Opera in crisis? Twilight of the Opera Gods – A personal essay by Jim Pritchard (JPr)

In the days soon after the Tiger was pronounced to be on the verge of extinction, let us say definitively that, if not yet quite wiped out, international British Wagner singers are an equally endangered species. I do not wish to insult the older individuals still being paraded in the international opera circus, but we are just not breeding enough young ones to take their place. The last great hope of the species, Bryn Terfel, is unlikely to reach the Wagner summit now after his recent withdrawal from the Covent Garden Ring cycles where he has been replaced as Wotan by that old ‘greyback’ male, Sir John Tomlinson.

History had me first meet Bryn Terfel in the downstairs toilet of the London Coliseum over 20 years ago prior to auditioning him for the Wagner Society’s Bayreuth Bursary which, of course, he won, another notch on what we hoped even then would be the Wotan’s spear with which he would conquer the Wagner world. Sadly this has not materialised, even though time is on his side  as he will soon be only 42 to Sir John's  62. But, and it's a big one,  Bryn Terfel appears to have real difficulty getting into these Wagner roles and  with his growing reputation for cancellations,  he could soon  lose the trust of opera managements, apart from the more cynical ones willing to ‘sell-out’ tickets on the back of his name and not offering refunds - even when  they fear he may drop out.

Terfel's  statement via his agent said: ‘I am deeply sorry that I feel it necessary to cancel my performances at Covent Garden this autumn. I have had a particularly stressful family situation involving one of my children this summer which has affected the time I had put aside to prepare for this challenging role. Having begun rehearsals it is clear to me that I would not be able to perform at the standard I would wish to, and rather than progressing through rehearsal in the hope that I might make it, I feel it is better for The Royal Opera and the fantastic team working on this epic production that I withdraw at this stage.’

More worrying is the fact that he has sung the Wotans before and is only adding Wanderer (Siegfried) this time. Nowhere in any commentary about this is the fact mentioned that he appears -  despite all this difficulty -  to have had the time to be involved in his eighth festival at the Faenol Estate in Gwynedd at the end of August: which he neatly gets out of the way before cancelling the Royal Opera. There is also evidence in a ‘diary’ entry for the Western Mail that he was settling down to learn the Siegfried role as late as this August. Just how long has this Wanderer been in his performance diary I wonder?

There have been a number of other short notice cancellations by Bryn Terfel. Those involving Wagner include the time in 2000 when he pulled out of an entire run of performances at the Royal Opera House of Der fliegende Holländer citing a back injury,  and in March 2005 he was absent for the live TV broadcast of Die Walküre even though he was in good form at the performance before.

Bryn Terfel probably has more money now than he ever dreamed of when  growing up in his small Welsh village, and seems very much a family man:  so much so  that in 1998, he withdrew from the Edinburgh Festival when his wife had problems with her second pregnancy and later also pulled out of engagements leading up to the birth of their third son. He apparently  announced recently,  ‘The importance of opera is slipping from the diary and there may be a change in 2008. I want a year that's clear of opera, to concentrate on concerts and radio and TV work’. The fact that there was supposed to be a Hans Sachs for Welsh National Opera at the end of this period may just have been a coincidence and currently  I can only believe that  he will sing the role when I actually see him on stage at the Millennium Centre.  Sachs  is a role he was born to sing, but  will he ever? I do hope so, but doubt it. While I am genuinely sorry for the ‘personal family reasons’ apparently behind his current decision and sincerely hope they can be overcome, it seems to me that Terfel must decide whether he is a full-time family man (he has three children 13, 8 and 6) or a dedicated artist. If the latter, then he might usefully remember the hackneyed old-adage that ‘the show must go on’.

But are Bryn Terfel’s problems simply part of a wider malaise in the world of opera?  These are sad and murky times for opera, internationally with the recent suicide of the American tenor Jerry Hadley (who killed himself after what friends said was a prolonged bout of depression) with reported career, financial and drinking problems among other singers and recently with the alcohol and drug abuse revelations by the German tenor Endrik Wottrich discussing  the music world around him.

Wottrich, 43, received harsh criticism for pulling out of a performance of Siegmund at the Bayreuth Festival this summer because of a heavy cold. Losing his temper, he lifted the curtain on the pressures of performing and the personal abuse it causes. In an interview in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he claimed: ‘To deal with the pressures soloists are taking beta blockers to control their angst, some tenors take cortisone to push their voice high, and alcohol is everywhere … The real pressure is no longer good old stage fright but comes from a new dimension that has penetrated opera — it now lives from glamour, and normal human mistakes are a disruption in such an environment … The stress levels are too high... the whole opera world is sick. There are standards expected of us that are just not possible to realise.’ Speaking out,  Wottrich tells of opera singers being treated as advertising icons, forced to travel and perform so regularly that they get sick, exhausted and ruin their voices.

All this appears to be supported by the high numbers of stars who dropped out of this year's Salzburg Festival, many citing sickness or even depression, causing the organisers untold distress. The list included Russian soprano Anna Netrebko (laryngitis), Mexican tenor, Rolando Villazón (depression), American tenor Neil Shicoff, Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, Bulgarian mezzo-soprano Vesselina Kasarova, and Magdalena Kozená, the Czech mezzo-soprano and partner of Sir Simon Rattle.

It appears that most of the performers produced doctors' notes stating they were indeed sick or stressed though festival organisers claim that some of the singers are abusing their status as celebrities. They threaten to stop booking 'stars' in favour of less famous yet equally talented performers. Netrebko had come under the strongest attack and was accused of being 'unreliable' after she pulled out of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, for which there were tickets on the black market at €300. Wottrich, the partner of Katharina Wagner, great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner, said that singers were being treated like machines. 'We're faced with the choice of performing and then being attacked for failing to hit the right note, or calling in sick only to be attacked for taking things too easy. The fact that Anna Netrebko has been accused of being unreliable is a cheek. I know from reliable sources that she has laryngitis. Of course she cancelled the performance because she knows the festival hype and knows that every false note she sings would be the death of her in every city in which she is considered a star.'

So, perhaps there are two sides to every story: I must add here that I remember Endrik Wottrich as a rather slim David in Die Meistersinger …anyone seeing him as Florestan recently would see how much he has grown now into the heavier Heldentenor roles in more ways than one, so much so that he was described somewhere as a bodybuilder. Why exactly?

It basically comes down to the fact that these young artists have had it relatively easy; success has come quickly with the wealth to match. Not for them the grind of minor roles season after season, refining their voice, building stamina and confidence and determining a career path. Like modern footballers (who similarly seem to get injured very easily) once singers have more money than they’ll ever spend it is much easier for them to let the public …but probably more importantly themselves…down.

 

© Jim Pritchard

 

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