SFist Interviews Susan Graham

What convinced you to take this role with the Philharmonia Baroque?

I love this music, and you don't get too many opportunities to sing it. In early music repertoire, there are two pieces that are so gratifying to sing and so beautiful. One is the final duet from Monteverdi L'incoronazione di Poppea, the "pur ti miro" duet. The other is "Dido's Lament" of Purcell. To get a chance to sing this wonderful music with such a wonderful group as Philharmonia Baroque, and such wonderful and inventive conductor as Nick McGegan convinced me that this would be an opportunity I would not want to miss.

You'll sing a concert version, is that opera ever performed staged?

Yes, in fact the Royal Opera house in Covent Garden did a staged performance last year. It's only fifty minute long, you know, it's not very long. It's three acts, but they are tiny little baroque acts, and it was first done in a girls school, it's like fifty, fifty-five minutes.

Is it a different technique or stylistic approach to sing baroque? Do you think a flat voice with less vibrato is more appropriate?

You don't ever say a flat voice. You would say a different color, but a flat voice has a negative connotation, so you don't want to say it this way [laughs]!

You can use a different color, you can use less vibrato at times. Because of the small scale orchestra, you don't have to produce such a large volume of sound. You can play with colors. You can be much more intimate. You can be very expressive with text in a rich and subtle way.

Instruments can switch to a period instrument for authenticity. Is there a period style, a period voice?

I only have one voice, I only have one instrument. They can switch instrument and play a baroque violin, but I have only one instrument [laughs]. They are many ways I can use it. For instance, they can bow differently, they can finger differently, they can put the bow on the string differently, and I can use my breath differently and I can use color to give an expression differently. So yes, it is a different type of expression. I certainly sing this differently that I sing Octavian [she just completed a run of Der Rosenkavalier at the Met with Renée Fleming]. But that makes sense because I'm singing with a small baroque orchestra versus a hundred piece Strauss orchestra. By its very nature, the approach is very different.

We don't have recording from 1683 and people who were singing this at the time have different demands on them. We are a different kind of animals, our culture is different. In these performances, we are not interested in re-creating a historically accurate presentation, we're just trying to bring the music to life in the most honest way possible. As far as historical accuracy in this context, this is not of paramount importance. We are all modern opera singers who are doing this music. If they wanted a more historically accurate performance, maybe they would have chosen people who primarly sing early music and have different voices than I have.

But you have been very successful with this style and period here in SF in Ariodante or Iphigénie en Tauride.

I love this music. I find a real purity to it, an emotional and musical purity to it. Particularly with something that's as transparent as Dido & Aenas. In a way, there is a purity and transparency to it that does not exist even in Ariodante or Iphigénie. Those are more large scale pieces.

Part of the style of that period is to add ornamentation. Do you ornament for this role as well?

There are ornamentations in Handel or Purcell, or anything from this period: there are two reasons to ornament. One is for emotional expression. The other is to show off vocal virtuosity. There are many opportunities to just put in a trill here or and there. This is not that kind of an opera, it's not an ornate expression of vocal prowess. It's just an expression of emotional intensity, that's what we're after here. It's not a big florid piece, it's not a Handel opera. It's not for showing off, it's just for beauty. Certainly my part is for beauty and human expression. There is a lot of humor in it to. The two little witches are very amusing, there is a drunker sailor who sings a drinking song. And Aenas, the other title character, really appears quite quickly, unfortunately. I lament that,[she laughs] he goes away so quickly. The emotional crux of the piece is Dido.

You were part of the Merola program in the 80s. What were your hopes for your career back then?

When I came out here for Merola, I was just out of school. I was thrilled to have a summer program that accepted me. The training that I got in those ten weeks was extraordinary. It raised my standards and my goals to a very high level that I did not know about before I got here. I won the first prize, they gave an award and I won that year. It was an enormous confidence booster. It released me into the world as someone who felt they might be a success one day.[laughs] It gave me lot of confidence, and it made me feel that I have something to give after all.

You sang for Ted Kennedy's funeral and for George W. Bush's inauguration. Do people assign (obviously conflicting) political motives to your participation in such occasions?

No matter what you do, somebody is going to be upset to it. Therefore, I don't assign a political agenda to anything that I'm asked to do or that I accept. I accepted both of these invitations. It was a great honor as an American to be invited to sing at a presidential inauguration, and it was a great honor as a musician and as a human being to be invited to sing as such an important farewell as that of Ted Kennedy was. Of course, there are people who disagreed with my choices to do that, but the bottom line is that it had anything to do with anything except being a human being.