How do you balance work and family while pursuing or maintaining a career? Is it possible to have both?
I established the balance very simply. Because my wife had a simple life, she never abandoned me even for a day. She always followed me, never leaving my side. This is a great thing. She was always honest with me about my work and just because she was my wife never just said “bravo” when I hadn’t done well. She always found even the slightest errors – even the slightest! She heard it right away. This kept a balance. It was a big problem when I had children, of course. But my wife’s mother took care of the children. We sent them to a very good boarding school in Parma. While they were there my mother-in-law went to see them and every Saturday they went to her house while we were traveling. So the situation was solved that way. I was very lucky.
What is the best “next step” for young singers after they finish their formal education?
This is an international problem. One can study and not know how to proceed. The best thing to do is go to a good musical academy, especially those musical academies which, at the end of your course of study – if one is accepted there – offers you a debut in an opera. Competitions are also very important.
For example: Last year at my academy, I did a competition for Verdi voices. We accepted people in every voice category because they had good qualities. And then they had two months of study. In these two months we found out who were the best ones. Then an opera was selected to show off those particular voices. So if we had a baritone who could do Belcore [from L’elixir d’amore] we wouldn’t program Rigoletto. We would never cast them in something that would force their voices and ruin them. It’s a safer process.
When at the academy, each person has a teacher who is then responsible for the student for two months. It should be a minimum of two months. In that time the teacher prepares each of the voices for their roles. At the end, the teacher calls in the general manager of the academy to listen to the students. From this method you find good singers.
For instance, one year they chose Il Lombardi because they had Vincenzo Lascuola to do it. We did La Forza del Destino, Luisa Miller, Il Corsaro, La Traviata and Un Ballo in Maschera. From these came some quality singers: Michele Pertusi, Roberto Arronica, – who now sings at the Metropolitan – and Sylvia Mosca, who did Luisa Miller with me at the Met. These names all came into careers because they were programmed in a good opera. They started their careers because this academy offered them a debut in a role on stage with a lot of people attending. Of course, they also had the right qualities for a career.
How does one choose repertoire and when do you know when it’s a good time to move into different things?
First of all a singer has to have the correct range. Then, the teacher has to really make sure that a singer has the proper technique starting with the most elementary things like breathing correctly. This all has to be done slowly. When I sang as a baritone (and I wasn’t a baritone!) I had the good fortune of singing with some great tenors. Pertile, Gigli, Tagliavini and Schipa – the great tenors of our time. Pertile did not have the beautiful color of Gigli, but technically he was the best. With study he [Pertile] learned a “mix” [of chest and head]. Gigli just had a natural, beautiful voice and color. When I was doing Boheme, singing Marcello – nobody told me I shouldn’t be singing as a baritone, but I knew – I approached Gigli and said, “Commendatore, you go two hours to the theater before the performance and all you would do is hum and breathe.” And he responded by saying, “When one sings one should speak as little as possible, because the speaking position is one position and the singing is different.” In the intermissions nobody went in to his dressing room. Not even his wife! After the performance he sang all the popular songs he wanted to! He sang, “Mamma” and all those other pop songs until all hours of the morning.
We went to dinner one night and at the next table was Gigli and his wife. I saw Gigli writing. I asked Gigli’s daughter, Rena, (who was also a singer), “Is your father giving the waiter an autograph?” She responded by saying, “No, my father is asking for a cup of coffee.” He won’t even say, “A coffee, please!” This was the day before a performance! Del Monaco did the same thing. These great tenors had an incredible discipline in their singing and their lives which young people should emulate. This was a big, big lesson for me because I put this practice into my own life. The day before the performance I don’t speak to anybody.
What do you see happening with young singers today? Do they have the same discipline?
Today singers think that singing is like taking a walk, that it’s not something special. To be a singer entails great sacrifices as a man, because you can’t enjoy things that other people enjoy. I made my debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1956; I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time in 1980! Because when I came for the opera season it was cold, so I never went out! Normally I would take a limo from the Navarro Hotel at Central Park South to the Met and I would only take a little walk down Fifth Avenue to St. Patrick’s and do some shopping when it was sunny. It’s a big life of sacrifices if you want to be a singer. It has many benefits. I give this advice to many young singers and even if they say, “Well, Bergonzi is an old man and things have changed” – things have not changed; this is still the way to do it.
I follow it today. I don’t sing opera anymore, but I still sing concerts. No, I don’t sound like I did thirty years ago, but I still get good results from my concerts and I still sing operatic arias! Look, I still have to sacrifice and ‘live the life’ to get these results. This is the advice that young singers should receive and follow.
Another piece of advice: When a singer starts he should very carefully select his teacher and then always have faith in that teacher. When you start to sing it is useless to go to someone like me, or Joan Sutherland or Caballé and get advice and then go to other teachers. You can’t mix it up. Stick with one teacher and trust this person.
Singers should be intelligent and make sure that they are making progress with their teachers. Make sure they are right for your voice and then stick with them. If a singer isn’t intelligent, then he shouldn’t sing.
If you are a singer with things to offer the music, but are still solving problems (technique, language, stage skills, repertoire, etc.) would you continue pursuing a career in the world or stop to “fix” the problems first? Where should one go to perfect the craft and still work in the business, or should one work at all?
This problem doesn’t just exist in America! It exists in general. First of all, it depends on the extent of the complication.
There should be a seriousness in the way that you handle your career. You should have a musical intelligence. This is extremely important. Be very critical of yourself and what you are doing and always be able to give your best. Make the most of your own qualities. Never go out of your repertoire. Nowadays there are singers with very beautiful voices that sing the wrong repertoire. If the singers can sing L’elisir and Don Pasquale very well, nature has not given him the voice to sing Rigoletto and Aida. You shouldn’t do it.
As soon as the manager hears that the young lyric tenor has a high C they say, “Manrico.” Especially when someone has just been engaged in a role by a major theatre. There is where you need to be balanced.
The music world is sometimes crazy and unfair. What do you do to survive the insanity when it starts to get you down?
When you arrive at this point in a career, if you are intelligent you don’t become crazy. You need a certain amount of humility and the knowledge that you are following the right path. It’s the person who doesn’t have humility that gets a swelled head. They have a major engagement, think they are tremendously important and can do anything. “I can do this, I can do that – [in a high singer’s voice] Hi, how are you – okay!” [mimicking a soprano voice speaking] I’m fine, thank you!” [big laugh here] These are the crazy ones. Tenors do this a lot!
I’m not always right. But I think to myself “Is what has been told me right or not?” I search for the truth. If other people are right I try to adapt myself to what they want. I’m not crazy – I have always been very humble and always believed, not in the critics so much, but in the reaction of the public.
If you can catch the public with a phrase or a particular sound – you can hear them all take a breath and then – an explosion! Then that’s the truth. When it’s a cold public, it’s not the public’s fault, it’s my fault. Then I realize that I didn’t sing well. The crazy person would start saying, “Oh, the public is ignorant and they don’t understand anything.” I know that the public knows.
If there were one piece of advice that you wish someone had given you in the very beginning of your musical life, what would it have been?
Be your best ‘autocritico’ – self-critic.
I was a lucky man but I also had some bad moments. The best luck I had was that I started with some really great maestros like Bruno Walter all the way to Ricardo Muti (who I think is the best today). I sang with all the good maestros – all of them! It never went to my head that I sang with the great ones. I never had the good fortune of having the ‘physique de role.’ Karajan wanted to do Otello in Salzburg. Serafin, Karajan, Solti – they all wanted me to do the role. I said that I couldn’t do that role because I don’t look like the role. Karajan really insisted on me singing it, but at the time it was in the full height of my career. It would have taken me one year minimum to get my technique in line for the Otello, get it in my voice and six or seven months minimum with a good director. So I would have to stop for two years and even then I don’t know how successful it would be. I’m not sure it’s really worth stopping for two years to learn Otello when I am not sure it will be a success. If I had had the right shape I would have attempted it.
Do you regret that?
I really do. I am really sorry that I didn’t do it, but I am also glad I said no, but I’m sure that it would have been a disappointment.
If I had to do it over I would do it the same way. After 50 years, with all the sacrifices I would do it all again and always try to improve the faults!
