The very model of a modern opera star
by William Littler, Toronto Star
The Toronto Star
May 7, 2005 Saturday
NEW YORK — When Isabel Bayrakdarian walks out for her recital onto
the stage of Roy Thomson Hall tomorrow afternoon, fresh from flirting
with Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera, she will be accompanied by
the ghost of a fellow singer who once owned the holograph of Mozart’s
masterpiece, Pauline Viardot-Garcia.
One of the most celebrated vocalists of the 19th century, daughter
of a famous voice teacher who sang the tenor lead in the premiere of
Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Viardot-Garcia reportedly commanded
a range of 31/2 octaves and a career that took her across Europe.
What Isabel Bayrakdarian wants us to know is that she was also the
composer of more than 200 songs, some of which can be heard tomorrow in
Roy Thomson Hall and even more of which appear on the Armenian-Canadian
soprano’s recent debut album on the Analekta label.
“Her allure was not her beauty,” Bayrakdarian confided over afternoon
tea the other day, between Met performances. “Someone even said
she looked like a horse. But dozens of men fell in love with her,
as they did with Cleopatra.” The Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev was
one of them.
“I first came across some of the songs through a recording of three
of them by Cecilia Bartoli, whose singing I love. When I did more
research I found out that Marilyn Horne also championed some of the
songs early in her career. But existing recordings did not do justice
to her large output.
“Serouj (Kradjian, her recently acquired husband and the piano
accompanist in tomorrow’s recital) and I found more of the songs in
the Bibliotheque in Paris, at McGill University and in Ann Arbour.
There is a large collection at the University of Michigan.
“She spoke several languages and we found that her Italian, French and
German songs were all stylistically different. We became absorbed and
went to Analekta with the project to record a whole album of them. It
is my first project with my husband.”
Although Viardot-Garcia’s songs occupy a prominent place in tomorrow’s
recital, Bayrakdarian also wanted to draw attention to the woman’s
close association, as a performer, with the music of Rossini.
Viardot-Garcia made her operatic debut in London in 1839 as Desdemona
in the Italian composer’s Otello.
“One of my cardinal rules is not to turn a recital into an opera
program,” the downtown Toronto-based soprano insisted. “Although I’ll
do an aria from Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, Rossini wrote enough
art songs that I don’t have to do half a program of arias.”
Arias are nonetheless what Isabel Bayrakdarian sings much of the time
these days, thanks to a burgeoning operatic career that is taking
her to such places as Brussels, Dresden, Salzburg, Paris and Chicago.
“I thought 2004 was my lucky year,” she laughed, “but 2005 isn’t so
bad, either. I am getting ready to take bigger risks with new roles
now, even in Mozart, where until now I have been working on Susannas
(in The Marriage of Figaro), Paminas (in The Magic Flute) and Zerlinas
(in Don Giovanni).”
It is as Zerlina that she has been appearing in the Metropolitan
Opera’s new production of Don Giovanni, but anyone who thinks of the
character as an innocent victim of the Don’s seductive powers hasn’t
spoken with Bayrakdarian.
“I think of her as the female version of the Don,” she revealed. “I
may have played her as an innocent years ago, but today I feel she
is much more calculating. She is a peasant at a time when peasants
had no rights and she knows very well that her relationship with the
Don is not about love. She wants the diamonds.
“She is the most practical character in the opera. And she is certainly
not a victim. I don’t portray any of my characters as victims. It
gets you nowhere. At the end, when the Don has gone to hell, Donna
Anna may want to go into a nunnery but she says, let’s go for dinner.”
Not that directors always see Zerlina quite as the young Canadian
diva does. In a recent Salzburg Festival production, she had to appear
half naked and look visibly mauled, with bruises.
“Zerlina can be sung many ways,” Bayrakdarian suggested. “It has
difficulties for sopranos, mezzos, rich voices and light voices. But
it should not be sung by an old singer. Everything has an expiration
date.”
Her favourite Don? “That’s easy. Gerald Finley (another Canadian)
at The Met. He is not only 100 per cent believable, he is a real
gentleman. At one performance I slid down the steps of the set and,
while still singing, he gently lifted me up.
“Years ago I did a CBC concert and the producer, Neil Crory, had us
singing the Don Giovanni duet. Little did we realize then that we
would one day be singing the roles at The Met.”
It was in 2002, in William Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge, that
Bayrakdarian made her debut at the big house at Lincoln Center,
returning in the Met’s first production of Berlioz’s Benvenuto
Cellini. She appears more regularly there at the moment than with
the Canadian Opera Company.
“We are working on something for three years from now,” she
acknowledged. “It hasn’t been confirmed yet. Anyway, I love singing
in Toronto, where I can drive to work. My base is always going to
be in Toronto, although we also keep a place in Madrid, where Serouj
makes his European headquarters.
“My next Toronto project is a concert and recording at the Glenn
Gould Studio (June 6) with Michael Schade and Russell Braun, ‘The
Ultimate Mozart Experience.’ Neil Crory is producing again. I think
he’s a genius. He knows voices so well.”
Isabel Bayrakdarian’s is a voice the world seems destined to know
well. Since winning the Metropolitan Opera’s 1997 National Council
Auditions, she has, through a combination of vocal gifts, musical and
dramatic intelligence, become a prototype of the 21st century opera
star. And she doesn’t look like a horse.
GRAPHIC: Isabel Bayrakdarian did not portray her Zerlina for the
Metropolitan Opera’s Don Giovanni as merely a victim of the Don,
who was sung by fellow Canadian Gerald Finley. Bayrakdarian sings a
solo recital at Roy Thomson Hall tomorrow.