Can you tell us about your role at Opera Holland Park this summer?
It’s the title role in The Flying Dutchman – appropriate to play a Dutch character at Holland Park! One of the earliest pieces of source material names him as Hendrick van der Decken (a great name for a sailor), although Wagner only ever refers to him as “Der Holländer”. Either way, in this version of the legend, he’s cursed to sail the seven seas for eternity and his one hope of salvation is that once every seven years he’s allowed to come ashore and seek a woman who’ll be true to him – only then will the curse be lifted.
You are an acclaimed Wagnerian, and this is your role-debut as the Dutchman. What about the role are you looking forward to exploring?
He’s a fascinating character, and as with so many of Wagner’s creations, it’s crucial to see past the myths and the legends to find the humanity in his journey and his predicament. He’s a very vulnerable character, in a state of extreme desperation — Wagner’s often tempestuous relationship with his first wife must have been very much on his mind when he created the piece.
The Flying Dutchman is often described as Wagner’s first masterpiece – it is also his shortest and arguably his most accessible opera. How do you think The Flying Dutchman differs from his other operas?
Wagner was in a fascinating place in his compositional history when he wrote the piece. It’s definitely fair to say it’s his first masterpiece, but it’s still very much in his early style, still heavily influenced by Italian opera, so there are a lot of big tunes and spectacular set pieces, arias, duets and trios, as well as big choruses. It’s a real crowd-pleaser and I’m certain the Holland Park audiences will love it.
Do you find you must approach Wagner differently to other repertoire?
Yes and no. There are specific challenges to Wagner — the length of the roles, the challenges of his vocal writing, and in particular the extremes of human emotion he explores. It’s impossible not to get carried away by the music at times, and you have to prepare yourself for that. But it’s also crucial to recognise that he understood voices incredibly well, and was very much approaching vocal writing from the Italian bel canto tradition – so ultimately the principles of good singing technique should still apply at all times.
You have recently played Wotan in the full cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen for Longborough Festival Opera to great acclaim. How has performing Wagner influenced your technique and growth as a performer?
Wagner set out to explore the extremities of every aspect of music theatre — he quite deliberately seeks to push everyone, and every aspect of conventional theatre, to breaking point, and sometimes beyond. I think ultimately, if you decide to take on the challenge he set, you have to embrace that — you decide to push the boundaries and explore your limits. Sometimes you’ll end up falling flat on your face, but there are also times when you find yourself performing beyond those limits, and discovering that you’re capable of more than you previously thought.
You have spoken before on taking inspiration from the rehearsal processes of spoken actors. Can you elaborate on how this has influenced your approach to performance?
One of the aspects of the way spoken drama — plays, movies and TV shows — are prepared and rehearsed is the openness and collective creativity of the process. The whole thing is created together, as a team. Because of the nature and complexity of opera, we have to arrive in rehearsals in a far more advanced state of preparation, so it’s sometimes hard to take that apart in the pressure of a short rehearsal period. But when we find the time and the courage to do that, to work and explore and create as a team, it’s often what brings a piece to life.
You are a shareholder at Cardiff City Football Club and are the official Bard of the Lemmings Cricket Club. Do you find there are similarities between the sports and opera world?
The opera business can learn a lot from modern sports in terms of how they look after the health of sportsmen and women. Huge investments have been made in monitoring fatigue, conditioning performance levels on workloads, and making sure professional athletes are properly looked after so that they are able to perform at peak condition and extend the longevity of their careers. In the opera world we’re still by and large stuck in a mindset of pretending everything is fine and hoping for the best, leaving it very much to chance and guesswork, rather than taking a scientific approach to vocal health. It means that singers often end up suffering the consequences, in terms of their health and their careers. Opera singing is ultimately an extreme athletic pursuit, and I’d love us to embrace a more open and analytical approach to this, and look after our singers a lot more ethically and effectively.
In your book Giving It Away you discuss the challenges faced by freelance artists in the opera industry. Can you elaborate on how these challenges have shaped your own career and/or the roles you choose?
I’ve written a lot about the brutally Darwinistic nature of the modern opera industry — survival of the fittest, or more accurately, of the richest. The precarious nature of a singing career means that we’re in danger of excluding huge parts of society from being able to pursue singing careers, if only those young people with financial resources can afford to take the risk of being a singer. The impact of the Covid pandemic, of Brexit, and of a long term cost-of-living crisis has intensified this situation for British singers. If you end up narrowing the talent pool to only those who are from privileged backgrounds, the overall standard of singing will inevitably suffer. The opera industry needs to give a lot of serious thought into how it can support singing careers as a long term investment, to lower the socioeconomic barriers to access in the profession, and enable singers to take artistic risks in their careers. Otherwise the proud tradition of British opera singing as we’ve known it will be in critical danger of having no future.
You originally made your OHP debut in 2019 as Lescaut in Manon Lescaut. What has made your relationship with OHP so successful?
I think there’s been a careful building of trust and a mutual long term investment in our professional relationship. It’s easy as a young singer to want everything all at once, and to view building a career as a series of hoops to jump through, a series of prizes to be won. But there’s a lot more to it than that — you have to identify and build partnerships with people and organisations that match your values and your ethos. I’ve always felt that with Opera Holland Park — we’re doing things the right way, for the right reasons. Hopefully, what audiences see and enjoy on stage is the result of that relationship.
Is there a role you haven’t yet tackled that you would like to do in future?
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to play a lot of my “bucket list” roles already in my career. But I’d love to take a closer look at Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger, and beyond Wagner, Verdi’s Falstaff would be a good fit too. I suppose you can infer that I’ve been missing doing comedies recently!
What is a common misconception about opera that you’d like to see debunked?
That the stories are nonsensical, or don’t matter. The performances that have stayed with me over the years, on stage and as an audience member, have been the ones which have committed to clarity and truthfulness of storytelling. It’s hard work, but when everyone involved in creating the piece has the bravery and skill to commit to telling the story, it’s the difference between a good night out and an unforgettable, life-changing experience.
What is one piece of advice, musical or otherwise, that has stayed with you?
Not so much advice, but I take great inspiration from my Nana, who is still going strong at the age of 94, and the most optimistic and positive person I’ve ever met. No matter how hard life gets, there’s always a way of viewing the glass as half-full.
Interview by Holly Bancroft
