Vanessa Taylor

Classic Melbourne loves to report on success of Australian artists overseas, and so we welcome this interview of Russell Harcourt by our regular reporter Vanessa Taylor.

In 2016, countertenor Russell Harcourt performed the role of Nero in Agrippina at the Brisbane Baroque Festival, earning a Helpmann Award nomination.

That production of Agrippina originally hailed from the Göttingen Handel Festival in Germany. Now, in a nice bit of symmetry, Russell has recently made his debut in Göttingen, as Evanco in Handel’s early opera Rodrigo.

Vanessa Taylor: Next year will be the 100^th anniversary of the Göttingen festival, which started the revival of Handel’s operas in the 1920s. What has it meant to you to perform here?

Russell Harcourt: A great privilege to be asked.

I’ve known [Artistic Director] Laurence Cummings since I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music, but this is the first time since I finished studying that I’ve worked with him. It’s been a huge thrill for me because he’s such a wonderful musician and so knowledgeable about this repertoire.

I auditioned for Laurence two years ago. As my voice has moved up in tessitura, the role of Evanco was offered and it’s probably the most challenging role I’ve ever done because the character is so extreme. I mean, I thought Nero in Agrippina was an extreme character. Evanco encompasses a little bit of Nero, he has a little bit of Sesto from Giulio Cesare, and maybe a little bit of Rinaldo in terms of Rinaldo’s relationship with Almirena.

So it’s been like a roller coaster for me to do the role and the music is extreme as well. He’s got a love aria to Florinda, he’s got a fast coloratura aria when he’s talking about killing everyone, but like all baroque opera it ends happily.

I guess I also feel the responsibility of performing a Handel role here in Göttingen because they record it and film it. It’s been a very busy schedule; the build up before the performance, the extra events outside that we perform at and attend.

VT: The festival takes over the town, doesn’t it?

RH: It really does. The local community is so strongly affiliated with the festival that they also have high expectations of what’s presented. So you want to do the best for them as well.

You’ve seen that they have the costumes from previous productions in the shop windows. They’re very proud of it. Maybe as Australians we’re not used to that.

VT: Maybe for football.

RH: Yes, or the tennis.

VT: You mentioned that your voice is sitting a little higher these days. When did you realise?

RH: It was actually when I did Bajazet with Pinchgut in Sydney [in 2015]. When Erin Helyard offered me the Andronico role, I looked at it and thought this is higher than I’ve normally done in the past. But he’d worked with me before and said he thought it would be great for my voice, and it was. So since then, the roles I’ve been getting have been maybe a tone or a third higher than I would normally have done when I was a student.

Some people call me a soprano. I don’t like to use that term for countertenors but I do sit more in that male soprano bracket than male alto. Which is great, because there aren’t many of us and I’m really comfortable singing up there.

VT: What’s your top note?

RH: As Evanco, it’s only up to an A, so around 415 Hz, but comfortably in performance I can go up to a top C.

VT: When you performed in Agrippina at the Brisbane Baroque Festival, most of the cast had done the original production in Göttingen. How was it fitting into an established production with so many original cast members?

RH: Having now worked in Göttingen, I know their longer rehearsal schedule. To go into that revival situation in Brisbane where there were only three newbies out of eight singers, with three and a half weeks to opening, was challenging. It’s not a long time to find character and to refine everything musically. For the others it was just a refresher; none of us three had ever done the roles before. But it’s amazing what you can do when you have to, and it honestly is the highlight of my career, doing that role. And also because of the Helpmann nomination and also despite the Festival’s financial crisis.

VT: Graham Pushee was an early teacher for you.

RH: Yes, I started with Graham the year after high school and before I went to the Conservatorium in Sydney. He then took me through to the end of my studies at the Con.

VT: How did you know you were a countertenor?

RH: I was a clarinet player at the Con high school and Richard Gill came to conduct the school musical. I was still singing as a soprano. My voice had obviously broken but I’d retained the falsetto.

VT: It felt more natural?

RH: Yes, and I didn’t know any different then. And Richard said, Oh, I think you’re a male alto. I had no idea what that was. It sounds so naïve now, but I was a clarinettist. I’d sung in choirs but had not really experienced baroque repertoire and with clarinet it had been mostly classical, romantic, through to contemporary, as you’d expect.

It was an eye-opening experience when I first met Graham Pushee [Laughs]…and heard another man who sounds like me. But who’d also had such a tremendous career and was so widely respected. So every lesson was like a master class.

And he’s taken me on as a client, which I was very delighted about. He’s a wonderful agent and still a great mentor.

VT: It must be helpful to have an agent who knows your repertoire so well.

RH: Yes, it really is.

VT: Your operatic debut was Oberon in The Dream and so was Graham’s (back in 1973).

RH: Yes, mine was a student production but I had finished studying. It was at WAAPA [in 2007].

VT: As well studying with Graham Pushee, you’ve done master classes with countertenors Michael Chance and Andreas Scholl. What did you take from each?

RH: The master class with Andreas was for stylistic vocal suggestions and interpretation. It was a bit like meeting Graham Pushee for the first time, because they’re both very well known countertenors.

Michael was still singing a little bit at the time and with him it was more technical and developing the lower part of the voice. As countertenors, even though the top is strong, it’s important the top matches the bottom.

When you’ve listened to recordings of these singers whilst you’re a student and listened to the repertoire they’ve sung, and then you’re in the same room as them and you sing something that they’ve done [Laughs]…I was always terrified.

VT: When did you move to London?

RH: That was 2008.

VT: And now you’re studying there with Yvonne Kenny?

RH: Yes, another great Australian. When I sing for her, if I’ve been away working and come back and have a lesson, I always say to her afterwards, I was so nervous today. [Laughs]

I’ve been studying with her for eight or nine years now and she’s also a great mentor and friend. And like Graham and Michael and Andreas, she knows the repertoire.

VT: So what are you concentrating on with Yvonne, role preparation or technical?

RH: She’s very helpful with both. When I first started it was mostly technical, just ironing out issues, mainly with the top, into this transition into higher repertoire. Now it’s mainly role preparation. I can’t speak highly enough of her. She’s very kind in the way she teaches.

VT: You’ve had a relationship with Pinchgut Opera for several years.

RH: Yes, I’ve known Erin since I was an undergrad at the Con in Sydney. He’s a very unassuming, knowledgeable, talented musician. When I first met him he was my harmony keyboard tutor, then he moved to Canada and I moved to London. We popped up together again when he was first conducting Griselda. He, and Pinchgut as a body, have been so supportive of my voice, my career. It’s a very special company and because Erin knows my voice so well, he’s very selective with what he offers me. It was he who asked me to do Nero in Brisbane.

I think also as an Australian and a countertenor, it’s great to have a company like that in Australia, at such a high level. I’m just absolutely thrilled about their International Opera Award for Hasse’s Artaserse. It was a joy to be in that production. Erin is very gracious about thanking the other artists involved, but he was the brains behind it.

VT: Will you continue appearing with Pinchgut?

RH: I really hope so.

VT: Tell us about your work with director Peter Sellars in Adams’s The Gospel according to the Other Mary.

RH: What a personality! He had directed the original production at English National Opera and then they asked me to do the revival in Bonn. It was a delight to work with him though we only had him for the last four of the eight weeks of rehearsal.

He’s so passionate about that piece as he has such a good relationship with John Adams. The chorus and all the principals were just in awe when he was in the room. You could hear a pin drop because every single word he has to say is important.

VT: How long was the contract?

RH: It was very long. It was the eight weeks rehearsal in the middle of winter [Laughs]. Then it was the German system of being in repertoire. So we opened at the end of March and closed in the middle of May. I was commuting back and forth to London once the show had opened. That’s tough, particularly with such a difficult piece as that. To have a break of two or three weeks between performances, you have to be alert all the time.

VT: What was the audience reception like?

RH: Generally, I think they loved it. I don’t think they would ever have seen anything like it. It’s one of those pieces that will just continue touring and pop up occasionally.

VT: What’s the attraction with newer works such as The Gospel according to the Other Mary and Dove’s The Adventures of Pinocchio?

RH: I really like doing this contemporary repertoire. It’s a different way of writing for the voice because the baroque repertoire was written with specific singers in mind. Coming out of castrati into the modern countertenor, the voice has developed, even in the last 10-15 years. The parameters of the countertenor voice type are much wider.

VT: And the quality, there’s been such a steady progression for decades, hasn’t there?

RH: Yes, definitely. I think contemporary composers are writing with the knowledge of the voice type in mind and what its capabilities are. It wasn’t uncommon to transpose a Handel aria, a Vivaldi aria, depending when it was revived, from singer to singer. But with modern opera, I think you can just look at the role and it’s perfect. I don’t need to change a thing.

VT: What about baroque roles you’d like to do?

RH: Having sung Hasse twice now – because the second contract I did with Pinchgut was a Vivaldi pastiche but most of my character’s repertoire was Hasse – it seems to sit very comfortably in my voice and I enjoy singing it.

VT: But Hasse is not often on main stages.

RH: [Laughs] No, it’s not. I need to have a phone call with Erin.

Vivaldi is another composer whose repertoire sits well with my voice. Nero in Agrippina was always on my list. Rinaldo is something I’d love to do. Sesto I’ve done last year in the UK and would happily do again. I have an affinity with playing young boys. I’ve been told I’m quite good at it.

VT: How often are you going home to Australia to perform?

RH: Last year was the exception. That was twice. Then there are years when there’s nothing, like this year at the moment. I do like to go back at least once a year.

It doesn’t matter how long you live in Europe, when you come from the Southern Hemisphere, you just never get used to the cold. During our rehearsals in Göttingen it was snowing, and that was mid-April.

Much as Classic Melbourne celebrates the achievements of our home-grown performers, we are also proud of Melbourne’s reputation as a city that appreciates the Arts  and practitioners in many fields:  classical music of course, but also  theatre, dance, publishing  and more …. And we welcome the chance to find out more about our visitors. So when our writer  Vanessa Taylor (whose interview with the singer Thomas Hampson earned her a congratulatory tweet from the great  man himself) suggested we have an interview with Li Cunxin, who is well known in many of the areas above, how could we resist?

To help with the comprehensive interview, Ms Taylor invited Jacqueline Doyle to co-write the results, and Classic Melbourne thanks both of them for their thorough work and interesting results!  Here’s what they found:

In the Western world he is called by his surname Li, in preference to his more tricky to pronounce given name. As he says, “even my wife calls me Li”. 

By anyone’s account, Li Cunxin is a remarkable success story. As a dancer, he was one of the finest in America and successfully transported his career to Australia.

His autobiography Mao’s Last Dancer was first published in 2003, and subsequently in over 20 countries. A film adaptation was released in 2009 and accompanied by an updated edition of the book, with three new chapters. The book has also been published in a junior edition for the teenage market and a younger children’s version called The Peasant Prince. An exhibition of Mao’s Last Dancer has travelled from the Museum of Brisbane to Melbourne’s Immigration Museum, where it closes on 7 October.

While chance has played a part in Li’s success, such as his selection for ballet training by Madame Mao’s delegates at the age of 11, his strength is meticulous planning. He even worked as a stockbroker in his later years as a principal with The Australian Ballet to prepare for his retirement from dancing in 1999.

It was probably inevitable though, that ballet beckoned him back. He spent several years on the board of The Australian Ballet before taking over the artistic directorship of Queensland Ballet. 

Like the best artistic directors, Li is both a gambler and an astute businessman. In the six years of his leadership, Queensland Ballet has prospered greatly. Sponsorship and philanthropy have increased ten-fold and the Company has staged new and classic productions by leading choreographers, resulting in box office income doubling and growing artistic repute.

Having previously presented Queensland Ballet in London with Peter Schaufuss’s La Sylphide, next month he takes the Company on a tour of his homeland China, performing Liam Scarlett’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Shanghai, Suzhou, Beijing and Xi’an.

But first, A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes to Melbourne for a season at Her Majesty’s Theatre, commencing on 3 October. 

JD: How did the Melbourne season of A Midsummer Night’s Dream come about, as it’s been a while since Queensland Ballet was last here?

LC: Yes, it’s been 30 years since the Company was last here. Obviously, Melbourne is widely considered the cultural and arts capital of Australia, and of my years in Australia, the biggest chunk has been in Melbourne. So I really wanted to take my company here to perform.

And I thought the most unique and beautiful production that Melburnians have never seen, because it’s relatively new, is Liam Scarlett’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I really think it’s one of the best Midsummer Night’s Dreams in the world, if not the best. Liam has that knack to bring out the essence and humour of Shakespeare and to make a complicated story easily understandable. 

It takes audiences on an enchanted journey. The minute the curtain goes up you feel like you’re in a magical forest. As soon as the fairies appear with the most delightful, colourful costumes, you get drawn into the story.

I think audiences who see it in Melbourne will come out feeling so uplifted. I think they can be very happy with this stunning production.

VT: Mia Heathcote is performing the role of Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Can you talk about her rise to soloist in the Company? 

LC: Oh, she’s been a delight from the first time I set eyes on her as a little girl. [Her father] Steven and I are very close friends. We shared dressing rooms together when we were dancing at the Australian Ballet. Our children grew up together so they are good friends. I still remember as a little girl Mia was jumping, turning, dancing in their living room when we went over to their place for dinner. She was just that little fairy from a very young age. And she’s still a beautiful fairy today, so she’s dancing the fairy queen Titania.

She’s worked hard; she did not just rely on her natural talent. She really has become a beautiful dancer. I think Australia is lucky to have a talent like Mia’s. 

JD: You and Mary have three children. Are any of them interested in pursuing performing or artistic careers?

LC: The two girls learnt ballet while they were growing up. Unfortunately, none of them wanted to pursue a professional ballet career, which is sad for Mary and I, but it’s their journey and as long as they have passion for what they do in life, we’re happy for them.

In my family we all share a strong interest in the arts and theatre. Our children all love coming to performances. Our son sings and plays piano. He’s very into helping younger kids to stage theatrical productions and asks us for advice on dancing movements et cetera. [Laughs] I think he quietly wishes he had done more ballet dancing to give him that grounding and knowledge to help them.

He is a teacher and has a Master’s Degree in Education. One of our daughters is interested in IT and the other one is probably going to pursue a business or finance career. So they’re all doing different things.

JD: How did the exhibition Mao’s Last Dancer at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum eventuate?

LC: Well, I was approached by the Brisbane museum. I’d been to some of the exhibitions there and it’s such a beautiful space. The director Renai Grace has a very high standard but when she approached me I thought, “Oh, my life has been captured in an autobiography and then the movie and do I really want my personal artefacts and collections displayed in an exhibition?” 

But she thought that there was a lot of interest from the public in my life in general and the exhibition could tell my story from a different angle. So I reluctantly agreed, and I have to say, she did a wonderful job. I’m excited it’s now on in Melbourne. 

JD: As a dancer, you’ve been back to China with Houston Ballet and The Australian Ballet. But how will it feel to take the Company you lead to the country of your birth?

LC: I’m absolutely thrilled. Obviously China holds such a special place in my heart. I love the Chinese people and I owe a lot to China for what I have done in my life; the training and career I’ve had, and some of my former teachers, their love and care for me. 

So taking my company there to showcase the talent we have, to bring A Midsummer Night’s Dream and to perform in front of the Chinese audiences, my ballet teacher Xiao Shuhua and my old classmates; it is going to be such an emotional journey back home for me. 

VT:  Three of your five principals in Queensland Ballet are Cuban. What’s the story there?  

LC: I think it’s just because I love talent when I see it. When I first came on board, the company I inherited had more of a contemporary bent. I wanted to take our company back to the classical foundation. Obviously that’s not all we do, but I want to build on the classical tradition. So we brought back Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Giselle, Cinderella, The Nutcracker. I quickly realised I needed some different skill sets because I needed strong classically based dancers with classical technique and artistry. I had to do something quickly. So I went around the world doing international auditions and, of course, Cuba is one of the top countries in producing ballet talents. 

In that world trip, I also auditioned in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and we have trained up some Australian talent that is coming through our Company ranks, such as Mia Heathcote. And quite a few of them are students from our own training system, as well as students from the Australian Ballet School and all around Australia. It’s thrilling to see Australian talent coming up through the ranks. 

VT: It’s interesting that Queensland Ballet has trainee artists and a Young Artist Program. How does that work? 

LC: Well, I believe in providing that training pathway for young talents to really help them realise their potential. So we receive aspirational funding from a Geneva-based foundation called Oak Foundation. They have given the Royal Opera House a Young Artists Programme for opera singers and, generously, they agreed to fund our Young Artist Program here. So, initially, six young artists every year got a decent salary and the opportunity to have new works created for them in their own programs and to perform with the main company. Now we expanded to 12 young artists. We are getting international as well as national talent into that program. It’s one of the most comprehensive Young Artist Programs in the world. In fact, most of our new Company positions are promoted from this program.

As well, just this year we started trainee artists to help them be able to fast track and develop strong technique and artistry and who also get a chance to work with the Company. So this serves them well to get professional jobs, not only with our Company but with other companies nationally and internationally.

VT: You also provide classes for seniors and will be teaching a class as part of the Mao’s Last Dancer exhibition.

LC: It’s a program we started at Queensland Ballet to recognise that there are so many in the general public who want to get to live their dreams feeling what it’s like as a dancer. Because, let’s face it, a lot of people have had ballet or dance training when they grew up. But it became dormant due to their business careers. Now they are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, even in their 80s. 

Some people have never done ballet. So it’s up to the teacher to find that common ground for people to be able to enjoy it on different levels.

Ballet would have to be one of the most wonderful exercises you can do for your body and soul. So we started the seniors’ dance classes and it just took off. The public can’t get enough of it. We wish we had more studio space to accommodate the demand of people wanting to do classes. 

On International Seniors’ Day, I taught a class of 250 people. The waiting list was even longer than that. It was just so inspiring to have that many people in the studio. It made me feel they really are happy and made them feel good by moving their body to the music and everybody moving together. People go to gym, go walking and running and cycling, Pilates. All these are wonderful to keep yourself fit, but I think ballet moves your body in such a way with the music that’s quite special.

I think they end up feeling younger, lighter and happier. From the classes, they build friendships, they build a network, they form a community and I find that quite fascinating. So that is why I will be teaching a master class in Melbourne. 

VT: So how did you pull up after your return to the stage last year for The Nutcracker after 18 years of retirement?

LC: I spent nearly three months training myself but grossly underestimated how my body has aged in that 18 year period! [Laughs]. I realised that those old injuries I’d sustained over my dancing career, I thought they would have all healed, but no such luck. It all came back with a vengeance when I started to push myself. But I have to say I enjoyed it very much, even though it tore my body apart a bit.

The famous Australian actor David Wenham introduced that particular performance of The Nutcracker. The energy and anticipation from the audience, I felt that so much that night, which I’d really forgotten after 18 years of retirement. It was incredibly special. I felt that night I could do anything. But of course, I suffered afterwards. [Laughs].

VT: So will you be doing any other roles in the future?

LC: No, I don’t think so. I think one comeback is probably enough. And as a director, I have more than a full-time job. During the three months of preparation for Nutcracker, trying to get my body back to a certain condition, I still had to function in my directorship job. So my days were prolonged and my weekends suddenly disappeared because I had added another major task into my daily life.

JD: Liam Scarlett has produced a new full-length ballet for your 2019 season.

LC: Yes, we have just announced that for next year’s season, Liam will be creating a brand new full-length ballet, Dangerous Liaisons. That will be our opening program in Brisbane. The whole ballet world will be watching because Liam is one of the hottest choreographers in the world today. It comes on the back of his success with the world premiere of his Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House [where he is resident choreographer for The Royal Ballet]. He’s also the choreographer for Disney’s film The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. So he’s highly sought after around the world. We’re lucky to have him as our Artistic Associate.

VT: As well as Dangerous Liaisons, you have a return season of Romeo and Juliet next year. Can you tell us how you initially convinced Lady MacMillan that she should permit Queensland Ballet to perform the work?

LC: As you know, Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet would have to be one of the most incredible ballets of our time and it’s mostly done by the great national ballet companies such as The Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theater. For Queensland Ballet to get permission to do it was such a privilege. 

I flew down to Sydney to talk to Lady Deborah MacMillan. I was not going to take no for an answer. [Laughs]. She had so many questions but I had the answers waiting. So I think eventually I wore her down. [Laughs]

We did it back in 2014. I knew that if we didn’t do this ballet up to a certain standard then we would never have a hope of doing a Kenneth MacMillan ballet again. I have to say, it was a most profound experience for our dancers. The Company rose up to the challenge and grew in stature in front of our eyes. It was such a breakthrough moment for the Company to do a ballet like this. It was really a big ask. The Company was not at the standard that it is today. 

Lady MacMillan came to see the Company and we talked about what we needed to get the standard up. That first time around we had some international guest artists. Carlos Acosta, Tamara Rojo and Steven McRae came to dance with our own Company artists and helped them develop as artists. We also had Steven Heathcote come to play Lord Capulet, which is a crucial role in the ballet. 

This time around, next year, I really feel confident, and so does Lady MacMillan, that our Company can tackle this ballet on our own because we have that depth of talent now. 

It’s hard to know where to start with Thomas Hampson. The American baritone is enjoying a remarkably diverse career traversing through Wagner, Handel, Copeland, Léhar, Irving Berlin and so many more.

He’s in Australia for first time to share his passion for Mahler and American song in recitals at Melbourne Recital Centre and Sydney Opera House and concerts with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at Hamer Hall and Geelong’s Costa Hall. He’s also giving a masterclass for young male singers in Melbourne.

He proved to be a thoughtful, passionate and good-humoured companion for a chat about music over a green tea.

 VT:What took you so long to get to Australia?

TH:[Laughs] Well, it’s a very long way to come here, isn’t it? You try to do as many things as you can and it’s been a very busy career. I’ve been to South East Asia quite often and you would have thought we could just keep on going but, anyway, I’m here now.

VT: Tell us about Mahler and you.

TH: Mahler and me. The first time I heard his symphony I was preparing Songs and I thought I better get to know this guy’s music. I threw in a cassette of the first symphony and was off to one of my teaching jobs. I’m buzzing down the freeway and realise I’m going 37 miles an hour because my head’s like I’m on drugs. So I pull over while I listen to the first movement. I show up an hour and 15 minutes late. I confessed to one of my older musical colleagues what happened and he said, “I’m surprised you came in at all”.

I just fell in love with Mahler’s musical language. I found it beautiful but I knew there was something going on that I didn’t know about, that I wanted to know about. I was intrigued to find out more. The further I went down that rabbit hole, well, I’ve never come back out. I never tire of re-studying his music. On any level: historical perspective of his times, philosophical perspective of what he studied and believed, the musical integrity and structure of his pieces, the philological basis for all of his songs, is an enlightening world for any opera or song singer.

He became my point of reference. I understood Schubert better because of Mahler. I understood the flow of the 19^thcentury because of seeing the Phantasiethrough Mahler’s eyes. And the great personalities around him that he introduced me to. It doesn’t stop. I tirelessly sing Mahler song.

VT: Another reason for your visit to Australia has been to give a masterclass at Melbourne Recital Centre. When you’re teaching, what do you hope participants take away?

TH: You know, I would say about 20 per cent of my time now is pedagogical, which I think is quite exciting. I enjoy it. I’ve done teaching all through my career and I’ve got the Heidelberg Lied Academy and a couple of schools that I’m regularly at. I don’t have a position of my own yet because I just can’t be dependable [due to performing commitments].

I enjoy the exchange very much. I want to be of assistance. The tough thing about masterclasses is that I’ve got rather spoiled with these three, five and 10 day symposia that I get to do, because you can then really develop a vocabulary and move forward and build a rapport.

So doing masterclasses, I want to be as there as I can for them, if you get what I mean. I want to be consequential for them. At the same time it should be a pleasant and growing experience. I see myself as being as quickly as I possibly can, a stable mirror that will give them information about what they’re doing and something they can build on. I’m not there to chastise, I’m there to work with them. I will take what I get and hopefully move, whatever metaphor, move their ball down the gridiron.

What I say to them before the class is that in singing, to me, there’s a three dimensional potion to it. There’s the universal, what the piece is about…there’s the language, style, context of the opera if it’s from an opera or the poetic history…and then, of course, there’s the physical. And all three of those things must be in balance. Very often with young singers, of course, it’s something physical that they want to get at, because I think what they want to ing they are probably very clear about.

I just try to listen in that three dimensionality and react with them and for them. I think it’s important they sing the thing proper and then we go after it. They have the nervous experience of singing for a public and some vicious person like me. [Laughs]

In Germany, I invited Brigitte Fassbänder for some of my masterclasses and the young students were all “Oh my God, Brigitte Fassbänder”. And she said to them – I’ll see if I can translate – “You know, I’m extremely picky and I’m very stubborn but I mean very well” and that’s what you have to do.

VT: You’re a fine actor in your operatic roles, are you a natural?

TH: One has acting classes though I never went to a “thespian” school. Natural or not, I’ve always found that what I do as a singer is bound to the central idea of telling a story. So the physicality of being like the person you are inhabiting, their thoughts and psychology, seems to me a very natural process. That may sometimes be a different equation for an opera singer than perhaps a Broadway theatre person or so on and that’s not a problem.

That comes to a big point that I like to talk about with the opera. That is, moving forward, what the opera will be. I think it’s incredibly important that we all understand and agree on what it isn’t. It’s not in competition with television or film or theatre. It is it’s own world. And the basis of our world in opera is not plot. Our basis is historical context and the dilemma of the human condition. What we’re all there for is to inhabit that incredible moment of emotion and brain that happens, whether it’s a monologue or a sextet, when this dilemma takes place in a musical context. That is from where I sing. As I’ve matured, I’ve noticed more and more, I have to be careful sometimes in bigger pieces, like Faustus. You need to remember that you still have to sing it. You can’t just go writhing about on stage and screaming at God.

I’m as much a vocal fetishist as the next person. I love great voices and great singing. But to me, the greatest of vocal moments have always been those that are connected to “why”? I mean, à propos, Joan Sutherland, there was always a discussion about her diction. We never sang together, though I worked with her husband. I knew her, I saw her. And why was she one of the greatest singers of the 20^thcentury? Because there was never a moment that was not committed to the reason why. This phenomenal vocalism that would not have happened and have resonated with so many people across the world, were it not coming from the reason the damn thing was written in the first place.

VT:In the past, you have commented that sometimes the various departments of an opera production don’t work as an ensemble. Do you think that has changed at all over the years?

TH:Opera is only successful as a total ensemble artistic endeavour. I am just reinforcing my preparedness to work with everyone. In the rehearsal time, we’re all together, we’re doing the best we can; we’re creating an ensemble for the same purpose.

It is very easy in these massive well-organised, well-oiled opera theatres’ machines, that everyone can get rather dialled in on their own responsibilities and where they actually coalesce can get left on the side.

What I’ve tried to be very clear about is that opera is a musical art form in a theatrical context, and not a theatre piece with incidental music or a frame of sound in which theatrical events take place. Some people took slight umbrage to me saying things like that and wanted to involve me into some polemical argument and that wasn’t my point at all.

My point is that as a singer on stage, every breath I take is from a composer and not from a producer [director]. I think that our responsibility is to encode the piece rather than necessarily trying to reinvent it. That’s what I’m trying to be a positive force for.

Producers who are much more specific about how they want to design productions, may or may not create conflicts with the actual structure of the musical piece which, of course, is the responsibility of the conductor. So for a conductor to come in to observe the last three days of a stage process that we’ve been at for three and a half weeks before his orchestral rehearsals is not very useful. In fact, I think that’s a mistake.

There are times the pressure of theatre production values has lessened. People are finding other ways to create new atmospheres. I don’t think everyone has to run around singing Mozart in Spanish boots. But so much of what we call modern opera is actually a question of stage design. A lot of people are still trying to tell the story but with weird costumes and stuff. I think we have some room for fantasy there. I think that when productions are far more innovative in lighting design and atmosphere, we don’t need a lot of furniture on stage.

I think we need to be very careful of the multi-media aspects. You get caught in an aesthetic no man’s land because what we do is tremendously humanly acoustical. If you’re stuck in an electronic atmosphere, there’s going to be a paradox there.

I remember seeing a Faust at the Met that was so incredibly 20^thcentury industrial design that it seemed irritating to hear Gounod’s music inside of it.

VT: A parallel point you’ve made is that with opera you need to tell the story, not some other story imposed on it for the sake of it.

TH:I think that there are  some very intelligent and wonderful producers today and they sometimes tell the same story but in a way that is “My goodness, I’ve never thought of it like that” and that’s an exciting moment. But there’s an awful lot of them starting with “Gee, what would it be like if…” and that to me is never quite as fulfilling as “Gee, what was Verdi up to?” Especially Verdi. The great masters we really should kneel in front of.

VT: Show some respect?

TH:Well, exactly. There was a big conversation about Don Giovanni  back in the day. I’ve always said that a 21^stCentury Don Giovanni would be incredibly exciting to play and please write it for me, anybody, thank you. But Da Ponte and Mozart do not have that responsibility and the Mozart fach is an endlessly fascinating juxtaposition of social context, historical context, manners, mores, morals, that will always focus on a universal that is timelessly valid. That’s not going to get better by mucking about with the context. Don Giovanni  is not the story of a bus ride with seven people and one of them turns out to be an asshole. That’s just not what Giovanni’s about.

It sounds like I’m on some sort of crusade for opera productions. I’m not. It’s just that I’m trying not going to put myself in a position where I can’t be 150 per cent me. And there are some producers, I just know where they’re going and I’m just not interested in doing that. That’s my choice and I don’t mean it as an indictment. Most opera singers don’t have the opportunity to do that. On the other hand, it has cost me work. But I know that it represents a particular standard that most people respect. They know that if Hampson’s on board, we’re going to be dealing with what the piece is about.

VT:What would you say are your recent career highlights in opera?

TH:The last five years, 10 years, the handful of regular repertoire, like Simone Boccanegras that I did, quite a few Otellos and even Scarpias, and that sounds like an unusual repertoire for someone like me.

VT: Is there really such a thing as unusual repertoire for you?

TH:Well, you know, in the cliché world of opera, I’m slightly more elegant than what people would think Otellois, but I think Iago is just one of the great insidious badasses. I love playing evil people. Scarpia is dastardly intelligent, it’s just wonderful to try to keep up with. So I do enjoy that and the rest of the things have been like Mathis der Maler, which is just one of the greatest operas that I’ve ever been in.

It was great fun to return to DonCarlowith [Peter] Stein a few years ago. I don’t know how often I’ll be asked to sing Posa but it is a masterpiece. To be part of a Don Carloproduction is one of the great privileges of a career.

VT: So what are the opera premieres you have coming up?

TH: It’s exciting. Over the next two seasons, I have three world premieres. This floats my boat.

 Rufus Wainwright is writing an opera on Hadrian [the Roman emperor]. We’ve met several times and just get along like busters. I like his music. I heard his Prima Donna opera, and yes, it had flaws but what first opera of what major composer didn’t? This man is a theatrical, musical animal with a lyric gift. A very thoughtful man in terms of the psychology of his characters; I’m enjoying it enormously. That will be in Toronto.

Then there’s The Phoenix   by John Caird and Tarik O’Regan in Houston. It’s a piece on Da Ponte. It’s quite fun as it’s a comedy. It’s the story of Da Ponte in his later years in New York as the first opera company producer and, of course, all the tribulations and soprano huckstery and skirt-chasing you could possibly imagine. I’m the mature Da Ponte and my son-in-law Luca Pisaroni is the young version, so we’ll have fun with that.

Because it’s not announced yet, I won’t say where or what, but somebody’s writing an opera on the film called Girl with a Pearl Earring, the Vermeer story. So I think that will be very interesting.

VT: How did you feel when you first discovered the American songs?

TH:It goes way back. When I was starting out and doing community concerts and you’d work out your little tour, there was an older singer in Los Angeles who helped me program some of my first recitals. She gave me a handful of Richard Hundley and Samuel Barber songs. One would always start with a little Italian, then go into some German and I thought I would then sing some American songs. I liked them very much and I always wondered why there weren’t more.

People in musical education in America were always asking, “Well, who’s our Schubert?” and “Who’s our Brahms?” As I got more familiar with American song, the work of John Alden Carpenter, Charles Griffiths or John Duke – John Alden Carpenter was a hugely important composer in America at the beginning of the 20th century; today in America largely forgotten – I sort of tripped down this road.

I did a record for EMI quite early on in my career called An Old Song Resung. The idea was to get all those radio favourites of the baritones I just loved. That started me down a path that connected me to a completely different paradigm of where song in America comes from, meaning epochs and time frames rather than persons themselves.

Shortly after, we decided to do a Stephen Foster project. Stephen Foster’s passion was to do for American song what Thomas Moore did for Irish Melodies.

I picked up a wonderful book by Professor William Austin out of Cornell University. It was probably the first serious academic book on Stephen Foster. I wasn’t trying to be overly intellectual, I just wanted to know, who is this guy? What are the stories? Most of the literature about Stephen Foster was pretty insipid; Victorian romanticised nonsense about his life.

The first chapter of Austin’s book was the phenomenon of folk music out of Germany and England at the turn of the 19^thcentury, the second chapter was Thomas Moore and somewhere in there was Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which I was very involved with in my other hat, my life with Mahler. And in the third chapter Stephen Foster comes up in this context and I thought, of course, that’s what’s going on here. That’s when I started calling Stephen Foster the trunk of the tree of American Music. Everything up to Stephen Foster was essentially imported.

By the time Stephen Foster comes along in the 1830s and 40s, you got the tremendous influence of Italian opera up and down the East Coast and him copying Bellini and Donizetti, but mostly trying to write like Thomas Moore and trying to capture snapshots in song of contemporary American life, not much Native American, but certainly African American and Irish. Diaspora is the big word, a disenfranchised and/or displaced homesick person in a new country.

That story just never stopped. Every 10 or 15 years of American cultural history, which is very volatile and fast moving, some geniuses are writing poems, telling stories and writing music. What is incredible is that you have so many composers and poets writing moments within their time that are just gems. Then the times move on and they don’t. So to find the American Schubert or Brahms…there’s never a generation when they keep going.

So I started looking at American music completely the other way round. Especially with song repertoire, we really need to look at the poets and composers as the identifiers of the epochs from which they’re coming or they’re trying to articulate. What becomes extremely interesting is from the 1850s on, composers later in the 1860s, 70s, picking up poets and stories from before: this backwards hopping, trying to define for themselves the timelessness of the Americanism involved. And then you have this other phenomenon that the great classic composers spent as much time writing about that process of being an American artist as they did creating their own stuff.

So how did I feel when I discovered this? When I came up with this idea 25 years ago that we should be looking at our cultural history and celebrating the arts regardless of the period they come from versus this myopic star-gazing of trying to find our next superstars, I guess I felt relieved.

But it’s a very difficult argument to bring out. Most orchestras in America, even though we do play American things, we don’t play enough. We certainly don’t celebrate our historical canon of American classic music at all. Maybe one symphony of William Schuman shows up. John Alden Carpenter’s Adventures in Perambulator 

shows up once in a while. What about all the Piston symphonies?

In the song repertoire it’s slightly easier because people are fascinated by having this Song of America. I can bring out composers and they’re willing to say, “I’ve never heard of that guy, what a wonderful song”. Certainly other singers are getting on board. We have quite a strong collegium of singers that are really delving into historical and avant gardeAmerican song and I’m proud to be part of that. I’m gratified that a lot of my younger colleagues are taking the torch and moving on with it.

VT: Can you tell us about your new Songs of America project?

TH: The new project is the Song of America: Beyond Liberty Tour. I want to go to all 50 States and plant this as curriculum. In my Foundation, which I started 15 years ago about song in general, the biggest project is American Song and the next would be German song.

The point of this project is the history of American culture seen through the eyes of poets and composers. The foundation is teaching music and non-musical teachers how to teach history and social studies and politics through the eyes of poets and composers, which smuggles music back into schools and enlivens the whole humanities discussion of historical context. This is desperately needed in American education today. Only 12 per cent of American high school students have a sufficient understanding of American history. Something like 70 per cent of college freshman could not answer correctly the immigration form that we demand of people becoming American. I think that’s wrong.

VT: You recorded Sweet Surrender as part of the tribute album Great Voices Sing John Denver. Do you think Denver’s songs will come to be regarded as classic American folk songs?

TH:You know, there’s a direct line from Stephen Foster to John Denver and it goes through Carl Sandberg and a few other great folk singers.

I think John Denver has several songs that deserve to be heard more regularly. The album was a project borne of other peoples’ minds and they called me up and said would I be part of it. Without hesitation I signed on. They said would you do this song, and I said sure, it’s wonderful.
I love folk music. I adore Pete Seeger, I always have collected his stuff.

VT:How do you manage to be so versatile? Is it like putting on different hats or more of an organic flow here and there?

TH:It’s not so much a conscious or arbitrary decision. It’s more organic to me as I’ve always felt like what I’m singing should sound like what was written. So if I’m singing Cole Porter I don’t want anyone to think I should be singing Iago. And if I’m singing Hugo Wolf, I don’t want anyone to think I could possibly sing George Gershwin.

So I never really got the concept of crossover. To me I’m not crossing anywhere. I feel I have a particular ability, and certainly passion, for making audible the context of human life in various musical languages.

VT:How do you cope with the constant travelling in your career?

TH:There are two levels, I think. One, if you want to have a normal life with family and kids, it’s a tremendous pressure. My wife Andrea of 30 years; we were both married previously and we have four children between us but none of our own.

Andrea and I made a vow when we came together in our lives that we would never be apart for more than two weeks and we’ve held to that. And I don’t think there’s been more than 36 hours that we haven’t spoken on the phone.

The holidays could be exotic for the kids, but there were pressures and I carry guilt about that. I didn’t make a lot of basketball games of my step-son but he was the first boy to have a portable phone so that we were always in contact. We were among the first Skypers.

My kids are great and they’re our best friends. Now we have grandchildren. I think the purpose of grandkids is for parents to say I’m sorry and make it up. [Laughs] I just want to be there for my kids to say, why don’t you guys go on vacation? Let us have the grandkids. We’re good.

Now that our kids are grown, Andrea and I travel together. We factor that into the way we live because the presenters can’t pay for two people to travel. My life is a small business and we have a lot of management stuff to do. But just simply having this adventure together; we’re young for our age, we love life. My step-daughter Catherine Pisaroni is the web-master and designer of my website and she manages all the social media. Every day there’s a new set of photos on What’s App to our extended family. We’ve started a little thing in the last couple of weeks, Where the hell are they now? We were in Russia, then Bulgaria, then Vienna and now here.

The second thing for travelling singers is just staying healthy and staying in voice. I take my personal discipline very seriously. For me, the key to my health and my voice is my sleep patterns. Anything less than eight hours is just a bad idea for me.   You pay attention to draughts. I carry a scarf on the plane. You pay attention to your eating patterns. I’ve done yoga for 35 years.

I have a lot of chats with my younger colleagues about “The Life”. Time management is a big issue. All these devices we have can make your life better. They can also be like having 16 alarm clocks in your room and someone’s jerking your cord every 45 minutes.

VT: It seems sharing your experience with young singers is something you feel compelled to do.

TH:I’m very concentrated on being whatever help I can to pass on the great tradition that I was brought into, not quite knowing at the beginning, and now realising the phenomenal pedigree of people with whom I worked when I started in this business. The kind of colleagues who were very gracious and supportive of me and I would like to be the same. I want to participate in keeping that, as we say in German, Gesangskultur alive and well.

VT: So, are you glad you didn’t become a lawyer?

TH:[Laughs] I think I would have been a disastrous lawyer. I can argue well when I have my facts lined in a row but getting me there is a tortuous, dreamy process.

VT:Judges might get impatient…

TH:[Laughs] Exactly. “Judge, can I get back to you on that tomorrow?”

Really, I don’t regret it careerwise, but I do regret not having had the disciplined educational process. I think that would have been good for me.

VT:But you’ve always been a scholar in your own way.

TH:I have, without doubt. I’ve let my curiosity run rabid.

Editor’s note: Vanessa Taylor’s interview with the man of the moment is our longest ever, but not a word is wasted in questions or responses. It exemplifies Classic Melbourne’s approach which is to publish important and interesting information that can not readily be found elsewhere.

At the time of publishing Thomas Hampson is in Australia, and between concerts in Melbourne.To understand what all the excitement   is about, read Heather Leviston’s review of the MRC recital.

Graeme Murphy deserves this tribute. Not only is it 50 years ago that he started his professional career in the Australian Ballet’s corps de ballet but he is Australia’s best known choreographer internationally.

The Australian Ballet takes a bold approach to this tribute. It could have staged a triple bill of Murphy’s works, but instead chose to use excerpts of four ballets and the short ballets Shéhérazade and Firebird. The idea was seemingly to show as large a range of his choreography as possible (understandably excluding his work with Torvill and Dean), and from a long period of 30 years.

Using excerpts can leave some audience members feeling a little unsatisfied, wishing they could have seen the whole ballet. Then there’s the question of which works to select to represent an incredibly prolific and versatile choreographer.

Some audience members might have preferred a pas de deux from Murphy’s hugely successful commissions by the Australian Ballet: Swan Lake or Nutcracker. Obviously the demands of quick set changes were in the planners’ minds with only pauses in between the five works before interval. But these pas de deux could have been performed without sets. Artistic director David McAlister has sometimes programmed ballets without sets and relied on lighting for effect.

Also absent are two of Murphy’s finest ballets, created for the late Kelvin Coe, principal of the Australian Ballet for many years: Beyond Twelve (Australian Ballet) and Homelands (Sydney Dance Company). Homelands was toured overseas by Sydney Dance Company to great acclaim and it would have been wonderful to show it to a larger Australian audience. Its theme of cultural dislocation is timeless.

Beyond Twelve has been performed by the Australian Ballet without Coe and would have been cost-effective as the Company still has the set and costumes. Beyond Twelve has also toured overseas and it was reportedly so popular that staff at Covent Garden risked their jobs to sneak into the theatre and watch it. The fact that Beyond Twelve was featured in the AB’s 40^th Anniversary Gala in 2002 and in the AB’s Icons in 2012 (a triple bill of significant works from AB’s repertoire) may have gone against its inclusion in this Murphy tribute.

Of the ballet excerpts chosen for Murphy, the ones that work best are Ellipse and Grand.  Both ballets use the structure of a suite with several “self-contained” segments, so it’s easy to pluck a segment (or a few) out for the tribute. The Ellipse excerpt is a western-flavoured romp full of energy and cheekiness that seems a natural projection of Hindson’s sweeping and rhythmic music. It was delightfully and unflaggingly performed by its four dancers.

Preceded by a short video, and interrupted by the dancers’ playing Chopsticks, five segments of Grand are included in Murphy. Each is distinctive – humorous, sensual, sassy, melancholy, playful – and perfectly expresses the mood of its accompanying solo piano music.

Aside from his inventiveness and scope, what Murphy demonstrates is the choreographer’s consistently brilliant choices of music, set, and costume, which don’t merely complement his choreography but are intrinsically part of his ballets.

Murphy provides audiences with the opportunity to appreciate these works and performances. The program demonstrates that the dancers of the Australian Ballet are wonderfully attuned to Murphy’s fiendishly difficult choreography and to expressing both the extremes and the nuances of his imagination.

Murphy ran March 16-26 at the State Theatre at the Arts Centre Melbourne. It will play at the Sydney Opera House April 6-23.

Editor’s note: Classic Melbourne has reviewed a number of Murphy’s ballets over the years. Normally, the focus would also be on the performance of dancers and the orchestra. But this was Murphy’s night, and he chose to share his curtain calls with his partner Janet Vernon.

Soprano Genevieve Kingsford comes from a musical family. Her father, uncle and brother have all played in bands, but she is the only singer among instrumentalists. A few years ago, she followed the call of music and put aside the career she had planned in science.

She made her professional debut as Johanna in an innovative production of Sweeney Todd at the Twickenham Theatre, London, which sold out and won the WhatsOnStage Award for best Off-West End production. After returning home to Melbourne, she soon left again on a tour of China (18 cities in 30 days), performing in the chorus of La Traviata for the Australian International Opera Company.

Now Genevieve is home and making her way in musical theatre. Last year she was a finalist in the Rob Guest Endowment and won Melbourne’s East End Theatre District Artist Development Award. She is about to lend her delightful presence and voice to the role of Fiona in The Production Company’s Brigadoon. 

VT: How did you discover your singing voice?

GK: The first door opening for me was the Grade 6 musical. We did a silly fairy tale musical. I auditioned and just sang and had no idea it was something I might be good at. When I moved to high school Mum said, “Do you want to start singing lessons?” She thought it was a good idea mainly for our confidence socially and we – I say “we” because I’m an identical twin and everything’s “we” – would do it not so much as a pursuit but as an exercise. So I did singing lessons with my twin sister Grace up until Year 9 and then I broke away to have more individual training. We were singing songs together for fun but I wanted to get into singing exams and taking it further.

VT: What’s your range?

GK: It’s G3 to a D6. Might go higher on a good day.

VT: So although you loved music, at university you studied a double major in physiology and behavioural neuroscience?

GK: I did. I’d been involved in every facet of school at St Leonard’s. We really threw ourselves into it, so much so that when I got to the end of school I had no idea what I wanted to do. I did the International Baccalaureate, which makes sure you keep every door open. It worked for me because I was interested in sport, humanities, science, the arts, everything! Then my best subjects were chemistry and maths, so my preferences were science-based and I ended up getting into neuroscience.

VT: Did the careers counsellor discuss singing professionally with you?

GK: I didn’t formally study music as a subject at school though I was in three choirs and choir captain in Year 12. I studied drama and theatre studies. I also kept up my involvement in music with singing lessons and exams.

VT: Your voice is versatile. How did you decide to go with musical theatre rather than opera?

K: I think it was about what I listened to. When I was 14, it was the first time I got really obsessed with a musical. I’d come home from school every day and from about 4 to 9, when I had to go to bed, I would be listening to Les Mis. And around this time, I was in my first musical at high school. I’ve got this theory that one of the reasons people get into performing is because when they get on stage, they get that adrenaline rush, it’s almost like drug. It’s so thrilling to be expressing yourself within the safety of telling a story and captivating an audience. And I felt that when I was in high school musicals and was listening to Les Mis.

My singing teacher, Debbie Mitchell, was classically inclined and when I did my singing exams, I remember the examiners almost every year saying, “You should think about singing classically; doing classical singing at uni might be an option”. But my heart was already in musicals, though even then I didn’t see myself pursuing it as a career. I know that some kids from an early age go “that’s what I want to do”; I had no idea.

VT: So you eventually went to the London School of Musical Theatre?

K: Yes, after my neuroscience degree – I finished that in June 2013 – I started at the London School of Musical Theatre. So I went straight from one to the other. I think that after so many years of academia – I went straight from high school to uni without a gap year – I wasn’t willing to do another three year undergraduate degree, even if it was something so completely different as performing arts.

The London School of Musical Theatre was perfect because it was pitched as a professional’s training that polishes you up and takes you to a practical standard, there’s no academic component. I know that’s not for everyone, and there’s a lot of value in a three year degree, but it was totally right for me at the time.

VT: It must have been a big thing to go to London to study?

GK: Yes, it was exciting. Part of it was that I’d kind of got myself into this position, and maybe it was in my head, where there was an expectation that I was the neuroscientist. That’s the road I was heading down, and for me to say, “Oh, I’m just going to do something different”; it was too hard to make slight shifts. I felt that I had to break down everything. And this is all in hindsight, but it was so necessary to take myself out of my environment and really for the first time, make my own decisions. I had such a huge support network from my school, my family. I’d always been with Grace; the longest we’d ever spent apart was four weeks. Moving overseas for two years was a huge time of growth because I’d really never been by myself.

VT: What was your family’s reaction to your change of career path?

GK: I think they were concerned [laughs] because the arts is a fickle industry, but I know they trusted me.

VT: So have you used your neuroscience degree in your performing?

GK: It’s quite amazing, because when I did The Light in the Piazza last year, the character Clara that I played had a traumatic brain injury as a child. I was a bit cheeky; I even mentioned it at my audition, “Oh, by the way, I have a degree in neuroscience and I studied traumatic brain injury so I know everything… [laughs] … Let me just pop that nugget in for you because I really want that part.”

VT: So how did your casting in The Light in the Piazza come about?

GK: Six years before I played the role is when I discovered the show and just fell head over heels for it. From that point on, if anyone asked me what my dream role was, it was Clara in Piazza. It’s a relatively unknown musical, so the fact that it came to Melbourne when I had got back from living overseas, and was at the right age, was like the stars all aligning. At that point my visa had expired and I hadn’t achieved everything I wanted to do in London and it felt like a kind of defeat. But, sure enough, there was a purpose.

I was in China when I got a message to say that Piazza was auditioning and that I had a time booked. About 10 days after I arrived back I had my audition. When I went into the room, I didn’t know anyone there but I knew all the songs and also picked my own song from the same composer, Adam Guettel. After I sang for them, there was a most surreal moment when time stood still. The casting director said, “Where have you come from? How do we not know about you?” After I got the call saying I got the part, I couldn’t process it so I walked around the lounge room for about an hour and a half calling my mum, my sister, my brother, my best mates, my friends in London. Even throughout the course at the London School of Musical Theatre, every time I auditioned for agents, any time an important guest teacher would come in, I’d sing The Light in the Piazza for them. It’s so deeply rooted in me, it’s a beautiful show.

VT: Did The Production Company’s people see you in Piazza and ask you to audition for Brigadoon?

GK: They did, that’s how it came about. And when I got the call saying I got the part of Fiona, I did the same thing; walked around the lounge room for about an hour calling everyone going “Can you believe it?” I’ve gone from the Playhouse (where Piazza played) to the State Theatre (the 2,000 seat theatre at Arts Centre Melbourne). This is massive and so exciting.

VT: I saw you at Scotland the Brave, doing some research for Brigadoon.

GK: Yes, I was. I’ve been trying to get as many influences as I can. I’ve tried not to watch other productions of Brigadoon, I prefer to do research into the time and that’s why I got really obsessed with the TV show Outlander. It’s set in Scotland about 30 years apart from Brigadoon, back in the 1700s, so it’s a very different time to now. I know it’s a fictional show and not totally accurate, but the dramaturgy they’ve done for it is very appropriate to the production of Brigadoon we’re putting on. So I delved into that and went to Scotland the Brave with the bagpipes and the beautiful folk songs. I’m doing a lot of research, as well, on highland life and Scottish clans because this show is so rooted in the sense of community and I’ve got to know what community meant back in 1717.

VT: What do you think are the challenges of doing Brigadoon?

GK: I think the challenges will be that because the musical was written in the mid-1940s, just making sure it’s relatable to the audience now. The director Jason Langley and musical director Michael Tyack have done so much work on the script; without changing it in anyway that’s too far-fetched or changing the story at all, they’ve taken licence to make it more accessible. When you think about it, the setting is appropriate to now. If you look at our current climate in the world, the idea that someone from the modern day stumbles across a town that’s in the 1700s, a community in a simpler time, it’s idyllic.

My character Fiona is strong, she’s got endurance, especially for the times when if you were single at 24, 25, you’re going to be the talk of the town. She digs her heels in and says, “I’m not going to marry for the sake of doing it”. And the amazing thing about the show is that even though it was written in the 1940s, a female gets an “I want” song and she gets to sing it first.

VT: Brigadoon is your first association with The Production Company. Will it be the first of many?

GK: Oh yes, I hope so. I love The Production Company. It’s a not-for-profit organisation that puts on shows for performers so we get work. We also get a chance to delve into some stories that aren’t commonly told here.

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Brigadoon plays at the State Theatre October 28 –November 5, 2017. Details and booking.

Bass-baritone Derek Welton started singing with the Australian Boys Choir before moving onto Melbourne Chorale. In 2004, he won the Encouragement Award at the Herald-Sun Arias and the following year was Runner-up. He is now under contract to Deutsche Oper Berlin and this year makes his debut at both the Bayreuth Festival and the Salzburg Festival. Classic Melbourne writer Vanessa Taylor catches up with him to find out more.

VT: When did you first envisage a career in opera?

DW: It was not a life-long plan to become a musician. I was accelerated through school and ended up going to uni at 16. I started studying law and arts at Melbourne Uni. At the time, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer but I ended up doing a double major in Linguistics and German. It wasn’t until later that I did something serious about singing, after various people telling me I should. I was in the Melbourne Chorale from ’99 to ’03 and people, including Jonathan Grieves-Smith, were telling me “you’ve got some potential, you really should get some lessons”. Eventually, Richard Gill was conducting a Messiah for the Chorale. He picked me out of the group and asked me to come and sing for him, and he said the same thing. Still, it was some time later that I started getting lessons. It then became clear to me pretty quickly, as it never had before, that singing was a career interest.

I think it meant that I took everything more in my stride than I would have if I’d always had a drive from day one to become a singer. I never studied an undergraduate music degree and I didn’t have a kind of competition feeling that I think some people do from a young age. So things like the Herald-Sun Aria were just how it was to me. I was nervous in the final but I was nervous in a way one is in any performance when one’s young. More than anything, I think it was an enjoyable experience because there I was, performing arias that I never otherwise would have had the opportunity to perform; with an orchestra, in a full Melbourne Concert Hall (now Hamer Hall).

VT: So what led to your move to London?

DW: I won the Guildhall Prize in the 2005 Australian Singing Competition and despite having had no immediate plan to move overseas, one doesn’t turn down a full scholarship like that. I moved to London in August 2006 to study at Guildhall. The first year was post-graduate and there were two following years on the opera course, finishing in July 2009. Then I ended up doing a part-time year called the fellowship. It was a new programme, which gave me access to a singing teacher and I had some input back into the school at the same time. So it was another year to allow me to develop with some connection to an institution, which was very useful.

VT: While studying at Guildhall, you won the Handel Singing Competition in London. What led you to enter the Competition?

DW: It was one of the first things that I’d done in London, actually, in April 2007. Because I never had direct peer relationships in music studies until I moved to the UK, I never knew how far what I did would take me. I didn’t know how I would fit into the scheme of things. So, I signed up for the Handel Competition and went through every phase and all of a sudden ended up winning it, which was a very pleasant surprise.

VT: It’s interesting that you haven’t done a great deal of Handel since. What’s the reason that you’re now leaning more towards Wagner?

DW: Yes, it’s not by design. My first love was, and still is, Bach. I would gladly sing Bach every week and I’d gladly sing more Handel. I’ve got a Jephtha coming up next year. Partly, it’s that there’s less opera in the baroque repertoire. So there are not as many opportunities in the opera world, which is what I’m increasingly associated with and where the bulk of the employment is. I do feel probably that the more I develop, the more my voice tends toward Wagner. While I want to maintain the flexibility to sing Bach and Handel, I think the more you do Wagner, the more people think of your name in association with that repertoire.

VT: Do you think there’s still an idea that Handel and Wagner require two distinct voices?

DW: Yes and it’s a shame. Hans Hotter and Fischer-Dieskau sang everything. I would gladly sing more baroque music. And for voice matching if you’ve got people who just specialise in one thing, it doesn’t always make for seamless ensemble.

VT: You’ve been with Deutsche Oper Berlin for 2 years. How did your contract with the company come about?

DW: It all worked out serendipitously. I hadn’t planned on taking a fixed contract. My agent was very keen for me to consider the idea. It was a great way to get a lot of repertoire under my belt and helping me grow. So in 2013, I auditioned for the Deutsche Oper and sang my repertoire. They immediately offered me a two-year contract, which was surreal. Having just bought a flat in London, I learned I’d be moving countries again. But it’s been a wonderful experience in Berlin.

I think I’ve done 16 roles so far, which is a lot. Twelve of them are new roles. And I think I’ve grown as an artist from the experience. You learn so much from the vast array of things that you sing and the approach to it. Often there are quite short rehearsal periods, so I think I learned to be more realistic about expectations. You’re less precious about every little thing you do and I think it makes you a better artist.

VT: You’ve just concluded performances in a wonderful production of Billy Budd at Deutsche Oper. How did you find singing Mr Flint?

DW: It was strange to be in a cast that is entirely men, which I’d never done before. I found the role of Flint a tricky sing. I don’t want to use the word “shouty” but it’s quite exclamatory. They are not very nice men, the officers. I far prefer roles with a lot of lyric singing where you can really sing through phrases, as with a lot of Wagner’s scores. I found Flint almost harder to sing than Wotan in Das Rheingold. On the other hand, it’s a very good task to learn how to sing something like Flint without damaging your voice.

VT: What did you consider when deciding to accept the challenge of singing Wotan?

DW: It’s interesting. When the Deutsche Oper staff came to ask me about doing Wotan in Das Rheingold, it was about a year before I actually sang it. As a developing singer, I always used to think “that’s future repertoire”. You spend years of your life thinking I’m not going to sing that for years. All of a sudden, it’s no longer so far in the future. At the end of 2015, I was doing Angelotti in Deutsche Oper’s Tosca and Falk Struckmann was singing Scarpia. He asked me, “Have you sung Scarpia as well?”and I nearly laughed because I thought that’s so crazy. Then suddenly I thought, well, actually, it’s not. At some point you do start singing this repertoire.

Again, taking Hans Hotter as an example, he sang his first Wotan at the age of 23 and I don’t see why we shouldn’t do that if we have the right voices. When we look back years ago, there were singers taking a longer time to develop. One of the things that has changed now is that we have such access to recordings and when people think of Wotan, they think of Hans Hotter at 50 or George London at 40. They’re not used to hearing singers’ voices develop over time and I think I’d rather be somebody who starts something young and learns as I mature, how to do it better every time. In this case, what I found with Rheingold – I didn’t sing the Die Walküre Wotan or the Wanderer – is that it suits my tessitura very well. A lot of the roles I’ve sung have stretched me upwards or downwards and this one sits right in the correct range for me.
I’m never scared of the size of Wagner’s orchestra. If you look at a Wagner score, the majority of his dynamic markings for the orchestra are piano or pianissimo. He’s very clever with orchestration. There are points where a singer needs to be loud, but they’re mostly high in your voice so you have extra power. Rheingold was the highlight of my career to date. It’s beautiful music. It’s tender and soft in so many moments. I found it was a really holistic experience; everything came together. I didn’t need to think, goodness, I must sing loudly here; it just comes out of you. It’s part of what you’re expressing as a character.

VT: You’ve done a couple of productions of Das Rheingold and I believe there are more scheduled?

DW: Yes, in January there’s the Rheingold at Semperoper (Dresden) singing Donner, which will be interesting, having recently sung Wotan in Berlin. There will be another Wotan in Rheingold in a few years, as well.

VT: You make your debut at Bayreuth next month.

DW: I’m excited, though it happened under unfortunate circumstances. In January, I auditioned for the role of Klingsor in Parsifal for the 2018 festival. At the audition, they were happy. A week later, the poor man who was singing Klingsor in this year’s première of the production, Gerd Grochowski, suddenly died. So they said to me, “Would you be free this year?” It’s sad that I’m taking over from somebody who’s died, but at least the production will continue. It took some negotiation as I’m already singing in Salzburg this year. There was a lot of organisation involved to allow me to come back and forth for performances of Parsifal while rehearsing Lear in Salzburg. But everyone was very accommodating. I really can’t be thankful enough to these people for allowing me to do all this. It also means that I’ll be doing a fair bit of driving in July and August.

VT: Given that you’re contracted to Deutsche Oper, how does it work with guest appearances for other companies? DW: It’s always with the permission of the Deutsche Oper but they’re very generous when good engagements come along. As soon as Bayreuth came along, they were ecstatic for me. They took me out of the final six performances of a production just to facilitate it. They’ve done the same for my guesting at the Semperoper and for the Salzburg Festival this summer. That’s one of the things that makes me so appreciative of Deutsche Oper.

VT: Would you accept a Ring Cycle if it was offered?

DW: I would wait on the other two Wotans. The Rheingold Wotan is much shorter to sing. I’m particularly keen on singing The Wanderer before I sing the Die Walküre Wotan. I’m preparing them slowly and getting them into my body. It takes a long time to get them into your body so you can sing with full engagement. Again, I know it’s early compared to a lot of my colleagues, but the way I sing this repertoire is with the same voice as anything else, and I don’t think I’m causing any vocal damage doing it. So if I was offered a Ring Cycle in a few years time, I would look favourably on it.

VT: So would you consider returning home for a Melbourne Ring when you feel ready for it?

I’d dearly love to return to Australia. I’d happily return for anything, but especially The Ring. That would be a dream come true.

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Read more about Derek Welton at his website.