Tenor  Francisco  Araiza
 
Two Conversations with Bruce Duffie

Born October 4, 1950 in Mexico City, Mexico, tenor, (José) Francisco Araiza, was educated there. He studied voice with Irma Gonzalez in the Conservatorio Nacional de Musica (where he sang in its choir) and German repertory with Erika Kubacsek. Araiza made his concert debut in Mexico City in 1969, where he subsequently appeared for the first time in opera in 1970 as Jaquino. He went to Europe and took master-classes with Richard Holm and Erik Werba at the Munich Musikhochschule after having won the Bavarian Broadcasting Voice Competition. He also holds a Business Administration degree from the University of Mexico City. Following his studies, Francisco Araiza was a member of the Karlsruhe Opera from 1974 to 1977. Since 1977 he has been a permanent member of the Zürich Opera House. He has performed in all the main opera houses of the world and has participated in all great international festivals. From 1983 on, this most versatile singer who was already known as the best interpreters of Mozart and Rossini became a leading tenor of the Italian lirico-spinto, the French and lighter German repertory with roles like Edgardo, Alfredo, Duke of Mantua, Riccardo, Don Alvaro, Des Grieux, Faust, Hoffmann, Werther, Romeo, and Max. He sang Lohengrin in 1990 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and Walter von Stolzing in the Metropolitan Opera's new production in 1993. Besides his operatic engagement, Araiza is also a highly esteemed concert and Lieder-singer which can be shown by his nomination «Best musical event of the year 1988» for his Tokyo recital. He was named "Kammersänger of the Vienna State Opera" also in 1988. Francisco Araiza has worked with all the great conductors and stage directors like Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan, Carlo Maria Giulini, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Neville Marriner, James Levine, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Giuseppe Patane, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Harry Kupfer, August Everding, Otto Schenk, Giorgio Strehler, Franco Zeffirelli and Roman Polanski. His artistry has been documented in almost fifty recordings for labels including Philips, DGG, EMI, RCA, CBS, Teldec, Orfeo and Atlantis, as well as in lots of video productions for which he was awarded with the «Deutscher Schaliplattenpreis» and the «Orphée d'Or». An illustrated monograph called Voices of the World: Francisco Araiza was published by Atlantis in 1988 as well as his own chapter in the books named Great Interpreters published by Westermann and Divo published by Harper & Row. In 1992 the German television station ZDF presented a personal portrait with the title Francisco Araiza. I am a romantic. --  Throughout this page, names which are links refer to my interviews elsewhere on this website.  BD

Francisco Araiza appeared with Lyric Opera of Chicago on several occasions.  In 1984 he sang in Abduction from the Seraglio (with Ruth Welting, Kurt Moll, David Gordon, conducted by Ferdinand Leitner), and Barber of Seville (with J. Patrick Raftery, Kathleen Kuhlmann, Cesare Siepi, Sesto Bruscantini, and Florindo Andreolli, conducted by Bruno Bartoletti, staged by Graziella Sciutti (!) in sets by Sir Peter Hall).  The following season he returned for Traviata (with Catherine Malfitano, Pablo Elvira, Catherine Stoltz, Gualtiero Negrini, and Donald Kaasch, conducted by Bartoletti in the Pier Luigi Pizzi production).  The year after that was Magic Flute (with Judith Blegen, Luciana Serra, Timothy Nolen, Matti Salminen, and Thomas Stewart, conducted by Leonard Slatkin and staged by August Everding), and La Bohème (with Katia Ricciarelli, Barbara Daniels, Alessandro Corbelli, Paolo Washington, Renato Capecchi, conducted by John Mauceri with John Copley directing the Pizzi production).  He returned once more in 1990 for Rigoletto (with Leo Nucci, Patrizia Pace, Kevin Langan, and Elizabeth Futural, with John Fiore conducing and Sandro Sequi staging the Pizzi production, with Maria Tallchief credited as directing the ballet). 

During his visits in 1984 and 1990, he was gracious to allow me to speak with him, and these two lengthy conversations are presented here.  We spoke about various roles and ideas both musical and general.  He was confident in his decisions and with his opinions, and showed a wry sense of humor at various times.  His English was quite good, and while I have corrected small grammatical mistakes here and there, I have left a few of his charming turns of phrase, and a couple of words which do not exist, but convey his thoughts brilliantly!

Here are those encounters . . . . . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:    How was the Barber last night?

Francisco Araiza:    It was a nice opening night.  The public enjoyed themselves very much as we could notice on stage.  The usual jokes we were doing have to be done, and were very much applauded and loved.  So the public had a nice evening.  Musically it was also well.  To have Cesare Siepi as Don Basilio is such a big joy, and also the other incredible Italians of that tradition like Sesto Bruscantini making the part of Bartolo.  He’s always a person who has had special experience to hear these people because they are absolutely masterly.

BD:    Is it special because Bruscantini was a Figaro and now he’s a Bartolo?

FA:    No.  It’s special because Bruscantini is among those Italian people that represent a special culture.  In the case of Cesare Siepi is the big bass tradition, and in the case of Bruscantini, it’s a special school of treating the words, the recitativo.  That’s what makes his appearances so very, very, very exciting, very singular.

BD:    Is this a good tradition to work with?

FA:    That’s a good tradition to work with, and that’s an example because it gives you a classical interpretation with more points of view to use later when you’re going to meet them some day for special parts.  You are able to see the way he projected his whole role and interpretation, and the way he just places his highlights exactly with perfect timing and the right nuance in every sense.   That’s really a good school!

BD:    Are you carrying on that tradition?

FA:    I was always very aware of the importance of the words in the opera and in all vocal music, and that is information I have been trying to achieve.

BD:    Talking about words, most of the audience doesn’t speak Italian.  Would it be better at all to translate the opera, or would that lose too much?

FA:    It is very difficult to make a translation that could really compliment the music and all the characters.  There are some words that have to just be there, and if you change them a little bit because of the translation they lose strength.  So I don’t think that it would be a good idea to translate them.  It’s certain that the public has to do their homework in order to really enjoy the most of the evening.  I have seen in some houses, especially the latest in San Francisco, was there are some performances where they put supertitles in English, and that seems for me not a bad an idea at all.  [Lyric Opera of Chicago would begin using supertitles the following season.]  I must say they would be applicable for every kind of opera.  They did it with Don Pasquale because that’s a funny opera.  All the jokes were coming at the right time, and the people were understanding what’s going on.  But especially they did it in Siegfried as well, which is a very difficult piece to understand and follow.  It demands a very different way of putting these things together because the words just go on.  Most of the parts are conversational.  They don’t stay in the traditional ways of singing an aria that has one phrase and repeats it for the whole aria, so you just put that one in the text and that’s it.  You have to be changing immediately according to the music and according to what’s happening.

BD:    Is that distracting?

FA:    I just saw a general rehearsal, and I didn’t need it.  I just took a look at it for curiosity and then afterwards I didn’t see it any more.  But I can imagine that for people that really read those things, it is so easy because you can read it so fast and the music is most of the time a little bit slower.  Then you can concentrate on the stage, especially because you have only one line to read.  If you have two or three, that would be distracting, but with just one you can see it immediately and then concentrate on what’s going on on stage.  So I think that’s a good, positive way to bring operas towards the people.

BD:    We will get them next season. 

FA:    You will see.  It’s going to be a good experience.

BD:    Good!  Is it better because people have watched television and seen subtitles on television?  Has that made them accept the supertitles in the theater more?

FA:    Maybe, but it’s a question of practice as well.  You have the practice on television, and you don’t lose very much from what’s happening on the pictures by reading the subtitles.  So it might be a sort of discipline to adjust to it in the theater.

BD:    So then you envision this for happening for most operas?

FA:    Why not!  But not always.  When the people know enough of the opera, they should have the complete spectacle without distracting elements. 

BD:    What operas might not work?

FA:    I think everyone would work, but what I want to say is not to do all the performances of one series with supertitles.  Do two or three, and then all the others normally in order to let the people try to pick up spontaneous highlights.  Every opera goer needs a little bit of time in order to develop.

BD:    Would it be too distracting if the opera was in the language of the people anyway?  For instance, Peter Grimes in England or America?

FA:    There are operas where it couldn’t matter that much to make a translation, but especially on the kind of character operas

, but at the same time I am trying to make Basilio go away because we are in much danger.  [Laughter all around]  Everything is with hand gestures!  At La Scala they understand perfectly every word, so I don’t think an Italian actor really does these kinds of gestures because he wants to be understood by the public.  It’s almost impossible.  You have to create your presentation as accurately as possible, and then you have to bring it everywhere.

BD:    Is the opera public today more sophisticated now than twenty or thirty years ago?

FA:    Yes, especially in Europe.  What I have been missing in very many theaters is the spontaneity of the public, and willingness to accept a special event from anybody.  They are well treated with recordings and TV so they put their level of expectation very, very high in order to judge a live performance.

BD:    Is it right for the public to judge a live performance against the television or against a record?

FA:    No, not at all.  They are taking away from themselves the best of a live performance, which is spontaneity.  It is an easy comparison with the record when he held the note much longer, but they are taking away the magic of the moment.

BD:    Then why do you as an artist continue to make records?

FA:    Because they are documents.  As an artist I try to make recordings only where I’m able to do the part on the stage as well.  So my recordings are true documents of what I am able to do also in live performance.

BD:    So you would not accept to do a role on record that you hadn’t sung?

FA:    Yes, I would, but only if it could be according to my possibilities at the time.  What I mean is that I wouldn’t sing a high note on a record that I don’t sing on the stage.  If I feel like it, because in the moment I think that has to be the right condition, then I do it, but only if I would do it as well on stage.  Sometimes I don’t because I don’t feel like it or because I’m not in the mood to do it.  But if it’s written you have to!  [Laughs]

BD:    How much can you vary from the score?  How many extra notes can you put in?

FA:    Very few, very few.  That was the tradition once.  For instance, as the Count, normally I put a high C at the end, which doesn’t belong because it is so dark.  The high C, as you know, is a symbol of light and is just a most beautiful note for tenors.  But I do it anyway because I like to do that, though yesterday I just didn’t feel the mood of doing it physically, so I didn’t do it. 

BD:    Maybe in another performance in the run you will sing it?

FA:    Oh, yes, when I feel like doing it.  It’s also a question of compliment with the public.  If you feel like carrying the audience you say,

BD:    You specialize in Mozart, Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini.  That is your fach.

FA:    Yes. 

BD:    Do you enjoy doing those roles, or do you sing them only because your voice dictates that’s what you should sing?

FA:    Let’s say both of those reasons.  First of all I have never been a tenore leggiero.  I have always had a lyric tenor voice which already does fit this kind of repertoire.  But according to my technique and to my age, all the advice from my teachers and specialists around me said I have to sing Mozart!  I made my début in 1970, and Fritz Wunderlich had died six year before.  For me he isn’t the classical Mozart tenor, because I don’t think that the music of Mozart is sterile.  It is really full of life and of erotic character.  So if you’re going to make a Mozart tenor, he has to be first of all a real tenor, and not this kind of light castrato.  That is the kind of voice you’ve been used until then.  So I understand why the people try to move me immediately to sing Mozart, including my teachers in Mexico.  They brought me the German repertoire, taught me the German roles and tried induce me into that.  But in Mexico, a tenor like me could have sung immediately Rodolfo and Faust and all these roles.  I was lucky enough to go to Europe, and to build up my whole Mozart repertory.  I immediately sang four or five big Mozart opera roles for a young tenor

BD:    The Magic Flute, Abduction, Così, Giovanni...

FA:    ...and Idamante.  These built a very, very strong bond for my career in very many places.  I had the biggest load you can imagine because the way you go to study a Mozart part is very different from the way you go and study an Italian one or a French one.

BD:    Why is that?

FA:    Because of the style, the very, very old and difficult Mozart style.  First of all you have to be able to manage your voice in an absolutely instrumental way.

BD:    Do you feel you are just a clarinet or an oboe?

FA:    No, you learn the principles of what you can do with instrument.  You have to be able to put a note cleanly in place without carrying or letting it fall.  You just place it perfectly.  Also the definition has to be really a beautiful sound, first of all.  Second, you have to be able to put this note in the three main levels of loudness

See my interviews with Karita Mattila, Thomas Allen, and José van Dam To read my Interviews with Marie McLaughlin and Robert Lloyd See my interviews with Susanne Mentzer See my interview with Margaret Price

See my interview with Ann Murray See my interview with Martti Talvela

BD:    Does that please you to know that all of these have been documented?

FA:    Yes, it does indeed.  It was very funny.  The first experience I had with my first record was made in 1978.  I knew that it wasn’t the definitive interpretation of what I was singing, but it reflected my status at the moment vocally, technically and of the interpretative capability.  The recitatives I still find very exciting because it’s very fresh.  It’s a kind of achievement that a young person who has the whole world open for his eyes is able to do.  When I hear my first recording, I think that’s nice, that’s cute!

BD:    [Surprised]  Cute!?!?!

FA:    Cute, yes!  Now I listen to the other ones, and they really reflect what I have been doing during the years, what I’m trying to achieve now.

BD:    It’ll be interesting twenty years from now and see what you think of those first recordings.

FA:    Exactly, if I manage to sing that long!

BD:    How long do you think you should sing?

FA:    As long as you can really be honest with yourself and know you are really able physically to create a young character.

BD:    Alfredo Kraus is in his mid-fifties and he’s still singing Romeo and Des Grieux.

FA:    You cannot hear in his voice one beat of his elderly years.  The voice is fresh.  He is a wonderful tenor, and he’s perfectly in shape.

BD:    We’re very lucky here in Chicago.  He’s been here many, many times in the last fifteen years.

FA:    He’s such a fantastic, stylish artist, and he looks incredible.  He has this sporty figure, and he takes care of himself.  He’s perfect.

BD:    So you learn from other singers around you?

FA:    Not exactly.  What can you learn from other singers?  Everybody approaches the recitative in a different way, but it can open your eyes for a moment to a certain aspect.  Alfredo is now in his middle-fifties and he’s still able to sing those roles because he’s in shape and technically he has the experience of everything.  That’s a real example, so it’s right to apply the same discipline and go there as well.

BD:    The Bellini and Rossini and Mozart operas were written so long ago.  How do you make them speak to us today?

FA:    Most of the operas deal with the same thematics every time.  They present more extroverted feelings of the human person

to Monteverdi, to Heinrich Schütz?

FA:    Yes.  But as funny as it might be, opera is nowadays considered as second-class music.  Opera has been the challenge for everybody, for every composer.

BD:    Is it a challenge for the audience also?

FA:    Of course, but every time they were expecting it.  Why did Brahms not have this breakthrough that his qualities should have?  He didn’t compose any operas with success.  There are these two little hymns that are somewhere in the world that nobody knows about, and there are very few vocal pieces.

BD:    Would the Brahms symphonies have been better if he had written an opera?

FA:    I think so.  Look what Mozart does after composing opera and then the way that he handled the instruments afterwards, after hearing the human voice doing things.  They just wrote new challenges for the clarinet and for the flute.  It’s really amazing, and they treated them better.

BD:    So the songs and the choral works of Brahms don’t quite do it?

FA:    I think I understand why he really didn’t like it that much.  He just didn’t find a librettist that could interest him that much in the subject matter.  He would have had it all to make opera if he had found someone like that.

BD:    Are the librettists of these nineteenth century operas really good, or are they just hacks?

FA:    No, they are fantastic.  The librettists began to base themselves in the classical literature.  There is no question of the quality.  A librettist was literally build up into the art, so he knew what he had to bring to achieve in order to make something valuable.  There are some where the situation is going to have another rhythm which works much slower, and it’s going to carry sometimes for hours, as in Wagner.  The dialogue in Wagner takes hours and it is a very, very big challenge.

BD:    Any librettos you consider poor?

FA:    No.  For me, you have to find out what was trying to be said through this libretto, and then try to solve the problems.  Maybe composers sometimes wrote the music at such a speed that they have the full picture of what they wanted in their heads but didn’t have the time to write everything down, or thought maybe if they wrote this and that, the singers will understand what they mean.  But sometimes something is really missing.

BD:    They leave it to the interpreters to fill in the gaps?

FA:    I don’t think so, at least not that much and at least not on purpose.  They really wanted to have the full control of what they were doing.  They were such at ease, they thought the people also were like that.  The artists will understand if they do it like that, but it is really failing in very much information and through which eyes they were looking at these matters.  For instance, I’m occupying myself now with Rigoletto, which I’m going to sing Germany.  I see the [character of] Rigoletto coming back to his home, fearing for his daughter, finding strangers around his house.  Then he discovers finally that he was blind-folded.  It is silly.  You notice perfectly well if somebody’s trying to blind-fold you.  I’m sure that in those days they had anesthetics to make you sleep.  I’m sure that the courtiers who were going to kidnap Gilda had anesthetics in order to make her sleep and to take her away, but Gilda doesn’t sleep.  She screams for her life as she is carried away, but Rigoletto doesn’t notice anything from these screams.

BD:    Wasn’t he thinking that they were robbing somebody else, not his own house?

FA:    But he knows the voice of his daughter.  He had a big quarrel with Ceprano, and there is a certain moment when they forget about it and make a truce.  This is when they put this anesthetic in Rigoletto’s drink so to make Rigoletto fall asleep.  As he sleeps, they blind-fold him, and then they go and take his daughter.  He wakes up, and they haven’t finished yet.

BD:    That’s interesting you’re studying the opera for your own character of the Duke, and yet you’re studying the character of Rigoletto.

FA:    I study everything when I approach Mozart, so then you approach everything the same way.

BD:    But it’s interesting that you would go into such depth for another character.  It’s almost like a conductor who has to know every detail.

FA:    Yes, absolutely. 

BD:    Then how much do you as an actor divorce yourself from facts that will happen later?

FA:    You have to divorce.  You have to really find the keys.  There are things you’re not supposed to know. 

BD:    How much do you become the character?  Are you the character or are you playing a character?

FA:    It depends on how much the characteristics of the character you find with the ones of yourself.   For instance, when I am playing Des Grieux it’s more me.  When I’m playing Almaviva, I’m playing it absolutely.

BD:    Are there any characters that are really too close to Francisco Araiza?

FA:    Yes, especially the ‘Sturm und Drang’ characters like Werther, Don Carlo, Des Grieux.  One has this typical challenge, the idealization of the world.  That’s what interests me a lot and helps me.  All the other things are for me a question of discipline, which is a learned art.

BD:    Does the size of the house matter to you at all?

FA:    Not at all.  My voice carries very well and it’s big enough. 

BD:    Are there houses that are too small, or places where your voice is too big?

FA:    No, I haven’t noticed that.  In Europe you have the problem that the smaller houses have the worst acoustic.  So I don’t really care.  I have enough voice anyway.  My best experiences in the biggest houses were in Salzburg in the Festspielhaus, where I had no problems at all, and in Tokyo in the Bunka Kaikan.  The Metropolitan is the most difficult house to sing in.  The house here in Chicago has a very tricky acoustic. 

BD:    Does the stage-set help or hinder all of this, perhaps when there is very little scenery behind you?

FA:    Yes, that happens.  Sometimes we have a raked stage and that helps a lot.

BD:    If you’re standing in front of a wall, will that help to project the voice forward?

FA:    It depends if the wall is made of projecting material, but it’s other stuff it swallows the voice up.  But there are productions that have the purpose of helping the acoustics, especially the productions of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle.  All of them have very, very friendly acoustic.  Also they are beautiful.

BD:    How do the different directors affect your performance?

FA:    Very much.  I am a person who depends very much on the colleagues.  First of all I have to have the right colleagues, especially the right woman to be able to act really well.  It would be crazy not to.

BD:    What if you get someone that you don’t care for?

FA:    That’s awful. For me, that’s like punishment!  It really is.

BD:    But then you have to overcome it.  Isn’t it your responsibility to simply deal with the situation?

FA:    Of course you do overcome it, but you will be distracted from so many elements because it’s only okay.  I don’t look at her, or if I look at her, then I think it’s Flicka von Stade there, and not her.  But you can only do that until a certain moment when she does a stupid thing, then you know it’s not Flicka.  So you distract yourself.

BD:    [With a sly nudge]  You don’t do something to irritate her?

FA:    No, never!  That would be silly.  Sometimes I would love to, but...  [Both laugh]

BD:    Do rely on a prompter at all?

FA:    Not at all, especially when there are very penetrating ones that I hate, really.  They are snapping fingers and conducting you and saying you’re always the worst.  Then when you are trying to make the character pause they try to get you to come in.  There have been times when the prompter is pretty awful giving unnecessary prompts in dramatic pauses!  So no, I don’t rely on prompters.  I learn my lines very well.  As a matter of fact, I’m a specialist, so all my parts I have sung over fifty times at least.

BD:    Are there any parts you’ve sung too many times?

FA:    Yes, Barber!

BD:    So how do you then stay fresh?

FA:    You stay fresh because as soon as you have a new public it’s an absolutely new atmosphere.  Also with a new production and new colleagues there is a new challenge.  But this is my last production of Barber.

BD:    Are you retiring the part?

FA:    Yes.  I will sing this series and then the first and second performances at La Scala immediately after that, and that’s it!

BD:    You’ve told your agent not to accept any more Barbers?

FA:    Yes, and Cenerentola will be retiring in June next year in Munich.

BD:    Are you then accepting heavier and heavier parts?

FA:    Yes.  As I told you I sang Des Grieux in Manon, and I sang Leicester in Maria Stuarda.  I’m going to sing Percy in Anna Bolena, also the Duke in Rigoletto, Faust, Rodolfo, Werther, and up to Don Carlos and the ‘zwischen’ German repertory.  So I have a good new field to develop in.  I’m going to sing Hoffmann as well.  That will be as far as I want to go for now.  That’s my main characteristic, my personal voice.

BD:    Is it satisfying for you to know that you’re booked four or five years in advance?

FA:    Yes, it is very satisfying.

BD:    Is it at all scary?

FA:    Scary, no, but it’s a big responsibility especially if it does not happen.  How I’m feeling now tells me to move up in these matters.  It was easier to sing Almaviva or Ramiro in Cenerentola earlier in the career, so I would say no to the heavier parts.  I didn’t see why I should keep trying those very, very difficult parts which would strain my voice, making a violation of it if I could sing the other parts that fit me better.  But as I feel now, I don’t have the flexibility that I used to have years before.  Just going up to the C and down was no problem, but now I have to work to do it. 

BD:    So singing is harder work for you?

FA:    Oh, yes.

BD:    But you enjoy it?

FA:    I do enjoy it, and as I quit these parts, I want to achieve the heavier ones.  But what if I cannot?  That’s the bigger question, but I know that I can.  I sang for the Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg and I got a commendation.  That was very good. 

BD:    So are you taking these parts on one by one very gradually?

FA:    Yes.  They are coming one after the other but really with time, and also time to see the reactions.

BD:    Have you ever come across a part that you sing on the stage and you realize it is not the part for you, so you retire it earlier or immediately?

FA:    Not yet.  Always the more that I have occupied myself with the part that came early, the better.  I say that because I have sung my whole life the tenor part of Verdi Requiem.  I had my first Verdi Requiem ten years ago or so, and while I don’t hate the piece, it is difficult for the breathing and building of the phrases.  The orchestra comes in and I open the voice, so it’s a very tough part.  But year after year it became easier.  Now it’s a part of me and I don’t need so many places to breathe as ten years ago or eight or seven years ago.  I can sing a phrase normally without any breathing.  So you achieve more and can develop into it.

BD:    You started that one very early?

FA:    I thought it was very early.  As a matter of  fact I sang it last year again, and when I was restudying the part I remembered how I used to shake and to fight for breath.  Now that’s all gone!

BD:    Now it’s easy?

FA:    It’s absolutely easy.   It’s now that I am up to it.  I’m able to do it without any problems.  That’s why I think it’s the right moment to add other parts.  The Des Grieux in 1986 was an emergency.  I was offered that a year before, and it was a question should I do it right then or no?   I was waiting for it so I accepted it, and it went well. 

BD:    Are you very careful to not sing too often?

FA:    No!  [Laughs]

BD:    Are you singing too much?

FA:    Too much, no because I’m still vocally alive.  But I have been singing very much.  However I’ve noticed since I sang Des Grieux that I needed a full day after that performance in order to recover physically.  Jumping around from one part to another, I was able to recover very easily from Barber.  But the Des Grieux is another way of being tired.

BD:    Are you emotionally tired?

FA:    Right.  You can only make these parts in a convincing way if you really go into them.  You have to act, you have to try and be this part.  There are parts that you cannot play; you have to be that part and Des Grieux is one of these.  It takes your whole substance, and after a performance you’re really down for a while.

BD:    Next Fall you’ll be back in Chicago for Traviata.  Tell me a little bit about Alfredo!

FA:    I find Alfredo very, very exciting part.

BD:    Will you sing the cabaletta?

FA:    Yes, yes, certainly.  It is the problems of getting involved with such a situation as this, accompanied by such beautiful music, and especially a part where you can really live your emotions at the borders.  So that’s what I like to do, and it’s a very thankful part.  So I’m looking forward to doing it in a good production because it has to be well done.  Ardis Krainik was the first American Intendant to give me a long-period contract in the USA, so I shall probably get back here for many years!

BD:    Do you like being a ‘wandering minstrel’?

FA:    I must tell you that you really don’t realize this much traveling around.  The main concentration stays in the music and the parts that you have learned, doing your job and also trying to develop in a certain spiritual way to be able to understand this kind of lifestyle to keep your gifts occupied.  I am always learning new things in new fields.  One of the things I do the most is song recitals because that’s the field that allows you to realize the most as an artist.  If I sing them here, there or anywhere, that’s secondary.  The main thing is the art itself.

  [Both laugh]  How can we bring more children to the opera?

FA:    In Zurich and in Vienna and Munich and other cities there is a big program, a Magic Flute for children.

BD:    Is this a film?

FA:    No, it is live.  It is part of the school here for the 4th or 5th class, one day to the theater to see The Magic Flute for children.  It is incredible the way it is done.  The baritone is also a narrator.  He reorganizes the score and brings the old jokes.  He begins by talking about the snake.  Every kid likes the snake, the more dangerous, the more fun!  He tells how Tamino falls in love with Pamina through a picture, and Tamino sings the aria.  Then the narrator says that was in 1785.  How would it be if Tamino could fall in love with Pamina now?   So they have Tamino singing the Beatles song,

[During the course of doing interviews for many years, there have been several times when mention was made of getting together again at a later date.  Sometimes it worked out, but often it did not.  Happily, this was an instance when a second conversation did happen, specifically six years later.....]


BD:    You started out singing Mozart and Rossini and now you’re moving into the Verdi and French repertoire, and I understand even some Wagner.  Is this a comfortable move for you?

FA:    Yes, it is indeed.  Lohengrin was my actual goal of the vocal development, and I have put my concentration and my energies in arriving there without damage in the voice by going too far into heavy parts too soon or too much.  It was the final test to see how the development was working, and the Lohengrin last June in Venice I was really very, very excited.  But I was so lucky that I was part of a great, great production from Pier Luigi Pizzi [shown in a video-capture at right], and I was working with a conductor that for me is one of the geniuses of the younger generation, a German named Christian Thielemann.  From the very first rehearsal we had this understanding that we were going to do new things, and to treat the whole opera as we could do a Lied, given the great, great importance to every word and the phrasing of the part and the different moods and situations, the differentiation in attacks, etc., etc.  It was for me an incredible surprise to see how it worked.

BD:    Was the conductor very careful to make sure that he didn’t over-blow the orchestra because you have a different kind of voice than the normal Lohengrin?

FA:    That’s what I told him.  Certainly we chose a very nice theater in Venice to make this production.  It has one of the best acoustics of theaters of this size.  It’s very well constructed.  It’s very intimate, and I told him that I didn’t want any special attention in that matter.  You cannot really count too much on the dynamics of Wagner.  Certainly you have to understand that once you give these operas on a normal stage outside of Bayreuth, you have to lower your dynamics anyway, generally speaking.  So one knows that, and by applying this rule you are never wrong because it is an opera that is lyrical-heroic, and it is very well written.  When Wagner puts a certain amount of sound with orchestra and chorus together

but when you get to know the opera and when you get to know the weight of the voices of your colleagues on stage, you can adapt that as well.

BD:    For this production did they pick other voices which were similar in weight to yours?

FA:    No.  That was the great thing that they were all Wagner singers including Nadine Secunde as Elsa, Gudrun Volkert as Ortrud, Bent Norup as Telramund, Heinz Klaus Ecker as Henry and Eike Wilm Schulte as the Herald.  They didn

my breathing, my support, my voice, my placement, and my nerves.  Then I began to sing and began to realize that the voice was working the way I wanted it to, and I was feeling the room the way I wanted to do it.  After the first break I was absolutely confident, and I finished the rehearsal and everybody was cheering and a new Lohengrin was born.  It was fantastic.  Certainly the approach I do is very, very special.  It is an approach that explores all the possibilities.  It didn’t leave one possibility open.  I am thankful to the conductor who supported me in absolutely every aspect, giving me the time to shape the voice, time to re-attack, to make the diminuendos, to make different colors in between phrases, and all these things, and especially giving me the time to breathe. 

BD:    As the rehearsals progressed, did you find yourself getting stronger and more confident?

FA:    Always, yes.  Every one of the final rehearsals was a kind of affirmation that what I was doing was right.  I must say that when I arrived to the general rehearsal, which was open, that was the final test. 

BD:    Was there was an audience for that?

FA:    There was an audience there, and I knew that all the critics were also there.  They weren’t supposed to be, but they were there.  They couldn’t wait to see the premiere because they thought that I might cancel.  So if they got the chance to go the rehearsal, which I was supposed to sing, they went in!  But I felt confident, and I was enjoying this part so much because of the whole environment that went around me.  I had really fun doing it, and you could feel the expectation that they were positively disposed to this debut.  And after the Gralserzählung they applauded!  They shouted bravo!  In Wagner this is impossible.  The conductor was looking around because this never happens.  It never happened before.  He was happy and having fun as well!  So we had a great, great time together doing a series of five performances.

BD:    Did you have enough time to rest in between each performance?

FA:    In between I had usually two days, but one time I had only one day in between.  They wondered if I could do it in this manner, but I got to finish this series and I tell you I think that changed a lot in me.

BD:    How did you feel after the last performance?

FA:    It was a combination of fulfillment and being empty.  I was happy that I have done it, that I reached my goal.  I will never forget this production and the experience of constructing it every time new.  But at the same time the excitement was so big that I was absolutely empty.  I didn’t have any strength to go ahead.  It would have been wiser for me to take a couple of weeks off and really digest this whole experience, which was really one of the highlights of my career.

BD:    I was going to ask had you foresight to make sure that the next couple of weeks were empty.

FA:    In fact I went on to Munich to sing a series of Rigoletto.  You cannot put further extremes together, which was not wise at all because I wasn’t in the mood.  I was really still feeling in the Grail, and still enjoying my remembrances of this experience.

BD:    Were you able to readjust the voice for Verdi?

FA:    I wasn’t.  That was the problem, because as I told you before, I was using my full voice ninety percent of the time in this range that goes up to A natural.  Then I had to cope with this very, very difficult range of the Duke, so it was quite a trouble for me.  I had to reduce the voice, and I was just putting the voice very thin in the mask, and it was not nice at all.

BD:    Were the people there in Munich saying that you had just sung Lohengrin?

FA:    Exactly.  They were expecting a Lohengrin sound in this range, which is absolutely impossible.  Nobody can carry that amount of sound up there.  I needed at least two weeks to readjust to this range, which I didn’t have, so these performances weren’t very good, I must say.  But it’s my fault and I feel guilty about it.

BD:    As you reorganize your schedule for future performances, are you leaving more time after each production?

FA:    I’m not going to undertake more such experiences like that because I’m not going any further into the development.  That was my goal.

BD:    [With a gentle nudge]  No Siegfried?

FA:    No Siegfried!  [Both roar with laughter]  That was my goal, and as I achieved it I am really very lucky.  I’m not pursuing something further, but what I want to do is to fill up what I have done.  I just closed what I have to learn in my French repertory by singing Roméo.  I have the five important French parts

which was not needed at all.  So what was carried was what you were producing, and if you’re producing a round, healthy sound, that was what came through.  So it was a very, very good experience for me to do that because I could put my voice in the right focal point, and then give the full power, which was a great experience.  To develop this focus into the greatest possible amount of volume by not widening the throat is the important thing.  Besides that, I have always been a Wagner fan.  The first opera that I heard that really struck me was The Flying Dutchman in the recording with George London.  It was George London who has brought me, but by hearing it so often I learned to love the opera as well, and learned to love Wagner in that manner.

BD:    The Steersman on that recording is Richard Lewis, who is a fine Mozart tenor!

FA:    Yes, exactly!  So I began to think about a development into certain Wagner roles, and I began to think which parts those might be.  So by reading the parts, I realized Lohengrin could be in the possible range and Walter von Stolzing as well, and Loge certainly, but then that’s it.  Erik is definitely too heavy.  Tannhäuser is definitely too heavy, and of course the heroic tenors in the Ring have other ranges.  They are very low.  The young Siegfried has an incredible range of two octaves, and he moves the whole time for an amount of two hours and forty-five minutes.  It is the longest part ever written in the singing literature, even longer than Elektra and Hans Sachs.  And Siegmund is like a high baritone voice.  So if I was interested in singing those parts, then I would have to let my voice go down.  But I am interested in singing more the French and the Italian repertory, which requires you to have a healthy high C.  That’s why I wouldn’t go into these other parts.  Even Parsifal is very, very questionable for me because of the range.

BD:    Even though it’s very short by comparison?

FA:    Certainly, but it’s a question of feeling the range easily.  At the beginning of this year I did a recording Freischütz, and I was invited to do a production as well at the same time in London.  But before that I had a series of Faust in Vienna and after that again.  So I said it’s not going to work because I don’t have the time to let the voice really come down to the range of Max and then to pull it up again to the range of Faust.  So I canceled the series of performances in London, but I did the recording,  and I tell you I was having trouble achieving the low notes.  It was wise for me to cancel this series because I didn’t have the time to let the voice go down.  I knew that I could do it because when I do Liederabende I’m singing always in this range.  But you are not giving full power of the voice there.  It is a different way of singing when you sing Liederabende.  You sing as though it is in the middle of the dramatic general repertory.  So I decided to take care and to decide how far to go, and then I said Lohengrin will be the piece to decide whether I can achieve this development or not.  I’m glad I did it. 

BD:    Let’s talk a little bit now about the French roles.  You’ve sort of mastered, as you say, the big five roles.  Are they similar all in weight and in style?

FA:    They’re similar, though every one of them has their difficulties.  From the five, I think everybody could agree that Hoffmann is the most difficult of all of them.

BD:    Just because of the range?

FA:    I don’t think that’s only the range, but he keeps you really singing thoroughly in the break, and then from there up to the top. 

BD:    The E, F, F#, G?

FA:    Exactly.  It is always there and always ascending, and uses all the dynamics.  It’s always this way and all in this range.  It becomes very, very tough, so for that reason this part is very difficult.  As you well know, when a tenor achieves a good management of his break range, then he can sing.  When he has a good top, then he really manages every part, but that’s the most difficult thing to learn.

BD:    Now in the Hoffmann, do you sing the version with the recitatives or the version with the spoken dialogue?

FA:    I have sung the Guiraud version which is the recitatives, and I have recorded the newest version, which is  by Michael Kaye, for Philips.  [Vis-à-vis that recording (shown at right), Jeffrey Tate is the conductor, and Felicity Palmer is the voice of Antonia

like Kraus’s voice, for instance.  I have to work a lot to sing a good Werther.

BD:    But you still do it.

FA:    Oh yes, I love it.  That’s why I love my art. 

BD:    You enjoy singing French language?

FA:    Yes, I like it very much.  It is a technical language.  It’s not as easy as Italian, but being accustomed to German, maybe it’s the same way to approach it.

BD:    Is Werther a French opera because it is Massenet, or is it a German opera because it is Goethe?

FA:    It is a good question.  It’s a very good question.  As a matter of fact, you would tend to say that it is a combination of two autobiographies

  The only guilt that remains is the lack of total honesty from Pinkerton.  But he does tell her all about America, and what everybody does in America, and that women have rights in America, and all these things.  So then we have in his Manon Lescaut more the traditional version of Butterfly, which is not deep enough.  It is constructed.  It has lots of empty spots.  You take the first two arias of Des Grieux away, and then the second act doesn’t have any logic at all.  He comes to the room in the Palace to tell her that he doesn’t love her!  It’s silly!  It’s stupid, it’s constructed, it’s not well done.  Okay, you have the big duet, but that is all.

BD:    In the Massenet it’s all set up and it works out very logically.

FA:    That’s a dramatic piece.  That’s a dramatic development, and you see the steps of the novel of Prévost perfectly clearly.  You see how Massenet follows it, how he puts it together, and how they work, how they develop.  You have the right chronology of situations and feelings, which is the biggest lack in the Puccini version.

BD:    Do you enjoy singing the Massenet?

FA:    Yes, very much.  Besides being the first step into the heavier repertory, I have still very nice thoughts about it.  I would love to sing in a new production at this point.  These parts that I am singing now, I’m not singing them as often as the Mozart parts I used to sing in my first few years of my career.  I’m always hungry for these parts, and by singing other parts I’m complimenting the ones I have not sung for a certain amount of time because I find similarities.  I couldn’t reach them, so I was putting some expression into certain situations.  I was not very well focused, and I had to find explanations.  Doubts that I had before are now resolved.  For instance, why does Des Grieux have to run away from the dead Manon?  In the novel it says that he stays.  He puts his clothes into his hand and stays naked for five days, just lying there almost dead.  Why does he have to move away from her?  Okay, we interpret it because he stays alive.  So it’s these two levels.  He has to be away from her at the end, for the last second.  These are the kinds of things that keep you thinking, keep you going.  I’m going to sing this part again in February and March in Vienna, and this is a production that I love very much.  I’ve also been offered to do a new production in France and in Spain.

BD:    You’re getting a lot of offers for a lot of different parts.  How do you sort them out?  How do you decide which ones you’ll say yes, and the others you’ll turn aside?

FA:    I try to accept the parts that I enjoy the most.  I’m not going to sing in Rigoletto anymore because I had this bad experience in Munich, and it’s a part where you really have to work a lot.  It’s a very unsympathetic personality.

BD:    Does that mean when you came here to Chicago to sing it, it’s not really as exciting as it could be?

FA:    No, because when I sang it the first time I felt very good with this part, and I felt that I worked out the character very well.  I have put him into an environment where I could give this part all that it should have without hiding anything of his negative side.  But maybe to give the public the possibility to think why a nature like his acts the way he does, if he’s moved or pushed or forced by certain elements to do what he does, it’s his philosophy.  Verdi speaks about it very clearly in his letters. He says this guy has zero character.  He’s a nothing, a jerk!  But then when you sing this part, you don’t have the environment where you can really put everything in it and still make it a figure.  You have to be very careful not to make this unsympathetic figure more unsympathetic than it already is because you are going to get really in trouble from the audience with this approach, with the cutting of the message for them.

BD:    So then he’s really a wonderful jerk?

FA:    He’s a wonderful jerk, yes, who has the power to seduce if he wants to.  But as a matter of fact, he’s a very, very tragic figure, which you don’t notice very much in the traditional settings as we have here.  You don’t have the possibility to show that he’s really searching for something that he will never find.  In the case of Gilda he has a feeling, but he asks all these questions about virtue.

BD:    So he couldn’t have been happy with her then?

FA:    Well, he was happy for one month or so...  [Both roar laughing together]  But although Gilda is still being faithful to him, we see him going to look for a prostitute in order to experiment what’s really the animal in himself.  We have in this opera three clearly divided love situations of the Duke.  First in the Court he approaches Countess Ceprano, and he approaches her in a proper manner, educated, subtle, and with a certain amount of flavoring in his words.  Then we have Gilda, whom he approaches with a kind of first love, a student love in an innocent way.

BD:    Is he trying to recapture his youth?

FA:    He’s always searching.  He says he can notice things very well by which situations he finds himself.  When these elements are here, and by this amount of thought, he knows perfectly well he’s doing.  Of course he enjoys doing it, and then he enjoys seeing what results he gets.  So he is almost pushed into virtue.  He thought he would see himself through this relationship, so let’s see what’s there!  He dives in and experiments, and he was happy for one month.  But then we have this other element, the animal element in him.

BD:    That’s why he goes to Maddelena?

FA:    Right.  He goes to Maddelena, and that’s the way he treats her as well.  He tells Sparafucile he wants two things

© 1984 & 1990 Bruce Duffie

These conversations were recorded in Chicago on November 24, 1984, and December 6, 1990.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1987, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1998, and 2000.  A part of the first interview was transcribed and published in Nit & Wit Magazine in September, 1986.  This full transcription was made in 2015, and posted on this website at that time.  My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.