This piece is part of the coverage that Opera Lively did for the Berlin performances of Salvatore Sciarrino's Luci Mie Traditrice, one of Luiz's favorite contemporary operas. We also reviewed the piece, interviewed the lead female singer Katharina Kammerloher (her interview is inside the review article), the conductor maestro David Robert Coleman, and the stage director (and former Intendant of the Berlin Staatsoper), the famous Jürgen Flimm. Our readers can consult these other pieces by clicking on these links, respectively [here], [here], and [here].
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Otto Katzameier
Otto with Katharina in Luci Mie Traditrice at the Berlin Staatsoper; photo credit Matthias Baus
Otto Katzameier’s repertoire, which ranges from classic opera, to oratorio and Lied, to contemporary music, reflects his striking versatility. In particular, his brilliant interpretations of the works of Salvatore Sciarrino have received great acclaim.
Otto Katzameier studied singing in his hometown of Munich with Josef Metternich and Hans Hotter. He soon began to win prizes at many prestigious competitions, such as the Mastersinger Competition Nuremberg, Mozart Competition Würzburg, Hugo Wolf Competition Stuttgart, and the Bundeswettbewerb Gesang Berlin.
In recent years, he has performed many major operatic roles. These include Don Giovanni, Leporello, Guglielmo and Alfonso (Così fan tutte, Rheingau Musik Festival), Mustafa (L’Italiana in Algeri), and Imeneo (Handel Festival Halle). His guest performance in Offenbach’s Bluebeard at the Bregenz Festival has been particularly celebrated. His concert repertoire contains such works as Elija, Messiah, Saul, St. Matthew Passion, and the requiems of Brahms and Verdi.
Otto Katzameier’s dedication to contemporary music theatre is evident in the wide range of roles he has taken on, such as Prospero (Un Re in Ascolto by Berio), Landarzt (Ein Landarzt by Henze), Egäus (Berenice by Staud), Macbeth (Macbeth by Sciarrino), Dominique (Freax by Eggert), and Pope Urban VIII (Galilée by Jarrell), among others.
Otto Katzameier has worked together with prominent stage directors Achim Freyer, Willy Decker, Trisha Brown, Christoph Schlingensief, Stefan Herheim, and Nicolas Brieger. Opera productions have led him to the Salzburg Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Berliner Festspiele, and Biennale Munich as well as to Rome, Frankfurt, Paris, New York, Venice, Tokyo, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid, and Tel Aviv.
CD-recordings of Luci mie traditrici and the cycle of orchestral songs Quaderno di Strada – dedicated to Otto Katzameier himself – with the Klangforum Vienna, Beat Furrer, and Sylvain Cambreling, demonstrate his intense interest in Sciarrino’s work.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung nominated Otto Katzameier for “Singer of the Year” in 2006 for his interpretation of the Prince in Sciarrino’s opera Da Gelo a Gelo (world premiere at the Schwetzinger Schlossfestspiele). Further performances of the opera followed at the Opéra National de Paris and at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. He received enthusiastic international reviews for his interpretation of Lars in Georg Friedrich Haas’ opera Melancholia (world premiere at the Opéra National de Paris in 2008). In 2009, he appeared in Frank Martin’s Le Vin Herbé, produced by the RuhrTriennale at the Opéra de Lyon, as well as at the Salzburg Festival for the concert series Kontinent Varèse in collaboration with Ensemble Modern. In addition, he sang the title role in the 2009 recording of Haydn’s Singspiel Die Feuersbrunst (The Conflagration). Also in 2009, Otto Katzameier made his Wagner debut as Wolfram in Tannhäuser at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.
His close collaboration with Klangforum Wien brought him to Berlin in March 2010 for MaerzMusik, where he wowed audiences with his performance in Sciarrino’s Luci mie traditrici. Also in 2010, he gave his debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin at the Ultraschall Festival, appeared at the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam with musikFabrik, and sang in the world premiere of Philipp Maintz’s opera Maldoror at the Munich Biennale.
Otto Katzameier opened the Teatro Madrid’s 2010/2011 season with Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (production La Fura dels Baus) and returned later in the season to play the main role in the world premiere of Pilar Juardo’s La página en Blanco. He also sang in the successful world premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas‘ opera Bluthaus at the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele 2011. He was also heard in the Teatro Real production of Weill’s Mahagonny at the Bolshoi-Theater in Moscow and with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo in a premiere of a new work by Philipp Maintz.
Otto is currently at the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan, doing Sciarrino's new opera Ti Vedo, Ti Sento, Mi Perdo which he will take to the Berlin Staatsoper in 2018. In December 2017 and January 2018 he will do La Belle Hélène at the Staatsoper Hamburg.
The Exclusive Opera Lively interview with Otto Katzameier
Question by Opera Lively journalists Luiz Gazzola and James Weber.
Copyright Opera Lively - links to this interview are allowed as well as brief excerpts, but to reproduce the entire interview please use the Contact Us link to request authorization, and include a link to the source. Photo credits in some of our pieces might be unknown to us at the time; if we're informed of the photographers' names we'll be glad to include them; meanwhile, it's fair promotional use. This is Opera Lively's interview # 234.
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Luiz Gazzola - You seem to be one of Salvatore Sciarrino’s favorite singers. Please tell us how this relationship developed.
Otto Katzameier – In 1999 in Lucerne we did the first production of Luci Mie Traditrice after the world premiere which was in Schwetzingen. The theater in Lucerne did a new production one year after the world premiere, and there I met Sciarrino for the first time. The singers he discovered in this production, Anette Stricker, Simon Jaunin, and me, he liked the way we sang and so he decided to write the next opera for us. Macbeth followed, and then Da Gelo a Gelo. It became more and more. I just love his music. That’s the reason why I sing it the way he wrote it, and it seems to be what he wants! [laughs].
LG – Yes, he said that in an interview I read.
OK – Oh really?
LG – Yes. So, he has a very peculiar vocal writing (I love it, by the way). He elongates the vowels and then there is a burst of vocalizations at the end of the words. It distorts a lot the sounds. I do understand Italian, I’m Italian-American, but it is very hard to understand that version of Italian he writes, with the distortion in the phonemes. Right?
OK – Yes.
LG – Tell us about the vocal challenges involved in singing his music.
OK – Yeah. A very good question, but difficult to answer! [laughs] When I started to practice his music, to try to get into his music, I had to find solutions. Because when you’ve never done Sciarrino before, you look at the score and you think, “ah, impossible, how can I do it?” Luci is more or less OK, but later in Macbeth for instance, there are coloratura parts with huge jumps over more than two octaves, and everything in a crazy speed. I thought “it is not possible” but as we know now, it is possible, but you have to find solutions for it. In the beginning, I thought that it is a bit similar to Baroque music. It is… how to say it? It is difficult in a foreign language. I can’t find the word.
LG – I don’t speak any German but I do speak Italian and French if it is easier for you to find the right word in one of these.
James Weber – And I do speak a little German.
OK – Ah OK, so when I’m totally lost I’ll say it in German and you help me. Yes, it’s a bit like early Baroque music with coloratura and the non-vibrato singing, sometimes. It’s singing long tones and developing the tones very slowly. We have similar things in Baroque music but Sciarrino really goes to the top with it. Everything that is possible with the voice, he wants to have. It requires a lot of practicing and studying, but then at a certain point it becomes so natural for me! That’s my impression.
Every time when I have new colleagues who are singing Sciarrino for the first time they report the same experience to me: “the first week I thought I’d go crazy.” But then all of a sudden you realize that you can do it very easily. You practice every day a few hours and one day you have it.
LG – In a larger sense, tell our readers what is great about his compositions.
OK – Yesterday after the opening night a woman from the audience came to me. She said “I’m very impressed, but it didn’t feel like an opera. I don’t know if there was music at all! Anyhow, the music didn’t seem very opulent.” I thought, “wow, very interesting.” Because having been singing Sciarrino for almost twenty years now, I think his music is somehow very opulent, but in another way. Most composers use huge orchestras and big sounds. Sciarrino makes the music of silences. Of course it is minimalistic and all that, but more than that, it goes into the silence. When it is in the heart of silence, the music bursts out of it. It is so rich! It’s fascinating. It’s not music in the sense of melody or harmony, but he makes music out of silence and of sounds of nature. For instance, in Luci he has bird sounds, and cicadas and other insects, and winds in the trees and all that. When you go into that, when you become very silent as a listener, the music becomes very big. This is one part of his music, in my opinion.
The other part of it is that it is very psychological. I think I sang this role perhaps fifty or sixty times which is a lot for a contemporary piece, and every time I sing, I feel the same experience: it is so strong! It grabs me. In every show I try to be very cool; I try to keep my energy very focused, but it is so strong; the drama always grabs me and hits me.
LG – Yes, I’m surprised that the lady said that it is not opera, because it is so opera!
OK – Yes!
LG – There is infidelity, betrayal, jealousy, murder… it’s opera! [laughs]
OK – She liked it, she was totally impressed, but she thought it was more like a play.
LG – I agree with you that the music is very powerful.
OK – Yes.
LG – You don’t know what you are missing, Jim!
JW – Luiz and I have an ongoing dialogue. I’m not a big fan of contemporary music. I come to Berlin for Wagner. I’ll see Il Trovatore tonight but tomorrow I can’t come.
OK – So you won’t see Luci?
JW – No, I have dinner plans, I’ll miss it.
OK – Ah! Cancel it! Come see it!
LG – You should cancel! It’s such an experience! Otto, let’s talk about your character Il Malaspina. He seems very ambivalent about the entire situation. At first he seems very shy and tentative, even fainting at the sight of a drop of blood when his wife pricks her finger on a thorn. This evolves in the end of the opera into the brutal murder of her lover, and he kills her as well in spite of being madly in love with her. He seems to oscillate between forgiveness and sadism. He seems to only kill because it’s what one does at the time due to matters of honor (and influenced by the evil servant) but at other times he seems genuinely sadistic and abusive. Tell us about the psychological arc of your character.
OK – How much time do we have for that? [laughs]
LG – We have all the time, as long as we make it to Ms. Netrebko’s show tonight!
OK – I’ll do the short version. This character is so fascinating! I love him! He loves his wife, I would say. In this production we had many discussions about this character; controversial discussions. When I play this role I insist on the fact that he really loves this woman. He adores her until the end. Of course he hates her, then. I mean, love and hatred, what’s the difference? He really loves her, and I think she loves him too. Otherwise she wouldn’t stay when she realizes that he will kill her. She knows everything, but she stays.
Let’s start from the beginning. He lives with this woman, and he is a very anxious person. He is weak and anxious and frightened about life. He is also frightened about love. In the second scene there is a big discussion about what love is. She sees love as power, and he says, no, love is fear. She is a very strong woman, and he is weak. But this is not the 21st century; it’s many centuries ago, so he has to be the strong man and she needs to be the weak woman, but it is just the opposite. And then she hurts herself with the rose and there is one drop of blood. Perhaps because of the blood, perhaps because he sees his beloved injured, he cannot stand it and he faints. This is brilliant because we know what will happen in the end. He cannot see one drop of blood or his beloved wife hurt even if it is a ridiculous little thing.
Sciarrino describes this very special character in a very strong way. People might say it’s a bit exaggerated, but no, it’s the shortest and clearest way to define this character. And then, he learns from the servant that she betrayed him with the guest. He just cannot stand it. Immediately, within seconds, he realizes that now everything has changed, and there is no chance for forgiveness. He doesn’t even think of forgiveness. It’s clear. He says to the servant, “why did you tell me? If you hadn’t told me I wouldn’t have to kill her. Now you told me, now I have to kill her.” It’s clear. In seconds he knows he needs to kill her. And then he sends the servant out, and says “a te per primo tocca.” “You, I will kill first.” So, first at all he kills the servant. We don’t see it; it happens between two scenes, unfortunately. He kills him because the servant saw the betrayal; he has to die first. And then in the meantime he kills her lover.
But then the interesting part comes; the whole second part of the opera is just him and her. You mention him being between forgiveness and sadism, but I think he pretends; he plays with her. He pretends to forgive her. She says “I feel so guilty” and he says “everything is fine, what are you talking about?” It’s very sadistic. He is a devil. For three scenes, numbers 6, 7, and 8, the three last ones that are very long and extensive, it’s just this playing about forgiving her and all that, but at the same time in every single sentence he sends little messages about what he will do. It’s absolutely clear that he will kill her. She knows that something terrible will happen. Ah, it’s so terrible!
LG – This probably should be a question for your colleague when I interview her about La Malaspina, but she does seem hopeful at one point that she will survive, that there will be forgiveness. That’s what I thought, but in your take, you think that she knows from the beginning that she is doomed, right? She seems surprised at the end, that all her “I love you, I won’t do it again” didn’t work.
OK – It depends. You may be talking about this version we are playing here, but I’m talking about my personal view of this role. We have a different version here, so if you talk to Katharina or the other singers or Jürgen Flimm…
LG – Yes, I’ll interview Herr Flimm tomorrow.
OK – Flimm developed another view on the piece. Have you seen this piece before in other stages?
LG – Yes, I saw the one from the Opéra de Lyon [with Maria Riccarda Wesseling and Otto himself, stage director Georges Lavaudant, and conductor Jonathan Stockhammer], and another one given at the Buxton Festival by Music Theatre Wales [with George Humphreys and Amanda Forbes, conductor and stage director Michael Rafferty - this was a co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden where it was given in October 2013]. I saw a third one from a very small production in Sweden [MusikTeaterVerket, directed by Ola Beskow, conducted by Rei Munakata, singers Monica Danielson, Andreas Landin, Jonas Olofsson, Johanna Rudström]. I saw the DVD. I also have your CD of it; you sing beautifully. I think it’s the best version. [Studio recording, done in Vienna, November 14 and 15, 2000; Conductor: Beat Furrer; Orchestra: Klangforum Wien; Cast: Annette Stricker, Otto Katzamaier, Kai Wessel, Simon Jaunin]
[The DVD is with the Ensemble Algoritmo conducted by Marco Angius; Christian Pade, stage director; cast Nina Tarandek, Christian Miedl, Roland Schneider, and Simon Bode; a co-production of Oper Frankfurt and the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte di Montepulciano, recorded live in Montepulciano, Italy, on July 29-31 and August 1, 2010]
[There is a second CD which I find to be not as good as Otto's, which contains the same performance and cast of the DVD above]
[There is a third CD which I never heard and wasn't aware of at the time of the interview: Ensemble Risognanze conducted by Tito Ceccherini; Saito, Sharp, Tchernova, Heiligtag, Gabriel]
OK – Thanks. In this staging here the relationship between him and her is different from the ones I made before, and from the way I look into it. But you’ll see it tomorrow; this version is also very interesting and works well. I think she knows very well what is going to happen.
LG – Yes, just from reading the libretto, at one point she seems to say “OK, I will be killed.” Like you said, you have done this role before, many times, and while this time I believe Mr. Sciarrino is not present here in Berlin, I suppose in other times you had an opportunity to interact with him. What kind of advice he gave you on how to interpret your character in his opera?
OK – Very rarely he says something. For this role, there wasn’t much to talk about. When he wrote Macbeth, some scenes read like a tenor role. I said, “Salvo, listen, it’s much too high.” “Oh really, is it? Can you sing it one octave lower?” I said, “I can, but do you want that?” He said, “Yeah, if that’s what you prefer!” He is very cooperative. So he changed some things. At other times I said, “Salvo, I can’t sing this” but he said, “keep trying.” [laughs] And I kept trying, and one day I could, and he said “See, that’s what I said, of course you can!” He knows what he writes.
LG - This is a devastating libretto, very emotionally charged, not to forget that it depicts a real life story. It is quite disturbing. Does it get into your head in a way that you also feel upset and need to decompress after the show?
OK – I don’t know, we all do these roles, of course. I’m used to killing people on stage. [laughs] By the way, it’s big fun to do that, if you have nice colleagues! [laughs] It’s always a very nice job. A very interesting thing for me is that this piece is only seventy minutes, not very long.
JW – No intermission?
OK – No.
LG – But it’s two acts.
OK – It’s two acts but we do it in one go. But after these seventy minutes, you feel like it was a six-hour opera. It really takes all the energy. It’s so strong! It’s a challenge, every time. Psychologically, I’m a very emotional actor. I jump into the character each time. At the end I’m almost dead, but you have a beer after the show and everything is fine.
LG - Luci Mie Traditrice seems to have long legs. It’s been recorded twice on CD [actually, as I learned latter, three times], once on DVD, and it has deserved many productions, which is unusual for a contemporary opera. Do you know how many productions it has had so far?
OK – I don’t know. I did it in five productions, already, but I don’t know how many others were out there.
LG – I’d guess it’s at least ten because I saw it in three productions where you weren’t.
OK – At least, yes.
LG – To what factors do you attribute its endurance?
OK – I think, for many reasons. The libretto is one of the best librettos of all times. It’s incredible.
LG – Yes, it’s concise!
OK – Yes!
LG – One word has all these meanings!
OK – Yes! The libretto is amazing.
JW – OK, I guess I’ll have to cancel dinner!
OK – Yes, do it! So the libretto is fantastic, and then the music is just wonderful! The story is incredible! We have the prologue with this melody that then changes in all the intermezzi until the end. It’s a very special piece. I did so many contemporary operas… I don’t know how many, but I think this piece is unique. The first two scenes between him and her are, “yeah, lovely, nothing special” and then we get scenes three and four between her and her lover and it’s all fine, but then after thirty minutes there is a big curve and the drama starts. And then in the end it goes very fast.
LG – I find the first scene with the lover quite incredible. The dialogue goes organ by organ – the eyes, my breathing… so the erotic tension is constructed with single words that they exchange. She seems to try to fight off her own drives and impulses, which is why it is called Luci Mie Traditrice – my betraying eyes. She doesn’t want to see that the young lover is so handsome. She doesn’t want to be attracted to him. But her eyes betray her, and she is attracted. It’s visceral, it’s a sort of bodily sexual drive that overcomes her. I find that this construction that Sciarrino did with this short duet is one of the most incredible operatic scenes, and done with such a concise libretto. It’s the stuff of genius. It’s a masterpiece.
OK – Absolutely! Absolutely! I totally agree! [laughs]
LG – I have seen two of Mr. Sciarrino’s operas – this one of course, and Da Gelo a Gelo, which you have performed as well. I don’t know his other works. You performed in his Macbeth. Would you tell me about Mr. Sciarrino’s Macbeth?
[Editor’s note: maestro Coleman in his interview with us considers this piece even better than Luci Mie Traditrici]
JW – How apart were they in time?
LG – Luci Mie was in 1998.
OK – Yes, Luci Mie was in 98 and Macbeth I think was in 2002. Da Gelo a Gelo was in 2006, perhaps. [Editor’s note: this is correct]. Did you see it in Paris?
LG – I saw it online, not in person.
OK – There was only one version, so far, with Anna Radziejewska. Trisha Brown did the staging, and it was wonderful; I loved it. Difficult piece, by the way. I think, his pieces are so different! Luci is such a drama, like a real thriller. Macbeth is completely different, I don’t know how to describe it.
JW – Does he follow Shakespeare?
OK – Yes, he does, but it is [laughs] hard to recognize, sometimes. He melts it down to a few, very, again, psychological scenes. There is one long dialogue by Macbeth where he just sings “vieni, vieni, vieni” – “come to me, come to me” and he talks to a knife, the knife which he uses for the killing. So he speaks with the knife and says eighty or ninety times the word “vieni”- it’s a very psychological scene. He doesn’t use Shakespeare’s words. Again, he goes into the brain and into the heart of the characters, and goes into silence. I really love that music. I’m proud of this composer!
LG – I look forward to seeing it. His cycle of orchestral songs Quaderno di Strada was dedicated to you – tell us about it.
OK – Yes, Quaderno di Strada of course is a favorite of mine. It’s a wonderful piece with I think thirteen songs with very different lyrics and words; some of them funny, some of them about everything people found and made songs of. In Quaderno he shows the complete gamut of his possibilities as a composer. He shows all the colors of his composing skills. It is written for fifteen or sixteen instruments; it’s not a big orchestra, but it is so rich with colors, and such an interesting piece! We did it everywhere in the world from Tokyo to Oslo. Besides Luci it is his most successful piece. It’s the most difficult one for voice, I would say.
LG – Let’s go away from Sciarrino. You performed Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in Madrid in 2010, done by La Fura dels Baus which is always visually intriguing. Are there memories of that production you’d like to share with us?
OK – Difficult question. Memories… lots of memories… [laughs]. It was such a big production with so many people on stage, so many technical things… I didn’t have the biggest role in this piece. It was an interesting experience, to work with La Fura for the first time, because they don’t go so much into the characters or actors on stage; they mostly focus their view on the big scene. It’s a different way of working. This production was very successful too. We did it in Moscow at the Bolshoi and people totally freaked out in the end. Such a success… I don’t know if they were seeing La Fura dels Baus for the first time… [laughs]. Mahagonny is another fantastic piece, by the way.
LG - Opera Lively has a keen interest in contemporary opera – at least this half of it [meaning Luiz, not Jim - everybody laughs] - and you do seem to share it. Please tell our readers why you feel it is important to support contemporary opera. Given that it struggles to earn an audience due to the fact that so many opera lovers are more interested in the great composers of the past [Luiz stares at Jim, everybody laughs again], what would be the solutions you’d propose to get more people to grow an interest for contemporary opera?
OK – That’s more than one question!
LG – [laughs] Well, it’s two questions; why is it important to support it, and what would you do to convince the audience of its worth?
JW – Yes, what would you do to convince me?
OK – I would love to convince you, but you have to take one step first, that is, come to the show, otherwise I can’t convince you. In my profession, it’s funny, I’m a free-lancer, I travel from one city to the other, and I meet lots of new people, like landlords, and people say, “oh, you are an opera singer; I’ve never been to the opera.” “Really? Would you want to come to our show?” “Yeah, perhaps, now that I know you and you are a nice person, perhaps I’ll come.” Then I say “OK, but it’s not a normal opera, it’s contemporary opera.” “What is contemporary opera?” “Well, it’s very special” – and I explain to people a bit, and then I say “just go there, sit down, relax, and be open for whatever happens. It’s not Verdi, it’s not Mozart, it’s not lovely melodies, it is something different. Just try to be open, don’t judge it. I’d say that in 99% of the cases, it works. What helps very much is when you know one of the singers. It’s so funny, when I go the opera and I say “oh, this is my lovely colleague” – it builds a bridge.
It’s interesting that you say “why support it?” I didn’t know I was supporting it. I’m just so incredibly interested in modern art in everything – painting, sculpture, music. At one point I was a composer too. At age twelve or thirteen I was writing my first symphony, all of the three pages of it [laughs]. It’s so interesting to have a live composer and talk with him! And it’s the music of our time. I love it. I love to work with live artists. Of course I love to sing Mozart and Italian opera; everything is wonderful, but we can do both. We can do the classic stuff and the modern stuff. Of course I understand quite well that the public is more interested in classic opera. If I’m in the office for eight or nine hours and I’m tired and then I need to go to a Sciarrino opera, it is pretty hard! [laughs], so perhaps Il Trovatore is a bit easier to digest. [laughs[
JW – I don’t know Il Trovatore at all.
LG – You heard it on CD, no?
JW – I heard it. I read the synopsis too.
OK – Did you understand it? The plot makes no sense.
JW – In this house the subtitles are only in German.
OK – Anyway, the music is wonderful, and Anna Netrebko is great. Is she singing tonight?
LG – Yes.
OK – She is fantastic, not only singing but on stage. I haven’t seen this production. I just saw the trailer. It looks very good. Yes, but what can we do to bring more people to contemporary opera? I don’t know. It’s strange, because when I go to the museum, to the exhibitions of contemporary art, the museums are full. A couple of weeks ago I was at Lago d’Iseo and saw the installation The Floating Piers by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and there were 1.3 million people there in two weeks. 1.3 million people wanted to see the new artwork of Christo. It was amazing. I was there at 6 AM and I thought there would be a few people but there were thousands, at six o’clock in the morning! It means that people need to get up at 3 AM to go there. So, I thought, so many people are interested in contemporary art! You go to the MoMA or the Guggenheim in New York and it is full all the time. So people are not afraid of watching modern art but they seem sometimes to have a problem with contemporary music.
JW – Two years ago I went to the Berliner Philharmoniker and saw a piece by Magnus Lindberg that he wrote specifically to be performed there because of the layout, and it was an amazing piece. But it has garden hoses and symbols and all kinds of weird things… members of the orchestra walking around and playing. Seeing it makes a difference. I couldn’t imagine sitting in my living room and listening to it.
[Editor’s note: Kraft – see a trailer here:]
OK – No, no. Me neither. Especially with Sciarrino, we were talking about Quaderno di Strada. It’s not an opera. Quaderno is a song cycle. You see the musicians on stage and you see how they produce the sounds. After each concert people came and said, “oh it is so interesting! The double bass was playing so high and I saw how he produces this tone!” So of course, that helps. I wouldn’t listen to contemporary stuff on the subway on the iPhone.
LG – It’s a very interesting point. Young adults love contemporary art. Why can’t they make the switch? I saw on DVD an opera by the Portuguese contemporary composer Miguel Azguime, Itinerário do Sal, in Lisbon. Do you know this composer?
[see a clip here:]
OK – No.
LG – He uses various electronic instruments and synthesizers that produce waves of sounds, with visual projections and all that, and young people loved it. As a bonus on the DVD there are interviews with audience members coming out of the show. Some of them say “I don’t know if this is real opera” while it is; it has an operatic structure; but they say “I’m not sure if this is an opera, but whatever it is, I loved it!” There’s got to be some way to better promote it. I interviewed a young Chinese composer, Huang Ruo, who did the opera Paradise Lost.
OK – Yes, I know this one.
LG – And he took it to museums. He did installations, booths with video clips of it, and stretches of the music playing in the background with some of the scenery displayed as a museum piece; this brought some prominence to this piece, and people then said “oh, I’m curious to go see the full thing, now.”
OK – Quite interestingly, most of the time as I am somehow specialized in contemporary music, most of my work is in festivals. This is a festival too [the Infektion! Festival of New Music] but it is in the Staatsoper, a regular opera house too, but normally we are in festivals that are established for contemporary music and normally you can’t get tickets for our shows. People really want to see them. I remember, we did Luci in the Rebecca Horn version here in Berlin ten years ago in a modern music festival and every show was sold out. People who love contemporary music, they look for that kind of music in certain festivals.
A regular opera house has another structure, has another audience that prefers the classic stuff. Thank God there are intendants like Jürgen Flimm who love contemporary music and bring it to the houses; I mean compared to Ioan Holender who didn’t make one single world première in twenty-five years at the Vienna State Opera! He just didn’t like it. Jürgen likes it, and so does Gerard Mortier [general director of La Monnaie in Brussels] and other big managers of our time.
I must say, when I was 14 years old the opera Lear by Aribert Reimann had its world premiere. I am now 52 years old. This was almost 40 years ago. Now Lear is famous and is a normal piece in the operatic repertoire. It’s been played all over the world and famous opera singers have played these roles. It’s not a contemporary opera anymore, 18 or 19 years old now. I think it takes time.
JW – This is also part of our dialogue. In Opera Lively most of our colleagues and friends watch DVDs. I listen to music on headphones when I walk. I go on long walks, ten miles. Listening to contemporary opera is somehow too dissonant. The drama is such a critical component.
OK – Seeing it here, live, is better. I’d say this of every music. But there is no time to go to all live music so you have to watch DVDs and use headphones and all that. But I don’t like that at all. Sometimes I put my headphones on when I need to iron my shirts [laughs] but normally at home I prefer silence, and when I hear music, I prefer to hear it live.
JW – I go to a lot of live performances. I come to Berlin every summer.
OK – Yes, we have three companies here, it makes a difference, and hearing the Philharmonic live is such an experience!
LG - Who are the contemporary opera composers you most admire, and why? Tell us about the most memorable contemporary operas you’ve been a part of. Either the ones you sang, or in general as well.
OK – In general… [pauses] Some people will kill me for what I’ll say now. The first composer I’m thinking of is Morton Feldman. For me he is a god. Unfortunately I think he didn’t write anything for baritone. He wrote this one opera [Neither] but I love his music. My favorite piece is Samuel Beckett, an orchestral piece. I love Morton Feldman, and Sciarrino, of course. Then I sang three operas from Georg Friedrich Haas. I think he wrote some fascinating music.
JW – Schreker?
OK – Is Schreker contempory? He is last century. It’s wonderful music, but would you call it contemporary?
LG – It’s modern but not contemporary.
JW – I think I’m mixing modern and contemporary.
LG - If you go back to modern then you have Britten…
OK – Britten, oh my God!
LG – You have Stravinsky, Debussy…
OK – Yeah, yeah, all that.
JW – Yesterday when we met we talked about Die Soldaten from Zimmermann.
OK – Oh, Zimmermann!
LG – It’s very beautiful.
JW – Yes, it is.
OK – [To Jim] I thought you didn’t like contemporary music, conceptually!
JW – I don’t know it. It’s the idea that it is so complex, so difficult.
OK – But not for the audience. It is so strong!
LG – Die Soldaten with the simultaneous scenes is very interesting.
OK – Yes, it is wonderful.
JW – Are they giving it in Berlin next season?
OK – I don’t know.
LG – I mean, those are acclaimed masterpieces of modernist and 20th century music, but I’m thinking more about contemporary music by live composers. Even Zimmermann has died already. I feel it is important to make the art form advance, and not just sit on what was done in the past otherwise we’ll be a dead art form.
OK – Yeah!
LG – So, the name of our organization says it. Opera Lively!
OK – [laughs] That’s true!
LG – It’s to be kept alive, not as a museum piece. But anyway, what are the most exciting projects coming up in the future for you?
OK – The next project will be Don Quijote de la Mancha by Hans Zender. Zender was a very interesting experience for me. I sang a piece of his some years ago, an a capella piece for baritone and chorus. They asked me if I would like to do it with him as conductor, and I said “why not?” I didn’t know his music. They sent me the score, and I looked at it and said “what’s that? Totally strange!” Microtonal and everything. I started to study and I thought it was not so interesting.
But then they sent me a CD of the world premiere, and I realized that I had misunderstood the score completely, because I played it on the piano, but it did not work on the piano. The chorus is so strong! It’s just for voices. Very calm music, and the baritone is very excited all the time. It’s very complicated stuff, and the combination of the baritone and the chorus is so strong! It was such a fantastic work!
Hans Zender is now about 85 years old, and he wrote this Don Quijote opera, thirty years ago, I think. He wanted it as a birthday gift. [Editor’s note: composed between 1989 and 1991, premiered in 1993]. He wanted to do this opera again and he wanted to do it with me, which is a big honor for me. This Don Quijote opera is very special. Maybe you know Zender’s Winterreise, perhaps. This is the next project.
Then I do a piece by Moritz Eggert [Freax ] in a production of Christoph Schlingensief – what a wonderful person! It was one of the last productions before he died. These are the next two projects. But then let me tell you: the most exciting one, when we talk about exciting work, is that next year I’ll do my first production as the stage director.
JW – Ah!
OK – Yes! And I’ll do, of course, a contemporary piece!
JW – [laughs] Here in Berlin?
OK – Yes, here in Berlin, at the Werkstatt, at the small house as we call it, which is a fantastic place. I do a piece by Aribert Reimann called Die Gespenstersonate. And this is the most exciting project for me because I always wanted to do directing. Now I’ll do it, and it’s a big honor for me.
LG – Congratulations!
OK – You have to come! Next summer in the Infektion! Festival.
JW – I live in Washington, D.C., and Francesca Zambello runs the Washington National Opera, and she does these workshops – she devotes a lot of time and energy towards contemporary opera and new composers, and I ignore it completely, so perhaps you have convinced me to pay more attention.
LG – [laughs][To Jim] Now I’m jealous because I’ve been trying to convince you to pay attention to contemporary music for two years and in less than one hour Otto did it! [all laugh]
OK – I really wish you could cancel the dinner tomorrow, because what you don’t expect but you would see tomorrow night in this show is very emotional things. The beginning is like a bit of this and that, ho-hum, but then it gets more and more emotional and dramatic.
JW – Are there other performances?
OK – There is tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.
JW – That might be possible.
OK – July 12, 13, 15, and 16.
JW – My host has this dinner I must attend. But maybe I can bring her another time.
LG – Yes, there are other dates! Your host is an opera lover but she is seventy-some years old and hasn’t paid attention to contemporary opera either. She is a very traditional lady; she might be shocked.
JW – She might. She might. We went to Cendrillon last night.
OK – Ah, OK, at the Komische Oper.
JW – It was a modern production.
OK – I know, I heard about it.
LG – It was very nice. We liked it. OK, so, our last few questions – how do you approach life as a person?
OK – Ha! Life as a person? I don’t know. I love it. [laughs] I think it is getting better and better. I was a very depressed person when I was young. I was always sad, always full of problems, and the older I get, I enjoy life more and more, and I get the feeling that I get more and more strength. I like what I do. I remember when I was young, I was complaining of everything, all the time. There is not so much to complain about, anymore. [laughs]
JW – Where did you grow up?
OK – In Munich. Life… I must say I’m lucky. Most of the work I do is with wonderful people, and wonderful roles. Sometimes people say “with your voice you should sing other stuff.” Yes, it’s true, and I will; there are a few very traditional and big things to come next year; I don’t want to talk about them now but they are really big. But I must say that this very intensive work, especially in contemporary music, is such a pleasure! It’s really hard work. Studying a Sciarrino opera is like studying twenty Mozart operas. It’s incredible. But the studying is wonderful. I do it for me. I have this piece in my brain. I possess it, I own it, it’s a part of me. Whenever I want to listen to Sciarrino, I have it here [points to his head]. I don’t need a DVD. I have it, and it’s wonderful. Sometimes, when I do the traditional stuff… I remember, I did Tannhäuser a few years ago in Italy…
JW – You sang Wolfram?
OK - Yes, I sang Wolfram. All those famous Wagner singers, and the first few days I felt so strange in this society of Wagner singers, and everybody was so incredibly important [makes an entitled tone of voice], and they were saying “I just came from Paris where I sang this and that” and I was thinking, it’s so different because in contemporary music singers don’t matter. You are the servant of art and of the composer. You get applause at the end and you get a few bravos, perhaps. When you sing Wolfram, everyone can sing Wolfram, it’s so easy, and after that two thousand people scream Bravo! [He sings a line from the opera - the Ode to the Evening Star - and adds:] It’s very easy. It’s so easy.
JW – It’s probably easy for the singer, but it is such a sweet melody!
OK – It’s incredible.
LG – It’s probably one of the most melodious pieces ever composed for a baritone.
OK – Yes, it is.
JW – Am I being boring?
OK – No, not at all. It’s just that sometimes you kill yourself to sing contemporary music, extremely difficult stuff, and then the audience goes clap… clap… clap… [reproduces a slow, sparse applause]. And then you sing Wolfram which is really easy and everybody screams. You sing Papageno and everybody screams. “We love you, ahhh, Papageno!!!” That’s a bit sad, sometimes. But I love this kind of work and it makes me happy. Now I’m working with a young Berlin composer, Philipp Maintz.
He is planning for me to sing some of his pieces. He is planning a new opera. He was at the Luci opening night yesterday and we exchanged a few words. He tells me about his plans for the libretto, so I’m a part of the development of the piece, and it’s wonderful. I read the biography of Hans Hotter, and Richard Strauss sitting there and having drinks all night and the next day it was the world premiere of Salome. And I think, “Oh my God, he knew Richard Strauss!” And yeah, that’s my life. That’s my everyday life. [laughs]. Sitting with composers. Not having drinks! [laughs] Talking and being part of these projects.
LG – Tell us about some of your extra-operatic and extra-classical music interests that you have.
OK – As I said before, I’m a total art freak. I spend all my money on art. I spend much too much! I love nature. I’m a hiker, I spend every minute that is possible, in the mountains, hiking and all that. It’s important for me. And good food! [he says it in a way that we all laugh]. I think that’s it. Music, art, hiking, and food.
JW – You alluded to some traditional things coming up that you wouldn’t tell us about.
OK – Yes. Next year I’ll tell you, OK?
JW – Yes, but here is the question. Do you have a favorite traditional piece?
OK – Hm… I think lots of favorite traditional pieces. Not one composer. Give me a composer, I will tell you.
JW – Mozart.
OK – Don Giovanni.
JW – You sang the Don, or Leporello?
OK – Both. I did many Don Giovannis and many Leporellos.
JW – Leporello is a fun character.
OK – Leporello is wonderful; it’s the best role in the piece. I mean, I don’t sing Don Giovanni anymore because nobody wants me as Don Giovanni because I’m not as pretty anymore [we all laugh hard]. But Don Giovanni is so wonderful because it is not about love and all the ridiculous stuff. It’s about life and death. It’s about dying. It’s about facing that you have to die and about the truth in your life. This is what makes the character so interesting.
LG – Mozart is much deeper than it seems to the naked eye. I just came from Aix-en-Provence where I saw the Così Fan Tutte they did there, and oh my God, this was so deep, psychologically so intense!
OK – It is the saddest piece.
LG – Yes, because finally they did it without the comedy but rather as a tragedy. Ever since I saw this opera for the first time, I thought “this is not a drama giocoso. It is a drama; there is nothing giocoso about it.”
OK – Yes, exactly. It is so sad! Everyone loses everything, in this piece.
JW – It is the least accessible Mozart.
OK – Yes, Così is fantastic. It’s a wonderful piece to sing. I sang Guglielmo, and Alfonso, also. Such a sad piece. Yes, there is Mozart, but of course the Italians are also fantastic, Verdi and stuff. And I am German so of course Strauss and Wagner are really tops for me.
LG – My favorite composer is Wagner, and I rarely speak about it. I feel unqualified and overwhelmed. I’m such in awe of his music; I tend to just enjoy it quietly. I don’t talk much about Wagner on Opera Lively.
JW – Telramund?
OK – No, Telramund is too high for me, unfortunately. But there will be some Wagner stuff in 2019 or 2020.
LG – I was thinking about what you said that you don’t like to only listen to contemporary music; it reminded me that I can’t stand fragments of Wagner. Wagner is to be seen, and we must watch the whole thing for it to make sense. I think in some way, contemporary opera is similar.
OK – Absolutely. I think it is true of most of music. Perhaps you can listen to a Verdi aria. But you need the entire context. I think an opera is a journey. Good opera is a journey not only for the singer, but also for the audience.
LG – There was one question that I skipped, because you said you didn’t want to talk about it. I can turn the tape recorder off. It’s about Mr. Flimm’s concept for this piece. I’ll interview him tomorrow and I know nothing about his vision for it. I asked the Press Department if they had some material in English since I don’t speak German, but they didn’t have anything. They only had a tiny synopsis in English which I don’t need because I saw the piece several times. But I don’t know much about his concept. I saw a clip, I saw that you had black wings.
OK – Yes.
LG – So I was asking myself, what’s the concept? Can you tell me? Would you want me to turn off the recorder?
OK – I just said I didn’t want to talk about it because it would be a spoiler.
LG – Yes, but it's to prepare for the interview, because I’m a bit at a loss. I should have seen the piece first, then interviewed him.
OK – Absolutely. I thought that you had seen this production before. It’s not so easy for me to talk about the concept. It’s best that you talk with him.
LG – OK.
OK – I don’t know if I’d be able to explain it correctly. But I would like to talk with you about it afterwards, after you see it, or at least read your review.
LG – Right, because I see it tomorrow evening but then I fly back to Paris the next morning. But we can stay in touch. Do you want to add anything?
OK – Yes, there is something interesting I’d like to tell you. I’ve been married to my wife for fifteen years. When I first met her mother, I did Sciarrino’s Macbeth in Graz where she lives. Her mother was so proud. She wanted to come. We didn’t know each other before, and she was so proud that her future son-in-law was a famous opera singer. She is a very simple woman living in the countryside and not used to opera or modern art at all. When she went to the MoMA she just laughed. So I said, “listen, you’ll be sitting in the middle of the first row; you cannot leave the show; it takes two hours. Just relax, perhaps you will think that everybody is crazy, but just relax.” She said, “no problem for me.”
It was so funny, because I remember watching her throughout the show all the time. She was sitting there, not moving [laughs] and in the end she jumped up and screamed Bravo! This is a not-so-young woman, and she was totally enthusiastic. Afterwards we spoke and she said, “you won’t believe it; it was such an amazing experience!” And it was Achim Freyer’s staging, so everything was very strange. Achim Freyer! The first ten minutes, she thought “are they crazy? F dot dot dot!” [all laugh hard]. The next ten minutes, she said she became totally angry about what was happening. No music, just noise and strange things.
And then she calmed down, and then she became bored. That was the change, the point of change. After thirty minutes she just relaxed. She thought “OK, whatever happens here, I just have to sit here and wait until it’s done.” All of a sudden she was in it. She was in it and loved it and was so touched! Then she came to the next ten or twelve shows, and met Sciarrino and all that. So I said “do you want to come see a Don Giovanni?” And she said, “Oh, Mozart is not that interesting!” [we all laugh]. It’s so funny! This woman has no academic education. She is a very simple woman. But once she had the chance to open her mind up and her heart for that kind of art, it worked. Now she brings her friends.
JW – Do the friends enjoy it?
OK – Yes! They have this connection through me. They know, “ah, this is her son-in-law” and we have coffee together, then they go to the show, and they see that friendly guy...
JW – Killing people.
OK – [laughs] Yeah, killing people on stage! So sad!
LG – You said the first half hour in Luci is kind of slow. I think it is very important to build the characters. What I find incredible in his libretto is that it is only seventy minutes long! He does this psychological arc with every character; he defines things so well and sets them up in a way that is quite amazing. A libretto needs to be concise. It needs to convey a lot in a few lines because it takes longer to sing than to tell a story. If you read La Dame aux Camélias which Verdi set to music as La Traviata, there is a full chapter describing how she is lonely in Paris. Piave conveys it in one phrase – Povera donna, sola, abbandonata in questo popoloso deserto che appellano Parigi. [poor lonely abandoned woman in this populous desert that we call Paris.” One phrase, where he recovers fifty pages of text.
OK – Yes.
LG – Sciarrino has this capacity to be very synthetic, and to tell this story in short scenes with this incredible arc. This is really not easy to do.
OK – Yes, absolutely not easy. This is a real masterpiece. Like it or not, it is a real masterpiece; perhaps his best piece, I don’t know. Perhaps his best opera. He is writing a new one for La Scala next year. They called me and said “Mr. Katzameier, Sciarrino is writing a new opera for us, would you like to sing it?” I said, of course I would. We talked about it, then I called Sciarrino, and said “Salvo, you are writing a new opera for La Scala and you didn’t tell me?” He said, “no, I’m not writing a new opera for La Scala. I’m writing a new opera for you!” [we all laugh]. That’s charming.
LG – OK, thank you so much!
OK – Thank you. It was lovely. It was fun! It is nice to be interviewed by people who demonstrate such passion for opera and such knowledge of it.
LG and JW – Thank you!
LG - It was our pleasure to speak with such an intelligent singer!
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