It was the summer of 2003, and my guide was baritone Kurt Ollmann, who was showing me the photographs on the wall of the new Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee, where he was singing a run as El Gallo in The Fantasticks. We had met the year before at the Art Song Festival of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where Kurt presented a fascinatingly offbeat recital with Steven Blier, and afterword spent the day coaching students.
In a review of a 1985 New York concert, Andrew Porter praised Kurt for his “delicacy, variety, and subtlety of inflection, gentleness, and beauty of tone.” All these qualities were evident in the Cleveland recital, and he worked hard to try to pass them on to the students. In his master class, he proved a canny judge of voices, not afraid to pursue faults of production and intonation the young singers might have been happier to avoid dealing with. He was most interested, however, in the dramatic presentation of each song, which is grounded first in musical accuracy, but has to include detailed attention to language (he was especially fierce on lapses in French) and to the role of the body. To illustrate the effect in a melodie of Fauré, he suddenly lay down on the stage and languorously propped himself up on one arm—a terrific theatrical snapshot that reminded me of what an impact his Pelléas must have made.
Kurt’s career was launched famously in the early ‘80s with the patronage of Leonard Bernstein, and he continues to be prominently associated with Bernstein’s music. But his career has taken twists and turns that might not have been predicted at the start. In our conversations, Kurt seemed eager to share the story of his artistic path, which has along its way many instructive lessons for singers at the start of their own careers. It proves that life in the theater is rarely the “absolute perfection” that Kurt sang about as Maximilian in the Grammy Award-winning recording of Bernstein’s Candide. Today’s singers need determination, inventiveness and an ability to roll with the punches every bit as much as they need a golden throat. Here you can have no better guide than Kurt Ollmann.
You didn’t come to the profession through the usual conservatory route.
In a way, I didn’t even come to it originally through music, although I studied trumpet and guitar in school, sang in the YMCA chorus, and did high school musicals. But poetry and theater were always my passions. My father worked for Arthur Andersen, and when I was 12 my family moved from Wisconsin, where I was born, to Paris, and we lived there for three years. I became a real Francophile at that impressionable point, and was able to get a serious head start with the language. I majored in French at Bowdoin [a college in Maine], and one of my projects was to stage my own translation of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. I did take a number of music courses, however, including voice lessons.
My first teacher was Donna Jeffrey, who had been at New York City Opera; and then I worked with Judy Cornell, who had studied in Santa Barbara. When I came back to Milwaukee in 1977, I worked with Yolanda Marculescu, who taught me a great deal about the song repertoire; then later, in New York, I studied with Marlena Malas. All of my early vocal teachers were women.
Your technical ideas?
For me, technique was always a means to the primary end, which is to be able to express what I feel about the poetry and music I’m singing. That is the quality I admired in the singers I listened to early on: Bernac, Souzay, Pears. [Pierre Bernac (d 1979) Gerard Souzay (b 1920) Peter Pears (d 1986)] I admit, I did spend a lot of misguided effort trying imitate what Fischer-Dieskau [Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b 1925)] could do with that silken mezza voce, but looking back now I think that all that crooning on his part was at the expense of good forte singing above the staff.
The goal obviously is to create a tone that is both beautifully produced and meaningful. And I always thought that was my responsibility rather than my teacher’s, although since I myself have started teaching at the University of Wisconsin here in Milwaukee, I can see what a temptation it is to see lessons as teacher-centered rather than student-centered.
Singers must learn to trust their own instincts. When I was in my thirties somebody had me convinced briefly that I was a tenor—I suppose it happens to all high lyric baritones at some point. A few weeks into the experiment my middle voice started to come apart. That was a risk I wouldn’t take.
You mention Bernac and Souzay. I know you coached with them both. What was that experience like?
Well, for me, working with them was not primarily about technique. It was about style and tradition—making art. And this was old school—before the movement to introduce the uvular ‘r’ into classical singing. I do credit Bernac with unlocking the secret of legato singing for me. “The vowels are the music,” he would say and then sing through a phrase leaving out all the consonants. With Souzay, I learned that despite the apparent contradiction, careful study of a score could lead to an emotionally spontaneous performance.
“You are an instinctive artist,” he once told me. “And I am too.” The “too” meant so much to me. Souzay represented a great artistic fraternity that I had tremendous respect for, and he seemed to be inviting me to be a member. Established singers should never forget how much their validation means to the next generation.
You must be used to it by now, so here is the question everyone asks: How did you come to meet Leonard Bernstein?
After my apprenticeship here at the Skylight, I moved to New York in 1982, and my partner at the time, Stephen Wadsworth, was working with Bernstein on the libretto to A Quiet Place. He introduced us. When I heard that Bernstein was going to do the recording of West Side Story, which he had never conducted before, I have to say I lobbied to be cast as Riff. I have never been overconfident or pushy about my career, [but] this part I knew I could do—as long as I didn’t have to do the dancing.
And Bernstein evidently thought so too, and more. In the video documentary of the recording sessions, he introduces you as: “a young man who is going to be a big opera singer in our time.”
I always cringe when I see that bit. I don’t think he was trying to compliment me so much as he was defending himself to the world for having cast some unknown kid from Milwaukee in his definitive West Side Story. It’s a pity that more time and care wasn’t taken with the preparation. It’s always about money, I’m afraid.
Scheduling for international artists is a nightmare, and [José] Carreras wasn’t adequately prepared musically when he arrived. I think Nico Castel had about two days to coach him on the diction. Bernstein said later that he thought the producers of the video had taken every shot of him losing his temper and edited them to look as though all his anger was directed at Carreras. He got irritated with me too, but nobody would have been interested in watching that. The maestro vs. the star tenor is another story. There was just a lot of tension all through those sessions, and Kiri getting laryngitis didn’t help. It’s too bad the result isn’t on a more consistently high level.
You went on to a number of collaborations with Bernstein. Was the over-the-top theatrical persona the public saw the real man?
I don’t think that side of Bernstein was in any way an act. He really loved life and loved people. He loved to hug and kiss everybody. But he was also a very complex man—probably the smartest man I’ve ever known, but extremely self-critical and self-punishing. And he had terrible insomnia. No matter how much he accomplished it was never enough. I know that he wanted much to be remembered as a serious composer, not just as a great conductor who wrote West Side Story. I suppose it is a part of their genius that the most gifted people are the hardest on themselves.
You must have spent a good deal of time together coaching his music.
A lot of the music is very complicated, too. He said he would have given a great deal to be able to sing, but he had no patience for the things that we singers worry over. And much of his writing for the voice is not very idiomatic.
I remember when he and Stephen were collaborating; Stephen suggested that he alter the shape of a line because it was awkwardly composed in the passaggio. “Don’t bother me with your @*!!@!! passaggio” was his response. I was very struck, when working with him on new scores, that he was less concerned with accuracy of pitches than he was with rhythm and dynamics, and other markings. The heart of the music was not necessarily in the melody.
Other experiences I had with him showed how he didn’t understand the natural limitations of voices. At one point, he had the idea I could do Tony in the West Side Story recording: “It’s not all that high.” And when we recorded the Haydn Creation, he wanted me to sing Raphael as well as Adam (as the bass usually does). I told him the angel part was too low.
“Do you want me to beg you?” he said, as if I were just being coy or lazy. He ended up hiring Kurt Moll for the part. After one session he turned around to me and barked: “Why can’t you sing that like the other Kurt?” What I thought was: “Because he is a bass and I am only 29,” a fact not lost on our Eve Lucia Popp, who was none too happy to have a consort who could have been her son. But of course, I didn’t say anything.
In any case, people do remember those performances with Lenny and people may always think of me as a Bernstein singer. I got a foretaste of retirement recently when I was invited to reminisce on a panel before a performance of Candide at the Cultural Center in Chicago. I felt like Maestro Tonnoziti-Casseruola (or whatever his name is) in La Gran Scena: the world’s oldest living opera singer.
You and Bernstein worked together so often in the last part of his life. Did you have the chance to say goodbye?
In a way I did, although I didn’t realize it at the time. It was at Tanglewood and was to be the last concert he conducted. Lenny wasn’t well enough to conduct the whole program so he gave Arias and Barcarolles (which I was singing in) to his assistant. Still I had no idea that it would be the last time I would see him. It had been a while since we had worked together and I found that in some way I was able to really be myself with him for the first time. I’m very grateful for that last meeting.
Back to your career: How was it developing in the late ‘80s and ‘90s?
The highlight should have been “Pelléas” at La Scala with [Claudio] Abbado in 1986, but there were complications. I always used to have terrible trouble with jet lag and didn’t really like being on the road. Plus, it’s a very difficult opera, and it was La Scala, and I was 29 years old—and Abbado decided early on that he didn’t like me. He was conducting the opera for the first time, and concentrated entirely on the orchestra pit, leaving the singers completely dependent on the prompter. I’d never worked with a prompter before. It takes some getting used to. Flicka [Frederica von Stade], my Mélisande, was a real friend and a very generous colleague, but overall it was not a pleasant experience.
Still, the notices were fairly good, and perhaps if I had pushed at that point in my career I could have made headway internationally in opera. Frankly, I’ve never had the drive it takes to sustain a career at the highest level. Ambition is at least as important as talent. Stamina is another crucial ingredient.
I remember how struck I was by Sam Ramey when we recorded On the Town together. He got off a plane from somewhere in Europe, came to the hall, delivered exactly what was needed, and got back on a plane headed to his next engagement. No fuss, no bother, just straight ahead.
I never had much success in general auditions. I wasn’t a typical young lyric baritone, I guess. It was strange. I was working regularly on projects with Bernstein, but couldn’t get the Portland Opera to hire me. My career was always a mix of high profile and more modest projects—including as many song recitals as I could find. Some of the operas got a lot of press, like the Peter Sellars’ Don Giovanni, but I never settled into a repertory of roles that I repeated in a number of venues. Getting a reputation for doing contemporary music is partly responsible for that—the Met is not calling for Ashoka’s Dream. But the result is a career that takes a lot of intense musical work to maintain.
I am looking forward to [singing] Orin Mannon in the revision of Mourning Becomes Electra that [Marvin David] Levy is doing for Seattle and then the City Opera, but it will take a lot of time, and I need to find the right coach, too.
At least I’ll be doing more than two or three performances. [Author’s note: The Seattle production opened in October of last year, with one critic calling it “a knockout” and Kurt’s performance “remarkable.”]
It sounds as if you regret a little how your career has unfolded.
On one of my student recitals I programmed Schumann, Duparc, Fauré, and Barber, with “Che faro” and the Don Giovanni “Serenade” thrown in for good measure. My teacher’s comment was “Well, soup to nuts!” And that’s the way it’s stayed, with the addition of the musical theatre repertoire. But I do wonder how things would have turned out if I had narrowed my scope more. Perhaps I should have concentrated more exclusively on being a recitalist, even though people said there was no career in it.
Singing opera is like painting in oils, with broad brushstrokes meant to be seen at a distance. A song recital is like an etching that reveals itself only with detailed observation. I love detail. And I admit that I enjoy being the center of attention for the entire performance.
It’s also interesting that you haven’t found it necessary to live in New York.
I spent most of the eighties in New York. I loved it and I think at that time it was crucial for my career. Stephen and I bought a house in Santa Fe [N.M.] in 1988. The business was more geographically centralized in those days but that has changed quite a bit, I think. With modern communications, you can keep up necessary contacts and live somewhere that makes you happy. New York is for the young and the rich.
I gave up the Santa Fe house just this year and am now living full-time in Milwaukee with my partner, Bill Lavonis, who is also my voice teacher at this point. I think you should keep studying as long as you sing. I have an eager group of students at the university and I’m very content here.
The perfect lead-in to a final question. What advice do you give those students about their careers?
Try always to keep in touch with what it was originally that brought you to singing. And don’t become obsessed with transforming your voice into something it was never meant to be. There’s a lot pressure these days to make voices big, and this leads lots of singers (and teachers!) astray. Think about what makes you unique and about the best way to communicate that. And take time to prepare your music. Learn the languages and study the cultural context of the work.
I once read a biography of Lillian Nordica, and I was impressed by the way singers in the Golden Age used to prepare roles—so slowly and carefully and thoroughly.
And one thing above all: Always think of yourself as an artist. If you don’t, you can be sure no one else in the profession ever will.
More about Kurt Ollmann
Kurt Ollmann has established a wide-ranging career on the concert stage, in opera, oratorio and musical theatre. He first came to prominence singing Riff on the Deutsche Grammophon recording of West Side Story, under Leonard Bernstein. He has since sung “Pelléas” at La Scala under [Claudio] Abbado, the Count in “Figaro” at Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and Don Giovanni in the original Peter Sellars production at Pepsico Summerfare. He has also performed with opera companies in Vienna, Rome, Brussels, Seattle, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Wexford, and recently made his debut at New York City Opera in Ravel’s L’heure espagnole. He has numerous recordings and is known throughout the world for his excellence in bringing life to new works.
