Simon Keenlyside: “I’m Singing the Way I Want to Sing”
Four years after our last interview, it was a pleasure to catch up with world-renowned baritone Simon Keenlyside in Los Angeles where he was performing Mahler songs in L.A. Phil’s “Mahler’s Journey” concert. For biographical information and other details about Simon Keenlyside, please click on the link at the end of this interview.
The last time we did an interview was in June 2021 when we were just starting to emerge from pandemic isolation. Four years later, how do you as a performer see the landscape of the relationship between performance and audiences transformed? And what does that mean for you?
It’s been a massive change. Just before the pandemic I had made a decision that I was only going to work from October to April, and how privileged is that? I even knew the opera houses where I would work. In the summer and in the autumn, I could be on my farm in Wales and do things, see my children and wife more. Then with the pandemic, of course, none of us worked for a very long time. Actually, for several years, I had only worked seven months a year because I wanted to see the kids. Many of my bosses who were my supporters retired so the new bosses who came into the opera houses don’t know me, and they don’t have any compunction to put the cancelled contracts back in. Then time passed and I’m now old…
What does “old” really mean in baritone years?
Well, I could send them a list of the singers who were singing at the top of their game even in their early 70s, but unfortunately, I don’t know that some new administrators are that educated. They’re not prepared to take a risk, and I can’t blame them for that. There are younger, wonderful singers coming up and they want to give them a chance. That’s life! I think retirement will be less a case of me wanting to stop, as being retired by my bosses and not wanting to do too much new repertoire. I don’t want to do everything new just to find a new way forward. So, it has sorted itself out, but it’s taken a few years. A boss who doesn’t know me will say: “I’m not gonna give a man in his mid-60s the job!” Because most people in their mid-60s have stopped performing.
Actually, I didn’t really enjoy opera singing until my early 50s, but it doesn’t matter. I’m lucky to have had the chance at all. I embraced the lyric Italian repertoire and got married and had children all at the same time. I tried to be a half-decent papa, half-decent husband, and half-decent singer and I couldn’t do anything! It doesn’t leave you much room for error… either a wife or children or Verdi. I failed many, many times with Verdi, I failed with Rigoletto and Macbeth, I’m not ashamed to say.
But failing may mean something different to you than to the public…
Not at all. I mean, it was worthy and clever but… also, I’m not deaf, I did hear the whispers: “Why is he singing Verdi?” I can say: Gino Bechi, Giuseppe De Luca, Franz Grundheber, Renato Bruson did it, they are lyric baritones like me, but they are Italian; it’s their mother tongue and it’s their default position to be Italian opera singers. Of course, I got many more opportunities to do those roles, and I love doing them. I added them in my late 40s, and it just so happened that I got married and then the babies came, and I couldn’t find a way to sing Verdi the way I was supposed to. You’re talking with the little children nonstop, they travel with you, it’s exhausting. Verdi needs respect, and that respect is not just how to find a way through a role; these are roles with you having all your power at the end. When the final denouement comes, you need all your power in Macbeth, in Rigoletto, you can’t run out of steam towards the end. That requirement needs both the understanding of how to negotiate that journey but also rest. When I was always with the kids and my wife, I just couldn’t do it.
The pandemic changed my work completely. All the contracts were cancelled; the new ones that came in were not what I particularly wanted. Now it’s falling into place but since we are now casting for two years away, I think I’m going to change the balance anyway and do more chamber music like I’m doing here in L.A. I just love it; it makes me happy, and I don’t have to be away for so long. I’m singing the way I want to sing, and I don’t see any reason for people to bully me into following their own imperatives. Some of my colleagues have run out of voice in their late 40s. I grew into it very late, but I love it.
In our last interview, you spoke of how song meanings acquired different dimensions during the pandemic, for instance the song “Geduld” (Patience). At last night’s concert, I felt similarly about “Revelge”, the song about the ghost soldiers marching. In the context of what’s been happening in the world, after the pandemic, moving from one calamity to another, it gave me chills. How do you sing that song knowing that these senseless wars are going on? What does it do to you?
I think Gustavo [Dudamel] programmed very nicely this group of songs, and he finished with Urlicht, which was heartbreaking, because you’re talking about the state of humankind right now, which is very precarious as we all know. As an artist, you can speak about it; you don’t have to lecture people, you just point it out. As a citizen, you protest if something’s not fair or not right, and I think music is a very powerful protest. Look at all the Shostakovich symphonies as a protest about war. There’s a poet called Wilfred Owen who says: “My poem is about war and the pity of war; the poetry is in the pity.” So, with Revelge, you can just listen to the music, but it is a protest. That’s all I can do. I’m not a soldier. The other thing is, one should play it straight, just do what the master composer says, you don’t have to do more than he’s already done for you; you are merely a means by which he is expressing his protest. And what have we learned in the last 100 years? Nothing.
Tell me more about singing Mahler with orchestra.
Mahler is tricky. I’ve always loved Mahler with piano. First of all, you have much more choice. Still, I think we’re seeing the Rückert-Lieder, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Das Lied von der Erde, giant pieces of music just too often. There’s more out there… come on, guys, let’s be curious! Mahler’s got so many songs, but not all of them orchestrated, so that is really why they’re wonderful and I don’t have to address the biggest problem, which is the thickness of the orchestration. I think Mahler understood very well that the qualities of the female voice that he wanted to use were more delicate, and then the stuff that he wrote for men is often very big and heroic; that’s understandable too. I don’t mind being killed and drowned in a song like Revelge last night, because the effect of the whole piece is fantastic. I don’t mind that, but not in everything. When I meet Mr. Mahler, I’m going to ask him: ‘Please, could you have made some slightly thinner orchestrations?’ That’s why we chose these Luciano Berio orchestrations, and Gustavo was so generous in allowing us to do it. Berio understood the voice and introduced some light and some humor and some different themes, not just death and suffering played fortissimo.
What I found is that there’s always something looming in this music, the feeling that there’s something dark just waiting to emerge. That’s fascinating; it’s not just light, it’s not just humor in the light songs.
Yes. But in Hans und Grethe… that’s pure love, and the beautiful joking in Ablösung im Sommer is also very lovely. Of course, there’s a whole subtext to it. I wish Mr. Berio had done more.
What repertoire—or rather composer—continues to surprise you?
Mr. Verdi. I knew when I was practicing on my own in my late 40s and I did enough homework that, for example, you could have a coal-dark voice, such as, in the present times, Carlos Álvarez or Zeljko Lucic as go-to voices, and that’s the sort of thing you expect. But look at the history of people who sang Verdi. My friend Bob Lloyd did a recording with Renato Bruson. Bruson did not have a huge voice, but it was beautifully manufactured, and he was Italian, absolutely wonderful! De Luca and Gino Bechi were lyric baritones, then you get Bastianini who scares the hell out of you or Leonard Warren who is just so awesome!
I didn’t say yes to everything because I don’t want to do everything. I wanted to do Rigoletto and Macbeth, I enjoyed Don Carlo, Traviata, and I love doing them again and again and again. I’ve done maybe 150 Rigolettos and I will never be tired of it. And I don’t want to keep doing new stuff because it takes me a long time to get inside the skin of these roles. I’m singing in Falstaff in six months, and Boccanegra. Simon Boccanegra was supposed to happen for me in Vienna and in Cleveland, but both contracts were cancelled because of COVID, and I don’t think they’ll come back for me; they might, they might not. I used to do all my Verdi roles with my friend Franz in Cleveland, and then I’d come to Europe and start singing them. But I don’t think you have to try and finish this life having sung everything you possibly can.
Your voice sounds fresh and young; do you have a secret?
Yes. The secret is practicing combined with rest. I made mistakes in my 30s and 40s because anxiety was a big enemy of mine; I suffered a lot from it. The way it showed itself was that I would be ready to sing all the time, so I would practice and sing, sing, sing every day, and what that does is make your voice stiff and not elastic. It is ridiculous that I found that out so late. There’s a difference between practice and singing. Sometimes, you sing just to get fit, sometimes you practice to find the holes, but then, rest is important too. Rest is just as important as practice, so that has been, for me, the answer.
Are you teaching at all?
No, I’m not teaching. It’s very easy for singers to point out deficiencies in the voice, but if you’re not going to put something better in their place, well, then you’re useless. So, when I do coachings or master classes, which I do because I love young singers and I want to be useful, I’m very, very careful not to undermine them and not to point out deficiencies that they can’t immediately deal with or understand. The best you can say is maybe: I’m sure your teachers are working on this with you, keep it up.
What’s next that you’re really excited about?
I’m very excited about Boccanegra. I would like Vienna to put that back in, or somebody to put that back in, because I would love to do it more. There’s no point in doing it once. I don’t think the German route was ever really mine in opera; it didn’t make me as happy as the Italian route. But Tannhäuser was fun. Amfortas would have been fun, but COVID took it away. Beckmesser… I could have gone everywhere doing that, but it didn’t make me happy. I didn’t want to do Strauss much. I love Wozzeck. Well… I think, at my age, if you’re going to learn a new role, you better have other places where you’re going to do it, otherwise it’s a lot of work for nothing. Now I would like to reinvestigate many of the things I have been doing.
Photo by Maria-Cristina Necula
Top: Simon Keenlyside during the “Mahler’s Journey” concert with the L.A. Philharmonic
