A farewell proved to be an unexpected greeting.
On a Thursday evening in New York in May 2009, James Morris sang his final performance of Wotan at the Metropolitan Opera, the last presentation of Siegfried before the Met retired its Otto Schenk production. A constant presence in that particular production since 1987, Morris’ name seemed synonymous with the Ring at the Met. Four decades ago, he would have called you crazy if you told him he would eventually sing in that production.
Not Going to Happen
Morris, renowned for his portrayal of Wotan for more than a quarter of a century, and known for memorable characterizations of other Wagner roles, never envisioned himself as a Wagner bass. In fact, at the beginning of his career, he had no interest in singing any German opera. “I just didn’t like the language or the style, having studied and been coached in the Italian repertoire,” he recalls. “I thought opera was Italian and some French, and the limited experience I had with German operas at the time was not in major roles. I sang a few small roles like the First Nazarene or First Soldier in Salome.”
Anytime someone suggested German or Wotan to him, Morris would have none of it. In the early 1970s, he received a grant to study Italian in a total immersion course at Berlitz. Morris made his Met debut as the King in Aida in 1971, wanted to speak Italian as well as possible, and never thought he would sing in German (in addition to his Berlitz training, Morris studied with Rosa Ponselle and at both the Peabody Conservatory and Academy of Vocal Arts).
One of many recommendations came from the late Terry McEwen, an executive with Decca and then general director of San Francisco Opera from 1982 to 1988. To the best of Morris’ recollection, McEwen felt that Wotan would fit both his stamina and the size and color of his voice. Morris felt otherwise. While performing in Le nozze di Figaro in Florence, he came close to saying yes—during a lunch break, an accompanist was practicing Die Walküre at the piano to prepare for a production in another theater, so Morris hung around to listen. “Unfortunately, he was practicing Wotan’s Act II monologue, which didn’t grab me at all.”
On Second Thought . . .
Taking a different approach, McEwen suggested that Morris should listen to the end of Die Walküre, Wotan’s Farewell, and work his way backward through the opera. “So, I listened—and I was hooked. That music was unbelievable, and I knew I had to do the role,” Morris says. “Once you get into Wagner, it gets under your skin.”
Knowing that Morris was now on board, McEwen told him that San Francisco Opera would be presenting four cycles of a new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, and he was welcome to sing in as many or as few of the operas as he wanted. Morris decided to sing Wotan in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in all four cycles, but waited to add Siegfried until he sang his first complete Ring in Munich. “Some people sing all of the Wotans together for the first time, but I spread them out to make sure the role was right for me before I committed to an entire cycle,” he explains.
It is possible that McEwen and others had strongly recommended Wotan to Morris because they knew how infrequently a singer comes along who can master the role. Even Morris realizes that the opera world is always searching for the next Wotan. “You can do Don Giovanni a hundred times, and everybody says ‘that’s nice,’” he observes, “but Wotan seems to be in another category. It elicits quite a response from people.”
Bringing Wotan to Life
Wotan, ruler of the Gods, must be all powerful and all knowing. He must control everything. Or so Morris thought when he began to sing the part. “I soon found out that he really doesn’t control anything! The women in his life control everything,” he says, reflecting on how his interpretation has changed. “I was very disappointed when I found out that putting Brünnhilde to sleep and surrounding her with fire wasn’t even his idea—it was hers. I came to realize the parallels with humans. Wotan is not this distant, god-like figure who you assume is omniscient. He’s very, very human.”
Like any other singer returning to a role, Morris likes to believe that his interpretation of Wotan has constantly evolved. His preparations for (and insights into) each Ring cycle are usually aided by directors. Some directors are not helpful. “One director, to my way of thinking, reversed everything. If I felt Wotan was happy on a certain line, the director said Wotan was angry. If I thought he was sad, the director said he was overjoyed,” Morris recalls. “He thought my questions were stupid. I always want to learn, and I told that director, ‘I realize that you’ve forgotten more about this than I’ll ever know. But if I can’t ask you questions, how am I going to learn?’” They did resolve the situation with mutual respect.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Met’s previous staging was Morris’ favorite Ring production in the world because Otto Schenk focused on nature without limiting the production to a specific time frame or political setting. “You felt like a god on that set and in those costumes. In other productions, I felt like a person, because I was fighting the sets and costumes,” Morris says.
His Wotan Preserved on Recordings
A television director is to thank for a memorable moment in Morris’ career. Wotan’s Farewell, an emotional scene if there ever was one, sold Morris on Wotan and continues to affect him every time he sings it. “There have been times I could barely get through it,” he says, highlighting the performances he sang with the late Hildegard Behrens, his favorite Brünnhilde.
“When you performed with her, you couldn’t help but be in character, because she was in character every minute. The look in her face was undeniable—the way she reacted to what you were saying.” He cites the camera angle on the Met DVD of Die Walküre, looking over his shoulder at her face during the farewell. “It gets me every time. I had many ‘pin drop’ moments with her.”
Recording enthusiasts probably know that, in addition to the DVD of the complete Otto Schenk Ring, Morris also sings Wotan on two albums of the complete cycle, one released by Deutsche Grammophon and the other by EMI. The story of why he recorded the cycle twice on CD shows how in demand he became as Wotan.
Around 1985, while he was performing in Salzburg and a year after singing in his first Die Walküre, a representative from EMI took him to lunch and asked him to record the Ring. Morris said yes.
Not 24 hours later, backstage at a performance of Così fan tutte, a representative from DG told Morris about the label’s happiness that he was going to record the Ring with them. That was news to him.
Morris told the DG representative about the EMI agreement and called his own manager, who, it turns out, had been negotiating with DG but wanted to confirm everything before presenting Morris with something that might not happen. “I was between a rock and a hard place,” he says. “I really wanted to do the DG recording because it had Jimmy [Levine] and the Met Orchestra and Chorus, but I felt I owed a certain loyalty to EMI because they had asked me first. I didn’t know what to do, so I asked Jim, ‘Do you mind if I do it with both?’ He was fine with it. He said it would make me the ‘Wotan of the ’90s,’ which would be good for the Met.”
Then Morris consulted with McEwen about legal considerations, because the recording contract stipulated that he would not record the same role for another record label for five years. McEwen’s advice was not to worry: “Let the agents and lawyers work it out.” And so they did. Morris recorded both cycles at almost the same time with James Levine at the Manhattan Center in New York (April 1987 to May 1989) and with Bernard Haitink at the National Theater in Munich (November 1988 to November 1991), with time for other opera performances between recording sessions.
“It was strange, because the two conductors took different approaches, but it was fun. It was a great time in my life, and I kind of miss it,” Morris reflects. If anyone wonders whether he prefers one recording over another, he likes the EMI version for its acoustics and the DG version for Levine’s interpretation. “When I listen to that recording, the colors that he brings out in the orchestra are unbelievable,” he says.
Expanding the Wagner Repertoire
Proceeding from Wotan, Morris next added Der fliegende Holländer to his Wagner repertoire. Initially skeptical about singing the Dutchman because he thought it was written for a baritone (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recorded the role), he studied the score and found that it was well suited to his voice. His longtime Met colleague, bass Paul Plishka, found that Morris was an effectively mysterious Dutchman. “Behind all the beautiful singing and acting, there always seems to be a very mysterious person not coming out—there’s a feeling that he is hiding something,” Plishka comments.
Then—shades of Wotan—Morris wrestled with Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, another role people urged him to sing, but another role he originally had no interest in because of its length and sheer amount of text. “I didn’t like the music at first, either, because I was used to the Ring, Parsifal, and Tristan und Isolde—all these gorgeous, lush scores that had you on the edge of your seat. Meistersinger, to me, was unlike other Wagner,” Morris says.
He spent about five years working on Sachs, with periods of intense frustration, before experiencing the “light bulb” effect. “It’s [Wagner’s] only comedy! I fell in love with it. Sachs has become my favorite operatic character and favorite role to sing because he is an incredible human being—the kind we all want to be and fall short,” he says with pure admiration for Wagner’s genius at creating a five-hour poem. Die Meistersinger is now his favorite opera, too.
“A Singer of German”
With his new-found appreciation for and performances of Wagner, especially Wotan, Morris had to work a little harder to control opera companies’ and the public’s perceptions of his career. “People think I’m a big German singer, but I always make it a point to say, ‘I’m not a German singer—I’m a singer who sings German.’ I still sing other Italian and French roles. The extent of my Wagner repertoire is really Wotan, the Dutchman, and Sachs, and I recorded Amfortas with the Met,” he says.
In fact, when he had told conductor Richard Bonynge that he was studying Die Walküre with bass Hans Hotter, Bonynge was against Morris taking on Wagner, convinced that Morris would abandon the Italian and French repertoire, such as the Semiramide they were currently performing together. But Morris vowed that he would not let that happen—that if the combination were not possible, he would not give up Italian and French. Years later, Bonynge attended a Ring cycle with Morris and admitted he had been wrong.
On a practical level, Morris had to prevent Wagner from taking over his future casting, and he understood the seriousness of the situation when an opera company resisted casting him as the four villains in Les contes d’Hoffmann, roles he loves to sing, because they assumed he was singing only Wagner. “I got to the point that, if a company wanted me to do a Ring, I would accept only if I could do something else with the company, such as an Italian opera the following season,” Morris explains.
The Italian Wing, Plus Some
His career was all Italian until he started to learn Wotan, which is why it has always been so important to him to continue singing those roles; a turning point was his first major role at the Met in 1975, Don Giovanni, considered the epitome of the bass-baritone repertoire. Other Italian roles have included Ramfis in Aida, Colline in La bohème, Philip II and the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo, the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, Count Walter and Wurm in Luisa Miller, Lodovico and Iago in Otello, Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra, Scarpia in Tosca, Timur in Turandot, and Mozart’s Figaro—many of which he continues to sing today. Plus, his versatility extends to other English, French, Russian, and German roles, such as Claggart in Billy Budd, Méphistophélès in Faust, Boris Godunov, and Dr. Schön and Jack the Ripper in Lulu.
Surprising to many people, Scarpia is Morris’ most frequent Met role (he did not realize that fact until two years ago when the Met presented him with a book tabulating his repertoire to honor his 40th anniversary with the company), and he has made something of a specialty playing villains. “It’s probably the color of his voice,” Plishka observes, having performed the Sacristan to Morris’ Scarpia over 30 times. “It can be extremely beautiful, as in the early Wotans, but he can give it a very harsh edge that is perfect for the villains, although he is the most unlikely villain in real life.”
Like the Met’s previous Ring production, Morris also held in great esteem the house’s previous production of Tosca by Franco Zeffirelli. Seven years ago, when he was 59, Morris and his family traveled to Rome for the first time, and the Castel Sant’Angelo was among the places they visited. Upon climbing to the roof, Morris had an instant revelation: “It was our set! Zeffirelli duplicated each place down to the most minute detail in the Met’s production. He researches everything for his productions. To me, that’s grand opera.”
Young Singers and Wagner: Good Idea?
If there is one thing that Morris’ career combination of Italian and German has taught him, it is the belief that young singers should be extremely careful about how and when they approach Wagner. “It is very heavy singing. A lot of people who have started this repertoire at a young age have developed a huge wobble by their 30s. We refer to it as the ‘Bayreuth Bark.’ I recommend starting with Italian repertoire first, singing legato, then bringing that approach to German roles,” Morris says. To illustrate why he feels this way, he shares this example: the Met asked him to cover King Marke in Tristan und Isolde in his first season. Morris was 23 at the time, and his coaching sessions completely frustrated him. “I was tied up in glottal stops and attacks and was told not to sing legato,” he says. Famous last words, apparently. When Morris started to learn Die Walküre, he recalled that advice—but in his first coaching session with Hans Hotter, the instruction was “Legato!”
The new approach has suited Morris ever since, and Plishka has been impressed. “I will never forget the day when I was driving during a Saturday afternoon broadcast of Walküre from the Met,” Plishka recalls. “I was listening to him sing Wotan and thinking, ‘I have never heard this music sung so beautifully—so Italianate!’ When I listen to Italian operas, I expect a very specific Bel Canto style of singing with a very noble voice, especially in the lower voices. When I listen to some of the Wotans, I don’t always hear that kind of voice, so when I heard Jim singing the role, it was very pleasing to my ears.”
It is not surprising, then, that Morris urges any young bass approaching Wotan to use an Italian perspective: sing it as easily and legato as possible. “There’s a huge orchestra,” he notes, “but it’s rarely written more than piano or mezzo-forte when singers are singing. And young singers must know how to pace themselves.” Morris used to have trouble pacing himself in Act III of Die Walküre, since he had to reconcile the scenes with the Valkyrie sisters and then with Brünnhilde—the first with a lot of yelling back and forth, and the second sung piano and legato, ending with the emotionally charged farewell. “I had to figure out how to get through the first scene convincingly, angry and letting forth 100 percent, while holding enough back for later in the act. It’s definitely a case of stamina.”
Tackling the Ring
As far as the actual sequence of the Ring is concerned, Morris bases his advice on what worked for his learning style: start with the hardest and longest (Die Walküre). Das Rheingold is the easiest. “Siegfried has its own problems. It is not a large part, but the first scene can be vocally difficult, because a lot of it is written in middle voice with high notes. The first scene of Act III can also be vocally challenging,” he explains.
So, one might ask, what has motivated Morris to continue returning to Wotan time after time, production after production? The answer is more than simply saying yes to opera companies who want him to sing it. “I love the role,” he says. “It always brings out the goose bumps, and I like it when people identify me as Wotan. For example, I really love it when the Met stagehands say ‘Hey, Wotan.’ When people backstage are drawn into the onstage action and are moved by what you’re doing, that makes it worthwhile.”
Vary Your Roles
Young singers should keep in mind one potential problem related to being cast in the same role over and over again: familiarity can breed contempt. “It’s one thing if you’re a member of an opera company, and that’s how they operate. But try to vary your repertoire. I was always returning to Munich and Vienna to do the Ring, but I was singing other roles in other theaters,” Morris says. “In the case of the Met, I think I’m too familiar as Wotan after a quarter-century, and I think people will want to see someone else.”
Versatility in role selection is also healthy in caring for the voice, as is taking your time. “Don’t sing major, heavy roles in your 20s and burn yourself out,” Morris advises. “A lyric tenor isn’t a dramatic tenor, but it seems everybody always wants to be up one notch. Opera companies won’t take care of you because they’re only worried about a certain production at a particular time. If they think you can give a great performance, they’re not worried about what it’s going to do to you 10 years down the road.”
Clearly, Morris waited long enough to sing Wagner and has approached Wotan in a manner that was healthy enough for him to sing 89 performances at the Met over 22 years. And to think that his affinity for Wagner is a 180-degree switch from his first thoughts of German opera! “I know it sounds corny, but I actually feel privileged to be able to sing Wagner,” he says. “Many times in concert, sitting on stage surrounded by the orchestra, the music lifts me emotionally, and I think, ‘A lot of this is very frustrating, a lot of it has all the problems of other businesses, but moments like this make it worthwhile.’ You feel lucky to be part of it, and that’s the way I’ve always felt about the Ring. Wagner and the Ring have been very good to me.”
