Tenor Jonathan Welch
A Conversation with Bruce Duffie
[All names which are links on this webpage refer to my
interviews elsewhere on my website]
In September/October of 1989, Welch sang the Italian Tenor in Rosenkavalier
at Lyric Opera of Chicago, with Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Anne Sophie
Von Otter, Kurt Moll,
Kathleen Battle, and Julian
Patrick in principal roles, and Jean Kraft, Florindo Andreolli,
Cynthia Lawrence and Arnold Voketaitis among
the smaller parts. Jiri Kout led the production by Günther Schneider–Siemssen,
which was directed by Willy Decker. On a day off between performances,
Welch and I reunited for a conversation.
As we were setting up to record, the fact that we were old friends
produced laughter-filled banter. Full disclosure, both Jonathan
and I went to school together, at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington,
Illinois. We were a year apart, so we compared birthdates [his was
February 3], and he mentioned that he was an Aquarius (January 20 - February
18).
Bruce Duffie: Is it good for singers to be Aquarian?
Jonathan Welch: There are a lot of show-business-types
that are Aquarians, a lot of artistic people. Mozart was an Aquarian
(January 27), as was Jascha Heifetz (February 2).
BD: You were just talking a little bit about
the air quality. How much concern does the day-to-day weather, the
air quality, the temperature and everything else affect you and your performance?
Welch: I’m a pretty healthy singer, and there
aren’t a lot of things that bother me, but you can tell when the air’s
bad. It’s just an irritation in your voice, and it bothers everybody.
BD: Is there anything you can do to overcome
that?
Welch: Have a good attitude. [Laughs] I’m
serious. Some people get real crazy about their voice. They
have to have exactly so many hours of sleep, or I know what they have
to do for this or that. All of us have our routines, but some people
are just fanatical about them. I wouldn’t want to be that dependent
on always having my good luck charms, or whatever. I want to be
able to get there half-an-hour before the curtain, and when the train
is late I am still be able to go on and not be crazy.
BD: So you’re a real ‘trooper’?
Welch: That’s kind of the American way.
You know, ‘The Show Must Go On’.
I’ve done that... I got caught in a real bad rainstorm once before my
first Rigoletto, and I literally showed up a half-hour before curtain.
But I went right on, and still was passing out opening night gifts, and
laughing, and joking with everybody. That’s the way I’ve got to do
it, but I’m lucky. My voice doesn’t require a lot of fuss. It’s
just always there. It’s nothing to brag about, but it’s just how
I’m built.
BD: You say getting there half-an-hour early
is cutting it tight. When do you usually want to get to the theater?
Welch: I always like to be there at least an
hour before curtain. In most places I’ve ever been, that’s when they
want you there as far as the makeup, and costume, and all that. But
I’m not one that has to be in the theater hours before.
BD: Is it more satisfying to do leading roles
than smaller roles or supporting roles?
Welch: I don’t know exactly what you mean by
supporting roles. I think of the Italian Tenor in Rosenkavalier
as a leading role. It requires a special voice, a good voice. It’s
not what I’d consider a comprimario or a secondary role. I
don’t mind doing parts that are small in what you do. For example,
in Eugene Onegin, Lenski gets killed, but the opera’s not called
The Death of Lenski. I also do the Italian Tenor in Capriccio.
I did that in Geneva, and I arrived at the theater just before
the show started. Everybody else was already in costume and ready
to roll, and I wasn’t there an hour before the show because I don’t go
on for quite a while. But there’s a case where it’s a small role.
The Italian Tenor in Rosenkavalier is only one aria, but wow, what
an aria!
BD: You get offered a whole bunch of roles. How
do you decide which roles you’ll accept, and which roles you’ll postpone,
and which roles you’ll never do?
Welch: You have to know your own instrument. There
are some roles that people talk to me about that I think I will do eventually.
I know it’s just a matter of time, and I’m holding them at some place
in the calendar. In my case, there are several roles that I’m not
even going to look at until after I’m 40. I’m 38 now, so I’m getting
close to incorporating some of those.
BD: But you’re not going to look at them until
you’re 40, then you begin to incorporate them, and decide if you’re going
to sing them if and when you get offers.
Welch: Yes. For example, I’ve been offered
several big roles such as Don Carlos. I was also offered Cavalleria
Rusticana, and I always ask why not do L’amico Fritz? It’s
a beautiful work, and is one of the most underperformed operas. [Note
that Welch sang this work with the Chicago Opera Theater in 1986. To
read an interview with the conductor and director of that production,
where they discuss the work and Welch’s
participation, click HERE.]
BD: Do you ever feel that you should be doing
more lesser-known works, instead of always Traviata, and Bohème,
and Rigoletto?
Welch: Well, there’s the practical side of it.
Everybody knows Cavalleria, but how many people know L’amico
Fritz, yet that’s something which is perfect for me. There are
some Puccini roles that I don’t do, such as Calaf in Turandot, and
Cavaradossi in Tosca. I’ve turned down several offers for Tosca,
and there’s a case where someday I probably will do it.
BD: Is Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi too
light for you?
Welch: No, I would do Rinuccio. I do Butterfly
now. [We come back to Pinkerton at the end of the interview.]
* * *
* *
BD: Are you at the point in your career that
you expected to be at this age, and are you doing the roles you want to
do?
Welch: Yes, absolutely. I’m really hungry
to do Manon. I’ve done Werther, and I really love
that. I also want to do Romeo, and I’d like to do Faust
as soon as I can, and Lucia. Those are big right now for
me, and I’m waiting and hoping the next time an opera company calls,
they offer me one of them. I had a chance to do eight performances
of Faust in Rome, but it was one of those times where everything
comes at once, and then you have the period where nothing happens.
I couldn’t do them, and it was a big disappointment. But it will
come.
BD: What are some of the operas that you’re doing
now that please you?
Welch: Now I’m doing Traviata, Rigoletto,
Werther, Bohème, Butterfly. Also, Eugene
Onegin is coming up for me this season.
BD: It’s a nice balance. There’s a French
opera, some Italian, and a Russian.
Welch: Right, and Mozart. I have done
already Clemenza di Tito, and I’m doing Die Zauberflöte.
I’d like to do Don Giovanni. It surprises me that some people
say they don’t think of me as doing Don Ottavio, but I think it would
be fun to do him with some fire.
BD: While you’re here in Chicago, they’re doing
Clemenza de Tito [with Carol Vaness, Tatiana Troyanos/Suzanne Mentzer, Susan Graham, Susan Foster,
Gösta Winbergh,
and Mark S. Doss, led
by Andrew Davis, and
directed by François
Rochaix]. Do you make sure that the management of Lyric Opera
knows that it’s in your repertoire?
Welch: Actually, I haven’t mentioned it to Ms. Krainik. I went
to the dress rehearsal the other day and enjoyed hearing the other people
sing it.
BD: I just wondered if it’s partly your responsibility
to make sure that managements know as much about you as they can.
Welch: They have your repertoire sheet and all
your biographical material, for sure. I’ve told some Intendants
that whenever they’re thinking about doing Manon or Lucia to
let me know. I had a chance to do Manon with Welsh National
Opera, but I couldn’t do all the performances, and they were going to
have to split it up among other tenors. They would rather go with
one person, so there was a case where that production fell out. That
happens sometimes. You hate it when it’s one that you really wanted
to do, but it’s the same in any business.
BD: As long as you get enough good opportunities,
then it’s fine?
Welch: Oh, yes.
BD: Is singing fun?
Welch: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
BD: When did you first decide you wanted to be a
singer? [Vis-à-vis the review shown at left, see my interviews
with Zdenek Macal, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich,
Benita Valente, and
Janice Taylor.]
Welch: It’s really funny. I never really
thought of it as deciding I wanted to be a singer, because it was almost
like acknowledging the fact that you have a certain color hair or eyes.
I just always accepted it as a fact that I am a singer. When
I decided to pursue it professionally, I wanted to be an actor. I
was in community theater, and the musical extent for me in my dreams and
my fantasies as a young boy was to be a Broadway-type singer. I
wanted to be a legitimate actor. I was in drama club and community
theater doing all kinds of plays and musical comedy. But the Broadway
musical stage isn’t now like it was back in the heyday of Rodgers and
Hammerstein. That still wasn’t such a great era for tenors, but more
for baritones. You had your comic tenors, such as Marcellus Washburn
in The Music Man, etc. In fact, when I was 18 I was all prepared
to go to Illinois Wesleyan as a drama major, when a voice teacher and
good friend of our family in Danville said I should major in music, and
consider opera. That would give me a chance to act and sing.
BD: Now you’re heading to the Vienna State Opera
in this coming season.
Welch: Yes. I’m going to do Bohème,
Butterfly, Traviata, and Rosenkavalier. It’s
all the good stuff.
BD: Do you sing differently in different size
houses?
Welch: No, I don’t sing any differently.
BD: No change in technique, whatsoever?
Welch: No.
BD: Do you prefer singing in a large house or
a small house?
Welch: That doesn’t really make any difference to
me, because you have the energy of the people, the audience, and you
feel that whether it’s a large house or a small house. When the
energy’s there, that’s just something which is in the air. It’s
not always that you can see into the crowd, especially depending on how
something is lit. Sometimes the lights are so bright that you don’t
see very far into the house at all. You’ve got that contact with the
conductor and the orchestra, but as far as how big the hall is, no, I don’t
sing any different. I sing in all size houses. I sang a concert
in the Met when I won the Met Finals, and that’s 4,000 plus standing room.
Visually, that’s really something. It can be a little intimidating
sometimes just because a house is so beautiful. I don’t know if ‘intimidating’
is the right word, but you feel it, and you really experience it. I
enjoy some of the beautiful architecture, and the baroque architecture in
what we call ‘jewel box’ houses
in Europe. I like those, and that’s fun. There is a difference
as far as how you feel emotionally, vis-à-vis the contact with the
audience, but as far as singing a role with more oomph, no. Fortunately,
the bigger houses that I sing in, like the Lyric, are wonderful acoustically,
so you don’t have to change the voice at all. The pure quality of
the voice is there. It just depends on the acoustics of the house
for it to cut through.
* * *
* *
BD: You’re continuing to make a career in Europe.
Is this the advice you give to younger singers, to go to Europe to
make their career?
Welch: Not necessarily. There are as many different
ways to make a career as there are people. That’s what I’ve always
said, and that’s what was always told to me. I can just say that
it was a good thing for me to do. It was important for me to talk
to people who were mentors for me, and I respected their opinions.
Anna Moffo was one of
those people, Risë
Stevens was another, and also Carol Neblett. These people were
all judges in the Met competition at various levels, and Risë was
then the Director of the Metropolitan Opera National Council. They
basically were my stage mothers, and certainly all of them brought a wealth
of experience, and they all thought that it would be a really good thing
for me to go over there. They were sure I wouldn’t have to go and
sing everything in German translation, and that was the case with the exception
of one role. Everything else that I’ve done over there, I’ve done
in original languages. In fact, when we negotiated my contract, we
had it written right in that I would sing only original languages. When
you’re a tenor, you can get away with some things like that, but actually
it was very good for my home house.
BD: Are tenors in such short supply that you
can dictate terms?
Welch: Let’s just say I didn’t have any
problem getting that stipulation in my contract, and I’m really glad.
Many of my colleagues were also glad, because by my being able to do things
in the original language, they all got to do them in the original language.
The point being, I think that it’s okay for a young person to go over.
In fact, this was specifically one of the things Risë Stevens
and I talked about. She said that she did roles in German that you
want to eventually get into the original language, but she said I was
young enough that it didn’t matter. It was okay to know it in German
first. In my case, I started a little later, and because
I was a little older, I was more interested in doing these things in the
original languages. That way I could immediately guest in any house
in the world where they did standard repertoire in original languages.
Before I agreed to come to Europe, to my specific home house in Wiesbaden,
and make a major move in my life with my wife and children, I said I wanted
some assurances, and I was able to get them. Of course, everybody
can’t do that. But by and large for young singers, if you’re smart
and you know what’s right for you vocally, and have the courage to say no
when you know something isn’t right for you, you can go over there and do
just fine. Some people have heard horror stories of how they made people
sing out of their fach [vocal category], and do certain things that
they shouldn’t do. They were afraid, because if they didn’t do it,
then they’d hire someone else to do it. Well, that’s silly. You
can’t do what’s wrong for you just to get a job, or keep a job.
I’ve said no a lot, and not in a prima donna way, but when it’s just wrong.
Then, even though they’re disappointed, they’ve all said I was a very
intelligent singer.
BD: Does that gives you more credibility and more
respect?
Welch: Absolutely. It’s worked, but also
there’s something to be said for being a good colleague. When you’re
easy to get along with, and you’re cooperative, when you get down to real
issues that you really need to take a stand on, and say no, and assert
yourself, then maybe people take it a little better. I’m not so temperamental.
I usually only make a fuss if it’s something that’s really important, and
they respect it.
BD: Is there a competition amongst tenors for roles,
or rosters, or work?
Welch: There’s always good, healthy competition.
The Germans have this fach system, which is like being in
a pigeonhole. Every voice is a type, and I’ve often said that we’re
not model-numbers of Mercedes-Benz. There are some general voice
classifications, but someone may go a few notes higher than someone
else, and someone might go a little lower and have certain strengths in
other areas. So it’s a good guideline, but don’t try to put me in
a fach. The only competition is that some houses do more
lighter repertoire one year, and heavier things another year. These
are mostly repertory companies, so they’ve got a house full of singers,
and a lot of them have a ballet company, and a drama company, so they’re
regular performing arts factories. My particular house in Wiesbaden
is a staatstheater [state theater], and there are over 300 people
that come to work there every day. We have our own cobblers, and our
own wig makers, and costume makers. These people work there year-round,
and have pension programs. It’s an incredible business.
BD: Now, you’re leaving Wiesbaden to go to Vienna?
Welch: I am finishing my last year in a fest
contract in Wiesbaden [which means a stable or fixed contract, as opposed
to a freelance artist who sings as a guest in the house]. I’m
guesting all around Europe, and in the States, too. The year that
I go to Vienna will be my second year that I’ll be free from my home house
in Wiesbaden, and I may decide to have a home house somewhere else. I
don’t know if he’s still there, but for many years Zurich has been the home
house for Francisco Araiza.
Having a home house is a totally different situation. If you’re
sick, or something happens and you can’t sing, you’re still paid your salary.
We have nothing like that in America. It’s a totally different system.
BD: Should we have that arrangement here?
Welch: I don’t think there’s a big enough market
for us to do it over here. Plus, over there, they’re subsidized
by the government. So much of their tax money goes for the performing
arts. But back to your question about competition, a house will
have only so many roles in certain fach that they’re going to hand
out. If you’re a lyric tenor, and they’re planning a dramatic role,
you don’t want it. It’s not a matter of competition, but rather
a matter of doing what’s intelligent for you.
* * *
* *
BD: You were talking a bit about doing things in the
original language. Do you like this idea of having the supertitles
above the proscenium?
Welch: Yes, I do, because it opens it up for
more people.
BD: Is opera for everyone?
Welch: It can be. It’s like a lot of things.
You never know until you try them. That’s that way with anything
in life. I discovered the joys of cross-country skiing when I was
well into my 30s. I learned an entire new language when I was over
35. Perhaps it would be more true to say you like what you know.
If they have a chance to experience opera, then it would be another story,
and that’s where the key to building audiences will be for us. Reaching
out and trying to get more people from the general populace should begin
in the schools. Educating our children, and developing an appetite
is the future of opera in America.
BD: Is the industry of recordings, and television,
and videotape helping or hindering?
Welch: I think it’s helping all the people who
never would think of buying tickets and going to the opera. Their
only idea of the opera is maybe the Marx Brothers film Night at the Opera,
or seeing Three Stooges lip synching the Lucia sextet. Goodness
knows people have preconceived ideas about opera, often just because of
spoofs they’ve seen. Now with all of the broadcasts live from the
Met and everywhere, it comes into people’s homes. Even if they see
some of it by accident, they might want to listen to some of it. They’re
watching the program, and the subtitles are down there on the screen.
If they showed a foreign film, you would want the subtitles. That
way they can understand much of it. A lot of my children’s
early experiences with opera was watching it on television. They
could read the lines and know what was going on, and they really got the
bug. So I think there’s a much better chance with more and more opera
being telecast, and showing up on videos.
BD: Are you optimistic about the future of opera?
Welch: Sure, I am. Yes, very much so.
BD: How are you dividing your career now between opera
and concert?
Welch: I tried to do a mix. I had an experience
with Herbert von Karajan last summer. I was privileged to do an
audition for him and to meet him. Now he’s passed away, but a friend
of his came to a performance of Traviata that I did, and told him
about me. They wanted a cassette, which I sent them, and he said he
wanted to hear me. So, they flew me to Salzburg, and when I sang for
him, he said I should do concert and oratorio work, not just opera. He
said that I had many colors in my voice. This was like an echo from
the past, because I’ve done master classes with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,
and she always told me the same thing. We would work on songs, as
well as arias, and she said I could do it all. So I try to keep a good
mix. It’s important. It gives you a lot more variety. What
I do on the concert stage enhances what I do on the opera stage, and vice
versa. Variety is the spice of life, and I would get very bored if
I just did one thing. But I always remember it’s not just to do
something else. It’s always got to be the right thing, and sometimes
that’s based on a lot of things, not necessarily just repertoire. Vienna
wanted me for Maria Stuarda. I looked at the part, and it would
certainly be okay for me, but I have never done this role, and they wanted
me to come in with just a couple days’ rehearsal. So, I spoke to my
management. I like to sing in Vienna, and I’m flattered that they
offered it to me. They even picked the right repertoire, but they
didn’t pick the right situation in which to present it, so I turned it down,
and they respected my decision.
BD: Does the singer have any real influence as to what
operas are being done? Can you have an impact on the repertoire?
Welch: If you’re a world star, and they want
you for practically any production, then you can say you want to do this or
that. But other than that, I don’t know how much we specifically influence
what gets done.
BD: Do you yourself believe in expanding the
repertoire?
Welch: Yes. When you’re speaking about
America though, money is the bottom line. You’ve got to be able to reach
the market, and you have to consider the marketplace. There are
certain places when they know what the traffic will bear, and you’ve got
to have a real mix of styles and periods of whatever you’re doing to reach
the different corners of that marketplace so that you can survive.
BD: Do you feel that you, with what you can provide
vocally, are a commodity?
Welch: Sure, you’re a commodity.
BD: Should you be traded on the stock exchange?
Welch: Hopefully not today, since it’s Friday
the 13th. [Much laughter]
BD: Should we trade vocal futures?
Welch: Oh man, this is getting surreal...
* * *
* *
BD: Let’s go back to repertoire. Tell me about
the Duke. What’s he like?
Welch: What a rascal the Duke is. What a rotten
guy.
BD: Do you like playing rotten guys?
Welch: You reach down inside yourself to find
what may be rotten, or what lies within you. It may not be that
you’re a wanton womanizer, but you try to find something that you can identify
with. The Duke doesn’t quite bother me as much as a role like Werther.
That’s one which was really hard. But the Duke just goes roughshod
through these women. He’s in love with the idea of being in love.
When he sings Parmi veder le lagrime [I seem to see tears...], for
a moment he believes that he feels sorry for this poor Gilda. But
then the minute he finds out that they’ve got her in his chamber, he goes
back into his old lecherous self. I don’t know if there’s a redemptive
bone in this man’s body.
BD: In this or any other character, how deeply
can you dig into the psyche of the person you portray?
Welch: It’s good to do your homework as much as
you can. You need to do a certain amount of that deep digging even
before you go into rehearsal. It gives you more dimension and depth
in the characterization if you read everything that you can. However,
I have also experienced that you can only go as far as you can and still
handle musically what the composer wanted. For example, if I let
myself go as far in Bohème as my body would want to go, and
if I totally let myself go into that sad, distraught emotion in the last
act with Mimì, I wouldn’t be able to sing. I’ve experienced
that sometimes in rehearsals where literally I got choked up and would
begin to cry. If I don’t have to sing the next day, I’ll really
let myself go, and just let the tears come, and let myself get choked up,
and just let my throat constrict. But God help you if you do that
in the first act. In Bohème it wouldn’t be appropriate,
but someplace early in another opera. You have to be careful. Your
body reacts physically to certain emotions, and that can affect your voice.
So you’ve got to find a way to project that, and still have that
beautiful, nice legato line.
BD: So, are you portraying the character or
do you actually become the character for those two or three hours on
stage?
Welch: If you dare, it’s a much better flight
to just let yourself be that character. It’s a lot more fun, and
it’s a lot more interesting for the audience.
BD: Is it a lot more dangerous? [Vis-à-vis
the item shown at left, see my interviews with Neeme Järvi, David Zinman, and Florence Quivar.]
Welch: Yes, sure it is. It’s dangerous to let
yourself get too much into the character, and in the case of Otello, it
is more dangerous for Desdemona. [Laughs] But, oh gosh, it’s
a lot more fun. For Werther, I did a lot of really serious soul
searching. When he says, "Why do we tremble at the idea of our own
death? Then he begins to toy around with the pistol, and he says,
“One raises the curtain and steps to the other side.”
I just get goosebumps now talking about it. That’s one specific
instance where you let yourself get into it, and when I leave the theater,
I feel like I really earned my money that night.
BD: Talking about Werther, should they show
the shot in full view of the audience or should it be off stage?
Welch: That was one of the things that I
talked to the director about. I worked with a German director who
is a very prominent theater director in Germany, and has many successes,
but he’s also very controversial. I told him, “I’m
not sticking anything up to my head that’s going to make a loud bang.”
He said he wouldn’t want me to do that. I remember a Tosca
a few years ago, when I was a kid in the chorus at Lyric. When the
soldiers fired, the guy who brought down the sword to signal the shot got
his hand in front of one of the muskets with these explosive charges. I
saw the man standing there with his hand bleeding. So stage weapons
that go boom scare me. For the Werther, I had to move off behind
this little building. So, people don’t actually see me pull the trigger,
but they know what I’m going to do. I have a gun in my hand, and
then there’s a shot from off stage right near where I am. In the
meantime, there’s about 25 seconds of music, and they did a real makeup
job on me. There’s a lot of blood in this production, and in fact,
some people were bothered by it.
BD: Does it have to be so very realistic?
Welch: Not necessarily. It’s a matter of choice.
Look at what is done in movies. Could you imagine Sam Peckinpah
directing Werther? People in the audience would be splattered.
The opera is based on the Goethe book The Sorrows of Young Werther.
This guy actually did shoot himself in the head, and he lived for
something like 12 hours or more after he did this, with the musket ball
in his head.
BD: So he had time to think about what he had
done.
Welch: You wonder how a person would react.
I have to sing a beautiful lyric line there, and we wondered if maybe
there’d be paralysis. So, we experimented with my curling one arm
under, and not having any more use of that arm. It was a fascinating
challenge to try to think of all the physical things that we could express
for this to really be true, to be realistic, and yet still have that incredible
music go along with it. It stretched me as a performer more than anything
I’ve ever done.
BD: Let us come back to Pinkerton.
Welch: Pinkerton is a real interesting challenge
because you can’t let yourself go with the idea that I’m going to play
this really bad guy. I played him like a very immature young man,
who is not aware of the fact that he’s an ‘ugly American’.
He would drape the flag in all that he does. He thinks the oriental
customs are amusing, especially when he’s got the contract that says they’re
married for hundreds of years, but with the clause that anytime he can
get out of it. He’s traveling from port to port, and thinks he is
really clever when he finds out how to get around the laws. The more
you can play it that way, the more scary and gross he becomes. The
audience sees this clot running roughshod over this little delicate oriental
flower.
BD: That heightens the tragedy.
Welch: Oh, yes. So there’s a case where you have
to not make a judgment about yourself and your character in the eyes of
anybody else but yourself, and try to be sympathetic to your character.
Whenever I sing Pinkerton, I don’t start feeling ashamed of myself
until the very end when he comes back with Kate, and then everything
is explained. Still, I don’t think the full impact of that has
hit him even then. Finally, of course, when Butterfly is dead before
him, he cries out, but I dare say that the impact isn’t until years later
in his life.
BD: Do you promote yourself in the third act?
Welch: I don’t. Actually, I did one production
in San Diego, which is a navy town. They gave me all kinds of
campaign ribbons, and one guy just picked the uniform apart. He said
that one of the ribbons was from Vietnam, and some of the others were not
appropriate. I will say it looked good with all those colors on there...
BD: Thanks for coming back to Chicago.
Welch: My pleasure. It’s great
to see you again.
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© 1989 Bruce Duffie
This conversation was recorded in Chicago on Friday, October 13,
1989. Portions were broadcast on WNIB four days later.
This transcription was made in 2023,
and posted on this website at that time.
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.
* * * *
*
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.
