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You are opening the festival as Boris Godunov. What is your Boris like?
In the new production, Graham Vick offers another contemporary concept, one in parallel with the situation Russia is facing today. That’s happened with Boris before – in Salzburg in 1997 in Wernicke’s production they turned Boris into Yeltsin. That’s how director’s think. That’s what theatres are like today.
With regard to my Boris, the character changes together with me. But for me he’s just a man, an ordinary man who has committed a crime and is unable to carry the heavy burden of it, his conscience is too powerful.
You perform important roles – Boris, Ruslan and Don Giovanni...
I love singing title roles. There’s a sense of scale in that, singing as a character the opera is named after – Don Giovanni, Figaro, Boris Godunov, Ruslan, the Demon and the Dutchman.
I have a huge Russian repertoire. But Wagner is the composer that my voice led me to. as my voice developed it moved towards a German sound, German delivery and the German repertoire and I found it relatively easy to master the German language, I don’t have any bother with German pronunciation and the music is very close to my heart. in this sense, Wagner is one of my idols, in my personal “charts” he is composer No 1. That’s why I’m happy that I can perform his music, and it gives me great pleasure to do so.
A voice like mine is something the Germans refer to as a “Heldenbaritone” or heroic baritone in English. There are few true Wagnerian singers in the world who sing roles like the Dutchman. And there is less competition in this field. There is more air to breath, the horizon is clearer and you don’t have youngsters close at your heels.
Is “Wagner’s voice” different to the voices of other composers?
Yes, it’s a different manner of singing, you don’t have to add any softness to your voice, you have to “nail” it with a spinto tenor sound – and, as it happens, that’s what I do best.
I’ve heard you are a fan of medieval history and are a member of a club that re-enacts historic battles.
Yes, I used to be. Four years ago I was in the Frankland club – a historic re-enactment club in France. We learned how to use a sword, shield, pole-axe and bludgeon – and all other kinds of historical weaponry. And we would go and make battle, we went “to war” in Belgium with another club: single combat and headed for a showdown. These are not just re-enactments, they’re real fights. People get injured. It’s all quite serious: we had real iron outfits, really quite heavy, and in thirty degrees you have to wear this thick leather quilted jacket, chain mail on top of that, then a cape on top of that and a helmet weighing seven kilograms. You wear that the entire day and you understand that warriors were very strong men of great endurance. Your back begins to cause you agony, and the most interesting thing is that when you take all of this stuff off after wearing it an entire day you don’t have the feeling of lightness you’d expect – you have the feeling you’re still wearing it and that you’re still carrying it all the next day. It all requires good physical preparation and it hardens your character. When I was last in France I was unable to take part in a battle. Training generally takes place in the summer.
In some ways you’re like a Viking – strong and heroic.
Probably because I’m a redhead. I got into the knight thing by chance – I met some guys and decided to “sniff out” what this was all about. And I liked it – it has a certain something. There was basically almost no chance of staying alive in such a skirmish. You look through your visor – only forwards, you can only see your enemy. Someone coming from the side could kill you. Back then warriors did not die natural deaths, that much is evident. If any warrior lived to have grey hair then that meant he had avoided battle and that meant shame.
And are you still interested in history?
I don’t know that much about history. And then each government rewrites it again. I read books about the Crusades and the Inquisition but I bear in mind that the truth is not always one hundred percent. Everything else is interpretations and hypotheses. Our history is also covered in black and white marks.
When rehearsing a role do you “dig up” whatever information you can or do you simply trust the music and the director?
I trust the music, the stage director and the libretto because often the opera and the literary source can be extremely different. For example, Pushkin’s Herman is different from Tchaikovsky’s Herman. So it’s not worth filling your head with superfluous information – it just acts as a hindrance. I’m not going to read Pushkin specially for the purpose of singing the role of Boris Godunov. It’s a completely different story, the texts are different too. And the stage director adds his own reading.
What do you think of stage directors’ contemporary interpretations and stage directors’ permissiveness in musical theatre today?
I’m in two minds about stage directors without any restraint. On the one hand we’ve had enough of that, but on the other theatre has to change somehow, we need new impulses. We’ve been drilling in the one spot for about twenty years now. No breakthroughs. The only genuine impression that something has really made on me in many years was stage director Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal in Bayreuth. In my opinion that was a real breakthrough. the production is so engaging and dynamic that the five-hour opera passes very quickly. I’ve had the good luck to see that production from the auditorium.
Now theatre is searching. Let it search, I have nothing against searches.
Do you get to see anything often?
Actually, I try not to go to the theatre when I’m working. Your ears have to rest, over the years musicians can go deaf from their ears being constantly assailed.
As far as I can remember, in addition to everything else you also play the drums.
Nowadays I play much less – I don’t have the time and I try to look after my ears. I’m much more careful now.
So it was for relaxation – where do you get that from now?
Within myself. Before, relaxation meant a change of activity, that’s how my father raised me. I initially liked that approach, but for me now relaxation is when I do nothing at all. Quiet contemplation, that’s the best relaxation, you can breathe, you can meditate.
Do you follow any eastern customs?
Not seriously, but I’m beginning to come round to the idea that I should. You have to learn how to deal with stress properly. How do we normally deal with stress? We go to the Shamrock Irish bar after a performance and drink ourselves silly. And that’s not right.
I’ve heard that for you drawing is like meditating...
I absolutely love painting in acrylics and oils as well as simple graphics. You know, drawing is like meditating in some way – you can free yourself from everything and begin just to paint, your hand moves by itself. True, I end up with inartistic daubs, but for me it’s the process and not the result that matters.
I never learnt, I just wanted to do it and I started painting. Everyone can paint to whatever standard they want. the process of painting soothes me. Our work isn’t what you would call the most tranquil. After a performance your hands are shaking, the concentration has been so powerful. And I’ll have to sing for a long time to come. the longer the better.You have to be able to ration your energy.
Are festival performances different from those throughout the season?
There is much more pomp surrounding them, more people, more advertising; the festival is a major event.
Are you often engaged in productions outside the Mariinsky Theatre?
I travel a great deal, I have engagements in Germany, France, Spain and America. The new Boris Godunov is the first new production I have been in for many years.
Are the companies in western theatres stable?
It’s mixed, everywhere. They don’t have companies in the same way Russia does. In German theatres there are festival contract workers who generally sing secondary roles while freelancers take the lead roles. Guest artists. We can still get along with just our own company. And that can be seen in two ways: that’s where we have an advantage, we have our own company, or maybe we can’t yet afford to invite costly singers, we have to feed our own first and that’s as it should be. We should be cultivating our ranks.
You are singing as the Dutchman in Bayreuth this summer. Is it hard for a Russian singer to fit in with Wagner in a German team?
It’s not hard. I sang as Lohengrin in Munich, it was a new production; I did a video recording of it with everyone else and everyone was pleased. Everything depends on how good you are in a given role. the General Manager of the theatre in Munich – Klaus Bachler – used to be the director of a drama theatre; for him how a person performs, your acting and dramatic skills, is very important, not just the singing. I generally travel with a German repertoire. I actually sing very little in Russian abroad.
Speaking with Natalia Kozhevnikova
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