Benjamin Bernheim, the multi-talented opera singer

After Romeo and Juliet at the Bastille opera last June, the Franco-Swiss tenor returns to the same stage to perform the title role of The Tales of Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach. A high point for this solar singer who competes on the most beautiful stages in the world.

Last June, he was the vibrant, vulnerable and grandiose Romeo to an incandescent Juliet for whom we could give up everything. An impossible love sung in the flamboyant staging delivered by the inventive Thomas Jolly. In December, Benjamin Bernheim will be the poet Hoffmann, whom he has already played at the Hamburg Staatsoper in 2021. An opera that he will perform for the first time at Bastille in the production of Robert Carsen.

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“Before tackling a repertoire, I always try to understand what the composer wants to say,” explains Benjamin Bernheim. A role contains a host of messages, indications, details loaded with meaning. As in a novel, we inevitably find a little of the author, his life, his torments, his secret garden, his questions in the work he composed, as if he was hiding behind his creation . »

So it is with The Tales of Hoffmann, a fantastic opera in essence, which reveals the two facets of a storyteller torn between the obsession with the truth and a suspicion of dishonesty. A journey punctuated by famous songs and tunes, often virtuoso, where lightness hides the depth of souls. A beautiful tribute to artists and inspiration, to muses and their weaknesses. And finally to the desire to be loved, failing to obtain answers.

“I discovered this character when I was young thanks to performances that left an impression on me,” continues the tenor. Hoffmann is a poet who is both joyful and melancholy. It’s a bar pillar that sets the mood and sometimes sinks into alcohol. He is a successful artist, who is loved, who seduces. He is a tortured and misunderstood man who self-destructs. A paradoxical being. If he looked in the right place, he would realize that life is not that hopeless. But he prefers to wallow in lack and remain in search of what makes him suffer. It actually embodies a universal behavior that resonates in today’s world, it seems to me. Because behind all this lies a reflection on the status of the artist in particular, which goes through phases as contradictory as exaltation and doubt, and beyond that a reflection on the human condition in general. »

Benjamin Bernheim approaches this role with great serenity, perhaps because the character’s age matches his own, almost forty. “The age of questions, he believes, of legitimacy perhaps too. The hardest part of this opera, it is Act III, that of Giulietta, which requires a specific vocal strategy in order not to burn your wings. Hoffmann is a very physical role, because he embodies three types of characters and therefore adopts three tones of voice: a young, somewhat naive spirit, a person blinded by love and a disillusioned man. »

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French bel canto

Born in Paris, Benjamin Bernheim is a great defender of French opera. “It was time to restore its letters of nobility, because the genre had been shunned for thirty years by a good number of major opera theaters,” he laments, “with the exception of Carmen, Faust and Manon… Three masterful works, certainly, but the French opera is not limited to that. »

Hence the importance of diction and the hard work that the tenor imposes on himself “so that we don’t have to read the surtitles during the performance. » His most notable role? Romeo, in Romeo and Juliet for the solar character of the character, the Chevalier des Grieux, in Manon, for his nobility, Werther, for his tortured side.

“Three character traits found in Hoffmann” he continues. But there is also Rodolfo, in BohemianLenski, dans Eugene Onegin. And then the operas that he has not yet tackled: Don Carlos, A Masked Ball, Tosca, Carmen…

The most complicated role to take on? The Duke of Mantua, in Rigoletto, sung in Vienna, New York and Barcelona, “because he’s a difficult character to defend”, he confides. It is also the complete opposite of what he likes to embody: individuals who have a greatness of soul, a breath, a lyricism without necessarily being saints.

Childhood in the spotlight

A sports fan, Benjamin Bernheim does twenty minutes of cardio and gymnastics every day. Because a beautiful stature and a lyrical romantic tenor voice are worth talking about! “Our job is high-level sport,” he says. Recovery between performances is important, as is sleep, diet, and lifestyle, even if everyone approaches it differently. »

On the family side, opera influenced his childhood. A singing teacher mother, a baritone father, a famous maternal grandmother – Nicole Buloze, ballerina, choreographer and mezzo-soprano, assistant to Boris Kniaseff, the inventor of the floor barre. He has very few memories with her; she disappeared when he was 6 years old. On the other hand, he knew his paternal great-grandmother better, Fernande Bergerac, a great journalist for RTF [l’ancêtre de l’ORTF, NDLR].

Today, he shares his life with the Franco-American soprano Sandra Hamaoui, with whom he sang this year in Werther, Romeo and Juliet, La Rondine, in September, at the Zurich Opera. He is also an ambassador for the Rolex watch manufacturer. “I am proud to be associated with a house that supports so many magnificent projects. »

Stage fright, weariness or whims are foreign to him: “I am still as amazed by the job I do, as on the first day. It is a great honor to perform in Vienna, Munich, New York or Paris. When I sing at home in Zurich, as soon as I leave the house to go to the opera, I am already on stage…”

Benjamin Bernheim will perform in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, from November 30 to December 27, at theBastille Opera, from Paris ; Werther, from January 19 to February 4, at the Opernhaus in Zurich; Romeo and Juliet, from March 7 to 30, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

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