- You will appear at the Budapest Spring Festival as part of the programme dedicated to the Puccini memorial year. I guess this is no accident, considering that you are said to be a Puccini singer.
- Indeed I have sung in eight Puccini operas and he is one of my favourites, though I have not sung any Puccini this season, yet. But I also sing roles by many other composers.
- But you probably do not want to deny that you have a special aptitude for singing his music...
- If I did not have such aptitude, I could not sing him this often, considering that Puccini's music is built on grand emotions and passions, but at the same time on the fragility of emotions. Unlike Puccini's music, Verdi's music is based on noble emotions. For instance the celebration of being a patriot. A Sicilian peasant, unlike people from other regions, will never show his emotions. This gives him a sort of noble stand, like my father or grandfather had, but Puccini's heroes do not hide their feelings at all.
- As far as I know, your world debut, at Covent Garden, was also in the role of such a Puccini hero.
- Yes, I debuted with La Boheme in Covent Garden and then I sang the role in all of the great opera halls around the world. Rodolfo is an emblematic role for all tenors, it is one not to be missed. It is about youth, the start of one's career - the youth of a bohemian and of all humans. And at the same time, it is a painful discovery of reality because it involves the young poet's first encounter with death. This opera has deeply affected me, I am still moved by it even today. I have sung La Boheme very many times, also with my wife, the soprano Angela Gheorghiu. We often sing together and have made eighty to a hundred joint performances over the past ten years. The director Benoit Jacquot has made a French film version of Tosca with the two of us. We share the same passion for our vocation, and we have similar tastes, so we complement each other perfectly in our professional as well as our private lives.
- You said before that you cherished Verdi for the nobility of the emotions he expresses. I understand that after winning the Luciano Pavarotti Competition in 1988, you toured around Britain and Europe as Alfred from La Traviata.
- I sang that role more than 150 times. Also later, at the Metropolitan. At the Met, I also sang the title role in Othello, Count Mantau in Rigoletto, Radames in Aida, in Gounod's Romeo and Juliet, in the title role of Faust, Don José in Carmen, Pinkerton in Madam Butterfly and Nemorino in The Elixir of Love. Generally, I enjoy singing everything from bel canto to jazz, from folk music to contemporary music. But actually, I am a fan of melody. Opera, of course, is my favourite, but I am the same with music as Don Giovanni was with women.
- Does your wife ever get jealous?
- No, because she also admires music.
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- What is your relationship to Mozart?
- Nowadays, there is a ranking in the opera world which goes like this: Mozart, Verdi and the rest. Mozart is the universal genius, his music touches the depths of the soul. Indeed, his is God's music. God formed him to his own image. Mozart is God's music and Verdi is man's music. At the same time, music itself is the language of God. I have recorded for CD all tenor roles by Mozart and in France the tenor version of Don Giovanni was part of my repertoire.
- You have mentioned that you are a man of melody. So what is your relationship to modern music? One cannot say that it is rich in melody.
- Indeed, contemporary composers try to express our age, so there is not an abundance of harmony. Some of them have composed music especially for me. For instance Vladimir Cosma, whose opera premiered last year. But apart from cases when I have the honour of composers writing music for me, I also consider it important to support young composers. If I was not overloaded with work the way I am, I would quite like to spend more time studying new compositions.
- Under the excuse of modernity one encounters many abstract approaches to staging operas these days...
- That is not what modernity is really about. If a painter paints a patch on the wall, it is still only a patch. If he paints a square, it is not yet abstract art. They should have more imagination than that. For me, modernism is represented by the use of modern technologies in staging opera. Traditional works, such as Puccini for instance, can also be staged with a modern approach. Just look at the wonderful royal palace in Budapest, the amazing parliament building. You cannot call them modern, yet they function in modern ways. Their lighting and functioning are modern but these national monuments still remain historic. The same applies to opera. Emotions have existed since the start of time, we experience them the same way today as in the past. If they remain valid, then I believe this is their modernity. Next week for instance I will sing Cyrano in Monte Carlo and the emotions I will have to evoke in that role are valid even today. It is not being dressed in jeans that makes an opera modern - not that I am against wearing jeans - but being modern depends on the expression of the singer: whether he can convey the life experience of the composer to a contemporary audience.
Author: Katalin Metz / Photo: Máté Nándorfi
