Ms. Mödl, you were one of the pillars of the Neubayreuth ensemble, you embody something like a musical primal stone of Wagnerian singing. And yet you don't come from a musical home or have any other musical background.
Not at all! The only thing I can say is that my father, without being able to read music, could play something he heard on the piano. But there can be no talk of a musical home. However, I had a good voice from childhood, a strong natural voice. Already in school, I was with the English Fräuleins, I sang every morning in the chapel. That was the most important thing for me in my school days. The war then prevented any serious musical training for me. When I started singing professionally, i.e. at my first engagement, I was already thirty years old. By then I had already had five professions, none of which I took seriously. I think singing was my destiny and I just had the naive courage to want to sing without having really learned it. Well, the time was favorable, of course, after the war. The supply of singers was not as great as it is today. And so I was engaged, first in Düsseldorf, then in Hamburg, and then came Bayreuth.
But you had already sung your Bayreuth roles before that?
Yes, of course, at that time it was still a matter of course that you were only allowed to sing in Bayreuth if you had already mastered the role perfectly elsewhere. I had already sung Kundry at the WDR, at the State Opera in East Berlin, then in the Admiralspalast, and in Stuttgart.
How did your passion for Richard Wagner come about?
Oh God, it wasn't Wagner that interested me. It was first and foremost the figures, the characters of an Isolde, a Kundry, a Brünnhilde.
Furtwängler was your inspiring conductor who laid the foundation for your entire later career.
Yes, he absolutely wanted me for Wagner, I don't even know why. We were probably musically, artistically kindred spirits. We didn't need to exchange much at all. Intuitively, unspokenly, we always had the same ideas.
What distinguished Furtwängler?
I can hardly say. He didn't rehearse very much at all. Instead, he had an assistant from Vienn who rehearsed everything for him. Furtwängler only came at the very end, he only made the last two rehearsals at most. But in the evening, during the performance, he stood in the pit, didn't make any beautiful movements, he was no Karajan, but he inspired everyone in such a way that something extraordinary came about. You can't describe it. It was something tremendous, almost magical. He had charisma, power and energy. He was a person who was present in the moment when it mattered and could transform everything into great expression. And he carried us all along, under and on stage. I could never put it into words, only feel it.
Feeling is probably one of the key concepts of your stage art as a singer?
With me, everything always came from within. I was never a strategist. I do everything with feeling. I have always identified with the part I was singing. There was always something like a carryover from deep inside me. I have never elaborated a role with my head. I take everything from the music, from the sound. The moment I start thinking, I step away, I distance myself from the role. Then I'm beside myself.
How did you manage to get through the opera business of this second half of the century ?
It was not easy! There has to be a lot of love and obsession for this profession to make everything else in life easier to bear. Whoever does not have this endless desire to place what he is doing in this profession in the first place, will go to pieces. If you think only of success and fees, you will wear yourself and your voice out. Singing as a business kills the art. What remains is something cold and interchangeable. That is so often the case with young singers today, in fact they are often only voice owners. In my generation it was completely different. One wanted to sing for the sake of singing and only give one's best.
What do you do when you are not singing?
I can hardly answer that, because apart from singing there is really nothing that is important to me. Of course I do things that other people do. But I have never cultivated anything else besides singing, besides my singing life. Maybe that was a mistake. But there was always only one thing for me: singing.
That's what you've been working on all your life.
Yes, because I had to catch up a lot. The conservatory was in ruins, and I didn't learn a lot of the technically necessary things at the beginning. I was what you call an autodidact. I had a natural voice and just sang. To this day I don't know how that worked, which is why I could never give singing lessons. I always rehearsed my parts myself at first. I could play the piano since I was five years old. I had a wonderful music teacher at school. I owe a lot to Sister Friederike! I would only use a coach at the end of my role studies, for the final touches and so that I wouldn't rehearse any mistakes.
Did you do anything to keep up your voice ?
No, there are recipes, but I didn't have one. It happened to me occasionally on stage that I didn't catch a note. I was always a bit careless and didn't follow the laws of vocal economy. I had no time for that. I was always fully involved, or not at all! I have always sung to full capacity. And I must openly admit, I did not have a well trained voice. I was never a well-trained singer, actually. I always left the singing a bit up to the moment. But I had something that many don't have, a great natural voice.
And you fused singing and performing in such a way that even your smallest performances were events that moved people so much that they didn't even pay attention to singing technique.
Singing and acting always belonged together for me. What came out of me was music and expression. But I have always felt and presented everything from within. My expression was always total. It cannot be divided into singing and performing.
Didn't you occasionally have conflicts with directors ?
No, because in my time there were no such directors as there are today. The director's theater came after me. Of course, I sometimes thought that it wasn't my cup of tea, what the director wanted me to do. But then I exchanged a few words with him, sometimes I even thought about whether I could understand it and do it after all. But in the end I always did what I felt. Of course, that was easier in my time than it would be today. I would never have been able to do anything against my inner conviction on stage. Thank God I didn't get into such conflicts. Unfortunately, today's young singers can no longer afford such a point of view. They say: if you don't do it, the next one will. She is already standing in front of the door and is just waiting for her chance. Singers today are unfortunately mass products and disposable items.
Ms. Mödl, you have become famous throughout the world primarily as a highly dramatic Wagner singer. Was Wagner your focal point and goal from the very beginning ?
Absolutely. Wagner was always my focal center! These female characters have always fascinated me. This music also speaks to me deeply. There are strings in me that are made to sound like with no other composer.
What is actually the most important thing when singing Wagner?
You have to have strength! It is not without reason that many Wagner singers are solidly built. You need steadfastness, stamina, purely physical.
You became one of the pillars of Wolfgang and Wieland Wagner's "Neubayreuth". Especially in Wieland's first production you were in the very center. What kind of person was Wieland Wagner?
He was highly talented in every respect, he was an educated man, he was a gifted painter and an exceptionally good director. Humanly, he was a blank slate for me. I could never assess him, let alone see through him. He always remained a stranger to me. But he had something in common with Furtwängler, although he was a completely different type of man and human being. He was just as edgy as Furtwängler. He didn't show us how to act, by the way, but he put things into words so well that we all knew immediately what he meant and how to do it on stage. I learned from him, above all, that you can portray something without putting on airs and without exaggeration. I learned from him that a single posture can express the whole character. That was really all, but that's so much!!! It was like Furtwängler in a way, who told me things that I had long since had inside me without knowing them. They just had to be lured out. And he was able to do that, just as Furtwängler was.
The Bayreuth of the post-war years was different from the Bayreuth of today.
Of course. The one of today has to go with the times. It sacrifices to the, what do you call it, Zeitgeist. Everyone has to do something new in Bayreuth today. There is a lot of experimentation. Even beginners are allowed to work in Bayreuth today. Every new production offers something different. At any price. No one dares to go against it anymore and stop the cycle of sensationalism.
Do you believe in an innovative future of Bayreuth under the guidance of a Wagner family member, once Wolfgang is gone?
I fear not! Perhaps Wolfgang has been the last great principal of Bayreuth. You know, the quarreling family clan is the worst thing in Bayreuth.
Well, that was already the case in your time. But apart from Wagner: You have always sung a lot of modern music. How is that compatible with Wagner?
Well, the reason that I sang a lot of modern music was that when I could no longer sing Wagner, I had to look for something new. And I was offered modern pieces. I didn't want to stop singing. And modernism was a viable path. You know, I never married, so the stage is my life. When the time came for me to receive marriage proposals, I didn't want to, and when I wanted to, no more proposals would come! I simply neglected to take care of partnership and marriage in time. I'm an old maid. But I can't let go of the theater. The turn to modernity offered me a new perspective after my end as a Wagner and Strauss singer. And I could not have lived without one. It's not that I necessarily had a special love for new music, not at all! Later, among many modern operas that have since disappeared into oblivion, I also learned to love some of them, such as Reimann's "Gespenstersonate". But that's maybe seven or eight pieces. No more. And in pieces like the musical "Anatevka", I still perform as Golde today. And I can continue to do that, I hope, until I slip away from the stage of life. But I cannot leave the stage as long as I am healthy. There is nothing wrong with me yet. I am blessed with robust health, except for my eyes.
You have always made excursions into theater. As a Wagner heroine, tragic pathos has always been your forte.
Yes, but only when I listen to music. For me, spoken theater only makes sense when the language has music. Like Euripides' "Trojan Women" or Lorca's "Bernarda Alba's House" or plays like that. But this repertoire is small. I have not pursued this path.
But you still get enough offers ?
Yes, I still have plans for the future !
Do you have a good agent ?
I had only one in my life, for about ten years. I'm very glad I have him, because I can't handle money at all. I didn't need an agent before. The time was different. You were being passed around from Intendant to Intendant. All you needed was a good handbag to keep your slips of paper together with your appointments and dates. The fees were low in my day anyway. And I never cared about making money. If someone told me, please sing for free, I would do it in my idealism.
You have sung all over the world. Were there houses where you particularly liked to sing ?
Yes, in Vienna, Vienna was a kind of home to me. Of course, the Teatro San Carlo in Argentina is a wonderful house. I also love the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. But after Vienna, I don't really want to single out any house, because in Vienna I said goodbye to grand opera with "Pique Dame". Theater was beautiful everywhere, even if there were cockroaches around you. The main thing was always that I was in the theater, no matter where!
Are you afraid that one day you won't be able to go to the theater anymore?
If I am completely honest, yes! I am very afraid of it! When the end of my stage life is near, I will have to fight a hard battle. But I have fought so much in my life that I will get through this last battle.
But you have every reason to look back on a fulfilled life as a singer.
Yes, really! In spite of all the hardships and sorrows that such a life entails. I have lived the way I always wanted to live. And I would want to live like that again if I were born again.
Part of theater life is hustle and bustle and noise. But you love that even outside the theater, don't you?
Not the hustle and bustle, on the contrary, I don't need parties or hustle and bustle around me. I'm more of a quiet person. But I love the acoustic noise. When I move to a hotel, I always ask for the loudest room towards the front, towards the street. Because I'm afraid of silence.