“The days when you could only sing beautifully and strut around the stage are long gone. If you really want to create a successful career as an artist, if you don’t want to be boring after ten years, but want to constantly improve yourself and surprise the audience, multi-tasking is important , besides, different employment,” emphasizes the world-famous Latvian opera star Elina Garanca.
Immediately after the Song Festival, on July 10, the Dzintari Concert Hall will host the Opera Arts Festival, to which Elīna Garanča and friends will invite their audience. In order to learn more about this concert, as well as about other summer events and hobbies in the singer’s life, Gunda Vaivode asks Elina Garanča herself in a telephone interview, who is currently in Vienna.
Gunda Vaivode: I caught you in Vienna…
Elina Garanča: Yes, because we are currently preparing for our concerts in Gottweig and Kitzbühel. “Garanča and friends” will be held there for the fifteenth and tenth time, respectively, and after that we will also go to Jurmala with the same program and the same singers. And then we will continue to run in a mad race, each in our own direction of the world.
“Classics under the stars” in Gottweig and “Classics in Alpu Kitzbühel” – what will make these concerts special this summer?
These concerts are special because, first of all, each of the places has its own energy charge. Especially the Gottweig monastery – it is in an extremely beautiful place… Driving up the mountain and spending almost fourteen hours there in dress rehearsals gives us a mentally recharging energy. We really like being there!
In Kitzbühel it is completely different: there are mountains, and there we, all the little people, feel like little ants in front of millions of years of experience. But it is also a special place, because every year new or lesser-known singers are introduced to the public.
It is a big challenge for us to develop and search for new compositions, new musical performances. For three years now, the main winner of my competition “Voices of the Future” has been presented at these concerts, and especially it takes place in Kitzbühel, where already two days before the main concert – on Thursday and Friday afternoon – the audience is introduced to the first, second, third, fourth and for the fifth place winners. And the crowning glory is the final concert on Saturday in Kitzbühel Park.
Speaking more closely about your concert friends – there won’t be only young singers, right?
No, no, it won’t be just the young ones.
It has happened that now every year there is one singer or singer that I brought from my side, and there is someone that Karel found [Elīnas Garančas dzīvesbiedrs, diriģents Karels Marks Šišons].
We have had wonderful singers from New York’s Metropolis and Milan’s La Scala Opera House, but this year my friend and colleague SeokJong Baek (tenor), with whom I debuted in London last year – or rather, he debuted in the tenor repertoire and also in the theater – such I would also like iron nerves. (laughs)
It was in Camille Sensan’s opera “Samson and Delilah”?
Yes, he had worked as a baritone for ten years, then the pandemic came, and in two years he trained himself as a tenor and has been singing the golden repertoire of tenors in all theaters for a year and a half… This year we sang together both in concert and in performances of “Aida” in Covent Garden, London, and now we will perform together in concerts. There are several more projects or operas in which we will work together in the future, and it was my choice to involve him in my concerts. The soprano for me this year is Eleonora Burato, she is a colleague with whom Karel has previously collaborated in several performances, she sings in leading theaters and, in my opinion, the mezzo-soprano in the middle fits very well: both with a soprano and with a tenor in both directions, and they can find each other always nice works that please the listeners.
Will they both be in Amber?
Yes, they will both be in Amber as well. Because this week is always extremely stressful for us, and if it’s “Garanča and friends”, then why should the repertoire be changed to something else?
And since Sek Jong Bēks has never sung in Latvia, I think it will also be interesting for listeners to hear this singer live, without the mediation of radio broadcasts. I am not sure about Eleonora Burato, whether or not she has performed in Latvia. In any case, these words are certainly known to opera lovers and classical music lovers, and we are glad that we can bring them to Latvia as well.
You already mentioned the competition of young singers that you organize, which results in the selection of the best soloists who also participate in this project. Are good voices enough now, and is the singer’s professional prestige still high?
There is no shortage of votes. There is no vacuum. Rather, there is a great vacuum regarding a good school. There are a lot of misunderstandings about what a good school means, there are a lot of misunderstandings about what a breathy sound means, what a mask means, what it means, why a mask is needed at all. We hear a lot of singers who are somehow trained, but are not really suitable for the big show or chamber music programs, because the voice does not sound fresh, nor professional, nor cultivated. People suffer, and sometimes it really hurts to see that after four or five years of studies, no potential has been developed.
But there are also beautiful surprises. This year, for example, we had a new mezzo-soprano. Well, she’s 31 years old, and for a singer who’s just starting out, that train has pretty much moved on at this point. But hey – an extremely beautiful voice, a wonderful, juicy mezzo-soprano, and not of the dramatic ones, but of the full-voiced ones, which justifies the quality of a real mezzo-soprano!
Only because she was the oldest of the winners, we gave her second place, but since these places also have a financial incentive, opportunities were prepared for her to go to study and develop with private teachers, and we really hope that she will really get it and during this year will make one last push so that we can listen to him from next year. It is the kind of voice that is really worth investing time, money, attention and care for this person.
So you follow what happens next with your chosen soloists, the winners of the competitions?
Absolutely! They have a press conference both during and after the competition, where they are presented to the Austrian press, as well as to people who are interested in both the festival and the competition – they all get my phone number, my contacts, and I also work with them : this is also part of the reward – that they then have the opportunity to ask me any questions in any direction about their professional development. Sometimes also to talk purely emotionally and exchange your emotional and psychological states. I also work with them technically and give recommendations or my observations and technical tricks that could be useful to them. In any case, we stay in touch regularly.
You, who are now the middle generation – singers, conductors, and an instrumentalist – will continue to strengthen Latvia’s good reputation in the world. But sometimes there is a concern whether there will be a sequel and new names will break out. How do you feel this situation inside the field?
I have distanced myself a little from current events and activities that are happening in the world of young singers in Latvia. Academy final exams, masters or bachelors who are studying – I don’t have a real idea about them, but of course every now and then some new singers pop up when you look at the line-ups – it doesn’t matter if it’s Frankfurt Opera or Dresden or maybe some Italian opera . Every now and then a Latvian word appears, and then I look – yes, really from Latvia! This means that the young singers have potential and they are developing, but I cannot really say what is happening right now and on which singers, for example, the chamber music environment in Latvia or the Latvian National Opera. But I think that in Latvia, like everywhere else, there is definitely a passion for music and singing, and we are famous for the fact that many people wonder – say, well, how can it be that so many good singers come from Latvia! That means we really have it in our blood, and it’s definitely in our DNA.
Another thing – nowadays many singers burn out too early, forget too early [uz kaut ko] and sometimes too lazy – I’ll tell you how it is. But nowadays the pace in which singers currently live is crazy – with continuous overflights, with the fast pace at which you have to switch from one repertoire to another, also with the understanding that is generally required of you as a singer.
Many people may not really understand it, because the days when you could only sing beautifully and strut around the stage are long gone. If you really want to create a successful path as an artist and don’t want to be boring after ten, but want to constantly improve yourself and surprise the audience, [svarīga ir] exactly multi-employment, different employment. Not many people can pull it off, and many don’t need it, because there are a lot of people who are happy singing the first repertoire in theaters of second importance. And there are singers who absolutely need to sing only the main parts only in the main theaters, but they are very few. As some of my friends, the intendants or agents, with whom we have known for several years, tell me – there are only about thirty, forty singers for whom all the main theaters fight, fight and fight… But at the same time – if we look at how many there are a lot of theaters in Germany, Italy and the world in general, not all of them have to be the main stars.
The full conversation will soon be available on the Latvian public media portal lsm.lv.
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2023-07-02 21:21:23
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