When Ian Vayne set out on the evening of Nov. 4, 2004 for the Landes Theater in Linz, Austria, he expected to enjoy a performance of Carmen from the audience. When the baritone returned home later that night, his wife, Ruth, asked if he had enjoyed the opera.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he told her. “I actually sang the second half.”
Vayne had gone to see the show that night because he had been asked to consider singing Escamillo in Linz at a later performance, but would not get a stage rehearsal, so watching a performance on the same stage would be the next best thing. After the second act, he went backstage to see the Carmen, Valentina Kutzarova, whom he had known since their Zurich studio days. While he was backstage, to Vayne’s considerable surprise the stage manager asked if Vayne could take over for their Escamillo, Estonian baritone Lauri Vasar, who had suffered chest pains and was being taken to a hospital. Vayne said he could go on for the third and fourth acts and immediately began to work on the staging with the assistant director.
At the same time, the wardrobe people tried to find a costume for him. They located some usable items in storage and took others from the theater’s “Lost and Found.” A dresser soon appeared in Vayne’s newly appointed dressing room with a shirt and tie that fit him—and pants that did not. Thus, the baritone, who had arrived in a dark suit with a black shirt, stepped on stage with a black bullfighter’s jacket, a white shirt and black tie, over his own green pants and his favorite “Jackaroo” boots.
Vayne got no time to warm up—the theatre management did not want to prolong the intermission any more than was necessary. When Vayne had left home earlier that evening, he had no idea he would be performing that night—but the tough Austrian music critics reported that he sang with a strong, virile baritone sound and was able to execute some rather intricate staging during the second half of the opera.
As a result of all this, the Linz opera audience saw the rest of Carmen while the original Escamillo, Vasar, received treatment at a local hospital, where doctors found that he had not suffered a heart attack but had hyperventilated in such a way as to cause similar symptoms. He was released after a short time.
Vayne has been making a good career for himself on two continents. A native of Australia, he attended the Victorian College of the Arts and the Queensland Conservatorium, continuing his vocal studies with Daniel Ferro. In 1989, he was a finalist at the Australian Met Opera Competition. Since then, he has sung a number of leading roles with major opera companies in that country, including Scarpia in Tosca, Count di Luna in Il trovatore and Gérard in Andrea Chenier.
Vayne first went to Europe to be part of the Zurich Opera’s studio, and since then has sung major roles such as Eugene Onegin, Macbeth, and Escamillo at the main opera houses of Mannheim, Basel and Linz, among others. (He covered Simon Boccanegra at Covent Garden, too, but so far, he has not sung before the public there.)
Because he went from watching Carmen as part of the audience to singing Escamillo over the space of an intermission, Vayne received a great deal of publicity, not just in German and Austrian papers, but all over the world. It will be interesting to see how much difference it makes in his future career.
We all know it is important to be prepared at all times, because we never know when opportunity will knock. Ian Vayne was ready when the company needed him to save a performance, and thanks to some apt coverage by the press, it will not soon be forgotten.
