Opera Orchestra of New York’s founder and conductor laureate, Eve Queler, has created her own niche in the international opera world. Her daring combination of unknown operas and often unknown singers has raised numerous eyebrows, but you can’t argue with her success. What can you say to the “sold out” signs or to the screams, applause, and sometimes pandemonium in the auditorium?
Furthermore, her track record of discovering new talent and helping catapult the career of many singers is legendary.
Queler’s career began as a staff member at the New York City Opera, and in 1971 she founded OONY. She has also conducted at major opera houses around the world, including the Mariinsky Theatre, Opera Australia, the Hamburg State Opera, the National Theatre in Prague, the Frankfurt Opera, and many more. Queler recently finished writing a book about her remarkable life and spoke with me last November about her career, what she looks for in a voice, and her advice for young singers.
What kind of voices do you like?
Extraordinary voices. If I have to give you one factor, it is basically the sound, the quality. If you think about all the people who talk about how they first got interested in opera, it was from the Met radio broadcasts. This is strictly sound. I also realized that I am not only in love with the voice but I am in love with the repertoire which was written for voice.
I met many people through my work as a rehearsal pianist, some of them who were particularly friendly to me—like Richard Tucker and Nicolai Gedda. I asked if they would like to sing a concert with me, a fledgling conductor, and they both said yes. Nicolai said, “Choose anything from the list.” Hurok used to publish a list of repertoire for each singer, arranged alphabetically. At the bottom it said, William Tell by Rossini. I didn’t know that Rossini had written an opera named William Tell and I just picked it.
Then Gedda got sick and cancelled, so I had to go on with two guys off the street . . . but we were a success anyway. Louis Quilico (Tell) was a beautiful singer. I played his lessons with Martial Singher. At the end of his aria, there was a big ovation and somebody yelled out, “Quilico, sei un leone!” [Quilico, you are a lion!]
L’Africaine with Richard Tucker was a real success. Singers started to come to me. I got a message: “Montserrat Caballé would like to meet you.” When we met, she said, “I have heard about you. I tip my chapeau to a lady conductor. I want to sing with you.” Like that. She knew exactly what she wanted to sing: Parisina by Donizetti. “What’s that?” I said. I had to go to Italy and find it.
I met Renata Scotto through [artist manager] Bob Lombardo. She wanted to sing I lombardi alla prima crociata. In Paris, I heard Lucrezia Borgia with a tenor I never heard before: José Maria Carreras. I said, “I must have this voice.” I was able to put him into “Lombardi.”
Paul Plishka was singing Angelotti at the Met at that time; nobody knew him. I heard this beautiful voice and put it in the big part. I was putting James Morris in when nobody knew who he was. He was in the first thing I did. I wanted to bring Gedda back because I really loved working with him. I had heard about The Pearlfishers and Renato Bruson came and sang that.
I was the pianist at City Opera and I played a Carmen run through for Plácido Domingo. A lot of the tenors we had at the City Opera were “nervous.” They’d come and coach. Plácido was different; he was easy going. He was very friendly and nice. Everyone wanted to know him better. The company just kind of adopted him. So there’s this voice again, and we became friends. He proposed Francesca da Rimini, and I fell in love with it.
It is a magnificent score.
What a piece of music! I must have found Raina Kabaivanska because she knew this role. I had a baritone in the L’africaine who didn’t work out, so Richard Tucker suggested Matteo Manuguerra. I put Matteo Manuguerra and Paul Plishka in everything that I could . . . And so, those are the first few years. Between Manuguerra and Bruson and Cappuccilli, I felt I had the princes of baritones. I was just so fortunate.
I think Liz Cole said that there is somebody that you should hear. I went over and she was 27-year-old Aprile Millo . . . Oh my, I heard this voice—so beautiful, so expressive.
It almost sounds like it hits you immediately.
Yes, a color, a warmth, a beauty—and, you know, a person’s ability to sing pianissimo is such a plus. I always work as a coach to get people to sing pianissimo. Some people have turned me down and say, “I don’t do that.” But when I can, I try to help them with that. I look also for the possibility of them communicating with the voice.
Are there certain qualities—for instance, a darker voice as opposed to a bright voice—that you prefer?
No, I like a quality that touches me . . . and it’s very hard to explain, but I mentioned before “pianissimo.” Usually the upper part (unless you are Ulrica) is where the emotion is expressed—the frustration, or the pain, maybe anger or love. And if they can go up to those notes in the passaggio and not attack them forte but attack them soft and then let them bloom, that is something that is going to touch you because it has that moment of pathos—a weak word for what we all feel when we are taken by something a singer is saying.
I have noticed that a lot of singers sing really well with you.
They tell me that. Nicolai Gedda said that in spite of the fact that the rehearsals were very serious, they were also like a party. People are comfortable with me because I like music. I feel that it is something we do together. My goal for my responsibility to the composer is that they sing everything as beautifully as is possible.
What sort of things might you tell an inexperienced singer?
I connect people, and they learn. Let’s take a rehearsal of Roberto Devereux with Mariella Devia when the cover had to sing the duet with Mariella. All of a sudden, the style unfolded as he sang with her. Bergonzi was wonderful with young sopranos. Some tenors don’t want to sing with a cover, but he loved doing that.
Going back to Montserrat. She wanted to sing Parisina, and I could never find a tenor to sing it. So Montserrat sang this performance with the cover, an unknown tenor from Connecticut. She was very nice to him and helpful. She probably got him through it.
What do you think about someone auditioning for you with unusual repertoire?
Well, if somebody brings Benjamin Britten, for instance, you have to assume that that is his strong point.
That word “pianissimo” keeps coming up over and over with you.
Because I think it is the most expressive thing a voice can do—an upper voice. You can’t ram a pianissimo down someone’s throat. But at least get them to thinking, “Well, I’ll try this.”
People who listen only to recordings will never understand what Montserrat’s or Gedda’s piano really sounds like in the house. I believe that Scotto said Gigli’s soft singing filled the Arena di Verona. And I remember that Gedda’s soft singing filled the theater, like Montserrat’s.
Of course! A real pianissimo. You can’t cover it. If it is a recitative or a phrase with nobody playing, I always tell my singers, “Why are you singing so loud?”
It was as if they had diamonds in their voice. There was something shimmering.
Diamonds. That’s a good word. It is easier to be touched by a high voice with their gentle phrasing and color. From pianissimo, there is a place to go. If you are pouring out your emotion, if you start softly—oh—it is almost too much. You are gripped by these people. So how about a baritone voice? For me, when singing “Per me giunto” or “Il balen,” it is soft—but as it goes up, you have to express the longing in a color. Is it enough just to hear it pretty? No, it’s not.
And how about a bass voice. How about Ferruccio Furlanetto when he sang La sonnambula with me. Do you remember in the cadenza how big it got in the bottom? That’s a thrill.
And the color was so gorgeous, too.
Gorgeous! The first time I heard Dmitri Hvorostovsky, he sang at Symphony Space. I was about to do a Russian opera that year. He sang “Per me giunto” with four phrases in one breath. And I couldn’t believe it. The beauty of that voice. And of course he is very handsome, and that doesn’t hurt. But there is something very spiritual, very personal, in addition to the beauty. Is it the beauty? Is it all together one thing? Or is it simply a technical feat? What melted me down?
So now we are talking about young singers, and the young singers don’t have the bottom yet, so they can’t do that. But they can give you warmth. I have had warmth from Paul Plishka from Day 1. He is my most abused singer. He sang 29 times. One season he sang all three operas.
And in Nabucco I seem to remember that he took a high A-flat.
Probably. There wasn’t an opera he sang with me that he didn’t sing Fs. Sometimes Gs. There was beauty in the voice, a gentle beauty. I am just lucky that I stumbled over these people. But you asked something before, “Did you look for the singer or the opera first?” There was an aria that kept popping up called “Spirto gentil,” and sometimes I played Leonora’s aria, “O mio Fernando.” So I wondered, “Where is the rest of this opera?” I began to look for people who would like to sing it.
One of my first professional engagements was I Puritani in Royal Festival Hall in London with Alfredo Kraus. I wanted to do something else with Kraus. I worked with [Shirley] Verrett when I played the dance rehearsals at City Center. I offered her La favorita. She would only sing it with Pavarotti or Kraus, and I knew Kraus, so that was fine.
That’s very funny. “I’ll only do it with one of these two singers,” and one of them you had in your back pocket.
All through this I was working with Caballé in Hérodiade [and] Aroldo—those were her choices. And then I started to get interested in the Czech repertoire, and that’s because I was playing some reel-to-reel tapes and Stanley [Eve’s husband] walked by and said, “What’s that?” And I said, “It’s an opera called Dalibor by Smetana.” And he said, “That’s beautiful. Could you do that?” I said, “I don’t know.” That’s now my favorite opera.
I remember the Libuše with Gabriela Beňačková.
I have a sold-out poster for Libuše, an opera that nobody ever heard of. Sold out at Carnegie Hall.
And she was not known here.
She wasn’t. I honestly feel that I built the audience for the Czech language operas. Nobody did Rusalka in Czech until I did it. But to do Libuše and sell out? It shows you what kind of an audience I have. It didn’t matter what I did.
Because they knew that you were going to deliver. Libuše—that’s the one with the big scene at the end and Beňačková’s opulent voice poured out like molten gold.
And then the last chorus, “The Czech people will never die”—the Czechs in the audience stood up and sang it and rocked back and forth, which is the tradition in Prague. I can’t tell you that without crying, because in 1988 they weren’t free yet.
I met Leonie Rysanek in Sydney, Australia. I was conducting “Seraglio,” and she was singing Kostelnička in Jenůfa, but in English. I said, “Would you sing with me in New York?” She already knew who I was and what I was doing, so we made that plan. One board member said to me, “Why are you doing Jenůfa? That’s a terrible opera!” Jenůfa was probably the biggest success we ever had.
Yes, there was a 20- or 22-minute ovation after Rysanek sang. And that was in the middle of the opera! I thought the walls of the theater were going to crack from the yelling, clapping, and stomping. So, what came first? The opera or Leonie?
Oh, I was definitely going to do Jenůfa. I was in a Czech frenzy at this point. I was fortunate enough that I was guest conducting where I met the right people.
You put Czech opera on the map in America.
Now I am re-exploring some Bel Canto, which I feel is the best expression for the young voices. These guys didn’t stretch the voice. They knew how to write for it without damage. Even Puccini sometimes went a bit far—pushed the envelope a little.
So, would you suggest that is the repertoire for young singers to study a lot?
I do. I am coaching privately now because there’s a group of people who are no longer in school who still need some work.
I am not concerned with what singers look like. Most look pretty good. It is the beauty of the voice and the ability to communicate. And I have to say I do like words. Use the consonants for expression. A lot of our American singers don’t pronounce the consonants when they sing. I heard Furlanetto tell one young singer in the cast of La sonnambula, “I want to hear that ‘r’ rolled on the pitch five times. Twice is not enough.” Or pronounce the word d-d-d-dio. Americans will say “dio.” There is a difference in expression whether you say “O dio” or “o d-d-d-dio.” Words, expression of the words, consonants sung.
What about YouTube?
I don’t listen on YouTube because the sound is electronic, too impersonal. I am not interested in what they look like. I want expression. I want color. I want tone. Do I look for recommendations? Not necessarily, but it is always nice to get them. Paul Plishka used to recommend singers to me, but very rarely. He once recommended Stephanie Blythe. He said, “Remember that name. It’s a voice.” Stephanie has a voice you can touch. And Paul, of course, comes from that school.
You tend to cast what I call “old fashioned” voices. Right?
Oh, yes.
Nowadays there are a lot of colorless singers.
Well, they don’t touch me. I want to be totally involved.
Any advice to young singers about career preparation?
The words—besides your beautiful voice, your pianissimo, and expression. Understanding the words. Sometimes singers pronounce carefully but don’t get the inflection. It-is-as-if-they’re-speaking-the-words-but-not-getting-the inflection-that-is-how-they-are-singing-in-Italian [Queler says in a monotone]. Sometimes you have to actually dot a note because that’s the way the language goes up and down. You can doctor the rhythm to say the words properly. It has to fit what we are playing. That’s needed. The rise and fall of the sentence, especially in the recitatives and even sometimes in the cantilena. As soon as I say, “and-even-sometimes-in-a-cantilena” [pronounced with no inflection], they realize what they are doing. If a singer is doing a recitative or something all on one pitch and they don’t have the rise and the fall, I don’t know where they are in the bar!
Devia is easy to conduct because I hear the words. We need the preparation to be together on the downbeats. I need the consonants. Especially if I know the words.
By the way, the Internet was abuzz for weeks over Devia’s performance in Roberto Devereux. Everyone was talking about it.
I know. And we are talking with her again about coming back.
