Bass  Andrea  Silvestrelli

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie



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Andrea Silvestrelli is one of the most sought-after ‘bassi profondi’ on the international opera scene. Garnering critical acclaim for his debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in Rigoletto, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, “There were wild cheers for Andrea Silvestrelli …who brought a terrifying, sepulchral tone to the assassin Sparafucile.” The Chicago Tribune concurred, “Andrea Silvestrelli wielded a big, black, menacing bass in his debut as the assassin Sparafucile.”

The current season opens with performances of Hagen in Götterdämmerung in a return to the Taichung National Theater in Taiwan, followed by performances of the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo with the Dallas Opera and Sparafucile in Rigoletto with Opera San Antonio. Last season, he was Fafner in Siegfried in Taiwan, and Geronte in Manon Lescaut and Pistola in Falstaff with the Dallas Opera. In the 2017-2018 season, Mr. Silvestrelli was heard as Hunding in Die Walküre in Taiwan, returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago as Nourabad in Les pêcheurs de perles and Timur in Turandot, and sang the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo with Washington National Opera. In spring 2018, he performed in San Francisco Opera’s Ring Cycle as Fasolt in Das Rheingold and Hagen in Götterdämmerung. [The photo below shows him as Hagen in Brisbane, Australia.]


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Mr. Silvestrelli’s performances in the 2016-2017 season included Fafner in Das Rheingold with National Taichung Theater, Oroveso in Norma with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Hagen in Götterdämmerung with Houston Grand Opera, and the Commendatore in Don Giovanni and Sparafucile in Rigoletto, both with San Francisco Opera. With SFO in 2015-2016, he sang the role of Wurm in Luisa Miller, The Night Watchman in Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg, Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo. He also returned to Erl, Austria for performances of the Ring Cycle at the Tiroler Festspiele.

==  Text in this box is mostly taken from the Opera Festival of Chicago website.  
Photo is from another source.  



In November of 2000, it was my great pleasure to have the opportunity to interview the Italian bass Andrea Silvestrelli.  He was singing for the first time with Lyric Opera of Chicago, and we met in a dressing room backstage on a day between performances.  His role was Sparafucile in Rigoletto, which he would sing again in two later seasons.  Interestingly, several of his other roles would also be repeated in subsequent seasons.  These included Colline in Bohème, the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, Bartolo in Marriage of Figaro, Ferrando in Trovatore, and Timur in Turandot.  Roles he has sung only once (thus far!) include Fasolt in Das Rheingold, Pimen in Boris Godunov, Osmin in Abduction from the Seraglio, the Night Watchman in Meistersinger, Oroveso in Norma, and Nourabad in Pearl Fishers.  He also participated in one of the gala concerts at Millennium Park.

Portions of this chat were aired on WNIB, Classical 97, and now, in 2025, I am pleased to present the entire conversation.  He spoke quite a bit of English, but, as usual when she is present, my sincere thanks go to Marina Vecci, Production Administrator with Lyric Opera of Chicago, for providing the translation for us when it was needed.

While we all were getting settled to begin, comments were made by each of us about languages . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:   We’re talking about speaking various languages.  [With a wink]  Is it important that you speak ‘opera’?

Andrea Silvestrelli:   [Laughs]  I speak ‘opera’, yes.

BD:   Do you like singing mostly fathers, priests, and kings?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, I like very much singing the old people.  In my family, there is my grandfather, my grandmother and the brothers of my grandfather and my grandmother.  I like very much to speak with older parents, and I like this world, the world of old people.  I like to live in the world of people that have lived such long lives, and have seen things that I haven’t seen yet.

BD:   Is this out of respect and experience?
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Silvestrelli:   Yes, for the sake of the knowledge of their world.  I also have respect, but most of all for the knowledge and interests they have.

BD:   Are you gaining some of that knowledge?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, and when I sing the role of an older person, I try to understand what this father or grandfather would have done in that situation.  I also like very much to sing the killer Sparafucile in Rigoletto, because I’m very different.  [Much laughter all around]  I like to sing very much characters that are opposite to what I am, like the killer Sparafucile.  I’m obviously not a killer!

BD:   Can we count on that?  [More laughter]  Perhaps when you play a character that is against your personality, it is like therapy for you on the stage.  [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interview with Gustav Kuhn.  Another recording of Don Giovanni is shown at the bottom of this webpage.]

Silvestrelli:   I don’t know, but it’s very interesting to me, and I love it.

BD:   Are there times when you get killed?

Silvestrelli:   [Smiles]  Ah, more and more.  I have sung more than a hundred times the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, and every day this man, Don Giovanni, comes to me and [makes a squawking sound].

BD:   You get skewered!

Silvestrelli:   Yes, and I don’t know why!

BD:   Would you rather kill or be killed onstage?

Silvestrelli:   Oh, I’d rather be killed.

BD:   Why?

Silvestrelli:   Because first of all I’m a romantic Italian, and I like dying!  But I like coming back into life again.  I know how to come back and be very mad about what they’ve done to me!  I like to be the victim more than the killer.

BD:   You’d like to have a second life, and come back to settle the score with a vendetta?

Silvestrelli:   A vendetta!  Bad luck!  [Much laughter]

BD:   Are any of the characters that you play very close to the real you?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, one Lied from Mahler of the Rückert Lieder, Ich bin der Welt.  Singing this character is very near to my own character, and the sensibility of that piece is close to what my soul is like.  In Turin, I sang Murder in the Cathedral by Ildebrando Pizzetti [who also wrote the libretto, which he adapted from an Italian translation of T. S. Eliot’s 1935 play] .  I was doing the Archbishop, Thomas Becket [the role created in 1958 by Nicola Rossi-Lemeni].  He is a character who is very introverted, and I liked it very much.  It was the most beautiful thing to study, and to try and understand what to do with that character.  I like to do some research before interpreting a role, and in this case I had the work to base my research on.  So it was very easy.  When I was singing it, it was interesting to see, and to try to understand what went through the mind of the real Thomas Becket at the time, and make sure that what I was doing was what they were representing on the stage.  At the time of Becket’s death, when everybody was saying to close the doors and not let them come in, he would say to let them all come in.  From the psychological and dramatic point of view, it was a very interesting experience to do the Archbishop in that opera.

BD:   Do you try to find psychological insight in all of the characters you sing?

Silvestrelli:   Yes.  More than looking for the psychological insight, I’d rather try to put myself in the situation, and see what I would do as the character.  I am a strong and big person, and when I find myself in a situation of antagonistic things, or a battle, I myself am very uncomfortable in reacting as a big violent person would.  I understand why some of the historical characters were faced with the same situations I would be facing, by just going to them and trying to understand what I would do in their situation.

BD:   Most of these are literary characters.  Are there are a few real figures, historical people that you portray?

Silvestrelli:   Almost always!  Think of Philip II, or in Nabucco there’s Zaccaria.  He’s not a historical figure, but he’s very close to Moses as a man.  There’s Sparafucile in Rigoletto, and even though he’s not a real person or a historical person, you can really identify him by some of the characters that exist even now in Italy, meaning the Mafia, or gangsters and such!  [All laugh]
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BD:   Do you like being evil?

Silvestrelli:   No, I don’t like being bad, but I just like to be the character that I’m singing.  If I have to cry, then I like crying.  I do what the character takes.

BD:   Do you also do some comic characters?

Silvestrelli:   No, just Truffaldino in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and Pistola in Falstaff.

BD:   You don’t do Don Basilio?

Silvestrelli:   No, I’ve never done Don Basilio, but I want to do it.  I like the character very much.

BD:   From the array of characters you’re offered, how do you decide yes or no?

Silvestrelli:   [With a broad smile]  Ha!  First of all, I study the role, any role I am offered.  There are roles like Philip II, which are so huge and historical, especially kings.  All of them are very important for the dramatic Italian literature, and of course, for Verdi.  So, when I am offered a role, if I cannot be close to the importance of the character, even if they are vocally right, then I go home, and I don’t accept.  I say no if I cannot come up to all the things that I expect to be able to give in doing this role.

BD:   Is it you that cannot come up to the character, or is it the character that cannot come up to you?

Silvestrelli:   Usually it would be me that can’t get to it because my experience is limited.  So far I have only had ten years of a career, so I haven’t done everything yet.  Probably it is necessary for me to do five or ten more years before I can achieve a complete range of characters that I can do.  This is not for everything, but for most of the roles that I would be asked to do.

BD:   Do you want to sing all roles?

Silvestrelli:   Of course.  [Laughs]  It would be a great dream to sing all roles!  But I am content, and I’m very happy with what I’m doing, and what I’m being offered so far.  I’ve been very happy with the parts that I have accepted, and the ones that I’ve declined.  The day before I die, I will decide about all the things, and what I’ve done right and wrong will come up!  [More laughter]
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   You mentioned Philip II.  You also sing the Inquisitor?  [As shown in the CD and video at left, he has also sung the Friar!]

Silvestrelli:   Yes.

BD:   Is it good to know both of these parts intimately?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, it’s very good to know both roles, and also Eboli, Elisabeth, and Don Carlo.  My voice teacher says the first stage direction must take place on the score.  Verdi has written words, music, and stage directions.  It’s not a stage direction as he intended, perhaps, but when you start the aria Ella giammai m’amò, Verdi wrote the notes as if Philip were sleeping.  It is something that Verdi really thought of deeply.  It’s not a casual suggestion of a stage direction, and you’d hope that the stage director would follow it.  Of course, the singer will have to follow that direction, too.

BD:   Should we still follow Verdi’s directions exactly, or might we branch out and become a little more modern?

Silvestrelli:   If you’re going to say that going beyond or branching off means to do things better, of course that would be a good thing.  But just to go beyond for the sake of it, is not necessary.

BD:   How far is too far?

Silvestrelli:   Ha!  I don’t know.  To change the ideas that go beyond what’s right, is to change the ideas that motivated the composer.  For example, Mimì cannot die by an overdose of drugs, as they’ve done in one production [by Ken Russell, which is discussed in my interview with Alessandro Corbelli].  Mimì is as poor girl and is in love, and she must remain a poor girl who is in love.

BD:   Without mentioning any names, are there times when stage directors go either too far, or in a wrong direction?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, and especially in Europe this happens sometimes, because they want to believe that they have to invent something new, so I guess they do!

BD:   Are there some times when that invention works?

Silvestrelli:   I’m not against doing innovative stage directing or productions, but I wouldn’t like to portray Sparafucile who is full of money.  I accept him as a Mafioso, or a crazy homeless person, but not a rich man, or one who is very sophisticated.  That would change the nature of the character.

BD:   Does all of this help to make these operas speak to us today?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, yes, yes.  If they are well done and well thought out, then they do succeed in making us closer to the piece.

BD:   Is it possible to make all of these pieces that are two or even three hundred years old, speak to us today when we have come through wars and depressions?

Silvestrelli:   Yes.  The lyrical music, the opera language, is about a story.  It may date back to the 1400s, but it can speak of love, and it is very probable that it’s very similar to any story that speaks of love of in the 2000s.

BD:   So, people are people are people?

Silvestrelli:   Yes!  [Laughter all around]

BD:   Is music is music is music through the centuries?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, wow!  The music changes... but Mozart speaks of love in Don Giovanni.  Verdi speaks of love in Rigoletto.  Strauss is the same thing, as is Wagner.  It’s only the musical language that changes.  The feelings of people are the same.

BD:   Is this what makes an opera great, that the composer was able to delve into these feelings?

Silvestrelli:   Absolutely, yes!  [Much laughter]
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   Your voice is of a certain size.  Do you change it at all for a big house or a small house?

Silvestrelli:   No, no!

BD:   Not at all?

Silvestrelli:   No!  Of course, it depends a lot on the conductor of the orchestra.  [Laughs]  They do ask you for certain things, and one tries to listen to them and give them what they want.

BD:   Is it what they want, or what the composer wants?

Silvestrelli:   Sometimes it’s what the conductor wants, and sometimes the composer!  [More laughter]  But there are times in which I cannot do either what the composer wants or the conductor wants!  I am not able to achieve it at times.

BD:   Can we assume that most of the time you get it so that you give them both?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, I always try!

BD:   Without mentioning names again, are most of the conductors you work with sympathetic towards your plight as a singer?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, yes, but naming names, the great conductors, such as Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta are fantastic, and you can work very well with them.  When I sang Don Carlo at La Scala with Riccardo Muti, it was an experience of being schooled every single day and learning something new, because Muti understood that work exceptionally well.

BD:   Are you pleased with that recording [shown at left in CD and video]?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, it has been one of the most beautiful things I have done in my life, singing with Luciano Pavarotti, with Samuel Ramey, with Daniela Dessì, and being conducted by Riccardo Muti at La Scala with their orchestra.  Wow!  This was in 1992, and it was an incredible experience.

BD:   Does it surprise you that you were there?

Silvestrelli:   I was originally in the second cast of that opera, and then Riccardo Muti decided to change that, and I was in the first company.  So I guess that was a great thing to do.

BD:   Do you feel that your career is progressing at the right pace?

Silvestrelli:   [Thinks a moment]  Yes, I am content.  I’ve made some wrong decisions and choices, but that’s life, and you do that!

BD:   Of course, when you’re young.

Silvestrelli:   Yes, but perhaps not even when you’re only young but later on!  [More laughter]

BD:   I hope you’ve learned from the mistakes.

Silvestrelli:   Yes, but not always.  You learn right away that it takes you a while.

BD:   But I assume you don’t want to be overly cautious.

Silvestrelli:   But I don’t think of them too cautiously.  I’m humble, and I’m trying to be respectful of the composer and what the opera entails and needs.  I’ve renounced a Nabucco at La Scala, and I renounced it on the day of the dress rehearsal.

BD:   [Surprised]  You walked out???

Silvestrelli:   No, I didn’t walk out.  I renounced before the general rehearsal.  I sang the dress rehearsal.  Muti was the conductor, and he came to my dressing room and asked why I would not be continuing, as I sang well.  My answer was that I could have sung Zaccaria, but it wasn’t right to sing it that way.  It didn’t feel right for me.

BD:   Is it not very dangerous though to leave at that point?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, but I was hired to understudy another singer, not to sing it first.  As it turned out, the other singer did not sing it, so I was called in to sing the first role.

BD:   When you’re setting up your agenda, do you leave enough time for yourself to study, and for home life?

Silvestrelli:   Yes.  I try always to leave a month free after every engagement, but sometimes it’s not always possible, because if it’s an important theater, or an important stage director, or an important conductor offering me something, of course I feel like I should go.  [More laughter]

BD:   I assume you could sing every night if you wanted to?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, but I do sing every night!  [Gales all round of laughter]

BD:   Is it a little easier for a bass to sing more often than, say, a tenor because many of your roles are shorter in duration?
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Silvestrelli:   Perhaps psychologically is it easier, but I don’t think of it as being different because I have a bass voice.  I study to search for the true sensation, and to add color to my voice.  The tenor has done the same thing, and is always doing the same thing, and so does the soprano, and everybody.  But perhaps doing a performance, an error from the tenor is more important than the error from the bass.  [All laugh]
 
BD:   What is your range, top and bottom?

Silvestrelli:   I sang Neptune in Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses, and it goes to bottom C [C2], and then I do Escamillo in Carmen with a G4.  [In the illustration at left, besides the two notes that Silvestrelli mentions, C4 is middle C, C5 is the high C of the tenor, and C6 is the high C of the soprano.]

BD:   Now we can all say, “Wow!”  [More laughter]

Marina Vecci (translator):  [Jokes that they would not be sung on the same night, of course, which provokes gales of laughter!]

Silvestrelli:   In China I sang Turandot, which is a middle-range role with not much height.  The day after the last performance of Neptune, I went to Tokyo to sing Carmen, and the first two days were not terrific.  But after that, I liked it very much.

BD:   Do you like traveling all over the world?

Silvestrelli:   This is my work, but it’s not really work.  I love to sing, to know people, and to travel in new places.

BD:   Is the public different from China to Japan to Italy to America?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, very different.  I like the American audiences very much.  I like the Japanese audiences, as they are very similar in a sense to the American public.  I don’t like the Italian audiences very much.  There are the audiences of the big well-known theaters, but I do like singing for people in general.

BD:   Do you ever feel that it is a contest?

Silvestrelli:   No, no, no, not for me.  When I sing, I try to tell people my stories.  Maybe it’s an interesting story, or maybe it’s not an interesting story.  Or, maybe it’s interesting, and I can’t tell it right.  [More laughter]

BD:   Isn’t that up to the composer?

Silvestrelli:   Not only him.  A joke can be very beautiful and very funny, but if you can’t tell it right, nobody laughs.

BD:   Should the public become as infatuated with the low C of the bass as the high C of the tenor?

Silvestrelli:   It’s an impossible thing.  When I hear ‘Vincerò’ from the tenor [at the end of Nessun dorma in Turandot], wow!  I think being a tenor is like being on a trapeze.  It’s really like being an acrobat, and so deservedly he receives much applause for that... if he’s a good tenor!  [More laughter]
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BD:   Should we applaud you for your low C?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, but the bass is more a person.  The tenor is always the lover, the hero, the handsome man, and one who always has lots of women!  The bass is always cuckolded by the tenor.  He’s old, or a priest, or a man of the cloth, or Mephistopheles, the bad guy.

BD:   Should some new composer write the lover to be the bass?

Silvestrelli:   Mozart did with Don Giovanni, Figaro, and the Count, but I don’t sing Mozart that much.  When I sing Mozart, it is Sarastro, and he is a priest.  Or, if I sing Osmin, he’s a eunuch, so what can you do?  [Everyone giggles]  But in America, there is less distance between the tenor and the bass in terms of public acceptance and likings.

BD:   That means we like a lot of basses!

Silvestrelli:   Yes, I think so.  I got this impression when doing Rigoletto here in Chicago, as I got great applause.  So it was a great liking from the audience.
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   What is the role you’ve sung most?

Silvestrelli:   The Commendatore, Pistola, Sarastro...

BD:   Are you keeping those roles, or are you moving away from them?

Silvestrelli:   I wouldn’t want to leave those roles, but I would like to add other ones.

BD:   Is there any German in your repertoire, any Wagner?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Parsifal …

BD:   Gurnemanz or Titurel?

Silvestrelli:   Titurel.  I hope one day Gurnemanz, [laughs] but I don’t speak German.  I have studied Gurnemanz, but it’s one of those roles, like all great roles, that needs respect and attention and care.  Then there is also Richard Strauss’s Die Frau Ohne Schatten, Capriccio...

BD:   La Roche is a good role.

Silvestrelli:   Wow, fantastic!

BD:   Are you at the point in your career that you want to be now?

Silvestrelli:   No!

BD:   [Surprised]  Why not?

Silvestrelli:   In my family, they call me bimbo [child], and I don’t want to be the child anymore.  However, I am still that child.  [He was born May 22, 1966.]

BD:   Is it schizophrenic that you are ‘the child’, and yet you’re always playing the old man?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, yes!  If there had been more planning in my career, I could have been more advanced at this point... but I’m bimbo!

BD:   A child with a wonderful voice!

Silvestrelli:   Oh, thank you.

BD:   Are you coming back to Chicago?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, several times including 2003 and 2004 for The Marriage of Figaro, and for Don Giovanni.

BD:   The Commendatore again?

Silvestrelli:   Yes, but I like the Commendatore, and I like Chicago.  There will also be Fasolt in Das Rheingold, and I am learning Hagen in Götterdämmerung.

BD:   There’s a great part.

Silvestrelli:   Ah, the bad guy again!  It is a very good part, a beautiful part, and I like it because I have a few years to study it.  [He would sing it in various places, including San Francisco in 2018.]

BD:   We look forward to having you back year after year.

Silvestrelli:   Yes.  A career is like a ladder.  Hagen is towards the upper part of this ladder, almost near the top, and one has to go step by step in order to get up there.  My dream is Hans Sachs, and Der Rosenkavalier, and Mephistopheles.

BD:   Gounod, Boito, or both?

Silvestrelli:   Boito, because it’s Italian, and I’m an Italian.  Boito is really Mephistopheles, whereas Gounod is Faust.

BD:   Thank you for coming, and thank you for the interview.  I appreciate it.

Silvestrelli:   Oh, thank you so much.


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See my interviews with Nancy Maultsby, Vinson Cole, and Rodney Gilfry




© 2000 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on November 10, 2000.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB a few weeks later.  This transcription was made in 2025, and posted on this website at that time.  My thanks to Marina Vecci, Production Administrator with Lyric Opera of Chicago for providing the translation.  My thanks also 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.  To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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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.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests.  He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago.  You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.