Richard Wagner’s operas as King Mark Tristan and Izolde in a concert performance in Cēsis on July 9, Estonian bass Ain Anger performed shortly after his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and performances at the Vienna State Opera. In New York last season, Ain Anger sang Pimen (Boris Godunov) a Guild (Eugene Onegin), while Vienna played Philip (Don Carlos) and made by Commodore director Barry Kosk Don Juan in the new production.
The next major event for Ain Anger will be in Milan Teatro alla Scala the opening new production of the next season on December 7 – Mussorgsky’s opera directed by Kaspar Holten Boris Godunov he will sing together with Ildar Abdrazakov. Engagements at the Vienna State Opera (also in the tetralogy Ring of the Nibelung), at the Amsterdam Opera, at the Valencia Opera (in the role of King Mark in Tristan and Isolde), at the German Opera in Berlin and elsewhere.
Born in Kuressaare and trained in his native Estonia, Aina Anger is considered one of the most outstanding Wagner basses of our time. At the Bayreuth Festival, he made his debut as Fafner in a performance conducted by maestro Christian Thielemann, while in Milan he made his debut as Dahland under the direction of Hartmut Henchen. Ain Anger has sung Hunding in Munich under Kent Nagano, Vienna State Opera under Franz Welzer-Mest, Chicago Opera under Andrew Davies and London under Antonio Pappano, Hagen at the Canadian Opera and Edinburgh Festival under Andrew Davies, King Mark with the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welzer-Mest and with the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Asher Fish (ABC Classics tuning).
Ain Angers has sung in performances at the Paris Opera Boris Godunov and Don Juan. He is a frequent performer at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where he recently sang the rarely staged operas of Cardinal de Brongi Fromental’s Alevi Jewish woman in performances under the direction of Bertrand de Biji. In Vienna, where Ain Angers was once a staff soloist of the Vienna State Opera, in 2020 he was awarded the honorary title of Austrian singer. Aina Anger’s bass is well known and loved by listeners in Latvia, where he has sung both in productions and concerts of the Latvian National Opera, and vocally in symphonic music performances with the State Academic Choir. Latvia.
For a Wagner singer who is in demand all over the world, it would probably be superfluous to ask about the importance of Wagner’s roles in his career? I will ask though.
When I had just started working at the Estonian National Opera and opera houses in Germany (Leipzig and Hamburg), I had not yet sung Wagner. Young singers do not sing Wagner at all. When I got to the Vienna State Opera, the repertoire there was very wide and I had the opportunity to try everything and find out what works and what doesn’t. There I checked that my voice is also capable of Wagner. My first Wagner role was the giant Fafner in the opera Rhine gold. When I sang in the show, it became clear that I could do it. Now I have only one bass role in Wagner’s operas left, which I have not yet sung.
Which one is it?
Old Grail Knight Gurneman In Parsifal. All other bass parts are already sung. Of course, I would also like to play the vivid Wagner characters sung by bass baritones, for example The Wandering Dutchman title role and Hans Sachs In the Nuremberg Masterpieces, but these parts are too high for my voice. I would really like to reveal these characters on stage as characters, but unfortunately they are not meant for my voice. Having sung a lot of Wagner, I have noticed that many of Wagner’s roles are similar in some ways. For example, the role of an old man or father is typical for basses in his operas. The melodic lines are also similar.
Did Wagner stop?
I think that he had simply developed his own vision, approach, system. There are many leitmotifs and quotes in his music. For instance, in Lohengrin plays a melody very similar to the main theme from Peter Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake. I have a lot of Wagner in my repertoire, but you can’t sing only Wagner all the time. I recently sang a Bach cantata in a church in Germany. Bach is like medicine to the voice.
Tchaikovsky disliked Wagnerism, the cult of worshiping Wagner’s theories. In 1876 he went to Ring of the Nibelung premiere of the tetralogy in Bayreuth, and later in both the Russian and the US press said that Wagner was a genius who chose to go astray and did not care about singers.
It doesn’t matter in this case. The similarity in the music is very palpable, and I think that explains something.
Latvian bass-baritone Egils Siliņš is also a Wagnerian hymn. Last summer, he completed the constellation of soloists for your 50th anniversary concert in Kuressaare. Are you friends?
Of course, I know Egil Silinas well. We have sung together in performances both in Vienna and Riga. We met on productions in Japan. When I celebrated my 50th anniversary, I invited him to sing at a birthday concert on my native island of Saaremaa. At the opera festival Saaremaa Opera Days there were great opportunities and conditions for the celebration. We met Wagner in Riga The Wandering Dutchman in the premiere. He sang the title role, I – Dalanda.
You made your debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York last season. Has this scene gathered those closest to you?
I sang in the Metropolitan Opera Borisu Godunovuboth Eugene Onegin. Each opera house has its own characteristics. You just need to sing well and that’s it. I really like singing itself, and I’m happy to perform in Estonia, because that’s where I was born and took my first steps in the art. That’s why I feel singing in my homeland is my mission. Of course, it is not the level of the Metropolitan Opera, but this place is very important to me.
So is Riga. I sang for the first time at the Latvian National Opera in 1999 or 2000 and I vividly remember the joy I experienced at the fact that the audience welcomed me with enthusiasm. I was still a very young singer, and it was my first performance outside of Estonia, and I really needed the audience’s appreciation. I sang Mozart at the Latvian National Opera The Magic Flute and In Don JuanRossini In the Barber of Seville, Wagner In The Wandering Dutchman – I forgot to mention something here. In Riga, I really like both the theater and the audience.
Do you get stage fright before a performance or are you as unwaveringly calm as we were during our conversation?
Let’s put it this way – I feel respect before every show and concert. A certain stress is necessary for an artist. Each time you have to sing better and prove yourself more and more. If you have already sung something a lot, you have to develop, go further and find something special in the same music and image every time. If you sing like you’ve done it before, it feels like it’s already happened. It is also the same when there is another audience sitting in the hall. You have to be in a living movement – further, deeper.
Do you listen and evaluate your own recordings for the sake of artistic growth?
No. I don’t listen to them at all. Do not have to!
Which role will you sing on December 7 in Milan? Teatro alla Scala Season opening?
Pimenu Modesta Musorgska Borisa Godunova in the new production, which will be created by director Kaspars Holten. Singing in Milan is very interesting. The last time I played Daland there In The Wandering Dutchman. In Milan, of course, the audience expects Italian opera, and it was very difficult to sing Wagner there. Let’s see how the audience will accept the Russian opera. In the theater La Scala I will also sing in Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with soprano Marina Rebekah in May 2023. We have also sung together in Riga – both at the concert in Latvia’s centenary and Vincenzo Bellini Standards in a concert performance at the Latvian National Opera.
What are you most looking forward to in the future as a soloist?
Next year I have plans for Wagner at the Vienna State Opera, also at the Amsterdam Opera (tetralogy Ring of the Nibelung), King Mark Tristana an Izoldes in a production at the Valencia Opera House. But who knows how it will be.
Our previous life and plans were thoroughly disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many shows and concerts were postponed or canceled altogether. Having turned down a number of other projects, I had booked time to sing at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth this summer. Contracts had already been signed, but the festival plans changed. This year’s performance cannot be postponed to next or the following summer either, because the next festivals have been planned for a long time.
All this time there was complete uncertainty: you have to buy a plane ticket and fly to the planned concert or new production, but until the last moment it is not known whether it will actually happen. If it happens, will it be with or without an audience? I went to a production in France, but it turned out that only a concert was allowed instead of a performance. It soon became clear that this would only be allowed to happen without an audience, and due to the changing restrictions, the program changed every day. Then the participation of the choir became threatened because there were too many participants in one room. Finally, the choir sang in masks and it was not a concert, but just a recording. When you work like that, you lose motivation. What’s the point of preparing a new repertoire if you don’t know if you’ll be able to sing it… Last year it was all the time.
Is summer the most stressful work period for you or the time for relaxation?
I have always worked during the summers, although it is difficult to call what is my passion and lifestyle a job. After the pandemic, there is now a very intense concert life everywhere, but in the summer you also need time to be free, relax, rest, meet friends and be at home with your family. At home on the island of Saaremaa, I have started creating a Japanese garden this year. It’s just the beginning. The climate is also very different from that of Japan, and you have to think completely differently. It takes a lot of time, and it’s good that I have more free time this summer. Let’s see how I do.
Do you drive everywhere from the island of Saaremaa?
I live both in Vienna and on the island of Saaremaa. It is the largest island in the Baltic Sea. If you live on an island, it already means distance. It is already far. However, there is more time and I can plan everything with a different approach. Yes, the sense of time on the island is completely different. It is not for nothing that the conductor Tenu Kaljuste lives on the very small island of Naisāre, the composer Erki Sven Tīrs settled on the island of Hījuma. I feel good in Saaremaa. While there, right there from my home on live TV from Vienna, I recently watched Andre Nelson’s Vienna Philharmonic The summer night concert in the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace – it was truly excellent, the soloist was the French cellist Gauthier Capisons, the program also included a piece by the Latvian composer Arturas Maskats.
Do you have red lines – something you would refuse to do on stage?
Once in Vienna, staged by Mussorgsky Hovanščin, the famous Russian director Lev Dodin wanted them all to be naked on stage at the end of the show before the death of the Old Believers. However, the director failed to implement this intention. Yes, there are such red lines. Once the conductor Paavo Jervi invited me to sing solo in an oratorio by Dmitri Shostakovich Forest song, Op. 81, 1949. It was composed with an overt Soviet propaganda text praising the Soviet Union and Stalin as the “great gardener”. This was the time when I said: no, Paavo, I can’t sing such a text! None of Paavo’s arguments that it was Shostakovich and the music was great didn’t help here.
How will we live on? On the one hand, covid threatens again, on the other – war is raging so close to us.
We don’t know what will happen. We have already learned to live with covid. It is clear that we will no longer be able to close and stop everything, because we still need to work and continue to live. Some did very well during the covid era and had great benefits, but we, musicians, are already pretty much sitting at home. It was especially difficult for children, because socialization at school is very important for them. My children are now almost adults – students.
Now, excuse me, the question you have probably been tired of for a long time – what is your dream role?
You have to love the part you are singing today, right now. I can say that my dream role is Hans Sachs Wagner in the Nuremberg Masterpieces, but it is only a dream and it will remain so, because this party is not for my vote. Similarly, one could dream about Wotan as well… That’s why they are already dream roles that I will never sing them. But it is also good to dream.
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