It’s rained the whole time I’ve been in Paris—I’ve sung Donner so many times I think I’m starting to bring bad weather with me. And this opera house is huge! It took me a week before I stopped getting lost backstage.” That was Alan Held on the phone, as we were making final plans to meet for lunch to discuss his career and upcoming debut at the Bastille as the four villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Now a well-established singer in America, especially praised in the bass-baritone Germanic repertoire, Alan has spent much of this season in Europe, with debuts in Paris, Milan, Amsterdam, and Madrid. Over a splendid meal at Taillevent, where an accommodating Jean-Claude Vrinat let us linger well into the afternoon, Alan talked with eager midwestern warmth about the principles and strategies that have shaped his career and about his plans for the future. All young artists will profit from his experience and advice about the modern operatic world, where a laptop computer is as much a necessity as a musical score.
You’re still a young singer, but were part of the Met’s Ring cycle over ten years ago. How did you come to the major stages so quickly?
I didn’t really expect it, since I started off preparing for a career in music education. After I graduated from Millikin in 1981 I did an M.M. At Wichita State and then headed east to the Hartt School, where I started working with Richard Cross, who I consider my main teacher. I sang for James Levine in 1987, and he gave me a contract right off. So I think I had a more old-fashioned kind of professional training, actually in the theater rather than the conservatory. That was lucky, because I am a real opera fan, which is not too common among singers—I actually enjoy keeping up with things on Opera-L when I’m traveling. It was a real privilege for me at a pretty young age to sing with and be around the great artists of previous generations. Ludwig, Gedda, Ghiaurov, Freni, King, McCracken, Kraus—these people were heroes to me growing up, and I was anxious to learn everything I could from them. I’ve also sung with two-thirds of the three tenors: with Luciano first in the 1990 Pavarotti Plus and then in many performances at the Met afterwards, and with Domingo in Hoffmann, Tosca, and his Wagnerian repertoire—in the recent Parsifal we did, I was amazed at how his voice has retained so much of its luster. I’ve definitely been fortunate in my colleagues. (Although there was a prominent dramatic soprano who was given to screaming fits during rehearsals. She threw a spear in the direction of the stage manager too. But luckily that kind of behavior is the exception.)
I think always being on top of things musically has been a big advantage to me as well. I began in school with the tuba, and I play the piano, so now while I’m here in Paris I can teach myself Bartok’s Bluebeard, which I’ll be singing in Cincinnati this summer. I don’t know how people who can’t play the piano manage. Well, actually I do know—they pay a fortune in coaches. It’s good, too, to be able to keep a lot of parts in your head, since people know they can call on you at the last minute if they’re in a bind. There was a Fidelio in San Francisco where I was singing Don Ferrando and covering Wlaschiha as Pizzaro. He got sick for the rehearsal and they didn’t call in my replacement, so I did both parts, which at one point involved singing to myself ! All that work in music education has stood me in good stead; in Robert Carsen’s production of Hoffmann here I get to live out every singer’s dream, since Dr. Miracle conducts his own orchestra at the end of the act.
Did you always know you would sing the Wagner roles you’ve become associated with?
Well, my name and my size sort of pointed me in that direction, and I was the kind of baritone nobody ever suggested might be a tenor. I had a plan, though. I was 31 when I first sang the Rheingold Wotan, but I held out until I was 39 for the other two. It’s a big mistake to thrust yourself on stage in the major Wagner roles without adequate preparation, both vocal and intellectual. I still remember things from the Wagner seminar I took as a sophomore in college. There’s a lot to think about in this music, and if you haven’t done the thinking before you do the singing, you can bet the critics are going to notice.
I intend to keep Donner and Gunther in my repertoire even though I’ve done Wotan now in San Francisco and will next season in Vienna. Both roles are interesting to me, and I like being part of what has become the international Ring family — Jim Morris has been such a good friend and colleague, I’m always happy to be singing with him. It’s funny how the cycle has a distinct dynamic through the four operas. Everybody is very relaxed for Rheingold — when the treasure is being piled up for the giants we gods sometimes turn upstage and do a little Gladys Knight and the Pips act with Fafner’s line Nicht so leicht und locker gefügt. Then things start to get tense with Walküre, since Wotan has had one big sing already and there are now two star sopranos in the mix. Siegfried is calmer again, until the duet, when anything can happen. And finally in Götterdämmerung everybody’s afraid they’ve worked their tails off for three nights and Hagen is going to come in and steal the show. But there’s hardly anything I do more thrilling than the trio at the end of the second act, and if you get into Gunther’s psychology you can make a sadly compelling character out of him. I’ve had some of my best notices in the part.
You haven’t sung at Bayreuth yet?
Your readers will appreciate this story. I had a Bayreuth audition some ten years ago. Daniel Barenboim was going to be conducting the Ring there, and he was also at Salzburg, so Gerard Mortier suggested I kill two birds with one stone and take along some other things for him to hear. He and Wolfgang Wagner listened to me do the Abendlich strahlt in the theater—pretty well I thought—and then I said that I was prepared to sing something else for Maestro Barenboim. Wolfgang Wagner fired back: “Perhaps, Mr. Held, you are unaware that only the music of Richard Wagner is sung from this stage!” As if I didn’t know that! In any event, end of conversation. I do hope I sing at Bayreuth before I finish, though, even if it is such a big commitment of time and people are apprehensive about the productions. As somebody interested in operatic history it’s important to me.
The critics always comment on how effective you are as an actor. Do you think that’s an instinctual gift, or something you worked on consciously to develop?
Both, I suppose. From the start I’ve always tried to pay attention to what other people were doing around me. If you watch carefully and have some kind of feel for the theater, you’re going to learn things. Of course today there is tension between what you would like to do and the high-concept stagings we often find ourselves in. I was once called inexpressive in a Ring cycle where I had to pull a mask down over my face half the time. It’s very hard to build up a consistent characterization of a part for yourself when everything is so particular to a production. Robert Wilson’s Met Lohengrin is probably the best example of that sort of thing. I was scheduled to sing the Herald, and we were all called in at one point so the director could tell us the meaning of what we were doing. But if you need to explain to the singers what an opera is about, God help the audience! Mr. Wilson was nearly half an hour late, so there we were in that mirror-lined rehearsal room—Ben, the two Deborahs, and the rest of us—staring at each other. He eventually arrived, folded his hands together, looked down for what seemed like another five minutes, and then finally said: “Opera is work.” As it turned out I was genuinely sick for the run and never sang in it, which was fine with me. It got better the next year, I think, when people were allowed to loosen things up, and the chorus was more comfortable with the numbers flashing from the wings to cue those weird arm movements. I don’t know how people can think of themselves as artists when they are being treated like quarterbacks getting their play calls. I think I can speak for most of us when I say that more often than not singers do not appreciate these eccentric productions. That’s been one of the reasons we like to sing for Chicago, which among the major companies has tended to avoid them, although I hear they had a Rigoletto last season that was off-the-wall. I hope they don’t move further in that direction.
Now that you have achieved an active international career, how hard is it to maintain?
Harder than the average opera-goer would ever suspect. We all start off wanting to do this because we love the art form, but once you become successful at it you have to realize that you are a one-person business, and if the business goes under, so do you. I don’t know how things worked 30 years ago, but today I do a lot of talking personally to the companies, and after we’ve discussed possibilities, then the agents hammer out details. And don’t be fooled by the seemingly large European fees people see quoted in the press. I’ve calculated that with the tax structure in Germany and Italy, I will realize only about 25-30% of my fees as contracted, and about 30-35% in the rest of Europe. And if they give you a ticket to come over, often you pay tax on that too. Even though I have a financial advisor, I still feel I have to keep close track of things like insurance and retirement accounts myself. I know too many singers some the public would consider very successful who are not in good shape at all financially. It’s especially unfortunate when you come towards the end of a career and financial considerations make you go on a little longer than you think you really should. But for people who have no particular interest in teaching, the options are limited.
There are other issues too, like keeping yourself occupied in new cities for long periods. Even in Paris there are only so many museums to visit. You never know what kind of working conditions you’re going to encounter in various theaters either. We had a very good success with Peter Grimes at the Scala last summer, but everything that Albert Innaurato wrote about the place in Opera News was true to my experience—except that unfortunately Renata Tebaldi never came to any of our rehearsals. I’ve developed allergies that can cause problems when I’m always in a new living environment I can’t control. And then there are the natural insecurities that are built into the profession. I remember when I first heard Bryn Terfel I said to myself: “Well, there goes my career right down the tubes.” But he hasn’t moved in the Wagnerian direction many people thought he would—not yet at least—and in fact we’re singing in Don Giovanni together next season at Covent Garden. So it all works out.
A number of singers in your generation are talking openly about the difficulty of managing career and family together.
That is certainly a major concern of mine. My wife and I were married right out of college, and as a young couple it was relatively easy to take everything in stride. Our first son was born during a blizzard when we were on the road in Minneapolis, and we used to travel with him when he was an infant. There are three boys now, and school meant a big change in our lives. I just can’t be there as much as I’d like, and I can’t have my wife in the audience as much as I want—she’s undoubtedly my best critic, as well as my best friend and a terrific mother to our children. I think my kids enjoy the idea of having an opera singer for a dad, though, and they’re especially keen on coming to rehearsals if they know there’s a swordfight involved. No doubt my career has provided wonderful cultural opportunities for my family that we might not have had otherwise. When the boys were here with me in Paris
they had studied up on all the sights, and now have exciting memories of places to bring back to their classes. And they like the music too. When he was only five my oldest son sat through Don Giovanni without making a peep, and the whole next day he was drawing pictures of the production. I like to return the favor when I can. At a football practice I was at last year I heard the ten year old quarterbacks abusing their cords badly calling plays, and I tried to get them to support their voices better—the team did go on to be undefeated!
But still, managing an artist’s family is a big and ultimately unfair burden on the other spouse, which is one of the reasons I would like to move into a teaching position sooner rather than later in my career. People are doing this more commonly, and I think schools like the idea of having someone on the faculty who is still actively singing in important places. Stanford Olsen is at Florida State now, and Gary Lakes will be going to IU. I’m looking for a good university where there is a lively intellectual community to become part of. As I said, I began thinking I would teach, and I’ve always made time in my schedule for clinics and masterclasses. I can call myself “Doctor” now too—but I wouldn’t—since my alma mater Millikin gave me an honorary degree last year, which was very gratifying.
What is your impression of the current state of vocal pedagogy?
There are definite problems, no doubt. I think we have a lot of good coaches, but not so many people who can teach you how to sing beautifully and naturally, which ought to be the goal. It’s always great to be able to give a young person an idea that can solve a difficulty right off, and that does happen in master classes. But I have also encountered students that seem to me already beyond help, which is kind of scary. You wouldn’t believe some of the strange ideas they get from teachers about “the technique.” That it’s a secret thing you shouldn’t talk about to anybody, for example. What nonsense! There comes a point when you just have to open up and let out what’s inside. That’s what singing is about in the last analysis, not “the technique.”
Given the way productions work today, conductors can’t help as much as they used to either, so that when you work with one of the exceptions he really stands out. Tristan with Simon Rattle this season in Amsterdam was that kind of experience. From the first Sitzprobe through all the performances he made the music unfold with such clarity and sense of line that we all felt we were singing better not only during but after that production. I hope American audiences get the chance to know his work better; I think he is really a great conductor, and one like James Levine who cares for the voice.
Some final words of wisdom for the singers who read Classical Singer Magazine?
Find out who you really are as a singer and an artist and follow that path! I hate the homogenized approach we get so much today, with people trying to sound like somebody else and then everybody beginning to sound more or less alike. I want to see and hear individuality. Singers must discover what makes their own voices work, and understand their personal strengths and weaknesses. That information doesn’t come out of a book, and unfortunately there aren’t too many people around who can be of real help. Get to a practice room and then learn to trust your own instincts.
We all have different reasons why we become opera singers. Singing may not be absolutely the most important thing to you, but you must treat your profession with the respect it deserves. Love the tradition and history of opera, immerse yourself in all the aspects of the art form—then you’ll be able to appreciate the great joy it can bring to your life. It certainly has made mine very happy.
