composer?
I adore Verdi, Donizetti, Mozart. But then Donizetti wrote tens of operas that are rubbish. Yet, he hit genius once or twice. I think my favourite of all operas is Falstaff. Falstaff I can listen and listen to. I have sung it, I’ve conducted it. I adore every note. I admire it as the most remarkable monument to western culture. I’d like to see a double bill of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Falstaff. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You could do a theatre company with Merry Wives on one night and the night after Verdi and Boito – and see how that is in European culture.
Do you also produce your operas?
Yes, I do. There is a reason for that. I had two experiences with producers. They were very nice people. It’s just that unless you are totally in harmony with your producer…
The first production of Cenerentola went behind my back. It was very provocative and shocking. Cenerentola should be shocking in many different ways but not in a perverse way. The producer didn’t agree to change it and he left. I had to do it myself in ten days – and it was a success. I cannot allow people to mess around with three months of musical work and mess it up.
How many times do you read reviews of productions like the new Aida in Covent Garden, done in the Japanese style, and ask WHY? And yet people pay an awful a lot of money for that and I’m sure many were very unhappy to see it.
I have an assistant producer who helps me with the ideas.
You are also a singing teacher whose students keep winning top prizes.
I have also been teaching a 50-year old from Cambridge via email. She’s been going to teachers for 30 years. She says she has learned more via email with me than with them. I have been wondering how that can be, but actually I have been through it myself. A good singing teacher is more rare than a good surgeon. You can find good surgeons all over the world. You can count good singing teachers on the fingers of one hand.
Of course, not every teacher works for every singer but there are basic mechanisms that should be taught. And you should always remember you are dealing with people’s lives and emotions.
Who are your favourite singers?
There is ‘before’ and ‘after’ Enrico Caruso. The same with baritones, before and after Leonard Warren. Before and after Maria Callas.
I have sung on stage close to singers like Dimitrova, Domingo, Pavarotti who have got something special, something quite extraordinary that communicates. They say Richard Burton brought his own cathedral with him. It also happens with some singers. What is it? Some extraordinary mixture.
Renato Bruson is a remarkable artist. I admire Leo Nucci who has no technical difficulties, sings night and day, sings everything full voice, is never tired and always perfectly in tune. Absolutely fantastic. He himself says he is not one of the greats but I would dispute that.
What would you say to people who don’t like opera?
Opera is an extraordinary art form and yet it has power like football matches to people who love it. You don’t need to understand it. How can you explain to a Liverpool supporter that what he feels about his team is really 11 people kicking a dirty bit of leather around on a pitch at three o’clock in the afternoon?
I didn’t like opera until I worked as a scene-shifter and extra chorus for Kent Opera when I was 18-years old. The stage manager couldn’t read music and I stayed by her so she could get the cues. I was very close to the singers, who went on to be very famous: John Tomlinson, Alan Opie. I watched and listened. It was like a religious experience. I couldn’t sleep for two or three nights. This was the most marvellous thing I had ever seen in my life.
What is important in an opera performance?
I think it is important to be close to it. Giancarlo Menotti, asked about the future of opera in a recent interview, said that opera might come out of the big spaces into more intimate spaces. Of course there is a place for the grand opera and you cannot put on certain Verdi and Wagner unless you’ve got massive spaces. That’s fine. But Verdi intended Falstaff to be performed in his own house in Busseto.
One of the things I like in my Elisir is that I get the cast walking through the audience, as if they are among them. It’s not just in front of the audience. I think it’s nice to be able to almost touch the singer. I like intimate spaces. I’d like to give people what you get on video with the facial expressions.
Don’t you think people might get intimidated by the full blast of a big voice? Or that your singers will downscale not to hurt the audience?
None of my cast so far have had such enormous voices. The Rosslyn Hill Chapel, where we perform next, is a lovely, open space, often used for recordings. We’ll put a stage and lights in there. It’s just big enough. We’ll have a fair size audience. I like the idea of creating from nothing. I have very few props. I keep it very simple. One of the strengths of Shakespearean theatre was that they had nothing. And the pace was very fast.
I think that we should respect the attention span of the audience. People get bored watching films longer than two hours. Of course, there is Wagner, but I think for the general public two hours is a good length of opera and that’s why I have cut it down.
You are very passionate about opera. What are your other passions?
I could have been something totally different. It sounds really corny, but I wanted to help the Third World, to be an agricultural advisor. I was advised to become a singer instead. I still feel slightly guilty that I am not building wells in Africa. There is a part of me that would be much happier if I was a farmer. I know it sounds crazy. My father was a vicar and he taught me to try to help the community. Opera is very selfish But it has chosen me and I can't not do it. I tried to give it up several times but I can’t. Music is terribly important.
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