SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Go East young man!: The tenor Robert Dean Smith talks to Jim Pritchard. (JPr)

Robert Dean Smith - Picture © Photo Pulse

When The New York Met broadcast Tristan und Isolde live to cinemas throughout the world on 22 March 2008 Robert Dean Smith became the fourth Tristan involved in that run of performances. This was the mid-west American’s  debut at the USA’s premier opera house and all at just a few days notice. The performance was a great success and typifies how important stepping in at the last moment has become in the career of one of the most lyrical of current Wagner tenors. I have always compared his untiring, somewhat Italianate, voice as Walther, Siegmund, Lohengrin and Tristan to that of the legendary British Siegfried, Alberto Remedios from an earlier generation.

Robert Dean Smith is currently at Covent Garden rehearsing for the role of Bacchus in the forthcoming Ariadne auf Naxos which begins on 16 June so we talked about Bacchus, the last-minute call from The Met and how he began his international career. He offered a fascinating insight into the life of an opera singer in the twenty-first century.

Remind me how that performance of Tristan at The Met came about.

I really don’t know why they finally asked me after having a couple of other tenors when Ben Heppner fell ill but they did, and I was able to go despite it beginning a week before my Tannhäuser debut in Berlin which was added stress. The Berlin Staatsoper were kind enough to let me go just for a couple of days. I had never worked with James Levine before and in the back of my mind I thought after being asked,  that it would never happen because we would not have any time to work together. Maestro Levine later told me he had three good recommendations from people for me – one was from Waltraud Meier, another was from Eva Wagner-Pasquier and the third was from the conductor Donald Runnicles who was at that time at The Met – and on the basis of those recommendations they asked me to do it.

I really did not have much time to think about it either before or afterwards because I arrived the day before from Germany to work on a rehearsal stage, did the performance and went straight back to Berlin afterwards. I just got to see a little of the set of course without lighting before each act. Yes,  there were a few nerves but the curtain went up and I saw the huge space of The Met - I’d been there many times before as a listener of course but never on stage - and I looked out and thought ‘Well it’s big but it’s just another opera house’ and away we went.

I didn’t have any problems with my acoustical sense of the house and that had been my biggest concern. I was worried that I might over-sing and blow it all out much too quickly after the last minute flight across the Atlantic and the rehearsals the day before. Then I started to sing and it was wonderful and I realised there would be no problems.

Why hadn’t he sung before at The Met?

Well they had called me a couple of times but it hadn’t worked out because of my other commitments for the time they wanted me,  though I do have a couple of contracts and my official debut is in Die Frau ohne Schatten but not until December 2009. The Met’s Tristan is about to be shown on Public TV in the US so that will be an extra added plus to my exposure in America. It was amazing the response from all over the world. I couldn’t have made it any more difficult on myself, it being Tristan of all pieces and at the last minute but it went well.

How did he start singing?

I come from Kansas and certainly knew nothing about opera until I was 17 or 18 years old and deciding what I might like to study in college or some other form of higher education. I came to the realisation that I loved music. I played saxophone a lot and sang pop songs in choral groups in school as a teenager and came to really like music. I didn’t have any idea what it involved and so I went to check-out a local college and they invited me to see an opera there : it was Mozart’s The Impressario in a double bill with Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. This was the same time that I really heard jazz music too and although I was a saxophone player I had only played in things like marching bands – so at the same time jazz, opera and classical music hit me like a wall falling on me and a whole new world opened up for me.  I have been running after it ever since.

It is well known that you began as a baritone and started your career in Germany how did you get there and how did you make the change to becoming a tenor?

I was able to arrange a few auditions in Germany while I was still a student at the Juilliard School in New York City. I was finishing my degree and then got a job offer so I was able to get out of school and start as a lyric baritone in a small theatre in Biederfeld. It was a very nice house and particularly so for the fact that I met my wife, Janice [Harper-Smith], there. Then after 6 or 7 years of singing in Germany I decided to change because I noticed my voice was developing in lots of ways that a baritone does but also that the  top was developing even more. It was getting easier especially from singing all the Rossini Figaros I been doing. I had a couple of months where I didn’t have too many performances so I did vocal exercises and a few tenor arias and realised I knew how to do it. I did it all myself because I think it is dangerous if someone tells you should change and you really don’t believe them,  but for me it all came together in my head and throat luckily at the same time.

I was in Wiesbaden at the time and so I quit my job with one year left on my contract and I was very fortunate to go right into another one as a tenor. After a further six months I finally realised I had exhausted all my knowledge and began asking my wife  - who had just started teaching singing at that time - if she would teach me. She said ‘Yes I’ll teach you but you have to shut your mouth during the lessons.’ Since then we have worked together and it has been amazing.

I would never have made it without her because it is so hard to find a pair of eyes and a pair of ears that you trust. Janice travels with me which is important for our marriage because at most I am home in Switzerland 4 or 5 weeks a year and that is no time at all. She hears important rehearsals and performances and it is usually on the evening after the performance that I want to hear my critique. I have learnt to accept this and want to hear what went well and find out about what maybe didn’t go so well so that I can remember this for another time. I know I can only improve from this but I know a lot of performers have a problem with hearing critique because they do not trust anyone in this way.  I feel so lucky to have someone that I do.

In 1997 at Bayreuth you saved a performance of Die Meistersinger and have been a Bayreuth regular ever since. What happened then and what are your thoughts on the current issues surrounding the Bayreuth Festival?

I had been invited to go to Bayreuth as a cover for the tenor singing Walther with no guarantees of performances but I would be there in case the other singer got sick - which as fate would have it is exactly what happened. In fact I had already sung three whole performances that summer but it was the last performance that got all the publicity because the original tenor came back and began it but couldn’t get through the evening so I had to jump in after they had stopped the performance,  and sing the last bit. Bayreuth then was the start of my international career because I’d been singing in medium sized houses throughout Germany for quite a number of years before that and funny as it seems,  this is the way it happens sometimes. Luckily I was  and  very prepared as, unlike in New York, I’d seen performances and some rehearsals and was ready to go on as Walther. I was glad to have helped out and am happy to continue singing in Bayreuth.

My only worry about Bayreuth is that maybe it might change too much from the concept and the way it is,  because concentrating on the works of Richard Wagner makes it unique. I am concerned that if they open it up to other composers and new ideas that it will become the same as so many other festivals and lose that uniqueness. If they want to add early Wagner works well they can do that,  but otherwise I hope to see it carry on in the future, more or less, in the way it has been for all these years.

Coming straight in with Walther at Bayreuth and Tristan at The Met were not the easiest of roles to have to sing on these occasions…

Yes,  Walther of course is one of the highest and longest of the Wagner ones and Tristan is the most difficult I think,  because it is the most dramatic. What I always say is that the third act is so difficult because the second act is so difficult! It is amazing the emotional levels that are demanded of a Tristan; there is no stopping yet it is so fulfilling on the one hand whilst dangerous on the other,  if you are not in control of your technique. If you can funnel your vocal resources by employing your technique into the music to express what you want to express then it can be done,  otherwise it is very difficult. When I first sang Tristan that too was at Bayreuth and my main goal was to sing the third act without any shouting, yelling, covering up or faking in any places. Since I am able to do that, this is one of the main reasons I still sing Tristan plus so many other things -  even the Italian repertoire.

I want to keep singing Italian roles like Andrea Chénier - which I will sing for the first time on stage in January 2009 in Toulous -  and these are possible for my voice because I am more of a lyric Heldentenor – if there is such a thing - as a Heldentenor.

With your Strauss roles -  notably the current one Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos - do you ever  feel that Strauss has something against tenors?

I don’t know if he had some bad experiences with tenors or not along the way,  but as far as I can tell in his writing he always wanted a certain level of excitement in the voice and therefore puts it in the worst possible area for a tenor much of the time. He requires tension even if it is lyric easy singing and he writes in the passaggio so much - and then asks for a high note above that all the time. It is very awkward and difficult at times. He knew how to write better,  particularly for sopranos,  so I guess this was just an idea or colour he wanted in the tenor voice. I try to find that without strangling myself and it takes a lot of technique to sing it well and make it sound easy.

Ariadne is not so bad as Die Frau ohne Schatten because all the singing at least comes at the end. For Frau ohne Schatten the Emperor sings right at the beginning then sings some more a couple of hours later and is back after another couple of hours at the end. You really have to know how to maintain your level of performance for around five hours. Singing Wagner helps you learn how to pace yourself, how much you need to warm up in between and how to keep a certain energy level up. It becomes an experience thing and I practice an awful lot. I sing and then take a couple of hours off and then warm back up and sing it again. I used to do that when I was learning Walther in Meistersinger , so if I had a 15 minute break I would act as though I was in my dressing room and then start singing again the next piece. I just wanted to be prepared for the rehearsals when they came.

What do you think about this current Ariadne production and are you enjoying working with the conductor Mark Elder, once again?

The production has a little bit of everything and it is such a great piece that goes smoothly along with a story that intertwines. It’s a lot of fun even to sit back and listen to it even if I’m not on stage. The rehearsals are going as well as expected for a revival as far as I know and everyone is healthy and so far … so good.

I have worked with Mark Elder before here on Lohengrin and I have to say, as I told my wife and some other people, that aside from the performances it is the rehearsals that are also fascinating with him. He really is one of the few conductors that I work with today where I see and feel a lot is coming out of the rehearsals. He is very demanding in a nice way, he is not an ogre about anything but he demands things out of the singers and that there is the right attitude, the right colour, let alone the right notes or rhythm,  but more importantly that we have a musical concept that is not always the case unfortunately. It is very nice to see someone demanding that because I love a good challenge. It is the competitor in me that enjoys it.

You also sing Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde -  another difficult piece -  and it will bring you back to the Royal Festival Hall in October. Do you have any particularly thoughts about that music?

I haven’t made it easy on myself with that either but as I said I enjoy a good challenge and  Das Lied von der Erde is written so well. A recording I made of Mahler’s original piano version for tenor and baritone was released last year [Telos TEL1002] and I was thinking before I did it that it was going to be rather boring without the orchestra: but it wasn’t and I was very surprised at how alive the piano parts are. It is tremendously difficult to play on the piano and as a piece would be hard to programme in a concert -  because of what you put before or after it - so I don’t think it will be heard very often. But it is interesting to hear Mahler’s own piano voice.

Are there any new roles you are most looking forward to and what are your hopes for the future?

I am excited about Die tote Stadt that I will do in Paris in October 2009 as I have never sung before though I have known the opera for quite a while now,  ever since I saw a fantastic production in Berlin in the early 1980s. I just love that turn of the century – fin de siècle – atmosphere of Korngold’s music and am really looking forward to singing it and getting into that work. That is what’s new on my horizon now that I have sung Tannhäuser,  but of course there is also the Chénier.I have sung that  in concert but not on stage so I look forward to that as well as any other odd Italian piece that comes up.

For me,  I am doing something I love to do. I was from Kansas, the Prairies, where there was nothing.  I just wanted to sing and that was my motivation, I followed the music and still do. I didn’t have any prospect of getting a job in America as a lyric baritone at the time and that is why I came to Europe to find somewhere I could sing. The motivation now is to keep working with good orchestras and good conductors and if I am doing that,  then I am happy.

© Jim Pritchard

Robert Dean Smith sings Bacchus in the revival of Christof Loy’s production of Ariadne auf Naxos at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in June and July and for further information visit: http://esales.roh.org.uk/home/. 

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