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SEEN
AND HEARD INTERVIEW
Carpe diem
:
the great Argentinian tenor, José Cura talks with Jim
Pritchard about how he looks forward to every day.
(JPr)
The biography on the tenor’s own informative web site
JoseCura.com,
begins by saying how he is ‘World-famous for his
intense and original interpretations of opera
characters, notably Verdi's Otello and Saint-Saëns'
Samson, as well as for his unconventional and
innovative concert performances, José Cura is the
first artist to have sung and conducted
simultaneously (both in concert and on recordings)
and the first to combine singing with symphonic works
in a “half and half” concert format. He also made
operatic history when he first conducted
Cavalleria rusticana and then stepped on stage
after intermission to sing Canio in Pagliacci
at the Hamburg Opera in 2003.’
This might already seem enough for one person - star
tenor and conductor - but add to this that he is also
a composer, an opera director, set designer and
photographer and the mind begins to boggle. Then do
not forget he is also visiting professor of voice at
the Royal Academy of Music in London as well as being
associated with the British Youth Opera and New Devon
Opera and in fact you begin to wonder what the person
is like behind these achievements and commitments. So
during his rehearsals for his first Calaf at Covent
Garden in their revival of
Turandot it was wonderful to meet such an
out-going, self-effacing, humorous and knowledgeable
person. Our talk ranged from José Cura’s earliest
memories to his future plans and dwelt on those
moments that otherwise have been highlights of his
career and the 46 years of his life so far.
How did his career in music begin?
That I don’t know and we cannot even ask my father
who died about a year ago now. I remember he used to
say to me ‘Ok you want to be a musician well that’s
fine … but what are you going to do for work?’
I do not recall many years of my life when I have not
been on stage. I began when I was about 12 and that’s
33 years now so my memories of being on stage are
more than my memories off. I sang only as an amateur
– chorus singer, pop music, spirituals in octets,
some jazz singing and other things like that. It was
a way of expressing myself that I did in parallel to
my studies at the Conservatoire in Buenos Aires and
that was in composing and conducting. For some reason
I don’t recall why that was my vocation; all I
remember is when I was 15 I said to my father ‘I want
to be a conductor’. Fate is what moves you to one
thing or another and when I had almost finished my
studies one of my teachers said to me that I had
better start learning how to sing properly. I
wondered why as I did not want to be a singer. He
said that it is the same way that understanding all
the instruments I could play, such as violin, flute
and trombone, helps with being a good conductor so by
studying singing I could become an even better one.
So I started to learn proper singing and not just the
‘poppy’ singing I was doing and one thing lead to
another and here I am.
I wondered what made him move to Europe in 1991.
For me I find everything comes because of some reason
and at that time in Argentina we were at the end of a
military dictatorship and it was the first years of
the new democracy and to live in my country then was
really an adventure. We had a child and I had four
jobs and my wife had two jobs and even then we did
not have enough money at the end of the each month.
We took the risk and decided to go to Europe to see
what might happen for me. If nothing happens then we
could always come back. Of course we didn’t have the
money to buy the tickets so we sold out little
apartment and I remember that they gave me for it
what I am now getting for one night’s fee as a first
tenor – so life is funny in a way – but it was a very
tiny apartment of course and not that my fee is so
big!
(Laughs) We came first to Verona and we’d met
someone on the plane coming over who helped us so we
started to pull a few strings, worked in restaurants
and hospitals, managed to cope and eventually it
happened for me.
His first Calaf was in Verona in 2003; it is an
open-air auditorium that he has sung in a number of
times over the years and I asked what it was like for
him to sing there.
It is an amazing place to sing when you sing out,
though it is in the intimate moments when you feel
the handicap of the place because you have to sing
loud. You do not shout but must be loud, so no
matter what you want to say you lose the subtleties.
There is no problem with the big moments such as with
the ‘vinceròs’ and things like that and you can feel
the 16,000 people roaring at the end of the aria; so
then it is an amazing feeling.
Why had it taken him a while to sing Calaf which
along with Dick Johnson, Otello Samson and others has
now become one of his signature roles?
Yes it was 15 years after my international career
began and it was always because I refused to sing
such a one-dimensional character but then of course I
surrendered because of the incredible beauty of the
music. The next step was to find something in his
personality for me – not necessarily positive because
he has a lot of negative sides – so I can sing that
and it is a change from the usual hero on stage and
therefore a nice challenge.
Calaf is not really interesting, in the sense of the
psychological analysis of his character and his
development through the opera. He is the same
character from the beginning to the end. He knows he
is going to win her, he’s arrogant and a bastard in
every sense. He does not care about love and actually
he does not mention the word throughout the whole
libretto : he talks about power, about domination,
about money and so could be any of our politicians
nowadays!
In this revival I have added, because that is part of
my style, more physicality to the role particularly
in the last duet. That last duet is almost a Freudian
moment of possession and Turandot surrenders to him
not only psychologically but sexually. So we are
trying to do a bit more here in a stylised way and I
am lucky that I also have a very athletic soprano.
Iréne Theorin, though of course we cannot have sex on
stage but we try to picture that and this is the main
addition to the staging we have done.
Had he any views on the various completions of the
ending of Turandot?
I’ve sung two alternative endings. One is the
original Alfano ending which is even tougher
harmonically with a more evolved musical style that
is closer to Schoenberg and similar composers –
remember Alfano lived in that period too. The
traditional one that we do here is the second Alfano
version, a little more rounded in the corners, not
Puccini of course but more acceptable according to
the previous music heard in the opera.
I have also done the ending without the last duet
when there is the death of Liu and the curtains close
and that is the end. If that happens your character
is less of a bastard and it is more biographical
because of what happened to Puccini. Everyone knows
that Liu is the
alter ego of the Manfredi girl and Turandot is the
alter ego of Elvira, Puccini’s wife, and
that’s just what Puccini did when Doria Manfredi
committed suicide: he just went to Brussels to die
and so more or less ended his life in Turandot.
So if we carry on and do the traditional ending,
then we have a really disgusting character who only
10 bars on from killing the only person he really
loved, turns around and continues his social
climbing - someone who would sell his own mother to
achieve what he wants.
He has sung Calaf in 2007 in Shanghai and I asked
what it had been like to perform Turandot in
China.
I remember doing a press conference and saying ‘I’m
coming to China to tell the Chinese how to be
Chinese’. But of course Calaf in the plot to the
opera is a foreigner himself so that helps and is not
so bad. Also the production was not like the one we
are doing now where we try to be authentic. Here that
is okay because maybe apart from some Chinese in the
audience no one will know what mistakes we are making
and if some things are not Chinese but occidental. In
China everybody would notice what was wrong, so it
was a very modern production and very wise in the
sense that my character was somebody travelling
through time and arriving in an old China - and
being modern himself he set about convincing
everyone to drop their old traditions and to move
forward into the modern world. So the message was
very interesting and they reacted well.
We sang in a gigantic auditorium though the acoustics
were very good. China certainly knows more about our
music than we know about theirs and if only because
of that, they deserve our respect though the thing I
remember most – which is shocking for us – is that
they eat during the performance. When I asked about
this they said it was what they do every day and
nobody saw a problem with it. So if you can cope with
the fact that you might raise your head during an
aria and see someone eating in the first row because
it is normal for them to do so, then the rest is
fine.
I asked now Calaf compares to some of the other roles
he has become famous for.
Well there is nobody so one-dimensional though
Pinkerton, for instance, is an even worse character
for me. Despite it happening in another time period
Pinkerton with his paedophilia and sexual tourism is
much worse than Calaf’s greediness. Another famous
bastard, a big one Italian style, is the Duke in
Rigoletto and another who is one but is also a
great character to portray is Stiffelio. He is a
hypocrite and someone who proclaims peace and love
and yet can hate to the point of wanting to kill his
wife. It is a case of ‘do what I say not what I do.’
Stiffelio is very interesting psychologically and
that is something I like; it was my debut role here
at Covent Garden in 1995.
I wondered what his thoughts then, were on Otello.
Otello is a very complicated issue because if you do
just what is written and forget the centuries of
tradition, then Otello is the bastard of all the
bastards. He is the biggest because he is somebody
who was a Muslim who became a Christian for political
convenience and he is now engaged in killing Muslims
himself. He is a professional killer and there is
nothing heroic or noble in his behaviour. In the
context of modern fundamentalism this is a problem.
Otello is a very complicated character and now after
singing the role for a number of years, I am getting
more and more to the point where, apart from the
ending when he is a little bit pitiful, l for the
rest of the time I make him very disgusting which is
not always what traditional people want to see in
this opera. They come to see the poor black guy who
has been cheated and who suffers and forget all the
other things that must be dealt with also.
I have done Otello in some weird situations and once
in Zürich was in a spaceship where I was Captain Kirk
and Iago was Mr Spock, but in that production you
could ignore the ridiculous surroundings and it was
very well acted. I was lucky to have tremendous
colleagues including Ruggero Raimondi and Daniela
Dessì and so we were able altogether to create a
great atmosphere with the thing to make it one of my
most daring Otellos.
He has a lot of options for things to keep him busy;
conducting, composing, set design, directing,
teaching not forgetting the singing, so I wondered
how he balances his working life.
Well I don’t think I balance it at all and I just do
not stop. My day starts at 7 in the morning and
finishes at midnight but it is never a chore and is
great fun. To distract myself from the singing day,
I can sit down and draw some sketches for a
production I want to do and that is a good thing.
Doing one thing all the time would end up suffocating
me, but I have 3, 4, 5 things I might be working on
and that for me creates a real distraction, and is a
good thing.
In 2007 I enjoyed creating my show
La commedia è finita in Croatia and there is
information about it on my website and I have not
long ag,o directed Un ballo in maschera in
Cologne, I was the director and set designer for
that, and it was good. I didn’t sing in that of
course but sometimes I will sing, sometimes not, so
in 2010 when I am directing a new Samson et
Delilah in Karlsruhe for the opening of the season
I will be designing that and singing in some of the
performances. So it is all part of the same thing and
its not that I do one thing one day and something
entirely different the next: here one thing is
enriching the other. Of course it is a lot of work
and needs a lot of energy. I am glad God gave me this
body and my energy and I know it is not something
everybody could cope with because it really can be
exhausting.
I asked if he had a particularly style when he
directs.
My way of directing is the same way I am when on
stage. My concentration is on the acting technique
and really understanding the subtext of what we are
doing. This has been the feature of my career as I
believe people come to the opera house to see good
acting. If you want to hear good singing these days
you can stay at home and put on a CD but if you come
to the theatre you want to see good acting and if
they do not get it, we will lose our public. There
is no way they are just coming to listen as in
previous times when there was no other way to hear
music.
How had all his work with young performers come to be
centred in England?
It’s amazing how everything is happening in Great
Britain. They all asked and I love to do it. I am a
father of three and my eldest son is living and
studying in London and is a young, up-and-coming
actor but more than that it is the responsibility of
my generation to nurture the new generations. So in a
humble way I try to pass on my experience and my
training and to draw them into my little revolution
of trying to be a believable actor, even if it means
sacrificing a sound to an overall result. My
contribution is purely artistical and I give as much
time as I can. It is great to be involved with three
English organisations - something as an Argentinian I
never expected.
(Laughs)
My theory is when I give a masterclass, the people
attending will already be young professionals with a
high level of education. I will not be teaching them
singing as I cannot in a few hours or even one or two
weeks teach somebody how to sing. The only thing is
if I hear something dangerous or ugly, then I can
give them some advice about how to try another way
and tell them to discuss it with their teacher. In
the short term it is possible to do more damage than
help. I get them to discover their characters and to
discover their psychology and understand why the
voice on a certain note should sound a certain way to
convey the meaning of the text and what that
character feels in that moment.
I am pleased to say that in 99% of the cases, by
putting aside complicated technical issues, almost
without realising it they will sing better. They
often say ‘I’ve never sung this aria so easily’. They
may have worried before about the aria but now they
have the psychology of the character and trust the
composer, so the job is done.
Did he himself have a mentor?
For me my biggest mentor is my own wife who next year
will have been with me 30 years. That is a lot of
patience for someone married to somebody like me.
Other people along the way gave me help but I never
had a sort of godfather throughout my career because
I repeat the only one who has been there from the
beginning - in the good times, in the bad times and
the more-or-less times - was my wife.
I referred to his published book of photographs and
asked if he still has time for both photography and
composing.
My hobby is to take photos and I never thought about
doing a book, but there was a Swiss editor who had
seen some of my pictures and said could we do a book
of them. My reaction was ‘I don’t think people need a
book of photographs by Cura’ but he persuaded me and
he was right because they are good pictures and I am
pleased I can give the opportunity to people to try
and see what I see. It’s selling pretty well.
I don’t compose big things any more because I do not
have the time and any way I will have the rest of my
life to write music: orchestration particularly,
takes a huge amount of time. What I do a lot now is
to write song cycles because that takes less time.
Last year in Italy I had the première of my song
cycle based on Pablo Neruda’s poems and it was a
great success. I was very pleased because I was
worried. When you are a singer, people can complain
but ultimately the responsibility for the music is
not yours but when you sing your own compositions it
is tricky. You are not sure what is going to happen
as it is a very risky thing to do. Now in January
2009, I will record this cycle of seven songs and
parallel with the recording will release the vocal
piano scores.
The last big thing I wrote was a
Requiem
for the victims of the Falklands War in 1984 when I
was about 22. One day I might rewrite it completely
or I may even leave it like it is with its innocent
naivety of someone young.
Will he be back to Covent Garden soon and
what is he most looking forward to in his busy
schedule?
This is my last signed contract here now with
Turandot and I hope we can discuss other things
for the future, but if not I’ve been singing here
since understudying Carreras in 1994 and making my
debut in 1995 so in 2009 that will be 15 years and
that is a lot of time.
In February I will go to Bologna to conduct
La Rondine and this is something very new and we
are still discussing it now. It is because Italy has
it own financial difficulties and the opera is
suffering and they have had to reschedule the whole
season. Two big productions in February have been
cancelled and because I was going to be there at the
end of January for masterclasses they have asked me
if I wanted to continue the masterclasses with
performances of La Rondine done with students
and I like this idea very much. It is not confirmed
yet and I’ll have to work like hell since rehearsals
would start in a couple of weeks now and I am still
to open the score – or even receive it. Although it
is always traumatic for a theatre to cancel
productions due to lack of money, to substitute this
with something using young people is a daring thing
and takes a lot of courage.
In March I’m also particularly looking forward to my
return to the Metropolitan Opera, simply because my
debut there in 1999 was in
Cavalleria rusticana when Domingo sang Pagliacci.
Now I’m going back to do them both myself and
that will be exactly 10 years after I first sang
there.
I think I look forward to everything, everyday – it’s
my way …
carpe diem!
©
Jim Pritchard
For more
information on José Cura visit his website
www.josecura.com.
For information about performances of the revival of Andrei Serban’s
production of Turandot at Covent Garden (Johan Botha sings
Calaf at some performances) in December and January see
www.roh.org.uk.