Tenor Gregory Kunde is one of the most celebrated American singers on the international stage today. He has performed in all the world’s major opera houses and his repertoire extends from the standard tenor roles such as Alfredo and Rodolfo, to Baroque masterpieces. A master of French and Italian Bel Canto repertoire, Mr. Kunde has recently and skillfully used his Bel Canto principles to expand into Berlioz territory, to great acclaim. His next appearance will be in New York City Opera’s production of Rossini’s Ermione in April of this year. To find out more about this versatile singer, please visit his website at: www.gregorykunde.com. The following interview is more than just a lesson in Bel Canto; it is a moving glimpse into the personal life of an intelligent artist and courageous human being.
Were you a voice major at Illinois State?
I was a conducting education major, but I had to take some voice. I’d never heard of opera until I was 19. I was an American kid, [a] lead singer in a rock band and growing up with rock’n’roll in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
When you first became aware of vocal technique, what challenges did you face?
The top and the passaggio. When I was going to school in the mid-seventies, repertory was not really discussed. You took Schirmer’s Operatic Anthology and picked whatever you wanted to sing. I didn’t know the difference between Wagner and Mozart! Both had some arias that didn’t go very high, so I would sing “Dalla sua pace” followed by “Nessun dorma”!
Tell me about your apprenticeship at Chicago Lyric Opera.
In the late part of my college years, I did the Met auditions and won a regional audition at Chicago Lyric. Someone who worked there said, “you should audition for our apprentice program.” So I persistently called back until they gave me the audition.
Chicago was a spectacular experience! That’s where I met my mentor, Alfredo Kraus. I actually had no idea who he was, and I got a couple of recordings to at least know his voice.
Once I started covering Alfredo’s roles, Carol Fox, the general manager at the time, encouraged me to approach him. He was very kind to me. He listened to me and said: “Our voices are very similar. You don’t have a big voice so you have to be very careful in what you choose to sing.” I never really took it to heart until about eight years later. As a young singer, you take anything that comes your way because you need the work and the experience. I was doing a lot of Bohèmes and Pinkertons in Butterfly, also Rigoletto, Traviata in regional opera companies. But I finally took Kraus’s advice when I was asked to sing Puritani, in 1986 in Montreal
What were the technical principles you learned from Kraus?
The most important was the placement of the voice. He advised me that I have to really become an instrument and place the voice in the perfect spot so that every note will be heard. Kraus said you have to become like the woodwinds. You always hear the oboes, even though they’re not the biggest sound. So, he would have me imagine a little pinhole at the top of my forehead. He said: “The more closed the vowel, the smaller that pinhole gets. You have to concentrate there and bring the sound out in that point.” His perception of the voice was way up in the top of the head, and you could hear every sound. That unbelievable focus of the voice has always helped me.
He also told me not to think so much. Now, the only time I get really analytical is when I am learning a role. Then I listen to myself on tape or CD and make sure everything is even from top to bottom. But onstage, I want to concentrate on the character. Especially in Bel Canto, since the characters can be such uninteresting people, if you let them. It’s up to you to make them human, and relate as much as possible to everything happening on the stage. I’ve been singing Bel Canto since that Puritani in 1986. This music is naturally refreshing because it can be different every time.
Do you make your own variations and ornamentations?
Always! The challenge is in doing different variations for Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini, because they are not the same. There are some variations Rossini would have done that would never fit with Donizetti. Just by listening to the overture of a piece, you know how a variation should go. This is something hard to teach. It comes with experience. You can point out to people that Donizetti would have never done a certain variation because he didn’t use those series of intervals. That applies to cadenzas too. For example, you can hear someone singing Donizetti and doing a cadenza and you think: “That’s a Verdi cadenza!”
Does it help you to hear other interpretations of the role you are preparing?
It helped me in college. Now I only listen to get a feeling of the orchestration of a piece. Take Les Troyens, for example. There are many interpretations of Les Troyens by Wagnerian singers. I have nothing in common with them. To be influenced by their interpretation would be wrong. My challenge was to give this a fresh interpretation.
Of course, the center of the voice is much more used in Les Troyens. Aeneas has a couple of top notes you just touch on, but most climaxes of phrases are at about A flat or A. You can carry the chest voice a little higher to reinforce the middle.
But if you use the middle voice too intensely, it might take you away from the stratosphere.
That is a danger. If you emphasize a different part of your anatomy—voice or body—and neglect another, then the emphasized part will overpower the unused part. The only way to get around that is to mix things up as much as possible. Now that I did Les Troyens, and recently, Benvenuto Cellini, my next opera is Cenerentola; so you couldn’t get farther away from Berlioz!
Tell me about your coloratura skills.
That is a phenomenon that has come to me. I try not to make coloratura a hurdle I have to get over. I play with it. The best music for me is the serious Rossini, like Tancredi or Ermione. I’ve done both roles in Ermione: Pirro and Oreste. Pirro has coloratura all over the place, but it’s different from Oreste. When Rossini wrote for two major tenors, there was the florid tenor and the heroic tenor, sometimes called the “baritenor.”
Rossini has such drama in coloratura! When Oreste sings, the florid part is more romantic. But when Pirro sings, the coloratura is more declamatory and harsh. It’s wonderful when you can let the public know that there is a difference in emotion between two characters’ coloraturas. Then you’ve given the audience something they enjoy much more than if you have two singers showing off agility that sounds the same.
Do you ever run into technical difficulties?
At one point last year, I was doing Sonnambula. One day, watching myself in the mirror, I saw my stomach go the wrong way. My stomach would always go in while singing and now I was starting to push out. It felt OK, but I realized I wasn’t letting any air out. So, I went into the practice room everyday for a week and had to completely re-learn how to breathe! I had been sick and tried to sing through the cold for a couple of performances, so I did something improper, which stayed with me for four months after that! I kept wondering why it was getting harder to sing. An oversight like that can cost you, if you’re not careful.
What are your own dos and don’ts of Bel Canto?
The most important thing is to make the performance your own. In this day and age, there are so many recordings that it can be very tempting to copy other singers. Make your own variations, if you can, staying true to the composer and serving the music. Bel Canto can be something of a showoff thing, and that’s OK in certain situations, if you’re doing an aria by itself. In the context of a whole opera, it’s different.
When I worked with Richard Bonynge for the first time, I copied another singer’s performance, and he asked me why I did that. I said: “Because so-and-so did it.” He said: “Make it yours. Do you really think it needs that high note here or that variation there?” I said: “I don’t think so, but it’s a tradition.”
“Well, make your own tradition!” he told me, and that got me to thinking that this is what the art of Bel Canto is about: making the piece yours, so that we know when we hear the performance that it is not you doing Pavarotti’s interpretation, it’s just pure you.
Do you see Bel Canto as alive, always moving and changing?
Of course, the basic principles of legato and beautiful singing stay the same. But the freedom to invent your own variations and make the phrases different is thrilling because each performance becomes unique. I’ll probably get into trouble for this, but the Ricci cadenzas? They’re great—but they’re Ricci’s! They are very good to get a sense of what the art is all about, but once you become an experienced performer, it has to be you, not Ricci! It’s a fine line when you invent your own.
One of the very first Rossini Bel Cantos I did was La Donna del Lago, with Riccardo Muti. There’s a famous trio, with two tenors and a soprano, where all three singers sing the same phrases. The second time through, we needed to make variations. Muti is known for sticking to the score, so if you want to change something, it’s better not to tell him beforehand; just do it.
I’ll never forget the look on his face when I sang my variation straight at him. He smiled at me! But then the next thing I did with him was Don Pasquale. When I tried to do some showy variations he said: “That’s not Donizetti. You have to be much simpler in Donizetti Bel Canto, not as elaborate as in Rossini.”
… Another “don’t” of Bel Canto involves high notes. Don’t do them to show off, but only if they work dramatically. Always push yourself to the next level. If you think that’s as fast as you can take that coloratura, you could probably take it a little faster! It’s not to go past what you can do, but to go as far as you can, because that’s what really makes it exciting.
I think that sometimes people don’t appreciate Bel Canto as much, because it can be just a lot of pretty notes coming from not-so-credible characters. The music is so vocally self-indulgent, and many singers are very well-rehearsed, but the performance can lose its edge and become beauty without drama.
Sometimes it’s hard to find conductors who welcome the vocal freedom of Bel Canto. Some conductors want to know exactly what you are going to do… I had an incident last summer. I was doing a piece for the first time and I decided to do something different at the dress rehearsal: to make a phrase a little longer, hold one note and come down. The conductor went right through it! I stood there and said: “Where are you going? Wait! I’m not done yet!” It was probably a little embarrassing for all of us, but my colleagues loved it!
Let’s talk about the unexpected turn your life took nine years ago. What happened to you?
I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
What was going on at the time?
I was in Madrid doing L’Italiana in Algieri and I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable. There’s a self-examination you can do for testicular cancer, although I didn’t know this at the time. But when I was showering, I felt a lump on one of my testicles.
When I returned to the States, the doctor told me straight out that it was cancer. So, I went into surgery to remove the testicle with the growth. They told me it was stage one out of four. This is the best prognosis you can get. If you’re a stage one and you follow the protocol, you can be sure that you will be cured.
There were a couple of different protocols. One was the Indiana University protocol, which saved Lance Armstrong’s life. But that one had a history of lung scarring, so you wouldn’t be able to use part of your lungs. Of course, I said: “No way, that’s not for me!” I wanted to sing again.
The doctor was very accommodating, so we did the other protocol. The whole process itself lasted about six months. Looking back, it wasn’t even that long, but when you’re in it, it seems endless!
What side effects did you experience from chemotherapy?
They were very tough. Chemotherapy basically tries to kill off everything bad in your body. Consequently, a lot of good stuff goes with it too. They push you as far as your body will go without killing you. So I went from having one uncomfortable little lump to feeling much sicker than I could ever imagine.
What sustained you mentally and emotionally during this time?
My faith in God. There was never a question that I was going to get better. It was just going to be a hard road, but I was determined to get there. I didn’t ask “why.” All I asked was: “How can you help me?” I kept telling my agent, Robert Lombardo, that I really wanted to sing again. At the beginning of this whole ordeal, he actually advised me not to say anything about my illness. You are the first person I am officially telling about this.
Why did he advise you to keep it quiet?
There is too much prejudice out there. You don’t want anyone to know you have cancer because you will not work anymore. That’s just a fact of life, not only in our business but almost everywhere. I kept quiet not because I was embarrassed or scared about it, but because I
wanted to come back after not singing for so long, without having anyone throw preconceived notions at me. If people I worked for didn’t know it, then they wouldn’t cancel on that. So, I wanted to prove that this was not so terrible, that it is possible to recover from it, to go on, to live my life and continue my career.
Do you believe that if you had told the truth, and then explained that you’ve recovered, you still would have met with discrimination?
Definitely. I’ve seen it. Unfortunately, people today still believe that the word “cancer” is another word for “death.” But many more people survive cancer today than die, especially if it’s detected early enough. The doctor told me: “Yes, you’re going to die, but you’re not going to die of cancer!”
However, in our business, you have to sign contracts sometimes two or more years in advance. If they have even the slightest notion that you may not be around two years from now, they won’t hire you.
If you look at it from the general managers’ point of view, it’s understandable. They need to have a guarantee that you will be there. But it is terribly morbid. I heard stories where general managers said: “I was told I shouldn’t hire you because you were sick and you probably wouldn’t be around for very long.”
If I had come out right away to say: “Yes, I had cancer but now I am cured, everything is fine!” … so what? That is just what I say. I had to prove that it was actually true, and that nine years later I am still singing. What happened is in the past. So send good thoughts to all those who are going through similar situations.
It was so hard not to have my colleagues’ support! I couldn’t tell them! When you’re in a rehearsal period for six weeks, you get to know the other cast members very well. For that period of time, they become a surrogate family, your support system; you tell them about things that happened to you. When you’re not able to talk about something like this, it’s just horrible!
What was the explanation you gave for disappearing from the singing circuit for all those months?
I said I had a stomach ulcer. The good thing in our profession is that you don’t have an everyday, nine-to-five employer to whom you have to explain why you won’t be there for the next six months. I had to cancel four jobs. Ironically, the job I came back with was in Madrid! When I look back today, I think: “My God. I must have been crazy! After, not singing for six months, I came back with Don Pasquale and then Puritani with Eve Queler.
Did chemotherapy affect your voice in any way?
I received great advice from the doctors taking care of me. Chemotherapy kills every red blood cell in your body, so the vocal cords become extremely vulnerable. If you as much as shout or speak loudly, you can do a lot of damage, because the cords have no protection. So, for the whole time I did chemotherapy, I hardly even talked. After it was all over and my hair started to come back, and all [my] blood levels were normal, I saw my laryngologist. He looked at the cords and said: “perfect!” The six-month non-singing, barely-speaking rest had rejuvenated the whole mechanism!
How long did it take you to recover your vocal shape?
Vocally, I came back rather quickly. I practiced everyday and the voice came back in about three weeks. It felt really fresh, and it was fantastic to sing again. The body, however, responded less fast than the cords. I did physical therapy daily, not just for the stomach muscles but for my arms and legs. I had lost muscle tone and I was pretty much incapacitated for a while.
The most exhilarating experience was being on stage again and having my life back! Colleagues asked me: “What did you do to your hair?” Eve Queler said: “Oh my God! Your beautiful hair! Where is it?” because I had about a quarter of an inch of hair! I said: “Well, I lost a Super Bowl bet and I had to shave my head!” I didn’t talk about it. The rumors would fly around, of course, as they always do. You try to ignore them as much as you can.
So, this is really the first time you are opening up about this?
Yes. My family and people in my community knew, of course, because I did some support things for the hospital that took care of me. But people in the opera world don’t know, because I have never told anyone personally. My God, to be able to say this now: “Yes, I really did have cancer and I am cured!”
I’m honored… Thank you for sharing your inspiring story with our readers.
I appreciate that. It’s been nine years! It was time to talk about it. I believe singers will be very sympathetic; hopefully general managers will understand, and not be swayed, not only by cancer, but everything: “Oh, so-and-so has a heart problem. So-and-so has AIDS.” I mean, if you have the goods, you’ve got to be able to work! You should be hired. Don’t discriminate against anyone because of their health or what you assume their health will be in two years!
How did this experience affect your perspective?
Something like this can’t help but change your whole attitude towards life, if you take the right path. It could have gone two ways. I could have said: “Why me?” but I said: “What do I do? How do I beat this?” Getting better became my job in those months. For five or six years afterwards, I thought about it constantly. It made me appreciate everything around me.
What I do for a living is a privilege, and I thank God everyday. Of course, having our child was the absolute miracle! You know, when you do chemotherapy, you can’t have children anymore, because there are certain things in your body which never come back after you kill them, and one is sperm. So, your reproductive function is gone.
Then how did you…
It’s a secret!
Come on; share one more secret with us, please!
Well, before I started the chemotherapy, the doctors said there was a thing called “banking,” which means storing the sperm, so we did that. Our only chance then was in vitro fertilization, you know, your test-tube baby! For me it was easy to say “yes,” but my chemotherapy was nothing compared to what my wife went through in this process. They had to do it three times, until it was successful. There were all these shots and hormone things, the stress, the emotional ups and downs; it was all incredible. But when we went to the doctor after the third try and he showed us the little embryo growing inside her, we were ecstatic! We were just hoping for a healthy baby, but I have to tell you: she is gorgeous!
Tell me about the Gregory Kunde Chorale.
It’s really become its own animal. We used to sing in a local church choir. I had the summer of ’99 free, and I asked the choral director what she thought about the choir coming to my house once a week to do some choral techniques and learn different music other than church anthems. I hadn’t done any conducting since I was in college. But they began coming to my house, 35 of them in my family room, and we started having a lot of fun. They were all amateurs and about 70 percent of them didn’t read music. That was a wonderful challenge for me, and our first concert was very successful.
Afterwards, they wanted to keep [going], so in the fall of 2000, we began as a real group. We had five concerts this year alone. It involves a lot of work, but it’s a rewarding, new experience for me, to be able to teach amateurs and see them successful. All I do is just stand there and wave my arms! They are great, and the community has really taken to them.
So far, you’ve only had one or two Met appearances. Are there any scheduled?
No. The Met is kind of elusive to me. I’m not sure why. I was always given the excuse that I had too small a voice. When I sang Cenerentola there once, I was told: “Oh, we didn’t realize your voice was that big!”
I would love to sing there. But I guess they have other people who sing my repertoire.
Any last words for our readers?
I know this sounds very trite but: Know your voice and be true to it! Take care of it and let it grow naturally. Think long-term. It can be very exciting for 10 years, but don’t burn yourself out!
Alfredo Kraus was singing La Fille du Regiment at age 70. He maintained his wonderful sound his whole life. That has always been my model, and I wish that for my up-and-coming colleagues.
Have a long career and never push your voice where it doesn’t belong. No matter what anyone tells you, and how much money they offer you, it’s not worth it!
