Wieland Wagner and Maria Callas spearheaded a revolution in opera.
Jon Vickers in conversation with Bruce Duffie
When you're on the stage in a role that you believe in, you give it everything?
Yes, I do. I believe that I try to touch the fundamental essences of the struggle of existence that are timeless and universal, so that I can reach through the proscenium arch and sort of gather the audience into my arms and bring them into the stage and say, "You feel these things with me; you feel these emotions with me. You put yourself into these situations and when you go out of here and you wrestle with those thoughts and emotions, you might go out of here a better person."
Are you not pleased that 100 years from now people will listen to your records?
I think they will laugh. I think they will find it old-fashioned. I think they will find it inadequate.
Is it even worth something as a document?
Interesting as a historical document, but there is an obsession at the moment amongst fringe groups who take ancient recordings and hold them up and forgive every flaw in the vocal technique by saying, "We have to magnify the magnificence of this recording because the recording technique itself was so poor." It doesn't change the fact that Clara Butt had four different voices, and when she changed from one register to the next, it sounded like a truck changing gears. I'm not knocking Clara Butt. All I'm saying is that during her period of vocal history, that style of singing was admired. It was an example of great vocal virtuosity to have four different voices. At a different period in history, the point of vocal training was to smooth out the voice so that it was one voice from top to bottom.
To make it seamless?
Yes, seamless. I have caught that period of history, but it is coming to an end. The greatest example of it that I ever knew in all my operatic experience was Giulietta Simionato. I think she had the most supreme seamless voice from the bottom to the top I have ever heard, and it was a joy always to sing with her. I used to tell her, "Giulietta, I love to sing with you because all night I take vocal lessons."
Did you say this is coming to an end?
Yes, it's coming to an end because what have we got today in the operatic world? We have the cult of the personality. The personality now is using the art form, in my opinion, for personal glorification. Certain works that were in the archives have now been dug out because they are vehicles for the vocal gymnastics of particular types of vocal demonstrations. But when that happens, at any point of the onward movement of the operatic art form, the art form degenerates because the human voice is given to mankind as a vehicle of communication. That is its fundamental expression, and the magnificence of the human voice is that every human emotion is automatically reflected in the human voice. I can define what I say by the way I say it. I can say "pig" and you will know that I am not referring to a four-footed animal that eats out of a trough. The voice totally cuts through the definition and illuminates the definition. But when we use the great operatic art form (or music) to serve as a vehicle for our voices, a great inversion has taken place and we have become servants of our voices and our voices are no longer servants of our emotions, of our intellect, of our hearts. You understand what I'm saying?
You are turning it inside out so the music itself becomes a vocal exercise, a technical vocal exercise, and there is no composer who wrote music only as technical exercises. None of the great composers that I have ever known, and I include the ones that I put little question marks over. There was a depth and meaning behind every trill, a meaning behind every run, a meaning behind every sforzando that it is the responsibility of the vocal artist to digest and spew out as a revelation of the meaning of the music. If we degenerate and allow to continue to degenerate the approach to the vocal art so that it only becomes vocal gymnastics, then because there is no longer the element which is essential (which Beethoven articulated when he said, "I write from the heart to the heart") if that element is totally missing, and if we write from the ear to the ear, if we appeal to the audience through nothing but mere vocal gymnastics, if those gymnastics and that technical ability does not serve the higher meaning, the more profound understanding, the revelation of human emotion with which the great composers are concerned, then we are going to lose our audience just as certainly as the castrati was done away with. Why? Because they were no longer capable of projecting a true human emotion. They became only the emperor's mechanical canary.
Are any of your roles monsters?
No.
You don't view Peter Grimes as a monster?
No, not at all. I wrestled with Tannhäuser for a long time and finally I said I wouldn't sing it. I couldn't sing it because it denied everything that I believed in and everything on which I've founded my philosophy of life.
Would you sing Siegfried if the vocal problems were not there?
I don't think Siegfried is anywhere as difficult as Aeneas. But as a character, I don't enjoy him. I find him not delineated in an interesting way as a human being. Götterdämmerung Siegfried, yes. I was interested in doing the older Siegfried and I offered it to Karajan some years ago and he accepted it. But he asked when I would sing Tristan and I replied that I would sing it for him any time, and he said we'd do it next year, so immediately the idea of doing Götterdämmerung went out the window because he was far more interested in my Tristan than in Siegfried.
Let me ask you about Karajan - are his productions more unified because he is both conductor and producer?
Yes, no question of it. Von Karajan, in talking with me himself, said, "I know that I am not the greatest of producers, but I have conducted so many performances where there was such conflict between what was going on in the pit and what went on on the stage that I was determined that I would do my own so that good, bad or indifferent, there was a unification between what went on in the pit and what went on on the stage." And I believe he has done that.
There is a single-mindedness to his productions. Is there anyone else today who could do that?
That's a difficult question to answer. I would daresay that yes there are, but the difficulty that is happening is that the whole of the operatic world in terms of production is in a state of flux. The whole world of production is going through such convolutions and upheavals of trying to find a new direction, a new way, a new method of illumination and the tragic aspect of this striving that is going on is that many people (and I might say the popularity of opera itself is contributing to this) is giving opportunity to human beings who call themselves producers, like some singers in our present generation, to use the works of art, the great works of art themselves for their own particular purpose. They take the meaning of these works and twist them to shove their own perverse sense, their own perverted philosophies down the throat of the viewing public, and that is a fact and that is happening in Germany to such a tremendous extent today that it's frightening.
It pulls the opera out of shape?
It just destroys it. I could describe things regarding production that are fact which you would not print in this magazine! They could not be printed, they would not be acceptable, and yet they are seen on the stage and they're called works of art.
Is it because we're looking for something that we don't want to see and we accept them?
That is a very difficult question to answer. I feel totally unqualified to answer that question. I think that it is related to what we were talking about before - that there is a determination to mediocrity. I really do believe that it is true. Of course what is the result of this? It's producing a handful of superstars.
Performers?
Yes, who are in demand for the quality that is missing elsewhere. But to get back to the business of "Is there anyone who could do it?" Not until there is a clear change in the direction that the operatic art form must take. After the war, there was an absolute revolution that took place in the operatic world. I've said it so often, but I believe that the leaders of that revolution were Wieland Wagner on the one hand as producer, and the personality and the singing and the dramatic interpretation of Maria Callas. Those two people spearheaded a revolution in opera.
They never worked together did they?
No, they never worked together, but nevertheless, they were spearheading a revolution in opera to bring it forward into the twentieth century. That revolution is spent. I caught the tail end of it. I worked for 6 years with Maria. I worked with Wieland. By choosing those two, I don't diminish the contributions of men like Gunther Rennert, or Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Luchino Visconti; nor would I dream of reducing Tito Gobbi or Boris Christoff, or Renata Tebaldi and Leontyne Price and Martina Arroyo. These great artists that created such a vital, living thing out of the operatic art form that, alas, (or hallelujah, whichever way you want to look at it), it became popular. Because it became popular, it became politically advisable to support it. When it became the political "in" thing, then it became commercially interesting.
Do you enjoy making recordings?
No!
Not at all?
Not at all ! I've had to do it from time to time.
You've had to do it???
I've been a naughty boy with the recording companies. And there, too, you see, perhaps if the attitudes of the recording companies with regard to the art form itself had any semblance of real artistic endeavor, perhaps I would not have been such a naughty boy. But when engineer after engineer, when administrator after administrator of the recording companies told me that they weren't interested in duplicating what took place, when they were only interested in producing a new sound-experience, a new listening experience; when the modern equipment (which is marvelous - don't misunderstand me) can put together two voices that are totally unbalanced on the stage and make the smaller one sound like the more dramatic one, something is kooky.
Suppose you discovered a soprano who had such vision for singing the counterparts to your roles, but had such a small voice.
Yes, but for instance, take the great Birgit Nilsson - she's the best example. There is no recording anywhere at all that can even give you a taste of the greatness of that voice. There isn't a recording anywhere at all that can give you a taste of the greatness of that performance. I know - I've sung with her. I'm talking of a specific point now - brilliance of sound. The ability to ride an orchestra. You can't convey that in a recording. It's not possible.
I wish I could cast a net over the audiences and find out if the ones that stand out for you stand out for them, also.
Well, I can assure you that the Parsifal at Covent Garden and the Don Carlo there are talked about to this day, and I'll say one other word: The Tristan and Isolde of Nilsson and I at the Met is also talked about. And shame, shame, shame on the Met that we did only one performance together.
You also did it with her in Buenos Aires.
We did six performances there.
How did they compare with the one at the Met?
It was one of those wonderful times when Nilsson and I sang Tristan and Isolde together. We had a great and wonderful cooperation between us and I enjoyed singing with her like I've enjoyed singing with few. There's no question in my mind, though I will be argued with, that she is the greatest Wagnerian soprano of the century. To have the privilege of standing opposite her, having a voice by nature that's matched hers in timbre - our voices melded somehow - they worked well together. The performances I remember with her in Buenos Aires, the one at the Met, the performances in the ancient arena in Orange, the performances in Münich and in Vienna, they were wonderful performances.
Do you find the same kind of intensity then when you're singing three nights later with some other than Nilsson?
You can say that the end result is of such intense excitement. But the responsibility of an artist is to wrestle with the work, and the wrestling with the work itself gives you all the challenge and almost all the satisfaction that one deserves to have. That you have that challenge and you have Nilsson besides, that's the cherry on the top. (Laughter)
Sometimes, when I ask these questions, I'm looking for perspective.
Of course, but just to relate it back a little bit to our earlier conversation about mediocrity... These performances - let's talk about the one at the Met - will stand out no matter what anyone says. That will stand out as a performance by which all will be judged.
And none will come up to that.
Oh... Just give it a few years.
Really???
Just give it a little time. Tristan and Isolde isn't going to die just because Nilsson and Vickers die. There'll come along another soprano and another tenor, and they'll forget all about Birgit and I.
Will you be out there cheering for them?
I certainly will! If they can find another tenor that will push me off the stage, I'll be very grateful. I'm sure if they were there, I wouldn't be around.
Are we getting too much opera?
Depends on your point of view. From my standpoint, I say yes, but I will make people very angry when I say it. I just think that the operatic art form is so unbelievably difficult, really and truly so unbelievably difficult that it can only really be expounded by such a few. If it is expounded by those who are not capable, it's diminished.