Michael Sylvester Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Tenor Michael Sylvester

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Tenor Michael Sylvester, widely considered one of the finest lyric spinto tenors of his generation before turning his skills to teaching, holds a BM from Westminster Choir College and a MM from Indiana University. Mr. Sylvester has sung leading roles in the major opera houses of the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, London’s Covent Garden, Milan’s La Scala, Vienna Staatsoper, Opera Australia’s Sydney Opera House, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Dallas Opera, Paris Opera, Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colon, Houston Grand Opera, Venice’s Teatro La Fenice, Staatsoper Berlin, Grand Theater de Geneva, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Florence’s Maggio Musicale, Hamburg Staatsoper, Bonn Staatsoper, Frankfurt Staatsoper, Opera de Toulouse, the New Israeli Opera, and many others. During the 1990s, Mr. Sylvester sang more performances at the Metropolitan Opera of Radamès in Verdi’s opera AÏDA than any other tenor. [Of the 27 performances, 3 were Saturday afternoon broadcasts, and they are shown in a box below-right.] A 1989 article in USA Today named Mr. Sylvester as one of the two most important tenors of his generation.

Among others his opera repertoire includes Radamès in AÏDA (which he has sung over 150 times), the title role Don Carlo in DON CARLO, Adorno in SIMON BOCCANEGRA, Cavaradossi in TOSCA, Pinkerton in MADAMA BUTTERFLY, Calaf in TURANDOT, Rodolfo in LA BOHÈME, Bacchus in ARIADNE AUF NAXOS, Der Kaiser in DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN, Samson in SAMSON ET DALILA, Don José in CARMEN and Pollione in NORMA. All in all, he has performed close to fifty leading roles. The many works he has performed in concert include Verdi’s REQUIEM, Mahler’s DAS LIED VON DER ERDE and SYMPHONY NO. 8, and Beethoven’s SYMPHONY NO. 9 with orchestras worldwide.

Among his recordings are the title role in DON CARLO with James Levine (Sony Classics), Adorno in SIMON BOCCANEGRA with Sir Georg Solti (Decca), Calaf in TURANDOT (EMI video), Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Robert Shaw (Telarc) and Mendelssohn’s Die ertse Walpurgisnacht (Arabesque). Additionally, he has been featured in numerous Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, and in other broadcast and televised performances around the world.

Mr. Sylvester served on the faculty of DePaul University for seven years, and he has also been on the faculty at Indiana University and the University of Indianapolis. After serving as Master Teacher-in-Residence for the 2014 Concurso San Miguel, he was recently named Master Teacher and Artist-in-Resdence for this opera competition, the largest for Mexican opera singers. In 2013 he was invited to be the Artist-in-Residence at the Art Song Festival at the University of Toledo. Mr. Sylvester has taught annually at the iSing! Festival in Suzhou, China and at Chicago Summer Opera. He has students performing in North America and Europe, and several that have been successful in national competitions. He is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the San Miguel Institute of Bel Canto, which celebrated its third season in the summer of 2017.

In recent years, Mr. Sylvester has turned his performing talents toward recital and concert work, having given recitals in Chicago, Rochester (New York), Atlanta, Toledo (Ohio), Indianapolis, San Miguel de Allende (Mexico) and Ridgefield (Connecticut). Concerts have included Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

He has just finished his first book, English Diction and Enunciation for North American Singers, and is finalizing its publication and eventual e-book publication. Currently he is working on a project called A Survey of Historically Important Classical Singers of the 20th Century, an audio project aimed at introducing young singers to the singers that came before them.

== Biography from the Wichita State University website (with additions and corrections)
== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

Michael Sylvester performed with Lyric Opera of Chicago in two successive seasons, both in works of Verdi given on Opening Night. First, in 1995, he sang Adorno in Simon Boccanegra with Alexandru Agache, Kiri Te Kanawa/Kallen Esperian, Richard Cowan, Stefan Skafarowsky, and Robert Lloyd. The conductor was Daniele Gatti, and the director was Elijah Moshinsky. [Another performance of Boccanegra with a similar cast was televised from Covent Garden, and the video is shown at right. Yet another performance (again with Agache) was a Saturday afternoon broadcast from the Met, and is listed in a box below-left.]

The following year, Sylvester returned to Lyric for Don Carlo with Carol Vaness, Dolora Zajick, Samuel Ramey, Vladimir Chernov, and Eric Halfvarson. Gatti was again the conductor, and the director was Sonia Frisell. Sylvester also participated in the Ardis Krainik Gala, with his Don Carlo colleagues, as well as Marilyn Horne, Bernadette Manca di Nissa, Eva Marton, Kristján Jóhannsson, June Anderson, Håkan Hagegård, Frederica von Stade, Timothy Nolen, Catherine Malfitano, David Cangelosi, Barbara Daniels, Richard Buckley, Bruno Bartoletti, Daniel Barenboim, and Donald Palumbo.

During that first visit, Sylvester kindly agreed to meet with me for an interview. Always forthright with his opinions, there was also a lot of laughter about this crazy business. Portions of the chat were aired on WNIB, Classical 97, and now in 2024 I am pleased to be able to present this transcript of the entire encounter.

Here is that conversation . . . . .

Bruce Duffie:   It’s nice of you to come in on your day off!

Michael Sylvester:   I’m very happy to do it.

BD:   Do you get enough days off?

Sylvester:   Here in Chicago, it’s been great. They have a wonderful system here. I don’t know if it’s the normal plan, but with the Simon Boccanegra, we have three complete free days between almost every performance. We have one with only two in between, but it’s a great amount of time to recoup. When they get stacked up so that the performances come every third day, if it’s a long run, it can get to be a little wearing physically and mentally.

BD:   Is this something that you can put into your contract, that there be three days break in between?

Sylvester:   I wish it were. It’s one of those things that’s difficult. Everyone tries to economize on time. Time is money, and money is time, so it comes down to that. Also, the artists want to come and go faster. I don’t know who is responsible for this trend, but it has gotten to be a bad thing for opera. It wasn’t all that many years ago, but when I was first starting, it seemed like when you got your contract, you got the dates of your performances. They might change but you got them. Now it seems like every contract you sign says ‘dates to be announced later’. So once you’ve signed the contract, a year may go by before you find out what the dates are. Many times, they don’t don’t even know what the dates are going to be.

BD:   It would just be ‘eight performances between this date and that date’?

Sylvester:   Yes, during this period, which makes it difficult.

BD:   Is it different in a stagione house as opposed to a repertory house?

Sylvester:   No, I don’t think there’s that much difference. It’s a growing trend of doing business this way. I suppose things change, and we have to change with them, but it has become a source of concern for a number of singers about the amount of time you have to rest in between performances.

BD:   When you’re singing a run of performances, do you make sure that you’re not rehearsing or performing another opera, either right on top of it, or in conjunction with it?

Sylvester:   Normally it doesn’t happen that way. In some places like the Met, it’s possible that you overlap with a rehearsal period. But most houses will be very understanding in their rehearsal arrangements, because they obviously want to protect you for your performances.

BD:   [With mock horror] You mean management is concerned about the artist???

Sylvester:   [Laughs] Oh, yes, I think they are! No, actually I believe that they are, yes.

* * * * *

BD:   You’ve started out singing mostly heavier roles, rather than the lighter roles that many tenors sing. Is this a good thing for your voice?

Sylvester:   I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. I did sing some heavier repertory occasionally when I was younger, but it was only some time in the last three years that I finally eclipsed the number of performances of Rigoletto that I had with anything else. [Laughs] I had done so many performances of the Duke that I was beginning to think it was the only thing I was ever going to sing.

BD:   At least it’s a grateful role.

Sylvester:   It is. It’s a nice role, and I almost would love to go back and sing it now, although I don’t think anybody is likely to ask me. But I think I’d probably do it better now than I did ten years ago.

BD:   When you move into the heavier roles, then the lighter roles become even better in the voice???

Sylvester:   As one gets older, if you’re smart and you know what you’re doing, your voice changes and darkens with age. It’s a natural thing, and it happens to most people. Even so, it’s possible that you learn better how to use your voice and how to shepherd your responsibilities and your resources. I’ve heard a number of older singers mention that, and many go back. For instance, Pavarotti is going to be singing The Daughter of the Regiment at the Met this year, which is something that he started out his career with, and it takes guts to do that.

BD:   Is that because the audience is going to hold up his new performances against his old recording?

Sylvester:   Yes, but it’s quite possible he will do it very well. I’m not advocating that we all forsake one repertory and go to what we sang when we were younger, but sometimes it’s fun and interesting to go back and do something that you haven’t done for many, many years, and the people have stopped thinking of you for.

BD:   Do you ever feel that you are competing against the shadows of other tenors who have sung each role?

Sylvester:   Since the first person sings a role, there’s always a certain connection, and a certain amount of comparison that happens. But I try not to think about that. Every once in a while, you’ll sing something and all of a sudden it occurs to you that some greater singer sang this part in this place, and you should be terribly worried about that. But if you let your mind go there, it’s devastating to begin to think of the ghosts in the closet.

BD:   Is it at all comforting to know that Caruso sang your roles at the Met?

Sylvester:   It’s more than comforting. It’s an honor to know that you are doing something that someone so great also did. The first time I sang in Carnegie Hall, I just looked around. You don’t have that feeling when you’re at the (new) Met because it’s such a new building [opened at Lincoln Center in 1966]. But if you think of Caruso, that’s a long time ago. [Caruso sang at the (old) Met from 1903-1920.] I thought about that when I sang at La Scala for the first time. You step onto these stages, and you think of the great people who have been here, and it’s almost as if the place has a spiritual presence of all of the souls that have been there, and given of themselves. It’s a wonderful feeling, but it could also be intimidating, of course.

BD:   Speaking of different houses, each house has a different size and different acoustical properties. Do you adjust your technique at all for each house, or do you just sing the way you sing?

Sylvester:   No. If you start adjusting for anything in that kind of exterior substance, it can be damaging. The voice is the voice, and if a conductor has a certain way of conducting, you may sing more lyrically or dramatically, depending on what he’s asking of you. But if you go into a big house and feel you have to sing louder or heavier, or into a small house and feel you can sing really light, it just doesn’t work. At least changing is not for me. Your voice is what it is, and you sing a particular note a certain way, and it carries. The worst thing to try to do is to think you have to fill a big house. If the acoustics are that bad, get us microphones, because when you start pushing your voice like that, it’s a quick death.

BD:   Are you aware of the acoustics being good or bad in any house?

Sylvester:   Yes, but they can be deceiving. You go into a house and when you sing on the stage you feel like you’re singing into cotton, and yet people in the house may say that it really carries! Then you go into another house, and you feel great on stage, and maybe it’s dead in the house. So every hall has its own individual qualities that way. I find the Lyric Opera (here in Chicago) is just marvelous, because even though it’s a fairly good-sized hall [3600 seats], it has an intimate feeling, and you get something back, which, as a performer, I find to be quite necessary. I don’t know that all performers feel that way, but I like to sing and feel that something’s coming back to me acoustically.

* * * * *

BD: You get offered various roles at various times. How do you decide if you’re going to say yes or no to each one?

Sylvester:   That’s a complicated decision. Some things, as we say, are ‘no-brainers’. If somebody offers you something you’ve been wanting to do for years, and it’s a great place and a great opportunity, you say yes if you’ve got the time for it, and if you don’t have the time, you go home and cry about it. [Both laugh] But it always seems to happen, at least to me, and I think it does to other people too, that as you begin filling up your calendar for a particular season, you accept certain things, and they all fit together. Then something great comes up that you really would love to do, and you don’t have the time. So you think how to shuffle it. If we ask to get out of something, will they hate me forever? It’s always a complicated thing, and probably one of the most complicated things is when you’re adding new repertory, particularly when you want to venture into something which is a brand-new realm for you. Finding the opportunity to do it can be difficult, and that can be a very difficult decision deciding if it’s the right time to take on such-and-such.

BD:   Do you have any kind of master plan for the next several years, to add this role and that role?

Sylvester:   I’m going to be doing my first foray into Wagner with Die Meistersinger, which is something that I’m looking forward to, and at the same time I’m a little leery of. I’m going to see how it works out. As a tenor, I have the view of singing Wagner as being something that one has to approach very cautiously. So many tenors, even true Heldentenors, have had very short careers. Many of them have had long wonderful careers too, but there are more examples of people who have had short careers, or at least short careers that were good, and I’m not eager to do that to myself. I’d much rather be conservative with my repertory if at all possible. But Walther von Stolzing is very Italianate in its very nature, so I’m curious to see how it works.

BD:   For that role you just have to remember all of the different verses for the song.

Sylvester: Yes. I’ve certainly never sung a role quite that long, or have been in an opera that was so long. So that has its own unique timing.

BD:   The biggest thing, the Prize Song, is almost at midnight, whereas for instance in Aïda, which you’re known for, Radamès has his big aria right at the top.

Sylvester:   Yes, right at the beginning! It’s almost easier to have an aria at the end.

BD:   Because it’s gives you all night to sing in? [Vis-à-vis the cast lists shown at right, see my interviews with Paul Plishka, John Fiore, and Adam Fischer.]

Sylvester:   You have time to get ready for it. That’s the worst thing about Aïda, or any of the other Verdi operas where the tenor walks on stage and sings his aria! [We mention Rigoletto and Un Ballo in Maschera.] The audience isn’t warm, and you’re not warm. With Radamès, it’s a quandary at every performance. I’ve sung a lot of them, but I still wonder every time if I should really warm up so that I feel in great voice to sing the aria, and then maybe run out of steam at the end, or do you go out just a little cold, and let the aria suffer a little bit so that you’ve got plenty of voice for the rest of the piece. It’s always a little bit of a decision you make every night depending on how you feel about it.

BD:   [Being greedy] Why can’t we have both?

Sylvester:   It’s just one of those things! It’s a long part, and it’s difficult to warm up for an hour, or an hour and a half, to really feel like you’ve got your voice at its peak, and then go out and sing your aria. You can’t sing all night long. You don’t have that much stamina.

BD:   In a role like Pinkerton [Madama Butterfly], you do a lot of singing in the first act, and then you have to wait a long time. [He does not appear in the second act.] Do you re-warm-up for the third act?

Sylvester:   I do, yes. I try to sing all the during the second act if I can find a good place, and in most houses you can do that. But to find an opportunity throughout other operas, you just keep singing a little bit and keeping warmed up. People tend to think of Pinkerton as being an easy role, but actually it’s not much shorter than Cavaradossi [Tosca]. It’s just a little bit shorter, and in that first act you sing hard all the way through. By the time you’ve finished it, and then all of a sudden you stop cold, your voice thinks it’s finished for the evening, and I’m going to go to sleep! [Both laugh] If you don’t keep singing, you get to the third act and your voice says, “Wait a minute! Are you at a bar somewhere? What are we doing singing here at midnight?” [More laughter] You have to keep warmed-up through that time period, so that when the third act comes, you don’t have to struggle over that hurdle.

* * * * *

BD:   We talked about selecting roles and performances. Do you make sure that your agent knows not to schedule too many performances per year?

Sylvester:   I try to keep track of that myself, because I have the final say-so on what I do. So I always try to watch it as we’re getting the season filled up — how many performances are there, and how they’re stacked up. Then, if I have new repertory, or something that I haven’t sung for a number of years, I make sure that I have some time before that comes up, or something that’s spaced out so I can spend some time with it. I find it very difficult to learn repertory while I’m in heavy performances because you need those days in between. I have to sing when I learn something, and when I get something old back into my voice, again I have to sing it, and if you only have two days in between the current performances, you don’t like to sing the day after, and you don’t want to sing the day before. So it doesn’t leave you any time to really be singing much.

BD:   Do you schedule enough time for vacation to be with your family?

Sylvester:   That’s always difficult, too. It always seems that by the time you accept everything you want to accept, eleven months of the year have gone by, and you’re scrambling for some time. Ideally, I would love to be able to work about nine months, and have three months for preparation, along with some time for vacation. I would like to spread that out over the course of the year, depending on how the season works out, but it always seems to be an illusive goal! I guess demand for tenors is what it is.

BD:   Do we not have enough tenors these days?

Sylvester:   There have never been enough tenors. It’s probably the rarest voice-type.

BD:   Really? Why?

Sylvester:   I don’t know. It’s just biology. We are freaks of nature, I guess! I’m not quite sure, but go anywhere and tenors are always the number one commodity that’s lacking. If you go to a vocal competition, there will be fifteen sopranos, and ten baritones, and some mezzos, and then maybe one or two tenors. It’s just the way the human body is built.

BD:   Is there any competition amongst the tenors, or is there really too much work for all of you?

Sylvester:   There’s competition in a certain sense between all singers. Certainly, within a voice type, and among people who sing the same repertory, there’s a certain amount of competition. You’re vying for the top spots, and not everybody is going to get those top spots. So yes, there’s competition, but competition is good as long as it doesn’t turn into a personality competition where people dislike each other. It’s fine to want to win out over someone else as long as you’re not stabbing them in the back, and bad-mouthing them, and being hateful towards them as a person. There’s no excuse for that kind of activity.
sylvester

BD:   [With a wink] You mean you’ve actually learned that opera plots are not to be realized??? [Both laugh]

Sylvester:   I suppose that’s the difference between opera and reality. Unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of reality in opera and vice-versa.

BD:   Many of the operas that you sing, are fifty, 100, 150 years old. Is there anything you can do to bring these characters to audiences of 1990s as we head into the new Millennium? [Vis-à-vis the cast list at left, see my interview with Karita Mattila.]

Sylvester:   Well, I always feel that the most wonderful thing about drama is that it’s universal. The exterior trappings may be different, but take Radamès, for instance. There’s nothing new or old about the concept of two people loving each other in a forbidden sense. They can’t have each other, or they’re not supposed to have each other. It’s Romeo and Juliet, which is timeless. Then you have Amneris wanting Radamès, and he doesn’t want her. This happens every day throughout the world. The essence of drama is that the playwrights and the librettists find the universality of characters. They appeal throughout time because as much as modern life is different from Egyptian life, and different from the fifteenth century and the eighteenth century, and will be different from the twenty-second century, I don’t believe human emotions change that drastically as cultures put their own spins on them.

BD:   Would you be averse to them resetting Aïda into Vietnam?

Sylvester:   I’m not averse to changing localities. It varies from one piece the next, but to change the essence of something is too much. If you change the locality, it can work, but don’t try to make us believe that when you’re talking about Egypt, that you’re talking about Mexico. It doesn’t work in that sense. I’ve seen updating of various pieces. Some work and some don’t, and it always tends to be more the concept of the stage director rather than the updating by itself, because you can update these things. You just have to be aware that audiences don’t always necessarily accept opera if it encroaches too contemporaneously on their own lives. They like some distance, because it’s an odd art form. It’s a strange thing to be singing, and pretending that people always sing to each other. We don’t, and you have to be very aware that audiences react to that with an odd sensation that it’s not reality. Whereas if it’s a little more distant, they can relate to it. I once did an Aïda that was taking place in outer-space. It was supposed to be between the planet of Ethiopia and the planet of Egypt. To me, that is not a stretch. You can believe that, but what the stage director did with it was just too strange. The concept wasn’t bad, but he had no idea of how to direct it that way.

BD:   If he wanted to do a space opera, he should have done Aniara of Karl-Birger Blomdahl.

Sylvester:   Well, it was fine that he did Aïda. I didn’t have any problem with that. At the end of the consecration scene, Radamès leaves in a spaceship. It works as long as you get yourself into believing. But when you get emotions that aren’t true to the characters, that’s where it falls apart. I just recently did an Aïda where the whole opera was about angst. Every time somebody said something a bit cross to Radamès, he was cowering on the floor. This is not Radamès! The concept was placed in a museum, and that idea works fine. But when you take away the character’s real human emotions, and try to replace them with something else, because you think it’s interesting, to get the character to be like that, well, Radamès is not full of angst! He may have angst in his mind. We all have it at times, but that doesn’t mean you’re cowering on the floor every time Aïda or Amneris says something threatening to you. He fights back in his own way! The whole Nile scene is basically an argument between these two lovers. But if you have Radamès cowering on the floor as if he’s going to be beaten at any moment, it doesn’t work!

BD:   Whether it is a new concept or the original idea, when you walk out on stage, are you portraying a character or do you actually become that character?

Sylvester:   I don’t know. That’s a hard thing to decide. It’s very difficult to judge yourself. Other people have to judge you. I can go out and feel like I’ve had a really good performance, and other people may disagree, but I can only relate to that performance as I perceived it. Did I do well? Did I feel like I was in character? Did I relate well to everything? Did I sing well from my way of thinking? It goes back to having the aria at the beginning. The first few minutes when I walk out on stage, I’m generally aware that I’m in an opera house, and there’s an audience there. In most performances, there comes a period two, three, or four minutes into it that all of sudden, you tend to focus on where you are in the drama, and you forget there’s an audience. Yes, they’re on the periphery, and the conductor is on the periphery, but what is happening on stage takes on a life of its own that becomes, in a sense, real. You can’t be a hundred percent into your character when you’re realizing you’ve got a conductor to watch, and the prompter is giving you words, and the audience is out there coughing and humming. You’ve got to be aware of these things, but in the best performances, when I feel most committed to what I am doing, I generally tend to put those very much on the periphery, and focus just on what I’m doing with the character.
sylvester

* * * * *

BD:   You’ve made a couple of recordings. Do you sing the same for the microphone as you do for a live audience?

Sylvester:   [Thinks a moment] Generally, yes. Recordings are an interesting thing because of the microphone. Singing a performance in a hall, you get the acoustics of the hall, which, if it’s a good hall, warms your voice. All the wood is supposed to do that. It’s supposed to be like the sounding board of a piano, or the body of a violin that warms the initial tone. So, recording is a little different, and some voices record better than others. Richard Tucker is one that if I can find a live performance recording of his, I will buy that any day over a studio recording, because it's just a different sound. There must have been something about his voice that sounded different when it got close to a microphone.

BD:   It needed the space?

Sylvester:   Needing the space had something to do something to it. I was impressed with a few singers I heard on recordings before I ever heard them in person, and in person I just wasn’t as impressed, shall we say. It’s an odd kind of medium, and now that everything has gone digital, it makes it even stranger.

BD:   Are you pleased with the recordings that have been made of your voice?

Sylvester:   For the most part, yes. You always want to be nit-picky about things. [Laughs]

BD:   Yes, but those are details. I’m talking about in general.

Sylvester:   Yes. The Don Carlo recording I made was cursed from the beginning because almost everybody involved was sick. We had two weeks to record it, but they were not consecutive. We had one week, and maybe two weeks off, and then another week, and during both of those weeks, someone was constantly sick. I was sick the first week, and Vladimir Chernov was sick at the same time. Unfortunately, that was when we recorded most of our music together, because he wasn’t available for the second week.

BD:   But it finally came off all right? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interview with Jane Klaviter.]

Sylvester:   Yes. When you’re intimately involved, you know very well where the problems were. It was better on this one day, but the orchestra wasn’t as good, and so they took the later day when the orchestra was better. Just little things like that which you’re aware of. Yes, I’m happy with it, but I know that under better conditions, it could have been a better recording.

BD:   Are there some other recordings coming out?

Sylvester:   Right now, recordings are very difficult for a tenor, because ‘the other three guys’ have everything locked up. Just to be very frank, I was off almost a year with back problems, and for a few years before that I was having back problems, and my performances were a little spotty here and there. People were waiting to see what was going to happen, and I’m hoping now there will be some offers. I did have an offer for one thing, but it wasn’t right for me, and I said no. I didn’t think I wanted to do that.

BD:   It’s good that you have the guts to say no!

Sylvester:   It was tempting because it was something good, but it just wasn’t my repertory. I’ve always had a strong opinion that too many singers record things that they would never sing on stage, or at least should never sing on stage. Certain singers get to be big names and they can record whatever they want to. Everybody wants to hear them record everything, and they start recording everything. I’m much more impressed with someone like Alfredo Kraus, who had a repertory, and it was his repertory. He had a certain number of roles. It wasn’t all that many, but he sang them exquisitely, and he stayed with that repertory most of his career. As he’s gotten a little older he’s added a few more things, but primarily he stayed in that one repertory, and he sounds fabulous! Maybe it’s the recording industry which probably has to be very competitive in order to sell records. Opera’s not a big money-making business for them, and if they can put a big name on the label, it sells. There’s been a temptation over the last fifteen or twenty years to have people sing repertory that they’re really not right for. But their name is on the label, so it goes that way.

BD:   Do you want Michael Sylvester to be a big name?

Sylvester:   Well yes, of course, in the sense that everyone goes into this business wanting ultimate success, whatever that is. More than anything, if I had to look down the road and hope what someone would say of me, I would like to be respected more as a singer’s singer than to have some tremendously big career. Both would be great, but if I had to choose, I think the honor that your peers give you is more meaningful.

BD:   Do you have any advice for younger singers coming along?

Sylvester:   I have a great interest in young singers. I always have, even when I was one myself. I’ve taken a great interest in some people specifically that I’ve been able to help in small ways, and I hope as I get older, I can do more for young singers. I’m very interested in competitions because that’s where many young singers get their first recognition. The thing that I always tell young singers is if there’s something else in life that you think you want to do to be happy, do it instead, because singing is a difficult business, and the reality is that out of ninety-nine people who want to be opera singers, maybe one will actually ultimately succeed. This is not to say that people shouldn’t follow their dreams, because if someone really wants to do it, then I say go for it. But when I was teaching, it seemed like every senior voice major came and asked if he or she should go professional. For most young singers, after having told them that it was a difficult road to travel, if they were in the process of making their careers and were legitimately young professional singers, the thing they have to do is be patient and wait. It’s much better to take on repertory later than sooner. It’ll be there, so hang in there. Do your study, work your repertory, but don’t think you have to run right out and sing whatever roles immediately and do all the repertory right away. It’s so tempting for young singers to accept everything that comes along, because not many things come along. Then to say no, as you mentioned, is very hard to do. For a twenty-four or twenty-five-year-old soprano to say she shouldn’t sing Butterfly when that’s what she’s been offered because she looks like a good Butterfly, is difficult. But if she shouldn’t sing it at twenty-five — and there probably aren’t many who should, not professionally at least — then she would do herself a service to say she’s going to wait until she’s thirty or thirty-five. It’ll still be there. The music is not going to go away.
sylvester

BD:   But will the offers be there then?

Sylvester:   They will be if you shepherd your resources right. People respect that. Even if they’re offering a role, they may respect you if you turn it down. In fact, I heard that from a general manager of an opera company. We were both judging a competition, and he was saying how he might offer somebody something, but would really respect that person if they turned it down. He said that if he could get them to do it, he can use them in his company, and maybe we can say we had them when they were just starting out. But I remember him making that comment that he’d respect them if they didn’t accept.

BD:   So, you want to make sure that the singer thinks of himself as an artist, rather than as the manager thinks of him as a commodity?

Sylvester:   Exactly, yes.

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BD:   What advice do you have for audiences?

Sylvester:   Hmmm... I’ve never been asked that question! That’s interesting. Having grown up in the Midwest, I didn’t see opera until I was away at college. I was nineteen or twenty years old before I saw an opera. I didn’t even know much about it, even though I was studying music. I was studying choral directing. That was my major at the time. Many people have a concept of opera that isn’t very accurate, and a lot of people come for the wrong reasons. After seeing something, I’ve heard people ask why they would want to see it again. The important thing for an audience member is to realize is that they can come and enjoy it without thinking about it. You can just sit back and let the music wash over you. That’s one level of enjoyment, and I’ve done that not knowing anything about an opera. I just sat down and experienced the music. You don’t even have to understand what the text is, or even care what the text is. There are, of course, other levels beyond that, such as understanding the intricacies of the story, and the history behind this story. Eventually comes an understanding of what the entire libretto is, even if you don’t speak the language. You can learn a few lines, but that’s for advanced opera lovers.

BD:   Has this new gimmick of the supertitles changed things?

Sylvester:   I love supertitles. I think they’ve wonderful. It makes things much more accessible to people. Sometimes when I go, even to something I’m familiar with, it’s nice to have the supertitles there to remind you of what’s going on, especially with comedies. Even though the laughs don’t always come exactly as they should for the music, because people read and they laugh. But they get it, and it helps them understand what is being said.

BD:   Comic singers have told me that they get two laughs — one when they read it, and one when they hear it!

Sylvester:   Sure, that happens.

BD:   Has the whole relationship changed because of the easy availability of opera on the television and on video tapes and discs?

Sylvester:   One thing that has, in a sense, hurt and helped opera at the same time is the accessibility of videos of operas, operas on television, and recordings. People who have never been to the opera before, and who have seen opera on television or heard it on a recording, expect to come and have the same experience in the theater, and it’s totally different. You don’t get the close-ups, for one thing. Also, the singers on stage don’t have the same presence as they do on a recording, because for a recording you have the microphone right in front of you, and they balance it so you’re right in front of the orchestra. In the house it doesn’t work that way. It has helped to bring people into the theater, and at the same time it has also created unfair expectations among people who are novices.

BD:   [We then stopped for a moment to take care of a few technical details. He also recorded a station break for WNIB, Classical 97.] May I ask your birth date?

Sylvester:   Yes... August 21, 1951.

BD:   Are you at the point in your career that you want to be at this age? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interviews with Deborah Voigt, Delores Ziegler, and William Stone.]

Sylvester:   I got a late start for a variety of reasons. I didn’t come from a musical family at all. So, when I went to college to study music, I went as a choral conducting major and, at that point, the only opera that I’d ever heard was Tosca, and that was what a neighbor had given me. It didn’t really impress me at the time. It wasn’t until my junior year in college that I began to think in terms of being a singer. I felt I could do this, and I enjoyed it. Jussi Björling’s recording of ‘Nessun Dorma’ really turned me onto opera. The first time I heard that, it was like the Heavens opened up! [Both laugh] Then I had a few years after I finished my masters, which I did at a leisurely pace to begin with, and a few years after that I was teaching and paying back loans. My voice wasn’t ready yet, anyway. My voice didn’t really come into its own until I was about thirty-five. At that point it began to feel a little less awkward. But in my twenties and early thirties, my voice was always awkward and didn’t do what I wanted it to. It was unruly! [Laughs]

BD:   It just needed time to ripen?

Sylvester:   It did for me. The aging process goes on for everybody pretty much identically, but some people get their technique worked out faster. I had a lot of problems that came from early studies, and I had to overcome and relearn the process of singing.

BD:   When did you get to Margaret Harshaw?

Sylvester:   It would have been 1973.

BD:   Did she straighten out the problems?

Sylvester:   Yes, but it took a while. Even after I left school and was on my own, it still just took a lot of singing and a lot of working out. I did a lot of tours — bus and truck tours as we call them — which were great for learning, but it was a hard time for me because I felt like I was terribly behind. I was reading about everyone else I had gone to school with in Opera News. They were making their debuts here and there, and here I was singing in small places paying my dues, which I felt like I had more than paid by then. Oddly enough, I got to a certain place in my career in the States, and it wasn’t progressing. It hadn’t for a few years, and my wife said we should go to Europe and see what can happen over there. She wanted me to enter the Zachary Competition in Los Angeles. The first prize was that they send you overseas, and they arrange for auditions. Their rules stipulated you had to be free from September to November, because that’s the audition period in Germany. I didn’t have those two months available. I had three weeks in December, and since I didn’t quality by the rules, why should I enter this? But she got the application, had me sit down and fill it out. It worked out very nicely for me. They gave me second place since I didn't qualify. That was the best they said they could do, but it got me over there. They got someone to give me an airfare ticket, which was what the first prize winner got that I didn’t, so in a sense they gave two first prizes. I went over and did auditions, and in Munich on the next-to-last audition before I was ready to come home, they said they were very interested, but they’d like for me to make my European debut first. They asked where else I was going to audition, and I was in Stuttgart the next day, but then I was leaving to go home. I hadn’t any nibbles yet, but I had sung for a lot of little tiny houses. I didn’t want a Fest contract, which is where you stay at the house. You’re employed by them, so you’re always around. I wanted to come in as a guest because I was at that point in my life. I can’t remember exactly, but I was somewhere between thirty-five and thirty-seven. I felt like I was too old to just begin and stay at a small house in Germany. So, I wanted a guest contract, and Munich asked me where I had my next audition, and it was Stuttgart. They said they thought they’d probably be interested, and they were. They offered me the opening of their next season, which was their 75th anniversary. It was the first season being conducted by their new music director, Luis Antonio García-Navarro, and they were doing a big splashy Aïda. At first they offered me just some other things during the season, and then a couple of months later, they called and said they had lost the Radamès for Aïda, so they flew me back to Germany. I sang for them, and they said, “You’re our new Radamès!” I got a lot of exposure from that in Europe because it was a performance that people wanted to attend. It was the opening of the house, and the beginning of their gala 75th season, and Navarro was taking over for the first time. So it was a draw, and a lot of people came. There were a lot of house managers and agents, and the doors just opened up for me. All of a sudden, Paris lost their Pollione for their Norma. So I learned that role in about three weeks, and went to Paris and made my debut there. This would have never happened if I had stayed in the US. In about two to three years, I gained a certain reputation in Europe, and then all of a sudden I came back to the States. I skipped from having sung in the small regional houses to singing at the Met, and Chicago, and San Francisco. It was odd. A lot of my friends have sung in all these other places in between, and I never sang there. Sometimes I feel a little strange about it.

BD:   Are you coming back to Chicago?

Sylvester:   Yes, I’m coming back next season for Don Carlo. I’m looking forward to that. I’ve loved being here. I love this town. It’s a big-town feeling like New York, but without all of the problems.

BD:   Hurray for us!

Sylvester:   I’ve really enjoyed it, and I’ve enjoyed being around the Lyric. The people are just very friendly, and they make you feel wanted and loved.

See my interview with Donald Runnicles

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on September 21, 1995. Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 2001. This transcription was made in 2024, 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. 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.