In a recent conversation with Maria Zouves, Mr. Plishka passed along some candid and fascinating thoughts on the life of a singer.
How do you balance work and family while pursuing or maintaining a career? Is it possible to have both?
I think a lot depends on the level to which you take a career. Obviously, there are many levels. If you are talking “superstar,” then you’re talking about many difficulties. In the first place, you’re never home. If you want to become an international personality, it’s a prerequisite to be on the road. It is very rare that you can have only a U.S. career—you have to be worldwide. Much of it is dependent on the recording industry, where you need exposure throughout the world. To have a family life, you have to take your children with you and have someone teaching them while you’re traveling. This might be a wonderful experience for them, but I think it’s very disruptive to their stability. With singing careers where you base yourself in one opera house somewhere, it’s probably more like a job—in other words, you are a nine-to-fiver right away, and if you are lucky enough to find a position like that, it’s probably more feasible to have a normal home life.
What is the best next step for young singers, once they complete their formal education?
A career is basically a ladder you climb. The university is a very protected environment, and eventually you have to go where you can hear a lot of music, and a lot of singing. Get away from the place where you are the big fish in a little pond, and get to the big pond—see what you would have to do to cope. I always recommend that people go to New York, London, Vienna, Milan, or Paris—someplace where you can hear major performers sing live. Don’t just sit and listen to recordings. That’s an artificial world. You have to hear live performances to know what your competition is, and where you have to go.
How does one choose repertoire? When do you know it’s a good time to move into different things?
What works for me, I believe, is probably true with most singers. Have a little core of people around you to help you make decisions. I believe you do not hear yourself, and that you need someone whom you trust to hear you. That’s where it gets a bit tricky. You have to find someone who knows your voice, has helped you from the word “go,” or is very comfortable with you and knows what you are capable of doing. You need someone you will really listen to—then you can go in that direction.
I have always had someone—my teacher or my wife—who is very close to me, knows what my sound is and knows what I’m capable of doing. I’ve learned to trust them over the years. Because I like characters and I like many operatic roles, I would do just about anything! But that’s dangerous, and most voices have a great deal of difficulty moving around in the repertoire. I have been really fortunate—I’ve mixed a lot of bizarre stuff in there.
But most people—a lot of people—should stay in one little area, even though that can be boring. Sometimes people move off into things they shouldn’t do and get into trouble. Lyric voices trying to move into dramatic areas can create obvious problems. For example, mezzo-sopranos who are really great in their roles can get so bored of doing Carmen, Amneris, Eboli and Azucena, that they want to move on to soprano roles. Then trouble sets in because they really aren’t sopranos. So…it’s really tough to make those decisions.
One of the lessons you have to learn, and I’m sure you’ve heard this before, is know when to say no. They make you an offer you can’t refuse; the conductor says, “We’ll keep the orchestra down;” they promise you a recording and a video….But you have to know that in the long run, it’s your voice, and when you’re vocally dead and gone, there are 50 people who can fill your shoes quite well, waiting outside the door.
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, or stop to fix the problems first? Where should one go to perfect the craft and still work in the business? Should one work at all?
Obviously, [singing] is very difficult. You come out of school when you’re only 21, 22, 23 years old. Suddenly you are expected to make a living! As a singer, that’s almost impossible. Ideally, you should not subject yourself to the rigors of a performance career if the technique isn’t yet ready. You’ll really hurt yourself. Also, when people hear you for the first time, the famous old saying is true—“The first impression is a lasting impression.” If you sing something that is not quite right, then two or three years later—after you’ve fixed the problem—they’re still going to hear it. It’s in their head. So it can sometimes be really dangerous to put yourself out there before you’re ready.
In school you’re in a protected environment, with only a couple of people working on your voice. When you begin a career you have tons of people who are telling you what to do—all with a different idea of the way it should be done. If you don’t have a rock-solid technique, within months you’ll be torn to bits. Your voice will be in shreds and you won’t know what to do.
You really have to stick to your guns and have a really complete technique. That’s the most important thing to have solid before you get out there.
What are the most important qualities a singer should have in today’s music world?, in order of importance?
First, I would like to see a great instrument and a great technique. Next, I need to have that voice perfectly lined up. I don’t care if the person weighs 900 pounds and looks like the Incredible Hulk, as long as the sound is really together and secure. That’s why I come to the opera house.
Unfortunately today we have a lot of different viewpoints about opera, mostly having to do with visual media—television. Opera wasn’t designed to be on television. Opera was designed for the theater, and I think we’re putting it someplace where it really doesn’t belong. Yes, young singers have to consider how they look and how they pre-sent themselves. It goes back years ago, to a word that they used when I was coming onto the scene—figura. You present a good figura or a mala figura. You have to present an image that makes people interested, and you have to have a presence that commands that interest. Sometimes today I feel that the physical presence is almost more important than the vocal presence, unfortunately. But for me it’s the opposite. I need to have the instrument first, a beautiful secure technique.
The music world is often crazy and unfair. What do you do to survive the insanity, when it starts to get you down?
I really, really love what I do very much. I also believe very strongly in the way I do it—even if someone gives me a hassle about it. It does, however, depend on who they are. If it’s the conductor, I try to please him, because in the long run he is where the buck stops. Beyond him is the stage director. Singers are there to interpret what the conductor and the stage director want. It really should not be Paul Plishka up there singing. I am there to try to create what the director and the conductor are trying to get across, and do that to the best of my ability. When someone doesn’t like it, and yet I’ve sort of pleased myself, which I almost always do, I’m happy. It’s all about the art form, and if I feel I’m creating something really good; they can say whatever they want.
What habits do you have to help keep you in good vocal and/or physical shape?
I do a lot of work and sing a lot. I find that earlier on, I could go for a couple of weeks and not sing, and still be okay. But now I have to vocalize a lot more. When I’m in a routine of doing a lot of performances and a lot of rehearsals, I sing a lot better. My routine is to sing a lot and keep it hot. If I let it cool off a little bit, then it’s hard work to get it back.
If there was one piece of advice that you wish someone had given you in the very beginning of your musical life, what would it have been?
There are a lot of things I can say, but if you ask me if I would have done anything differently, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m very happy about the way things have gone. Everybody has their own little barometer inside them. They all have a goal, which they have to achieve, and I achieved mine a long time ago. Some people will never be satisfied. They have to keep having more and more. My level was reached when I first started singing at the Metropolitan. Then I sang in the Don Carlo video, and to me that was the peak, the epitome of what a basso cantante is. What more could one ask for? Then several years later I had the great opportunity to sing Boris Godunov on the stage. It was another milestone. I thought, “Well, Paul, you’ve had the cake—now you’ve been given the icing.”
And when everything else was so far in the dust—there was Falstaff. I never believed that such a character could be so great on the stage, and to me that was IT! I was blessed thousands of times, and there are so many other great moments. I just love being around singers, I love hearing the music and I wouldn’t change a thing!
Paul Plishka’s extraordinary talent and impeccable artistry combine to make him one of the world’s foremost singers, praised by critics for his smooth, beautifully-produced voice and polished dramatic skills. Mr. Plishka appears regularly with opera companies worldwide, including the Metropolitan Opera, where he has been a principal artist for over 30 years.
