“Sena Jurinac has sung an amazing repertoire, not only in her early years. The only area that remained closed to her impetuous curiosity for new experiences were Wagner's works, perhaps caused by an unhappy collaboration with Wieland Wagner. “ (JENS MALTE FISCHER)
When you came to Vienna, you were soon singing soprano and mezzo-soprano parts. How did that come about?
Actually, I was a lyric soprano. There was no question of being a mezzo, but I also had depth. And when I came to Vienna, auditioning for Karl Böhm, my three arias and the Butterfly in Croatian, I sang everything they asked of me, out of necessity! They had no one else. But it's really a criminal story how I came to Vienna in 1944. Well, I had auditioned in June, was accepted and was to start at the end of August. Before I went to Vienna, I got an anonymous phone call, "Don't go to Vienna, the opera will close in three days!" I was somewhat irritated. Nevertheless, I went to Vienna, and indeed the opera closed three days later. But my arrival in the opera city of Vienna was promising. The doorman at the State Opera asked me, "Fraulein, what are you doing here?" "I have been hired here!" "What is your name?" "Srebrenka Jurinac." "What?" "Srebrenka Jurinac." "Go upstairs to the director's office." There too it was: "What do you want?" "I was hired here." "What's your name?" "Srebrenka Jurinac." "Please go one room over." There were two ladies there. "What is your name?" "Srebrenka Jurinac." "Please go to the next door!" There was only one lady, Karl Böhm's secretary. "So Fraulein," she asked, "what is your problem?" "I have no problem, I was hired here." "Yes, what is your name?" "Srebrenka Jurinac." Anyone can say that, that they are contracted. So I showed her my preliminary contract, she read it, fell silent and then said, "That too!" As I said, three days later the opera closed, it was bombed, I was lucky not to be killed by a falling iron door. The Russians came. We had to clear rubble. That was in March. A performance of "Figaros Hochzeit" was ordered for the first of May. We had to report to the State Opera. The engineer said to the Russian officer, "Nothing works, everything is broken." " Go ahead!" said the Russian at gunpoint: "The performance must go on!" So it went indeed, in the Volksoper. We were all happy that the war was over and that we could sing again. But the conditions were terrible, you can't imagine that now. I walked past a corpse to rehearsal for eight days. You can't describe the conditions. Wages were totally unimportant then, you were happy if you got a few potatoes. I walked to the Volksoper every day. We rehearsed from ten to one. Then there was a one-hour break. In the canteen there were usually only peas. At two o'clock to the dressing room. At three o'clock was the performance, at six o'clock it was over, then you ran home as fast as you could, because at seven o'clock the curfew was in effect. If you showed your face on the street, you would be shot. Those were the pioneering years of the Viennese postwar ensemble. That went on for a long time.
Did you see this collapse as an opportunity for a new beginning?
We had no other choice. But I don't want to glorify it in any way. Back to my versatility as a singer. On the day the opera was bombed, I was to have a rehearsal for Flotow's "Martha." They had no Nancy; everyone was sick or had fled. So they tried with me. The first orchestra rehearsal was prevented by the destruction of the opera. That's how I got to the mezzo parts. It was, simply put, pure necessity! There were no more mezzo-sopranos. But when the opera closed, there was another guest performance scheduled in Trieste with "Cosi fan tutte." There was no Dorabella. So I, who had already proven my depth as Nancy, was asked. And I memorized the Dorabella in four days, with a flashlight under the covers. Nowadays, when I ask a singing student to prepare and memorize at least one aria a day, they always say, "No, I can't!" I honestly don't understand this. How can you want to be a singer when you can't impose so little on yourself. Or when a student comes to me, "I can't sing today!" "Yes, why can't you sing, my child?" "My friend left me." "Well, then you sing better today! We singers can translate any pain, any misery!" I always say: translate that stuff! Let's be glad we can.
This willingness to learn an aria overnight, and if it takes the whole night, does that have to do only with necessity, or is it perhaps a fundamental attitude that has to do with your generation, with the work ethic that you were taught ?
Well, first of all, fast memorization of parts was never a problem for me. And when I had problems, I was hell-bent on overcoming them, I didn't give up easily! I always demanded the utmost from myself! If someone told me: you do this, I tried to do my best and I did it. That has nothing to do with ambition. It was simply the fulfillment of duty. I always felt obliged to meet artistic demands, even extreme ones, even under time constraints. That has nothing to do with obedience.
Is singing a fulfillment of duty, is the profession of a singer a serving, a submissive one?
No, singing is a need, it is a joy. And I didn't know that when I started this profession. All I really wanted was to get married and have children. Only later did I realize what a grace it is, this need and this ability to sing. I was always surprised that I was able to sing for so long, because for many years I sang only with feeling and instinct. For many years I didn't even think about technique, larynx, vocal cords. When the Italians used to say "non si canto con la voce, si canto con timbro", I always wondered what that meant, singing not with the voice but with the timbre. I picked up a lot of things and thought about them and tried them out. And some people advised me at that time in Vienna: You have to go to Italy, you have to continue taking singing lessons, you are lazy, and so on. So I was seriously determined to work technically with Edita Fischer, an emigrated colleague who had returned. But she said, "I don't want to do singing lessons with you at all! Let's rather sit down in a café and talk about singing." And she gave me invaluable, priceless tips and advice. By the way, I always had the feeling that everyone who wanted to teach me and make me aware of something was afraid of robbing me of the spontaneity of my singing. It is all the more surprising that I have held out vocally for so long. Of course, due to my unreflected way of singing, I was perhaps a bit unstable, sometimes better, sometimes worse, but it was always committed!
Did you also advise your students to sing intuitively and with the soul, as you do?
The singers who come to me today have no intuition anymore. I often wish that a singer would come to me who would show me that he really needs singing, that it is a need for him to sing. And almost all of them are already preformed, not to say deformed. As far as the objective criteria of singing are concerned, I have always acted quite pragmatically. I have always said to my students: "If you don't have enough air for a phrase, you are doing something wrong. If I don't understand the text, you're doing something wrong. If a note is too low, you're doing something wrong. If it's too high, you're also doing something wrong. And if you sing in such a way that you can't move on stage, there's something wrong. So think about what you can do differently." I gave tips, but never instructions. It already starts with breathing. Most of the students are already breathing so tensely. How can they sing naturally?
Do you think that today's singers lack the unconditional commitment, the idealism for the sake of the cause?
Yes, I think that is no longer the issue today. I often see a young singer come to me and say that her agent has urgently advised her to change her hairstyle, her make-up, her outfit. Today it's more about business, about sales strategies, than about singing. How can I sell this voice well? That is always the most important question today. Of course there are good voices, as there have always been. But we - that is, my generation - we basically made our debut at twenty, twenty-one, when I think of Siepi, who sang Mephistophele at La Scala at 21. Today the young singers are 28 when they start. Or even older. When one of them is 23, the juries at singing competitions are overjoyed and very tolerant.
What do you think is the reason why singers start so late today ?
It may be terrible what I am about to say, but I think they go to school too long and miss out on free, natural singing. They learn so much in terms of method, theory, background ... Of course you should sing consciously, but the earlier the better! The art is to transfer singing from the natural unconscious to the natural conscious. Now these trained twenty-eight year olds step in front of you, and they are constantly thinking about what they have learned, what they must do now and what they must not do. Rarely is what you then hear remotely natural. That is a great pity.
I find it no less dismal that today many voices sound so interchangeable.
That is precisely the consequence of what I have just hinted at. The young voices are all lumped together, technically and aesthetically formed according to a certain pattern into a standard ideal. What I find at least as bad: one no longer understands today's singers! People go to the opera today and don't expect to understand anything anymore! I am extremely upset about this! It is not true that one cannot understand opera. One can sing in such a way that one is understood by the audience! You know, singing and speaking have actually the same function, only that the vowels are more held and made to sound when singing. Nobody takes the trouble and the time to understand and to explain, why don't I understand you? But people are already speaking so incorrectly today.
You mentioned a few conductors' names, including Herbert von Karajan. Many of your colleagues have not always spoken positively about him. You worked with him for so long. Was there a special chemistry in your constellation that led to this consensus ?
I don't know. In any case, I'm actually very grateful to him, because he hired me for roles that probably no one else would have offered me, such as Madama Butterfly. To imagine a singer labeled as Rosenkavalier singer singing Butterfly is not a matter of course. He also engaged me as Desdemona in Otello and as Elisabeth in Don Carlos. I worked with him on many important roles, in Milan, Vienna and Salzburg. Karajan simply wanted me. And when he wanted someone, he was goodness itself. He had absolute trust and carried you on his hands. Woe to you if he didn't want you. But that's the way it is in this profession: if a director wants you, you can hide in the Indian bush, he'll find you. And if he doesn't want you, you can stand nose to nose and he won't see you!
Was Karajan good to you ?
He was always good to me. Until my departure. But I'm not vindictive. He just wanted to hear certain things one way and not another. Maybe I was already a little out of fashion. So he suddenly preferred another singer and dropped me. My husband was more upset about it than I was. That's the way of the world!
What was special about Karajan?
He had a great feeling for sound. The text was not so important to him, but he always had a vision of sound. And he worked relentlessly to make that vision a reality; he was uncompromising. He didn't care if you ruined your voice in the process, if he wore out singers or not. He was relentless, merciless. As long as you conformed to his ideas, he carried you on his hands and made you feel needed. If you no longer met his expectations, you no longer existed for him. We all went through that. Of course, I was lucky that I was able to work with him for 20 years. The fact that he was a man of power, that he was a good businessman, didn't really concern me. And that he installed Salzburg for the upper hundred thousand after the war? I always say: As long as there is a capitalist, there will still be an art. And as long as there is a capitalist, there will also be a communist. But one can't be without the other, and art needs both.
You have sung a wide repertoire and an infinite number of performances. Have you ever kept a record of them?
Never!
But you certainly kept a record of your fees!
Oh, the fees! In Zagreb I got a monthly fee, from which I could buy a pair of shoes, nothing more. In Vienna, too, I earned almost nothing at the beginning. I don't really know how I managed to live in the forties. Then, with great difficulty, I got a contract when the opera was closed. I got 300 marks a month. I lived as a subtenant in a small room. Later I got 600 marks. With the Russians I once received 1000 shillings for a performance. In the late fifties, I received 7500 shillings evening pay, I know this so well because I once wanted to go to the opera ball, and the box cost as much as an evening pay. For that I had to sing the fifth maid in Elektra, or Mimi in Bohème, I sang everything in a row, big and small roles.
Another recollection concerns the year 1960 and the opening of the new Festspielhaus in Salzburg. I sang Der Rosenkavalier. The highest fee had been discussed with the conductor. On the street I met with Renato Ercolani, who was singing Valzacchi. He flashed me a bird sign from afar : "You're crazy", he said! "What's wrong with you?", I say to him. "Tu cant il cavaliere della rosa per dodici Milla Schilling!" He was paid many times more for the small part of Valzacchi. That was the first time I told myself that I was an idiot after all! You wouldn't believe it, but my highest German fee was 6000 marks. Rolf Liebermann gave it to me of his own accord, I didn't ask for it. I never asked for much, and I was never obsessed with money, I couldn't bargain either. You can't eat more than three schnitzels a day! Money was never that important to me. Nevertheless, although I was never enterprising, I lived well. I always had enough.