If there is any singer today who could be introduced as needing no introduction, it is Jennifer Larmore. This mezzo-soprano has done it all in her nearly two decades before the public, accomplishing many miracles along the way. With a prodigiously beautiful voice, formidable endurance and an absolutely dependable coloratura technique, she has adorned all of the great American operatic and concert stages. She is a familiar and beloved voice in the major opera houses of Europe. In an era that has witnessed a huge downsizing of the classical recording industry, Larmore has an enviable representation on CD: nearly all of her repertoire of complete roles is available in the bins of Tower Records and online at Amazon.com. Larmore has accomplished this with hard work in support of a great natural gift. Larmore is a nice person with a realistic sense of her own place in the cosmos and a genuine good will toward all, on or off the opera stage. She devotes much free time to work for UNICEF, and having made it to the top, she feels the need to send the elevator back down for those waiting in the lobby for their chance at the career prize. Because she is so accomplished, and so accessible, young singers often feel that they can seek her advice.
She spoke of this during our interview.
J. LARMORE: [The young singers are] always there after performances. And they’re smart; they should be there to pick our brains, to find out how we did it. I did the same thing when I was younger. But I had one young singer saying that he needed to become famous very fast, because he needed all the money that came with fame. And I just sat there staring at him and thinking, “Is this a joke?”
It’s like that cute little Muppet movie: “We’d like the standard rich and famous contract, please.” Well, there is no standard rich and famous contract! In fact, I’ve thought about it deeply, about how to tactfully address this. Maybe this young guy has what it takes. I don’t know. He told me he did. I’ve never heard him so I have no way of knowing. I tactfully responded in this way: I said, “Let me tell you something. It’s good to have a healthy ego, good to have confidence in yourself. You need that. I said something once which everybody’s quoted from here to kingdom-come, which is, ‘You need to have an ego as big as a Winnebago to do what we do.’” And that is true.
On the other hand, if you go into a singing career to be famous, to be rich, those are all the wrong reasons. And I told him that people see this. That in itself, I think, brings along some type of negativism, and people feel it. They’re not stupid. When you sing, what comes out in your voice? Your soul. It’s a way of exposing your emotions, and the person you are. If all you want is to be rich and famous, I think somehow that’s going to come out. That’s either going to irritate people or completely turn them off.
Sometimes, when you do get a modicum of success, then maybe there are people who won’t like you—for reasons of jealousy or whatever. Maybe they just wish that it had happened to them. But you get some people who don’t like you no matter how much heart and soul you pour into things. Not everybody is going to like you.
F. GÜNTER: Were you a mezzo from the start? Did you have that Fach indecision that tortures so many beginning singers?
There was a time when I thought that maybe my voice would go up, who knows. The vocal chords aren’t really set until you’re 35 years of age in any case, so I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen to my voice. But it never did. I developed a nice high extension to my voice, which is always fun to flip up into, but my quality and tone stayed mezzo.
Isn’t that how one really determines the Fach? Where is the most beautiful part of the voice?
Where is the glory? Exactly.
Whom did you admire as a singer when you were forming the idea that this was what you wanted to do?
All the mezzos, of course. Janet Baker was a big, big influence. I still admire all those women. Flicka von Stade, who I’ve since met and become friends with and love dearly, she’s the nicest lady in the world. She’s always been so supportive with me, and so helpful. She’s never threatened by up-and-coming talents.
There are certain aspects about having a career that you just have to accept. Jealousy is one. Another is traveling. That’s part of it—you can’t get out of it. I know a lot of my colleagues are trying to make careers just here in the States so they don’t have to travel. That’s OK too, if you can do it. But in order to be an international opera star, you have to travel internationally. And that means getting on the plane!
Another part of the business is the publicity, the intrigue, the things like that. I often say that I really need a good scandal because I’m so boring. I’ve been happily married for 22 years [to bass-baritone William Powers]. I don’t throw fits. I’m always prepared. The first day of rehearsals, I’m always so afraid that I’m not going to be prepared that I end up over-prepared. I’m the only one who has it completely memorized on the first day of rehearsals. Bill always laughs at me; he says I always over-worry about not being prepared.
Well, it’s that nightmare we’ve all had of being on the stage naked, with everyone looking at you.
Yes! And you’ve got a score under your arm that you’ve never seen, ever! I was talking to Placido Domingo about this. He still, every once in a while, has these little anxiety nightmares, too. Everybody does.
He seems to have nerves of steel. He can fly in on the day without a rehearsal and sing like an angel.
And you know why? Because not only is he an extraordinary person and an extraordinary brain, but because this is a man who plans ahead and knows just how much he can do. I’ve learned, through the years that I’ve done this career—15 or16 years—just exactly how much I can do now. One of the most important things I learned at the beginning of my career, however, was what I couldn’t do vocally. And even then I was young, and my vocal chords weren’t set. I was still a work in progress. I learned there were certain things I wanted to do with the voice that I had in my head, but at the time I didn’t have that voice in reality. It was very frustrating. I had a voice in my head that I wanted. It was a combination of Marilyn Horne and Janet Baker with von Stade’s vulnerable, lovely beauty. What I learned through the years was this: I am just me. And me was good enough.
How much do you practice every day when you’re not in a production?
Sometimes I don’t sing a note.
Really! You don’t sing every single day?
No, I don’t. Sometimes I’ll find that I just need some vocal rest. There are times when, if I’m in the mood, I’ll go to the piano and I’ll sing something. I have to admit that, if I go longer than, let’s say a week without singing, and I try to sing the seventh day, then I sound as if I’ve never sung before in my entire life.
But you would rest that long?
I have, yes. I’ve rested for three weeks.
You are famous for being strong, for being able to sing for a long time.
Well, I had a good teacher.
I heard that you don’t even tire singing Romeo in I Capuleti, even after an hour of warming up full voice.
Capuleti now is totally in my throat. But at the beginning, I felt like I could have had a lever right here. I was cranking my voice up into that tessitura to stay there. But at the beginning, I had limits right here. I was all the time pushing them, just ever so slightly, which is healthy, because how else do you find out, as a young singer, what it is that you can do and can’t do?
You mentioned being aware of your limitations. How did you become aware of them?
When you’re young, you see what offers are coming in, and you weigh them against other things. The second year I was singing, I got an offer to do Jane Seymour in Anna Bolena in Nice. I thought, Marilyn Horne did it, and so did Giulietta Simionato, so why can’t I do it? What I didn’t understand is that Marilyn Horne maybe transposed it. I don’t know for sure, but she was at the height of the vocal prowess where she could easily handle it. And she had worked up to that. I, on the other hand, was young and stupid. But it was a very good experience. I did it, and I have to admit, I lost about 25 pounds, never looked better, and I was sick constantly from the nerves. I was so nervous that my nose was bleeding. It was as if my shoulders were in a perpetually tense stance. I was ready to collapse, and Bill sent me a picture of a Chihuahua with bowed legs. He wrote, “This is Anna Bow-lega.” And underneath, he added, “Don’t take it all so seriously.” Then, when I saw that, I was all of a sudden released.
But that wasn’t the end of it. I had eight performances to do. It was my trial by fire. I knew I was in trouble. Let me tell you what happened since it’s a very funny story, and it’s one of the best things that happened to me in my life and my career. At one of these early performances, Evgeny Nestorenko was my Henry the Eighth, and we were singing the second act duet. It just keeps going higher and higher, but in chromatics, which is the hardest way to approach anything. So there we were on stage. I swear, I have blocked the name of this conductor out of my head. I’m not just being tactful, I don’t remember now who it was. I only remember it was so slow, I had fantasies of bursting vocal chords, or of throwing my hands up and screaming, “STOP THE SHOW, I CANT GO ON!”
But I kept going, I kept going, and I put my hand on Evgeny’s shoulder, and I tapped out a faster tempo. Evgeny, being wonderful that he was, felt the tempo, and said, “Yes, yes, let’s get this thing moving. But the conductor was not in agreement. He was in the pit keeping it slow and rigid. I glared at him and so did Evgeny. We went to the front of the stage, and both of us were glaring, glaring, glaring and singing. When that duet was over, it stopped the show for ten minutes. Everybody was screaming, “Brava!” The next day in the papers, “The Success of Jane! Jennifer Larmore is the Overnight Star.” And I was dyingup there. They mistook my profound and abject terror for dramatic intensity. I mean, it stopped the show. It was a moment of revelation for me. But I had six more performances to go. And I did it.
When you warm up and vocalize to stay in shape, what kind of exercises do you do?
I do what ever comes into my mind. I think it’s really important to warm up your lower voice first, your middle voice, and then go to your high. If you have the discipline, do your lower voice in the morning, your middle voice in the afternoon, and your higher voice at night. It just makes sense. A lot of people, when they do a scale up, they neglect to come down. I think it’s important, whatever exercise you do up, take it down so that you can feel what’s going on in your throat.
Can you sing right away in the morning?
I sure can. I don’t know why. I’m a weird bird. I sometimes sing better in the morning. You can wake me up during the night and ask me to sing any Rossini and it works. I have no idea why. It’s just always there. I think I’m worse at night. I think after 6 o’clock, I’m ready to relax and have some fun.
Are you still working on your technique, and if so, what particular things are you trying to accomplish at this stage?
I’m not consciously working on my technique. When you’re young, you have really pay attention to having a good basic technique. That is the most important thing you can do. But I also think about knowing pedagogy, and knowing what’s happening in your throat—what makes something crack. I think it’s important that you know. The more knowledge you have, the better it is for you. I guess it’s like eating. Of course you’re not going to say, “OK, now my hand is reaching for the spoon, now it’s going into my mouth.” No, no, you learned how to do that technically when you were a baby. It’s kind of the same way vocally. It comes second nature. But the other thing is this: Every singer is different. Every singer has different needs. There are some singers, who, for many different personal reasons, like to take voice lessons all their lives. Well, I took voice lessons for three years, and I haven’t taken another one since.
I am astonished to hear this!
Well, I ran out of money. And I didn’t really trust anybody. I also had people around me who were brutal, telling me the truth about what I needed to do. My voice is a way of life. It’s not “the voice.” It’s me, just another part of me. I don’t think of it as separate from me.
What changes, if any, have you noticed in your voice since you began to sing professionally?
Oh goodness, there’s been a huge, huge change and evolution, simply because I’ve grown as a person in the way that I think about things, the way that I see things. Your voice also changes with you, or it should. I don’t know what to make of voices that don’t change. Or of repertoires that doesn’t change. Maybe that’s a deliberate choice for some people.
What would you like to sing that you haven’t sung?
Octavian (in Richard Strauss’ Die Rosenkavlier) of course. And I can sing it so well. Well, people don’t think of me for that. I guess because there’s so many out there that really look the part.
There’s something to be said for staying with what you do well. You’ve found wonderful niches in Rossini and Handel.
I’ll do those as long as everybody wants to hear them. Handel’s Julius Caesar is great music. And there’s a lot of drama in it. Handel is probably the most gracious thing to my voice. I can sing Handel for hours on end and not feel taxed. I think that’s also how you know what’s good for your voice. I would say to all young singers who may be reading this: if it’s not comfortable, don’t do it.
What do you pack to take to the theater with you for a performance? What do you pack besides essentials when you’ll be on the road for a while? And do you have any tips for packing light but still feeling at home on the road? I’m always interested in how singers manage to feel at home enough to concentrate in strange cities.
I wish someone would teach me how to pack lightly. What makes me feel at home? My dog, Sophie. This dog! If I have my dog with me, I’m happy. If I don’t have her with me, I’m not happy. As stupid as that may sound, I don’t care. She’s a living presence. It beats coming home to an empty apartment or a hotel. My husband is often not with me—he does things on his own. Besides that, it’s very expensive, and there are many different reasons why he wouldn’t want to go with me all over the world all the time. But we do have a rule: we’re never separated more than one month. So the first thing I would say is Sophie, she makes me feel very comfortable and relaxed. I also have this pulse point of lavender, and lavender bath salts. Lavender makes me relax.
What do you take to the theater?
Just what I need. I never take any money or anything like that.
You sing music that is notorious for it’s technical demands. Things like trills. Did they come naturally?
It came naturally. I must admit. I had a conversation with Rockwell Blake once, and Rocky and I were talking about how we’re always asked about our coloratura—because his is so good. And I said, “You know, Rocky, to tell you the truth, just between us, I’ve always had it. From the time I was 13 years old, it was there. And hopefully it will be there for many years to come.” And Rocky said, “You know, it’s the same with me.” You’ve either got it or you don’t. Now I don’t want that to discourage anybody who might be reading this article. What I want to tell them is that it can be worked on, and I’ve seen young people start out a passage very slowly, and get the feel of each note in their throat, and then go on and make it a little faster and a little faster. But just because I do it at a certain tempo doesn’t mean you have to. Do it at your tempo. The tempo that makes it fiery for you, or, that conveys the certain emotion. I mean, that’s what coloratura is for.
I just did a CD of Rossini’s Bianca e Falliero for Opera Rara. Listen to the last act. Even I like it, and I normally don’t like anything that I do because I’m too critical. But even I like what I did on this. The coloratura is right spot on and it moves me. It has a fiery anger, and at the same time there’s some pathos. I was just amazed that I was able to bring it out.
I don’t think I’ve ever sounded like myself on record. Some of my recordings make it sound like I’ve got a miniscule voice. I’ve always told them, please don’t mess around with my voice. I’ve had some people come up to me after a performance and say with such surprise, “My Lord, your voice is so big!” Some of them sound like they’ve been phoned in, but its not our fault. Then there are other people that sound like they’ve got these huge voices on disc, and when you see them live, you can’t hear them at all!
What about recitals?
Oh, I adore recitals.
Some people think they’re becoming dinosaurs, that there’s less audience for them. Do we need to reinvent the format? What would we do if we did?
I think it’s very strange that people think that it’s a dinosaur. Let me tell you that you have one person … it’s like a one-person show, with your wonderful accompanist—mine is terrific, Antoine Palloc—and the audience and the music. What more would a person want for total immersion and communication? When I go to recitals nowadays, I do see lots of young people. I tend to think that it’s kind of turning around. More young people are coming than ever before, at least to my recitals. I don’t know other people’s, but I know about mine.
People always want to know how to find a teacher that’s right for them. Can you recommend anyone who’s especially good for mezzos?
Bonnie Hamilton in New York is a magnificent teacher. She was a singer. She is the kind of teacher that is able to verbalize every tiny thing she wants. That’s what makes a good teacher. She can explain anything. She can demonstrate anything. She’s also an extremely intelligent woman, and funny! She has a great sense of humor. She is highly supportive and honest. Those are the things you want in the teacher. I would tell any young person looking for a teacher to try Bonnie first, but you also have to have a personality compatibility with the teacher. If you have any doubts about your teacher, than you’re probably right to doubt. I think so often we don’t trust our instincts. What are our instincts there for?
How do you deal with directors who ask you to do things that you are uncomfortable with?
I will always try to do what a director asks me to do, because he’s a director and he knows what he’s doing most of the time, I hope. And I imagine that since I’ve been hired to do my job, I know what I’m doing. OK, so we have two professionals. You have to be able to collaborate—you have to be able to work. If a director asks you to do something and you’re first response is “no,” then neither he nor you can get a good product. But if a director asks me to do something that is not absolutely ridiculous, like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of water, then I will try it. For example, Dario Fo, fantastic Nobel laureate for literature and mime for 40 years, and one of the most famous people living for that sort of thing, for literature and mime and acting. Dario did a Barber of Seville and Italiana in Algeri with me. Now, in that Italiana, in the “Per lui che adoro,” the part where you need the most breath support, he wanted me to do a strip tease. And it was beautifully done, it was very tasteful. Everybody loved it. All they ever saw was my back. My back is nice, I didn’t mind showing it. But he wanted me to double over to put on some stockings. My first response, non-verbal, I didn’t say it, was, “Is he kidding? Is he out of his mind? Doesn’t he know that I have to sing?” Well, yes, he knew, he knows the score very well. He knew what I had to do. He loves the human voice, and he loves me. So I thought, “OK, just try it. Push your limits out ever so slightly, see if you can do it.” And you know what? It was magnificent. It took a little technical stretching, it was very, very difficult at first, but I did try it. And not only was I able to sing it well, it enhanced the scene like you would not believe. It gave it the sensuality, and the loveliness.
We’ve heard that you’ve got a nasty tax bill in Europe, can you tell us the story? What is happening with taxes there? Is it worth it to sing there when they keep changing the laws.
They’re making it so difficult on all artists that it does not pay to sing there very often. I’m going over for the first three months of this year, and normally I would spend about six months over there, but I literally cannot financially afford to spend time in Europe. The taxes are so horrendous. In France they woke up this sleeping law that said, “Oh, by the way, guess what? You weren’t paying enough taxes all these years.” And all of us—“us” being the high profile opera singers, and also high profile sports figures and rock stars. Now it’s not fair to lump in the opera singers with the sports figures and rock stars because we don’t make half as much as they do, but what happened is this: they woke up this law, they told us we were not paying enough taxes. We went to the head of the opera companies, and we said, “Well, we trusted you to take out the amount of tax that we owed.” Normally it comes out automatically. They said, “We did, but we didn’t know about this law.”
So instead of paying 15 percent of a tax, or 20 percent, you now have to pay 27 percent. And the problem is that in France, they want it all right then, no installments. And everyone has just been canceling their contracts. And nobody wants to go sing in Germany, either. This worries me for young singers, because how are they going to get their starts? How are they going to hone their craft? How are they going to get experience? You can’t do it in the United States. You must go to Europe.
Because you get so much valuable experience in Europe?
The languages, for one! Learning them inside and out. And learning the culture, and the context that supports these operas we sing. And not only that, but of course opera was born over there. And here, as wonderful opera companies as we have, and we do have some of the best, they cannot afford, literally, to give a young unknown a leading role. But in France, in Germany, there’s an opera house on every corner. A young person can get the experience that they need. Try out things, find out if it works for you. If it doesn’t, then you’re OK. Go to the next house, work your career up, which is what I did.
Some people say, Your career went so fast! But it didn’t. I worked for eight long years. It was funny, because when I did Capuleti at Carnegie Hall here with Eve Queler and the Opera Orchestra of New York, I remember that the review the next day was, “Oh, we’re really surprised, this girl is good. Where did she come from?” And I was already a star in Europe. But for young singers I really worry about how they get started. If Europe is no longer feasible, where can they go to get experience?
Well, where can they go? A singer who’s at a certain stage where they’ve got a commanding technique, and they’re ready, how do they get the next step up?
Well, of course, the next step is to find yourself an agent. I was lucky with my management. They worked probably about 98 percent of the time for me and 2 percent for all the others, which wasn’t fair and I knew nothing about it, but I was just naïve enough to think they worked that way for everyone. They pounded the pavement to get me chances because they believed in me. And I believed in myself. But I purposefully said “no” to the Fest system in Germany. I did not want to be locked in to a Fest system. I purposefully said “no” to singing in choruses, because I did not want to get locked into that.
So you’ve never been afraid to say no to things you knew weren’t right for you?
No, but that was only because I was young and didn’t know any better. My parents had always said to me, “You will be successful in whatever you do, you have our full support in whatever you decide,” and I just believed them. I had no reason not to. I remember in college, some of my friends saying, “You’re the only Vocal Performance Major here, it’s really silly. You’re not going to make any money in vocal performance. You should take a degree in music teaching and minor in this so you’ll have something to fall back on.” I was incredulous. I gasped, “Fall back on?” I had no idea what that meant. It never occurred to me that I would fail. So when any door opened, I walked through it. But I did have my rules, like I said, no Fest and no chorus. Any other doors, I said yes to everything.
Including Giovanna Seymour! What is the downside of being a famous singer, being a successful established singer?
Oh my lord, it has surpassed everything I thought it would be. I really have to think hard to think of the downside.
Except for this money thing in France.
Let’s put things in perspective. I work for UNICEF. If you work for an organization like UNICEF, and you have monthly reports of what’s going on in the world, then what you see puts things into perspective. If there’s any downside, I guess it’s the logistic of packing/unpacking and traveling, which becomes rather old after 16 years of doing it ten months out of the 12. Now, that’s the only downside I can think of. To be able to do something I wanted to do all my life. … Luckily I had the voice to do it with, and the support. Luckily, I had the great coordinated efforts of Caroline Whitfield, Tom Graham, Mindi Rayner, all the people who have worked for me, agents, publicity people, I also had a fantastic marriage with Teldec for quite a few years, and they recorded all my repertoire. When I sang Carmen for the first time, my first Don Jose was Placido Domingo. I’ve tried out new roles at the Met; I didn’t go to Timbuktu to do it. So I have the best of everything. But I don’t complain. I’m lucky to be able to do what I do. At the end of the day I can go to bed and feel good about my life and about what I’m doing, and about my future. I’ll have so many good memories when I’m old and gray, at the nursing home.
