Interview
Franz Josef Selig
A leading international bass, particularly in the German repertoire, Selig originally studied church music at Cologne’s State Music University. Initially, he had no interest in opera and didn’t begin voice studies until after he graduated. He didn’t even attend an opera until he was 24, when he received a scholarship to Bayreuth and went to a performance of Tristan und Isolde. After the second act, he told another scholarship recipient that singing opera would have been presumptuous for him and he wasn’t even going to think about it. (Matti Salminen was singing King Marke, and Selig says he’s never heard such a big voice before.)
Eventually, he did decide to pursue this career path, and his first permanent engagement was with Essen’s Aalto Theater from 1992-95. There, he received fundamental instruction in stage deportment as well as slowly and carefully beginning to build a repertoire. As he notes in the interview, properly developing a voice takes time, especially with the lower voices. Unfortunately, many young singers who ask him for coaching today are trying to imitate singers they hear on recordings, who are 30 years older than themselves, and artificially make their own voices sound large. But attempting to bypass stages in the voice’s development will only cause problems in the long run, such as a loss of flexibility. In his own case, his lack of familiarity with opera made him extremely cautious, and helped him avoid the temptation of singing major roles before his voice had sufficiently matured.
He says many young singers today also lack good advisors to assist them with properly developing their voices. In addition, there are many conductors now who never worked as repetiteurs earlier in their careers, and as a result, have little or no experience with voices. So they tend to offer opera roles or concert parts to singers whose voices are not suited to them. He cites an example in his own career when he appeared as bass soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, and afterward was asked by the conductor if he would like to do Brahms’ German Requiem (in which the male part is written for a baritone).
In his own career, he sang Verdi roles before he took on any of those by Wagner. In fact, he thinks singing Verdi should probably be a prerequisite for singing Wagner. Unfortunately, he’s now finding that he’s offered few roles in the Italian repertoire because he’s been pigeonholed as a “German” bass. He stresses that it’s always important to begin first with the text when one starts studying a Wagner role, as the proper treatment of the text is crucial with this composer. The choice of roles is also critical, and the singer should not attempt to force the voice into parts for which it is unsuited. This is particularly true for tenors, but applies to other voices, as well. Like Kurt Moll, he will not sing Hagen. Both he and Moll have mellower, more soft-grained timbres that just aren’t right for the role.
Lieder concerts have been an important part of his career from the earliest years in Essen, and he regards them as a “wonderful challenge” which every singer should consider. He also uses Liederabende and concert appearances to periodically rest his voice; in the past few years, approximately a quarter of his engagements fell into this category. He also takes care to set aside sufficient time to spend with his family.
When the interviewer notes that orchestras today are tuned higher than those in the 19th century, Selig says he has worked with various tuning levels and that, aside from those who have perfect pitch (which he doesn’t), the differences are nearly imperceptible. However, he does wonder what the impact may be over time on voices that are constantly required to sing at these higher pitches, and suggests one result may be shorter careers.
Feature Story
“Alles in einem Ei” (All in One Egg)
Mao and his wife may be turning over in their mausoleum (or wherever their mortal remains have been deposited), but China has been slowly but surely undergoing another Cultural Revolution in recent decades that is repairing at least some of the damage done by theirs. The “big egg” referred to in the headline is Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), a mammoth, rounded structure that encloses a concert hall, opera house, and playhouse, and which has a total seating capacity of over 5,000. If Mao’s Cultural Revolution rejected Western art, the current Chinese government and the people enthusiastically embrace it. And western opera is an integral part of it. The audience at performances in the NCPA opera house is a cross-section of economic classes. (Communist country or not, China has 179,000 millionaires and 10,500 “super rich” living in Beijing alone, and the demand here for Western luxury goods is brisk.) With ticket prices to the opera not exceeding €100, one is as likely to see groups of youths in sweat suits as well-dressed couples at performances. And the average audience age, like that of the general population, is young.
The NCPA has not only been importing opera productions from the West, but has been busy cultivating Chinese artists and mounting its own productions. President Chen Ping has brought Giuseppe Cuccia from Palermo’s Teatro Massimo on board as an advisor, and Cuccia is helping the NCPA to develop its repertoire. At the present, that means the “ABC” war horses – Aida, La Boheme, and Carmen – as well as other popular works. “For Zimmermann’s Soldaten or Strauss’ Frau ohne Schatten, the time is not yet ripe,” Cuccia explains. But Verdi and Wagner already occupy a firm position in the repertoire, and both of the Birthday Boys are represented in the current season’s program. In late 2012, Wagner’s Lohengrin was presented in a traditional staging by Giancarlo del Monaco (like Cuccia, under contract in Beijing until 2015) that was a curious combination of the latest technical wizardry and what was close to the old “stand and deliver” method of performing. The opera was double-cast, with the first group of soloists comprised of leading international singers, and the second made up of Chinese vocalists. The international cast was not as impressive as one might have expected. Egil Silins, singing Telramund with a compact, dark bass-baritone, was the standout among the four principals. Stefan Vinke’s Lohengrin sounded static and listless; Petra Schnitzer’s fine, soft-grained Elsa lacked stage presence; and Eva Johansson (Ortrud), once a Bayreuth Elsa, clearly has her best days behind her, with her intonation now disturbed by a persistent vibrato. The Chinese soloists were also a varied group. (Telramund was, by way of exception, sung by Romanian Anton Keremidtchiev, a giant of a man who towered over Lohengrin to such an extent that it gave their duel unintended comedy.) Yang Guang was the best, her intense, dark-hued Ortrud far surpassing Johansson, and her German pronunciation clearly articulated and idiomatic. Wang Wei was an unusually lightweight Elsa. Her bell-like tone had plenty of carrying power on top, but tended toward weakness in her mid- and low ranges. Her pronunciation was about as fuzzy as Schnitzer’s. As Lohengrin, Mario Zhang was simply miscast. His nasalized singing was also characterized by constant sobbing and gulping effects, and a practically unintelligible delivery of the text. The audience loved conductor Lu Jia, who led a cool, clear performance that was pleasantly natural and free of ponderous solemnity. Unfortunately, he was not always successful in maintaining a balance between pit and stage, so that the China NCPA Orchestra often drowned out the singers. In contrast, the NCPA chorus, only a few months old at the time of this performance, had a wonderfully sonorous quality and proved themselves disciplined and balanced.
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