lso not in stage direction, but it has to fit the piece and really enhance it.  We had a wonderful production here in Los Angeles of Tristan that was really stirring.  It was contemporary, but it was all within the piece, and it really was fabulous.  So it depends.

BD:    Let me ask a balance question.  In opera, where is the balance between the music and the drama?

HG:    It’s equally important, and in certain operas the drama is more difficult.  In a Handel opera, it is certainly more difficult for a contemporary person to portray it, but one should certainly try one’s best.  The diction has to be excellent.  The people have to understand what goes on.  After all, if the composers would have not paid attention to the drama and the libretto, they would probably have composed symphonies.  So I think these people are geared to the text very much.

BD:    How do you feel about the use of translation?

HG:    That depends.  In comedies — let’s say Così fan Tutte or The Marriage of Figaro or Barber of Seville

Hans Erich Apostel (Born January 22, 1901 in Karlsruhe – died November 30, 1972 in Vienna) was a German-born Austrian composer of classical music. From 1916 to 1919 he studied piano, conducting and music theory in Karlsruhe with Alfred Lorenz. In 1920 he was Kapellmeister and Répétiteur at the Badischen Landestheater in Karlsruhe. He studied in Vienna with Arnold Schoenberg from 1921–1925, and from 1925–35 with Alban Berg, two prominent members of the Second Viennese School. At the same time, he taught piano, composition and music theory privately. Some of his compositions demonstrate his particular affinity with expressionist painting—he was friends with Emil Nolde, Oskar Kokoschka and Alfred Kubin. During the Nazi period his music was proscribed as "degenerate", but he continued to live in Vienna until his death in 1972. Apostel was active as a pianist, accompanist, and conductor of contemporary music in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. After the war, he was prominent in the Austrian branch of the Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, of which he was president from 1947 to 1950. He was an editor for the Universal Edition, and was responsible for new editions of the operas of Alban Berg, Wozzeck (published in 1955) and Lulu (published in 1963). Although he won numerous prizes for his compositions (including the Austrian State Prize in 1957), his works were rarely performed. He is buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, Group 32C, No. 57.

Luigi Dallapiccola (February 3, 1904 – February 19, 1975) was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions.  He was born at Pisino d'Istria (currently Pazin, Croatia), to Italian parents. Unlike many composers born into highly musical environments, his early musical career was irregular at best. Political disputes over his birthplace of Istria, then part of the Austrian empire, led to instability and frequent moves. His father was headmaster of an Italian-language school – the only one in the city – which was shut down at the start of World War I. The family, considered politically subversive, was placed in internment at Graz, Austria, where the budding composer did not even have access to a piano, though he did attend performances at the local opera house, which cemented his desire to pursue composition as a career. Once back to his hometown Pisino after the war, he travelled frequently. Dallapiccola took his piano degree at the Florence Conservatory in the 1920s and became professor there in 1931; until his 1967 retirement he spent his career there teaching lessons in piano as a secondary instrument. He also studied composition with Vito Frazzi at the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini. Dallapiccola's students include Abraham Zalman Walker, Luciano Berio, Bernard Rands, Donald Martino, Halim El-Dabh, Ernesto Rubin de Cervin, Arlene Zallman, Roland Trogan, Noel Da Costa, and Raymond Wilding-White. Dallapiccola's early experiences under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, who governed Italy from October 1922 to July 1943, colored his outlook and output for the rest of his life. He once supported Mussolini, believing the propaganda, and it was not until the 1930s that he became passionate about his political views, in protest to the Abyssinian campaign and Italy's involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Mussolini's sympathy with Adolf Hitler's views on race, which threatened Dallapiccola's Jewish wife Laura Luzzatto, only hardened his stance. Canti di prigionia and Il prigioniero are reflections of this impassioned concern; the former was his first true protest work. During World War II he was in the dangerous position of opposing the Nazis; though he tried to go about his career as usual, and did, to a limited extent. On two occasions he was forced to go into hiding for several months. Dallapiccola continued his touring as a recitalist – but only in countries not occupied by the Nazis. Though it was only after the war that his compositions made it into the public eye (with his opera Il prigioniero sparking his fame), it was then that his life became relatively quiet. He made frequent travels to the United States, including appearances at Tanglewood in the summers of 1951 and 1952 and several semesters of teaching courses in composition at Queens College, New York beginning in 1956. He was a sought-after lecturer throughout Western Europe and the Americas. Dallapiccola's 1968 opera Ulisse would be the peak of his career, after which his compositional output was sparse; his later years were largely spent writing essays rather than music. He had no more finished compositions after 1972 due to his failing health, and he died in Florence in 1975 of edema of the lungs. There are, however, a very few sketches and fragments of work from this period, including a vocal work left unfinished just hours before his death. It was Richard Wagner's music that inspired Dallapiccola to start composing in earnest, and Claude Debussy's that caused him to stop: hearing Der fliegende Holländer while exiled to Austria convinced the young man that composition was his calling, but after first hearing Debussy in 1921, at age 17, he stopped composing for three years in order to give this important influence time to sink in. The neoclassical works of Ferruccio Busoni would figure prominently in his later work, but his biggest influence would be the ideas of the Second Viennese School, which he encountered in the 1930s, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Dallapiccola's works of the 1920s (the period of his adherence to fascism) have been withdrawn, with the instruction that they never be performed, though they still exist under controlled access for study. His works widely use the serialism developed and embraced by his idols; he was, in fact, the first Italian to write in the method, and the primary proponent of it in Italy, and he developed serialist techniques to allow for a more lyrical, tonal style. Throughout the 1930s his style developed from a diatonic style with bursts of chromaticism to a consciously serialist outlook. He went from using twelve-tone rows for melodic material to structuring his works entirely serially. With the adoption of serialism he never lost the feel for melodic line that many of the detractors of the Second Viennese School claimed to be absent in modern dodecaphonic music. His disillusionment with Mussolini's regime effected a change in his style: after the Abyssinian campaign he claimed that his writing would no longer ever be light and carefree as it once was. While there are later exceptions, particularly the Piccolo concerto per Muriel Couvreux, this is largely the case. Liriche Greche (1942–45), for solo voice with instruments, would be his first work composed entirely in this twelve-tone style, composed concurrently with his last original purely diatonic work, the ballet Marsia (1943). The following decade showed a refinement in his technique and the increasing influence of Webern's work. After this, from the 1950s on, the refined, contemplative style he developed would characterize his output, in contrast to the more raw and passionate works of his youth. Most of his works would be songs for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment. His touch with instrumentation is noted for its impressionistic sensuality and soft textures, heavy on sustained notes by woodwinds and strings (particularly middle-range instruments, such as the clarinet and viola).  [Autograph shown is from the Goethe-Lieder (1953), for mezzo soprano, piccolo clarinet, clarinet, and bass clarinet.] The politically charged Canti di prigionia for chorus and ensemble was the beginning of a loose triptych on the highly personal themes of imprisonment and injustice; the one-act opera Il prigioniero and the cantata Canti di liberazione completed the trilogy. Of these, Il prigioniero (1944–48) has become Dallapiccola's best-known work. It tells the chilling story of a political prisoner whose jailor, in an apparent gesture of fraternity, allows him to escape from his cell. At the moment of his freedom, however, he finds he has been the victim of a cruel practical joke as he runs straight into the arms of the Grand Inquisitor, who smilingly leads him off to the stake at which he is to be burned alive. The opera's pessimistic outlook reflects Dallapiccola's complete disillusionment with fascism (which he had naïvely supported when Mussolini first came to power) and the music contained therein is both beautifully realized and supremely disquieting. His final opera Ulisse, with his own libretto after The Odyssey, was the culmination of his life's work. It was composed over 8 years, including and developing themes from his earlier works, and was his last large-scale composition.

BD:    You sang quite a bit of Wagner.  Did you sing all of the Wagner roles that you wanted to sing?

HG:    Yes, because while I sang a great deal of Wagner, I was really not a dramatic mezzo soprano.  The most dramatic roles I sang were Brangäne and Fricka, and those I liked very much.  I did not want to sing an Ortrud, for instance.  That would not have been the right thing for my type of voice.

BD:    You also sang Erda?

HG:    Oh yes.  I sang Erda, I sang the Norns and I sang Flosshilde, one of the Rhinemaidens.  I sang all kinds of things other than these two roles, but these are the two major roles which I really love to sing.

BD:    Were you a real contralto or were you a mezzo soprano?

HG:    I was a mezzo soprano, but I had a very good lower range

not a chesty voice like many of my Italian colleagues, but certainly more in the German vein.  So Erda was no difficulty for me, and some of the Mahler was no difficulty for me.  For instance, the Kindertotenlieder I could easily sing.  Sometimes I was called a mezzo soprano, sometimes a contralto, dependent actually on the piece.  It didn’t matter to me, really, what people called me.

BD:    When you were presented with a role and asked to sing it, how did you decide if you would or would not do it?

HG:    It is about the same thing which I advised young composers to do.  It had to fit my voice, you see.  Just because somebody offered something to me, I would not say “Okay, I have to do it.”  For instance, several people wanted me to sing in Cavalleria Rusticana.  I sing Lola, which was fine, but they wanted me to sing Santuzza.  Yes, I could sing it.  There was no range that I couldn’t sing, but it was certainly too dramatic.  I always said, “I want to keep my voice intact.”

BD:    Do you encourage your students, then, to be able to say no to some of these parts?

HG:    Yes.  Absolutely.

BD:    Is it very difficult to say no?

HG:    In life situations, you had better say no than yes!

BD:    [Laughs]  Absolutely.  Let us talk a little bit about some of these roles.  You particularly liked Fricka and Brangäne?

HG:    I also liked Octavian, which unfortunately I never had the opportunity to sing at the Met.  I sing Marina and I loved Cherubino, so there are actually a wide range.  I had really the ability to adjust to the styles.  People probably think of me as a Wagnerian singer.  I never considered myself as a Wagnerian singer.  I considered myself a singer who sang what I could.  I loved Mozart and I loved to sing Dorabella in Così fan tutte.  We are too much inclined to put ourselves into cubby holes and feel that a mezzo soprano is to sing this and this and can’t bridge that line of thought.

BD:    So placing a singer into a Fach is not a good idea?

HG:    I don’t think so.  We find that the singers who have really arrived could choose what they wanted to sing.  For instance, Callas sang all kinds of things, and so do the other people.  I don’t think one has to just sing one particular Fach, as it is called in Germany.  In Germany it’s difficult because they have an ongoing theatre, and they have to have people who sing certain roles and then have then people who sing other roles.  But in general, I think one can sing all kinds of things.

BD:    Did you enjoy playing a boy on stage?

HG:    When I was from my fourth to my thirteenth year, I wanted to be an actress.  So anything which created a challenge to be like a chameleon, to change my colors, intrigued me.  I also would like to say something to the young people.  I never thought that there are small roles.  I thought that every role, if properly done, is important and essential to the opera.  For instance, I went to a famous performance of Fidelio a few years ago, which was excellent, except that one singer who came out as a prisoner had one large sentence to sing, and it was god-awful.  It spoiled the whole evening for me.  People should not think they should sing only the major roles.

BD:    Whatever they do, they should do it to the best of their ability?

HG:    They should do it well, and should really involve themselves from every point of view.  When I sang the Page in Salome at the Met, I loved it.  I really thought it is a few beautiful phrases to sing.  If you analyze what this role is, then it becomes practically an important part.  I had many letters about it, and it’s really what people consider a small role.

BD:    Did you change your vocal technique at all when you sang in the large houses, as opposed to the smaller houses?

HG:    No, you can’t.  You shouldn’t do that.  This is really one of the dangers, that if you sing at a big house you have to sing with an enormous voice.  That’s how voices, obviously, get ruined.  No, a good technique means a resonant voice and a well-supported voice, and that should carry.  Some of my colleagues, famous colleagues, had not the biggest voices, but they were the greatest artists.  So no, I don’t think you should change your technique.

BD:    Is there a secret to singing Mozart?

HG:    First of all you have to understand the style very, very much.  You can’t approach a Mozart role as you approach Puccini or Verdi or Wagner.  It has a specific style, and you have to have the technique and ability to sing both.  Many of my colleagues did, for instance Eleanor Steber.  She sang Mozart and she sang Verdi both very well.  She did not basically change her technique, but she certainly was able to change the style.

BD:    You also sang some Verdi roles, did you not?

HG:    Yes.  Not very dramatic ones, but I sang Maddalena in Rigoletto.

BD:    [Gently protesting]  Did you not sing Amneris???

HG:    Yes, I made my debut as Amneris, now that you remind me of it!  I think I sang it well and I think I acted it well, but people were really accustomed

Alberto Erede (8 November 1909 – 12 April 2001) was an Italian conductor, particularly associated with operatic work. Born in Genoa, Erede studied there before studying in Milan, then with Felix Weingartner at Basle, and after this with Fritz Busch at Dresden. He made his debut in Turin in 1935, conducting Der Ring des Nibelungen. He also conducted at the Salzburg Festival. Fritz Busch invited him to Glyndebourne in England, where he conducted several performances before the war. He went back to England after the war, in 1946, to become music director of the New London Opera Company. From 1950 to 1955 he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. From 1956 he was at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and was the musical director there from 1958 to 1962. He conducted Wagner's Lohengrin at Bayreuth in 1968, being the first Italian to appear there since Arturo Toscanini. In 1985 he made guest appearances in Sydney with the Australian Opera.  Erede conducted the earlier series of Italian opera on long-playing Decca Records featuring Renata Tebaldi and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome) Orchestra and Chorus, during the 1950s.

BD:    Tell me a little bit about Brangäne.  She is somewhat of a complex character, is she not?

HG:    She is like so many characters in opera; she devotes herself to one person.  She’s totally devoted to Isolde without any concern about herself, and being so devoted, she makes mistakes.  She is told to put a certain drug into the goblet, and she on her own is frightened and she does something else.

BD:    Does she really believe that she is doing the right thing in making the substitution?

HG:    I think, maybe.  Consciously or unconsciously, she might have known that they really love each other.  But it’s hard to say that because Isolde later says, “Oh you are just ridiculous to say that it was your drought.  It was our love which brought us together, no matter what you would put into it.  If you would have put poison into it, we would have died.”

BD:    You say that Brangäne is devoted to one person.  Would she have been devoted to a husband if that had been the situation?

HG:    That I don’t know.  We have people now who devote themselves to a certain person.  For instance, the woman who worked with Helen Keller; she devoted her whole life to one human being.  There are people who feel that their help is more important than their own individual happiness derived from their own marriage.

BD:    Did Brangäne, then, get her own happiness vicariously through the happiness of Isolde?

HG:    Actually she lived Isolde’s life in a certain way.  She lived through every phase of her troubles and turbulent feelings.  She lived with her and through her.

BD:    You also sang a couple of Norns?

HG:    Yes, the second Norn.  I sang it, not very often, but I did sing it.

BD:    Is that a satisfying part to sing?

HG:    As I told you before, it’s only if you can’t do well that it is not gratifying.  It’s a part of a big picture.  You can’t take one corner of a masterpiece out and block it off!  It all belongs together.

BD:    Did you ever sing Waltraute?

HG:    Yes.  Unfortunately, not often enough.  I really loved that part!  It’s a wonderful, wonderful role!  Very beautiful.

BD:    On the night that you would sing Waltraute, did you also sing a Norn?

HG:    No.

BD:    Just one or the other, but not both?

HG:    One or the other, yes.

BD:    Tell me about Waltraute.  Does she really have any hope for Brünnhilde?  Does she think that she can persuade Brünnhilde when she comes to her?

HG:    I think so.  She is devoted very much to her father.  She implores, “Come back, come back and sit with us around at his feet, and don’t go your own way.”

BD:    Which role in the whole repertoire did you sing the most?

HG:    In my whole repertoire?  Oh God, that is hard to say.  I didn’t count.  I had no time to count.  I was too busy!  [Laughs]  If you ask me which role I feel I did very well, it was certainly Brangäne.  I also liked to sing Carmen, which I unfortunately had no opportunity to sing at the Met.  But there are many roles.  As I stipulated before, I was really happy with what I could do well.  If I couldn’t do something well, then obviously I didn’t like it.  I didn’t mind at all to sing Mrs. Sedley in Peter Grimes.  I wanted to be a part of it; I wanted to be in the drama.  Whatever was assigned to me, I tried to really justify the role and create as much as possible.  I went back and I read a great deal about it.  I didn’t take these things lightly.  Whatever I sang, I really studied it from every angle, from the musical as well as the dramatic.

BD:    And that’s what you encourage you students to do now?

HG:    Absolutely!  They have to deal with the content; they have to deal with the text; they have to read the words and understand why the composer composed it that way and not another way.  They have to know exactly why they should take a breath here.  What does it mean?  Is it important to the piece?  If the composer wanted it, then certainly it’s important, but you have to have the ability to interpret it. 

BD:    Is there ever a case where a role can be overanalyzed?

HG:    My response to learning something was that I got, at first, an impact and an impression.  I got a basic impression of the text as well as the music.  Then I really tried to be exact with both, and when I understood both, I went back to that first feeling and was able to really do a good job without being pedantic.  I had incorporated the details.

BD:    Let me ask a big philosophical question.  What do you feel is the ultimate purpose of music in society?

HG:    As far as music goes, it is really an international language.  I am completely amazed at my two Chinese singers, how they understand western music.  It’s just unbelievable!  They are both young.  They both went through the cultural revolution, had no education there, heard a little bit of music.  Both played the piano.  They were very soon geared to western music, but how they understand it is just incredible!  I think this is true, actually, all over the world.  This bridges nationalities and colors.  This is one thing which I think is marvelous.  The other thing, in general, the arts are really somewhat a salvation of this crazy world of ours.  For instance, Schubert, Mozart, Hugo Wolf, Haydn and all of the great masters of Austria represent Austria infinitely more than their history, where so much foolishness and cruelty was committed.  Not only Austria, but I speak in general, that nations go to war and they are destructive and they are very much materialistic-minded.  But the arts really survive.  They carry things on and over, and that, I think, is very good.  That’s the purpose of it today.  It lifts the people above their ordinary life.

BD:    Really, it’s a philosophy of life, is it not?

HG:    I feel so.  There are two things which really make my life meaningful, and that is the arts in general and nature.  Music is special, but I am interested in creative art of other sorts including the theatre.  I am  also very, very geared to the outdoors.  I love the outdoors.  It enriches me; it strengthens me.  So these are really the two things which are meaningful.  I am happy that I live comfortably, but this was never my aim.  I was never geared toward possessions as such.

BD:    I am glad that you are still able to bring these thoughts and these ideas to the young people today in the master classes.

HG:    With my students, I have a very, very good relationship.  We are all good friends, and they are good friends among each other.  There is no mean rivalry, as one very often finds.  They feel like a family.  They can come to me, and we have evenings together where we talk about things other than music, and how we relate the arts and their future careers.  A teacher should be more than just a technical teacher; you should also be really a mentor.

BD:    I want to thank you for spending the time with me this afternoon chatting about all of this.  I have learned a great deal, and have gotten a great deal of insight into your ideas.

HG:    Oh, I am so happy that you called.  I really appreciate it.  I hope we will meet one of these days.

BD:    That would be lovely.  That would be absolutely lovely.

HG:    So if you come this way, don’t forget to call on me.

BD:    I certainly will, but I’m afraid when we get to the west coast we head north.  We have been to Seattle and then up to Alaska.

HG:    Ah, isn’t that gorgeous?

BD:    That it is.  It is absolutely beautiful up there.

HG:    We made an extensive trip there with a small group of people.  We went up quite high to Mount McKinley.  We were inland, but we went quite far.  We were just a small group.

BD:    It is absolutely beautiful up there!  We have been there twice, and we hope that we can go back again and again.

HG:    Oh, it is fabulous.  Just fabulous country!

This interview was recorded on the telephone on February 7, 1988.  Segments were used (with recordings) on WNIB later that year, and again in 1993 and 1998.  A copy was also provided for use by Schoemaker's Opera Group in New York City.  The transcription was made and posted on this website in 2013.

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.