One of the most highly regarded singers of contemporary opera today, American tenor John Duykers is considered the model of the intrepid American opera singer, singing both traditional and cutting edge contemporary opera with dramatic and vocal ease. He has performed over 100 roles that include 50 world premieres and range from Mao Tse-tung in John Adams’ Nixon in China to the title role in Tannhäuser. A frequent collaborator with many notable living composers such as Philip Glass, Paul Dresher, Libby Larsen, and George Coates, Duykers has sung at many of the world’s great opera houses, including Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera, Netherlands Opera, and Frankfurt Opera.
Duykers’ career is still going strong, not only as a singer but also as voice teacher and opera educator. His lifetime of involvement in both modern and traditional opera and his vocal training, grounded in the Bel Canto technique, make him an artist/teacher avatar for the 21st century.
Duykers and I met 12 years ago while performing together with Long Beach Opera. Since then, I have invited him to teach masterclasses for my students in Los Angeles and had the pleasure of seeing him reprise the role of Mao in Nixon in China with Long Beach Opera this past March. He is a man of obvious intellect and incredible energy, and also a warm and caring teacher. Duykers found a moment to sit down during the Long Beach run and talk about the direction his career is taking, both as a singer and a teacher.
What was your early voice and stage training like?
I grew up in a family of Dutch and Manx immigrants in Butte, Montana. My father was a singer and played opera recordings all the time, and I would imitate what I heard—one of my earliest memories was singing “Largo al factotum” in the bathtub when I was seven! I started playing piano when I was eight, flute at 11, and joined the choir in high school.
Marjorie Rose Ryan, a singing teacher with the Metropolitan Opera, came through town and, on the advice of a neighbor, heard me sing while I was in high school. She heard promise, but thought I was too young to begin studying voice. My fi rst real voice teacher, at Oberlin, was Leon Lishner [the original Police Chief in Menotti’s The Consul], an enthusiastic and supportive teacher, although he never really talked about technique, per se.
But because I grew up with singers in a musical home, and had a natural ability, that lack of technical know-how worked for a while. I was an apprentice at Santa Fe Opera in the late ’60s, with the likes of Sam Ramey, Patricia Wise, David Holloway, Brent Ellis, and David Gockley. I then did San Francisco’s Merola program in the summer of 1968. By the time I was 24, I had a scholarship at the Met studio.
Throughout this time, I was singing as a baritone. I made the switch from baritone to tenor in 1970 and ’71, which was kind of rocky at first. This was after working with conductor Christoph von Dohnányi in Frankfurt, who suggested that my voice was moving in that direction—and John Crosby [at Santa Fe Opera] said the same. I came back to the States and worked with a teacher trying to figure out the tenor thing. I had no concept of the passaggio and what it took to make it work. I holed up for six months, contemplated getting out of singing, but finally figured it out.
Did you always aspire to be off the beaten track, or did the bug to sing outside the box come later in your career?
Leon Lishner’s interest and involvement in contemporary opera had a lot to do with my interest in the same. When he took a tenured position at the University of Washington, I followed him and wound up getting my degree there (after changing my major every semester at Oberlin—flute, piano, choral conducting, and chemistry). The program at Washington was a vigorous one. It was there that I met my fi rst wife, Janice Giteck, a composer with whom I created my first company.
It was also there that I began to have many intense conversations about the nature of opera. What I came up with was that opera is not just a stand-and-sing proposition. It’s multimedia. In order to be a complete singer, one must take movement classes [and] acting classes. In the late ’60s, this was a radical concept. While at University of Washington, I became fascinated with contemporary composers and their process.
My early performing life was influenced greatly by George Coates in San Francisco, with whom I collaborated on the creation of “Duykers the First,” a solo performance art piece based on my life experiences. This was performed in San Francisco, France, and Holland—a piece I created in my hometown toured internationally! Through this experience, I realized that generating pieces in the community—original works—has always been a primary interest of mine, and I’m still doing it.
You have sung for opera companies all over the world, but not at the Met. Is that still on your bucket list?
Actually, the Met has called me about five times in the last 20 years, but I have not sung there—yet! The first time was after the Nixon in China premiere, wanting to know if I was available to cover Herod and sing the First Jew in Salome. I wasn’t available at the time.
You have a fantastic technique, still singing at 66, an age when a lot of singers have stopped many years ago. What’s your secret?
My studies with Dickson Titus in San Francisco saved my life vocally. I was sent to him by coach Susan Webb, with whom I was working on Rodolfo. I was having real problems with the passaggio after my transition to tenor, and she suggested that I work with Dickson.
Dickson told me that he thought I would be a great teacher, and really encouraged me in that direction. But without Leon, I wouldn’t be here. He steered me into so many great opportunities. . . . Leon was a fabulously supportive teacher, and it was Dickson who really taught me technique. Since he passed on, I’ve also worked with David Burnakus, a student of Dickson’s and the husband of soprano Ruth Ann Swenson.
I actually still have a voice teacher today. From time to time I work with Bill Neill in New York. At this point in my singing life, I don’t need to be working with someone all the time, but it’s useful for me to check in with someone from time to time. I’ve been lucky. All the teachers, coaches I’ve worked with over the years have been encouraging, supportive, and demanding—never abusive.
Something I really got from Leon and from Dickson was how important it is to sing with your voice. You are your instrument and you are unique. There have been a lot of teachers that seem to encourage their students to sound like other, well known singers. Look at the singers with major careers, whose names we remember. They were all unique, with their own unique sound—singers like Björling, Gigli, Vickers, and Pavarotti.
Tell me about your teaching and what informs it today.
What Dickson gave me as a teacher really informs my teaching today. He embraced traditional Bel Canto technique, which is now the foundation of what I do. I encourage my students to listen to the early great singers. But what I encourage my students to do most is feel and not to listen to themselves, to get in touch with their body. I work a lot with support, low larynx, and linking to the breath while remaining vibrant and alert.
As a singer, you are a sound machine. That’s where it starts. Right now, I’m singing a 78-year-old guy, Mao, who’s about to die. And, yes, I’m playing an old guy, hunched over and fragile—but I still have to connect with the breath, pick up the chest, all of that.
All this has to do with what it takes to be a singer. It’s complicated! Of course, initially it’s all “left-brain”—notes, rhythm, tempi—but at some point you have to let go. I have come to realize that the teaching of vocal technique is in a major way a “hearing” or aural-dominant craft for the teacher. Acting and physicalization techniques are, in my view, largely imparted through visual perception on the part of the teacher. So, I find myself responding as a teacher to two different foci: vocal technique and what I have come to call “performance coaching.”
Often the first task is to encourage the singer to stand with a relaxed and aligned posture, with neutral faces and no gestures, no tension, [and] focus on breathing. Most of the acting work that I do with singers is related to breathing, and I encourage each to create a dramatic score—a transparent, overlying outline of intention shifts, attitude shifts, and focus shifts, as well as physical gestures and movement related and responding to the musical score. The character of each of these shifts is determined through creating a backstory or history for the character they are portraying. For music theater works, often the story of the piece will play a major part in the creation of the character’s history. For song, the history is often made up, based on historical research.
I incorporate some techniques I have learned from Ann Baltz, Paula Thomson, Missy Weaver [Duyker’s wife], and Lotfi Mansouri, and I have some second-hand familiarity with Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints.
Having seen your Mao recently, I was struck by the power and effectiveness of your portrayal, both dramatically and vocally. This has been a process, obviously, from the first performance with Houston Grand Opera in 1987 to the present Long Beach Opera production. How did it all come about?
I had asked John Adams for some comp tickets to see Meredith Monk, who was performing with San Francisco’s New and Unusual Music Series when Adams was the head of the series in the late ’70s. John gave me the tickets on the condition that I do something for him sometime. Well, later I was doing the opera The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even by composer Charles Shere. John saw it, and we had all heard about his new, upcoming opera, Nixon in China. I decided to call in my chips, as it were. So I talked to John about Mao, the tenor role in the opera. He was reluctant because, as he said, Mao was kind of a small guy, physically speaking. So, a “yes, but no” answer.
But then Houston [where the premiere happened] sent out a request for “tall tenors,” and I auditioned for [then general director of HGO] David Gockley and director Peter Sellars. I think initially they were looking for a Chinese tenor, but after three callbacks, they made their decision. I have now done 65 performances as Mao, including the two at Long Beach. The first 63 were all in the original production, which premiered in Houston, then went on to Kennedy Center, BAM, Holland Festival, Edinburgh Festival, LA Opera, Bobigny (outside Paris), and two runs at the Frankfurt Opera House.
Singing Mao this time with Long Beach has been a real epiphany for me. In the library scene, we are all sitting in chairs, and I could feel that downward expansion of breath as I was sitting. I was mentally standing back, not controlling anything, which is a marvelous feeling. It’s a great place to be, but you have to know the piece well enough—and have to do that 10,000 hours of preparation. You can be a “natural,” but it’s not going to go anywhere if you haven’t done the work.
You’ve done some amazing work creating programs at various institutions. Tell us about those.
I was hired as chairman of the classical music program at Cornish College of the Arts [in Washington State] in 1979. I was there until 1981. I evolved the curriculum to reflect world music influences and focused on composition. I hired several of the folks at Cornish who were involved in the performance company that Janice and I founded in 1972, Port Costa Players, which included Paul Dresher, Paul Taub, Roger Nelson, and Thomasa Eckert. I am still on the faculty at Cornish as adjunct faculty.
I was at California Institute of the Arts from 1999 to 2004, where I developed a training program for singers called Opera Theater Performance Project, with coach/conductor Lisa Sylvester and director/dramaturg Missy Weaver. We had two-hour classes twice a week that focused on acting training for singers, movement, character development, and performance coaching. We presented a “composite opera” in the spring, which focused on a subject, period, or theme, incorporated into the study throughout the year.
I taught at University of Miami for a year. I’ve taught at OperaWorks [the opera training program headed by Ann Baltz] for two years, which is a really good program. I love working with young singers. I think I have the experience to help them evolve. Right now, I’m teaching about 35 students in the Los Angeles area three days a month, and am also teaching in the Bay Area.
Any person who chooses to become a singer cannot possibly be doing it to make a lot of money. They have to love singing. What I really do enjoy is the work. I love rehearsal, the whole process of putting something together. If I am in that “zone,” then that’s me and that’s how in a performance situation I can best express myself. I want to help others find that, too.
I love your indefatigable energy! What’s next for you?
I am contracted for the premiere of Don Davis’ new opera, Río de Sangre, with Florentine Opera in Milwaukee in October. There are some tentative plans for an appearance with the Santa Fe New Music Series in November.
I will be doing Paul Dresher’s The Tyrant with Birds on a Wire, the new music ensemble at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo in April 2011. I am co-producing a new opera, Caliban Dreams, by Amanda Moody and Clark Suprynowicz, with Berkeley Opera and 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa in the summer of 2011. I am working on two new projects, one with composer Miguel Frasconi (called Hand to Mouth) and [the other with] playwright Philip Gotanda and Max Duykers (my son, a composer)—this work has the working title Apricots of Andujar. I keep on keeping on.
Another project that I am involved in is a 30-acre bio-intensive produce farm called French Garden Farm. Over many years I have worked as a dirt pusher, tractor driver, produce seller/deliverer, and proprietor. This opportunity, which is up here in beautiful West Sonoma County outside of Sebastopol, gives me a sense of spiritual and physical balance. When I am “working out” in nature’s gym, I feel more completely balanced.
