Opera audiences in Rome witnessed an important Nabucco performance in March. The performance received special attention not only because it was part of a series celebrating the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy but also because on the day of its premiere, a significant cut in funding for culture was announced and conductor Riccardo Muti made a short speech during the intermission of the performance expressing his protest, then had the audience sing along during the famous Freedom Choir. The Italian press had much coverage of the event but they forgot to mention an additional detail. The fact that you sang in the role of Abigail. How did you get the part?
It was originally intended for another singer but she fell ill a week before the premiere. They told me to hurry to Rome because Riccardo Muti wanted to hear me. Just the previous night, I had sung a Macbeth premiere in Modena. After listening to me, the maestro said, ?Where have you been all this time??. As a result of the shortage of time, I could only get two stage rehearsals and a few opportunities to work with Muti. His level of preparedness is fantastic and his hands are so expressive that he is considered a point of reference in Italian theatre. He permanently keeps an eye on us and you can read everything from him. One can really tell that what you hear is exactly what?s written in the score. That means freedom to me. It is natural in Rome that they perform a revised version because the maestro always insists on the original score. I therefore had to re-learn some parts of the role because previously I had always sung Abigail in the original version. When in the last scene I sang two tones a bit longer than we had agreed, his eyes immediately flashed on me. He is very angry even for the slightest mistakes but then during the bows we exchanged a happy embrace.
Has filling in in Rome continued?
We had four Nabucco performances in March, it was recorded on television and can be watched on the largest video-sharing website. After these performances, they asked me to sing three Toscas in the summer venue of the Rome Opera, the ancient site Terme di Caracalla, in July. And we are in talks about future opportunities. It is amazing what importance is associated with artists there. I was invited to five long interviews before Tosca, one by a television station. It is very special to sing for an Italian audience. Opera is still part of everyday culture there. Even children know the arias, it is almost their mother tongue. I did not have even one rehearsal with Nabucco?s director Jean-Paul Scarpitta because he had to go to hospital and we could only consult after the premiere. Still, we were immediately on the same wavelength. As you progress in your career, you learn that you need to think of every performance as a line dreamt up by the director and we are the tiny dots that make up this line. Even if only one dot is not in the right place, the line will have a different curve. Jean-Paul is a type of man who really makes an effort to understand others around him and he demonstrates total acceptance for the artists. After the performance, he invited me to the opera in Montpellier where he is the director. I had a chance to sing in his staging of Manon Lescaut in August. There have been only a few people in the past with whom I have struck a common chord so easily as with him. Perhaps only with Yoshoi Oida, the director of Idomeneo in Prague, and with Mária Anygal, who staged Tosca in Szeged three years ago. Those few performances were indeed career-changing. Prior to those, I would only play innocent virgins and I thought that?s just how it should be. But then I found myself facing reality. He demanded things from me that I would previously consider impossible, like exchanging a real kiss with my partner. That was when I really felt a stage presence and it liberated me as an artist. I learnt self-control which I need to practice every time because it is not us who should be moved but the audience.
You have great many roles in your repertoire.
I think if one sings using the right technique, then a great variety of roles can fit in the repertoire. This year I sang Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte and a few days later, I sang Aida. Surprisingly, Cosi was more difficult because of all the singing and running around I had to do. I had to realise that music for me was a form of self-expression. I still don?t know why already at age two, I would sit at the piano at home and I loved plunking away on it and the sounds that rushed forward made an impression in me. Later on, I would play five or six hours on it every day. Then I was admitted to music school and I even though I studied piano, I did not practice that much. And I started singing. Once a singing teacher happened to come in the room and she was struck by surprise that a pianist had a better voice than many of her students. She had me transfer to her department but I would still stick to my instrument because they had taught me at home that once you start something, you should properly finish it. I graduated and started teaching. But I really missed singing and so I contacted Judit Nemeth and we started working together and then after finishing the Music Academy, Ilona Tokody became my master.
You had a good career-start as a coloratura soprano at home. Why did you disappear from the Budapest opera scene?
I did not have enough work and opportunity to develop in Budapest. When I would ask why I had only been selected for two performances, and even these I did not think would really fit me, they would say ?there are many like you and you are at the end of the line.? That was when I saw a call for an audition at the Brno opera on the notice board. I travelled there with my husband and gave it a try. They immediately accepted me and gave me permanent status. That was a great step forward compared to the uncertainties at home. I would sing Constanza, Maria Gara, Melinda and Gilda in Pest. When I asked Professor Petrovics to give me some minor roles so that I could get more used to the stage, he said: ?Small roles would throw you off the stage?. I expected a very different repertoire in Bonn. I immediately had to learn Venus from Tannhäuser because rehearsals were starting in two days and then we left for Japan. During the two years and a half I spent at the Czech company, I received nearly twenty roles. I actually learnt my profession there, I first sang such roles as Tatiana, Aida, Tosca, Cho-cho-san and Lady Macbeth, the roles that I travelled around the world with. My first season was terrible because I really missed my family. That?s something I cannot get used to, even though Brno is a very liveable city and I have made many friends there.
When are we going to see you at home next?
Ironically, while they are doing everything they can to keep me in Brno, I have been a returning guest in Prague for years and I received the most prestigious Czech theatre award, the Thalia prize, last year for Cho-cho-san. Thanks to my agent I have been increasingly appearing on the most renowned European and American stages, I have not been invited to Pest for years. I am not complaining, I should be thankful for how things develop in my life. Next year, I will keep my current roles in Brno and I will sing two female leads in Prague on the same evening: in a premiere performance of Rustic Chivalry and Clowns. They have also called me back to Montpellier and I?ll perform an evening of arias at the Versailles Palace. I will sing leading roles in The Cloak and Sister Angelica, directed by David Pountney, for one night in Lyon. And the role of Abigail again waits for me in Washington and Philadelphia.
Have you not regretted leaving behind your ?little girl? role?
By changing my roles, my real character is much closer to the heroines that I sing. Tosca was such a great present, that everything since has been only an encore. I am now learning several new roles, and my voice is kept in order by my surrogate mother and singing teacher Gabriella Imre, who has a fantastic knowledge of every breath I take. Her everyday control is so important that recently, she would accompany me to my international performances. Still, I have some dream roles, such as Lucia di Lammermoor, Julia in Gounod?s opera and Donizetti?s English queens. And it would be good to once experience the passions of Isolde and Siegfried?s Brunhilde.
Interviewer: Márton Karczag / Photo: Bence Kovács
