Ben Heppner

Transcription

Tina Srebotnjak: So let's get started 'cause I know you're all anxious to see Ben Heppner. Let's... I'm going to turn things over to the Toronto Star and bring up Bob Hepburn who's the Director of Community Relations and Communications. [applause] Bob Hepburn: My role tonight is to formally introduce Ben Heppner and Richard Ouzounian. Let me say a few words about Richard first and I'll try to keep it short. For the past 35 years, Richard has worked professionally in the world of performing arts and arts journalism. In that time, he has written, directed and acted in more than 225 productions. He served as artistic director of five major Canadian theatres and has been associate director of the Stratford Festival. Richard has taught and/or directed at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser, the University of Winnipeg, George Brown's College, Sheridan College. He has also hosted a weekly CBC radio program on musical theatre and has served as creative head of Arts Programming at TV Ontario. Since 2000, he has been the Toronto Star's chief theatre critic. In his spare time, and he does have some spare time, he has written six books. Toronto Life Magazine has referred to him as the city's most influential critic. I'd go further and say he's Canada's most influential critic. BH: Ben Heppner. As all of you know, he's renowned worldwide as the finest dramatic tenor active to date. He has performed on the opera stage, in concert with the world's leading orchestras, in the most prestigious recital venues, and in recordings. And he was born in that musical centre of Murrayville, British Columbia. [laughter] And grew up in the thriving opera centre of Dawson Creek. [laughter] He began his musical studies at the University of British Columbia. He later studied in Toronto, and first gained national attention in 1979 as the winner of the CBC Talent Festival. During his career he' ha won both a Grammy Award and a Juno Award. And he is also a member of the Order of Canada. BH: More awards? His career has taken him regularly to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, to Covent Garden and operas in Vienna, Paris, Chicago and elsewhere. He has also performed at the closing ceremonies of two Winter Olympic Games; in Italy in 2006, in Vancouver in 2010. Over the years he has received countless honorary degrees from such institutions as the University of Toronto, York, Queens, McMaster, McGill, Memorial and more. Just this month, in his spare time, if you can believe he has some spare time, Ben has added a new title to his resume, radio host. He's now the host of CBC's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. Please welcome Ben Heppner and Richard Ouzounian. [applause] Richard Ouzounian: So Ben, make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Is that how it started? Or what... [chuckle] Ben Heppner: Initially, and then our family. At home, church-going family and we sang everywhere. We must have been horribly annoying to live beside. [laughter] We sang all the time. We sang in the car. In fact, my sister learnt how to play ukulele 'cause it was smaller [laughter] and it didn't bang so many people, you know, any of her brothers and sisters in the eye. So that was... That was part of it. By the way, who knows where Murrayville is? [laughter] Anybody know where Murrayville is?' [background conversation] BH: Langley. S?: Langley. BH: Yeah. RO: The lower mainland. BH: The lower mainland. RO: As we like to put it. That's great. What prompted the move up to Dawson Creek? BH: We moved up to Dawson Creek... I was pretty young so I don't remember a lot of this. But my father had an opportunity to get... I think we had a small acreage, maybe a dozen or 15 acres in Aldergrove, as I recall, and he exchanged that for a section, so 640 acres north of Dawson Creek. And I think the other guy got the better deal [laughter] because the 640 acres, only a fortune of them were broken for farming. And my dad, at age 50... What was he, 54, 55, was moving up there instead of starting fresh. RO: I have a great story to ask Ben about which you will love. We talked about this briefly last week. It's probably... I asked you if you were a good boy and you said, "Well, most of the time." But you had one incident when you were young, rather incendiary moment. [chuckle] BH: Oh. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I actually referred to it on the program last week. I did a thing about... I did a show about fire and smoke. And yeah, I burnt our house down when I was three. [laughter] I was three years old and I burnt our house down. We lived in a place called Clayhurst, British Columbia, which is sort of north of Dawson Creek on the north side of the Peace River, quite remote actually. And the whole story is insane because my father had hurt his back, so he was in the hospital in Dawson Creek, which to get there was quite a trek. And it must have been springtime because my mother had... She didn't drive. She had to arrange for somebody to take her to the river. And because it was such a high-flooded situation, the ferry wasn't working, so she had to take a small boat across the river, someone else meet her on the other side to go in. It must have taken two to three hours to do that, I would guess. And then on the way back, she comes to the far side of the river to our house and finds out that her house is gone. And yeah, so I burned our house down. [laughter] RO: The moment that you did it, I don't think you did it intentionally, right? You were playing with matches? BH: I was playing with matches. RO: But then, this is where the guilt comes in, you... I think once you noticed it was catching fire, you ran away, right? BH: Well I did, yeah. I sort of emerged [whistling] [laughter] And my older sister and then my next oldest sister, they were in the kitchen. And my... And I have another sister and then a brother, they were out working on the tractor. And when I first came out, my older sister said, "I smell smoke. Have you been playing with matches?" [chuckle] And then after a minute or two, she went, "I really smell smoke." And she walked into the living room and the bedroom, there were already flames licking into the top of the living room. So she quickly got us out and she got maybe one or two armfuls of things and that was it. It went up like... Just like crumpled paper. RO: Now this itself is an interesting enough story, but what I really love is when you kind of got... Did we talk about Repressed Memory Syndrome? I think Ben repressed this for a long time until you were doing Lohengrin, I believe, right? BH: I was doing Lohengrin in Munich in... It'd be maybe four years ago, three years ago now. And the particular production has Lohengrin and Elsa, the two main characters, build a house together. And so that starts in Act One, and by Act Two, it's sort of you see the exterior finished. Act Three, they swing it around so that the public can see the interior when... There's this bridal chamber. You might know the tune, dum dum duh duh, dee dee duh duh, right? That's the beginning of Act Three. So Lohengrin has asked Elsa to... She has to make a promise not to ask what is his name and where he is from. And of course, there are these evil characters who work on her, and finally, she starts in on the topic in Act Three and eventually goes for it and asks the question. BH: Lohengrin is very unhappy. And he tells her, "Go gather everybody, I'll tell everybody together." And then in the staging, this is not usually done, he takes a cradle that he has built, which is upstairs, thump thump thump thump upstairs, grab the cradle, thump thump thump thump thump, downstairs. Put the cradle on the bed, pour gasoline all over everything and light it. And then I walked out of the house, downstage, and then back to the centre stage where the prompt box is. And I don't know if you know, in opera, it's right dead centre in the front. And sat there, and I looked at this fire as it was developing on stage. And this is dress rehearsal, fortunately dress rehearsal. And all of a sudden, all the house from Clayhurst comes flooding back to me. BH: And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, "You know you've never mourned over that." And I started to cry and I was trying to think, "You've gotta sing in a minute." [laughter] And I just... I mean I couldn't stop it. So I have to go offstage in a certain point and quick change, back on, and I was able to arms length my emotion. And so then I finished that and off I went. And there's a Starbucks right close so I can get a... It's not just about the coffee, it's about the Internet connection. And so I phoned my wife back home and I said, "You know the strangest thing just happened to me." And then the reaction was even stronger when I was telling her the story. And, yeah, so that was 50 years to get the mourning over that thing, over the house burning down. RO: I mean, that's such an amazing story cause it was... You would have never expected it to pop up and haunt you. But, I'm curious, 'cause you deal with a lot of operas that are full of huge emotions and huge moments. Have other things in your life ever reverberated on you suddenly that caught you off guard? BH: That's the biggest one that I can... I don't know if I can come up with any right off the top of my head. There probably have been. I'm just not able to tap into them one right now. RO: I'm just curious 'cause like Tristan last year was magnificent. Did many of you see Tristan? [applause] RO: It was superb. And there were so many kind of primal moments in that about birth and death and love. And I sat there in awe watching you and thinking, how does he go there every night? I guess I have to ask you, how do you go there every night? BH: There's a sort of an image I have. When you're in Act Three and you've been unconscious and now you sort of wake up and you're going through your whole life, and at one point he says, "You know my father sired me and then died. And then my mother bore me and then died." And he's sort of... And he's in a real "poor me" moment. And I really kind of like that because I always have the vision that I'm actually trying to crawl into the lap of whoever's in front row. I want somehow for them to feel that I need to be comforted. And it's kind of fun going there actually. [laughter] BH: I mean, I used to when I started. I think I've actually come further as an actor. Not to say that I'm the best actor, but to say that I was so bad to start with, that for me to become more vulnerable was difficult, but I really enjoyed it once I learnt that I could do it. We have somebody who's obviously very keen on things. [laughter] RO: Okay. I wanna go back. We talked about you singing with the family as a child and everything. When was the moment that you were aware or someone ever said to you, "You know, you've got a great voice."? BH: Well when I was a kid, I knew that I could singer higher, louder, faster than anybody else in my little circle. I was aware of that and it was just... I don't know that I became anything different, I just could. And there was something about music that kept attracting me, but it's very much a moth to the flame. So I started taking trumpet lessons in my seventh grade and then joined the band in eighth grade when I went to junior high school. And the band was not particularly successful. I think by grade 11 it maybe had faded. But I had a bit of brass instrument and I had that taste of music and I had begun to sing now in churches and some community events. I mean, I used to sing for... You wouldn't know what this is necessarily, but there used to be a group called the Wally Byam Caravan. Apparently, Wally Byam was the inventor of the Airstream trailer. Am I right? Yeah. So they would come through, hundreds of trailers would all park in this one lot, all perfectly placed. And then they would have these community events, and I used to sing at them once in a while. So, I mean, I got this experience but I went through some really not very happy moments for the audience where I was quite nervous about singing and I would have things that happened. Like, my larynx would all of a sudden decide that it needed to shut down. It would just jam up against my uvula, basically. And so it [squeak]. But I kind of persevered and because people just kept asking me. RO: Is it something you passionately wanted to do or did you get into it? BH: It was... I couldn't stop myself. I never thought about it as a career other than as a teacher at first. And then when I was at university, then it started to... My eyes were opened to wider possibilities. RO: Interesting thing, you were singing hymns and folk songs and maybe some pop songs when you were younger. You have told me there is one kind of music you hate. You might as well reveal it. BH: Country and western. [laughter] BH: And the horrible thing is in the the small town, small city of Dawson Creek, that's what you heard. RO: But nowadays when Ben Heppner sings a hurtin' song, it's by Dickie Wagner. [laughter] But with the music, I'm curious about when it became opera, when you suddenly went, "Oh, this is... " You know, the old line in Harry Potter when Maggie Smith says to Daniel Radcliffe, "The wand chooses the wizard," did the wand choose you? BH: Yeah, yeah. Music was a thing, I loved singing, and I followed that path. But I didn't know that opera... In fact in university, I did a little bit of it. I did a full opera Rusalka in an English translation and I did some small excerpts but really not that much. And I really didn't get it, to be honest, not at that point. And after I won the CBC competition in 1979, it was that thing, that particular win that made me think, "Hey, maybe I can make a living at it," still not thinking opera. But people kept saying, "You know, I think your voice is really suited to opera. You should do more of that." And then I started to, and after one year, so in 1980 and '81, so two years after I won the CBC competition, I moved to Toronto to go to opera school in 1981. And I only lasted a year because the COC offered me a position in their training ensemble. RO: Was it Lotfi who spotted you? BH: It was Lotfi, yeah. RO: Tell me what you remember about him 'cause we're all thinking of him 'cause he passed away so recently. BH: Yes. Well he was always very sort of animated. And I remember one thing, I don't know why it comes to my mind, but I started in the summer, and we did all these things down at the tent, which has a whole raft of its stories all on its own, but I remember him, he always had this big handful of paper towels, you know the kind you dry your hands with in a washroom or something. And he always had a stack of them and he would take a few and he would always wipe off his bald head. [laughter] I just remembered because it was everywhere, and very affable and very animated. He would always want to act things out for you and then you would basically be doing a Lotfi imitation. [laughter] He was good so it kind of worked. And he always thought I should be doing Mozart, Mozart, Mozart, and lighter things, and I did a few, but eventually that had to change. [chuckle] RO: I guess, when did the first heavier parts start to come along? BH: In 19... Well, there was an unfortunate incident that happened between me and Lotfi in... It was actually January of '83. I can even tell you it was January 14th. It was an important thing that happened, but it was also my birthday. And so I kind of ran away, I ran away for about three and half years, well, basically from the summer of maybe '84 'til... Yeah, three years until '87. And then I decided I was tired of doing things in a half-baked kind of way. I no longer wanted to be okay at a number of different things. I wanted to be good at one thing and I decided that my best shot was opera. BH: So I did the stupidest thing that I possibly could have ever done and I do not recommend this, but it worked. I gave up every other thing I was doing, like leading church choirs and anything else that was not directly singing-related, and I gave myself a year to get something going. And like I say, it actually worked. So by this point I was already much more immersed in opera. I was certainly beginning to enjoy the dramatic side of things and the challenge of the music. That's one of the things that really holds the key to me, is I love the challenge of the music. And so I then came back and won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, they call it, in '88. So there was... RO: I wanna stop there 'cause that is an amazing story, 'cause it was a year where there were all these great people there, Susan Graham and Renée Fleming, but it wasn't the big blond sopranos who won, it was you, the tenor from north side. Yeah. BH: Yeah, I know. It kind of surprised me too. [laughter] So there's a story. So while we were at the competition, we go there for a week first, I think it is a week. And you do some training and they coach you on presenting your pieces. And then there were 26 of us. And those 26, we each sang two numbers for the judges and that was the semi-finals. And then they chose 11 people as winners, 11 winners. That means second in a beauty contest, right? But... And then you stay two weeks and do some more coaching and things because then these 11 people do a concert with orchestra, and that would be the final concert. BH: However, we were hearing rumours that there was a special prize going to be offered. It was called The Birgit Nilsson Prize, but we heard nothing official. So the 11 of us were at a radio studio in the southern part of Manhattan and were all doing one number on the air. So the person who ran the program at the time was Risë Stevens. She was there and one of the coaches, Joan Dornermann was there talking with the host. All the rest of us were in the green room listening over the radio speakers to them talk. And that's when they announced officially that this Birgit Nilsson Prize was going to be offered, and all of a sudden we started looking at each other as competitors. [chuckle] BH: You know that cartoon... That cartoon with the chicken and all of a sudden he becomes... You see him upside down on the platter with the legs sticking up and he's all nice and roasted with the potatoes beside? That's how we began to look at each other, as... [laughter] So I could feel the tension and so I decided I had to break the tension. So I leapt to my feet and I said, "That's it. I'm changing my name to Sven Heppner." [laughter] To this day, Renée Fleming and Susan Graham and Heidi Grant Murphy and the whole crew, they still call me Sven. [laughter] RO: Now, but what did Sven win singing? BH: Yeah, somebody said, "Who won the prize?" He-he-he-he. [laughter] RO: And what did you do? What did it? BH: What repertoire did I do? Well I started with the Freischütz Aria, "Durch die Wälder, durch die Auen." And then I sang Preislied, so Walter's Prize Song from Die Meistersinger, and maybe that's what did it. RO: Meistersinger is a special role for you. BH: Yeah. RO: At one point you told me you thought it was like your calling card in a way. BH: Oh, absolutely. It was for at least a decade. I sang it first in 1989 in Seattle. And I remember getting through the dress rehearsal and being like, whew, I got through it 'cause it's pretty long. And I remember talking with my teacher at the time and said, "Yeah, I didn't know I could sing it. I didn't know I could get all the way through it." He said, "Neither did I." [laughter] And I said, "Wait a second, you're the one who recommended me." He says, "You've got to take a risk once in a while." And I sang it. I think the last time I sang it was Fall... No, Winter 2005, and I've got two CD recordings of it and a DVD out there. So I was kind of the first call for that role. RO: That's good. Again, what appeals so much about it? The fact that it's basic... I won't put words in your mouth, but why do you relate to it so much? BH: Well I think it's this outsider status that absolutely appears to me the most. When I went to New York, particularly New York, nobody knew who I was. They knew who Renée Fleming was, they knew who Susan Graham was 'cause they already had a history in the New York Music School world. And the people were expecting great things from Renée and of course she has not disappointed. But they didn't know who I was, kind of this unwashed Canadian coming down from Toronto. No one knew who I was. I do remember... I don't know if any of you knew Margo Bindhardt, God rest her soul, she's not with us any more. But as she came down and because I was the low end Canadian representative, and I guess I wasn't as spectacular as I might've hoped in the semi-finals. BH: And somebody said, "Ben has not been really singing as well". He said, "Have you put him with orchestra yet?" And they said, "Well no". He said, "Well hang on. When he gets with orchestra, it really clicks in." And that's actually what happened. I've never... She told me that years later, that she had this conversation with people. And she kind of laughed at me because when I came out for my... To sing with the orchestra, I made sure... Because I wanted to show... I wanted to show something about me that was different, hopefully, than others might show. And that was when I came out, and this is probably not the right thing to do in a sense, but there were these people dressed in... It was a set. I don't remember what set it was, Werther or something, and the people were... There were some pages at the door, paging the door and they were dressed in these really real costumes, maybe even in the white powdered wigs. They were quite formal. And I reached over and I just touched them on the shoulder and then I went and sang because I wanted to show something different about myself. And [chuckle] Margo gave me the hardest time about that. "He's always going around shaking everybody's hand." [laughter] RO: What's the magic that happens for you with the orchestra? BH: I don't know, I just love singing with orchestra. There's colours, there's sound, there's support. It feels... Particularly in the repertoire I sing, you don't feel like you're the one out front and centre. You feel like you're part of something bigger. Particularly with Wagner, as you're in the middle of the sound. Whereas Verdi, you tend to be... You tend to stand front and forward of the orchestra. I'm speaking of the sound and the way that he has written it. And so you think of... [singing] But that orchestra stays kind of underneath you and behind you. Whereas in Wagner, you're part of it. RO: That's cool. Now I guess what they call, "Be careful what you wish for, you might get it," you become successful and you're travelling all over the world, which is exactly what you don't want to do as the family man that you are. BH: Yeah, that was hard. I remember there was a time... It was before '96 'cause in '96 there was a change. And I was travelling because I have to fill out my tax forms every year. And one of the ways that I would do it is I would add up how many days I was away from home and then charge a per diem for my living expenses beyond that. And it was close to 300 days, 280-300 days every year. And I just... And Karen, my wife, asked me... It's gonna sound a lot more knife-edged than it really was at the time. She said basically, "How many more years of not being home are there?" And it really wasn't meant as a knife. And I've been trying to figure it out. And I remember taking my boys to music lesson, I was in the old family minivan, sitting outside waiting, and I'm wrestling through this whole thing and I'm trying to figure out. BH: And I knew that there was a trap if I limited the number of performances. What happens is the rehearsals will expand to fill all that empty space. And I was liking the idea of singing about 50 performances a year, that's a comfortable living and a good use of your resources. But I didn't just want to be... End up in rehearsals in foreign cities forever. So I finally came upon a number that I was going to be happy with and then I instituted that. The world, the operatic world, thought I was committing career-icide. And it actually was quite the opposite because what happened was the old economic principle of supply and demand. I was less in supply, therefore I was more in demand. I think more people should do that. [laughter] It really was fantastic and then I knew that I could say that although I'm away a lot, I'm going to be home much more than I was. RO: Right. Do you ever feel you've lost out on anything that way? BH: Yeah. I don't think I ever missed a Christmas with my family but lots of birthdays and anniversaries. Yeah. So we started doing... We will find a day. Let's say in June, so I have a son who was born in June so we have to celebrate his birthday. Well, that's also Father's Day. And one year I remember it being graduation for one of the other son. And so we had to celebrate all three things on that very same night 'cause this was the only night that we could all get together. And that kind of a thing was... I wish we could have done it more but on the other hand, we had to make an effort and therefore that was special. RO: Yeah. Again, obviously there is a great love in your family, you for them and them for you, but when it has to be compressed like this, like, "Tonight we're all gonna love each other a lot," what does that do? BH: It was... My kids have been really, really forgiving. I've sort of had my big bag load of guilt that I have said, "Hey, I haven't been home for everything you've ever done and I'm sorry about that." But they've always said, "Yeah, but when you are home, you are totally 100% home. You're not absent in your head wishing you were away or having some other things." So I would take them to school. I took over that job when I was home 'cause our boys went to school 20 kilometres from our house. And I would drive them and pick them up. And in between times, I might rehearse or whatever, but I was always there. If there was a basketball game or something, some sporting thing, I was there making a horrible racket. [laughter] BH: So they knew I was there. I don't yell by the way. I have a whistle and it's devastating. And I do remember, [chuckle] it's just kind of a... It was volleyball. My older boy's a pretty good volleyball player. He was the captain of the team and they're playing UCC, Upper Canada College, formidable, formidable opponents. They usually win everything. Excuse me. And I'm in a relatively small gym and I'm whistling, and I'm just really whistling. And so the captain of the UCC team complained to the ref. And the ref says, "I've been listening to him." The reason that he was complaining was they couldn't hear the whistle for the serve. RO: Oh, okay. BH: And he says, "Actually, I've been listening. He never does it when you serve." [laughter] And so then the captain of the UCC team comes to the captain of our team, which was of course my son, and says, "Can you get the fat man to shut up?" RO: Oh! [laughter] BH: And my son looks at him and said, "The fat man's my dad. You going down." [laughter] RO: I wanna see that come into Wagner one day. "You going down!" [laughter] Now I guess every singer's nightmare is something happens to the voice and it did happen to you for a while, sporadically. What triggered it all? BH: Well there was... It never is one thing. You know, that's the thing. There was a... We found out that there was a blood pressure medication that I was on, that was... Some of you people may know what this is, an ACE inhibitor. And what it does is it messes with... They say that you get a bit of a cough. I never got a cough. But what happens is, the reason you get a cough is that it takes the saliva that's normally there present that's thin and runny, and what it does is it sort of becomes thick and white and globular and sits on your chords and it doesn't do the function of lubricating the chords. So now, add that to the most incredible repertoire in the world and you're putting a lot of pressure on those chords. And so that... And you know, there may even be some other things but that was the basic building block. And so I went off, that changed and things were good. But you know, stuff happens. I found emotional... I didn't thrive emotionally when I was away from home. And that also plays into your life as well. So, I mean, there's lots of other little building blocks that come in and it's not just one thing. And also I'm getting older. RO: No, no, no. No one here is getting older. [laughter] I just... Before I toss it over to the audience, I wanted to just ask you a bit about Peter Grimes 'cause that's what you're doing. BH: Yes. RO: And it is a part that you have a real affinity for. Is it because he's an outsider as well? Or... BH: Yeah, I think that has part of it. And the big change, I was telling somebody today that I certainly have changed my interpretation and that was, I think I was concerned that people didn't like Peter Grimes as a performer. And the change I finally figured out, and I'm trying to remember who was the... Maybe the director who helped me understand it most. I tell you it was actually Sir Peter Hall. It was during an Otello. He said, "No, no, you have to let them hate you. You have to let them hate you and then the payoff is later when they realize you've been had." And that's what it was for me. So I think... And if you don't allow them to hate you, the audience we're speaking of, there's a tendency for you to try to appeal to them on a kind of a direct basis, even kinda bypassing your characters on stage, and it becomes whiny. It's just... It's kind of like you're trying to appeal, "Oh, poor me." And like the Tristan moment I was talking about... RO: Right, right. BH: But to just allow them to see you as a mean man because, essentially, the meaner the borough, the meaner the townsfolk, the meaner you are. And they work in balance. And then at a certain point, now having changed to the fact that I don't try to win them over in any way, then there's a payoff. And all the sudden there are certain moments throughout the opera that have... The way you respond is maybe not what they were expecting a monster to be. RO: Right. BH: And between Britten, and Pears, and the Montagu Slater who did the libretto, it evolved into a much more complex character than the original poems by Dr. Crabbe from the early part of the 19th century. That was where they based the story, was these... Called "The Borough" by Crabbe, who's the poet. And he was really just a monster. But when they took it, they made it more complex and many more facets. And finally, even in the hut scene, when he is sort of yelling at the boy to get his boots on and his coat off and put on the... You're slicker and you're sou'wester and that kind of stuff, and you're... And even kinda stomping around, almost threatening to kick him or hit him. There were moments in there of incredible tenderness to that boy and to think... Then the audience all of a sudden thinks, "Wait. Have I misjudged him?" And then at the end, I love the fact that it doesn't give you a kind of a wrapped up moral that it come... And the audience is left thinking, "Oh." I don't know if it's a spoiler alert or not, but Grimes does kill himself. And the audience frequently sits there just trying to figure out why they even care. Like, "Was he... He's a monster but why do I maybe not... I feel bad. Why don't I feel happy at his end?" RO: And the last question before I fling back. I've said to you before, I always feel I'm in the presence of spirituality when I hear you sing. Is that very much a part of yours? BH: Yeah, very much. I was raised in church, and it's been very much part of my life since I grew up. I made a decision along the way that I would be a Christ follower. And it still remains so, in fact, so much so that my wife works as a minister in a church now just to make sure that I'm not too far away, and I have to go weekly. [laughter] But yes, a big part and certainly during the hard times, the early part of the of 2000s, 2002, 2003, and all the time, anytime you come upon difficulties and things like that, you need strength of family and friends, and I think you need something bigger than yourself to rely on. RO: That's great. I think we can fling it over into the audience if you have some questions. S?: Yes, who did you inherit your music ability from? BH: It's a very interesting thing. You're not speaking of anything... No, okay. [laughter] BH: There is an interesting case study. My father was born in what is now Ukraine. It was Russia in 1902 when my father was born. And he was married there, he had a child there, came to Canada, they had three more. And when the youngest was eight, his first wife died. Then he remarried about a year later, I think, and there are five children of which I'm the last. And it's very clear that the influence is my mother because the last five musical birds, mean just... I have a brother who would be a wonderful dramatic bass-baritone, would be just phenomenal, but he drives a truck. I have a sister, my next older sister, she sang in barbershop, Sweet Adelines, and for a long... Lot of years. Just they all have a musical streak. Now the older four had lovely voices, but not that really strong connection to singing. So it's my mum. S?: Ben, thank you very much for coming. I think everyone here is just thrilled to see you in person, not singing, and talking. You've brought back a lot of memories for me. I was part of the COC backstage. I'm a Ryerson Theatre graduate in the '70s, mid-70s. And I was at the Toronto version of the Met auditions. BH: February of '88. S?: That's right, when you were singing here. And it was just quite spectacular. We went, "Ben Heppner's gonna win!" [chuckle] and you did. And thank you very much. You've brought us a lot of joy and glory. I remember the Bindhardts very well, and Rosemary and Dean Dover, and days and nights under the tent. I have one question though, why are the best Heldentenors from Northern Canada? BH: Related to moose? I don't know. [laughter] I don't know. You know, I think the difference is the honest relationship too. And also some of the other fantastic Heldentenors in the world, you think of Melchior, and there's a couple of Finnish guys, and they're often Northern. And I don't have an answer for you, but it's interesting... S?: Because you are... BH: Maybe it's an honesty that they come to grips with the possible. Actually, I'll give you a small story about that round at the Met in Toronto, it was at the U of T Theatre. Not Walter Hall, it's the other one, McMillan Theatre. And I sang... The first one I did, "Ah! Fuyez, douce image" and my... And then I had sort of hoped, I wanted to sing "Fuor del mar" from Idomeneo which is really, really tough coloratura things. And my coach, Dixie Ross-Neill, wanted me to sing the... Wanted me to sing "Durch die Wälder, durch die Auen" from Freischütz. BH: So when I sang the first one, the routine was to wait until they decided, the judges decided what was the next piece. They would tell me and I would go away, come back 40 minutes later, and sing it as the second round came through. And they took a long time deciding, a long time. And finally, at least when you're standing there, they came back and they decided it was to be Freischütz. My coach was thrilled. My wife thought I maybe didn't know it properly because I was so sure that they would take the Idomeneo. And so there had been a big discussion. One of the judges told me there had been a big discussion. She says, "He can't sing that. That's not right for him." And the one judge who was Carol Neblett said, "Then make him hang himself [laughter] 'cause I think he can sing it." But they choose the Freischütz. And... Anyway so that was the back stage. One of my friends was standing behind them and heard all their arguing. That was kind of fun. Go ahead. S?: Again, welcome. BH: Thank you. S?: It's great to see you in person and not pay hundreds of dollars. [laughter] BH: You should do what I do, go to the dress rehearsal. [laughter] S?: My question to you is, if you could, unfortunately Caruso is gone, Mario Lanza is gone, the latest Luciano is gone, is there anybody who either has passed on or still alive that you would love to sing with? BH: Well of course those guys are the tenors. I wouldn't have sung with them 'cause they'd be doing the role I wanted. [chuckle] Well there were... Anybody who has passed on that I would have loved to have sung with. I got to sing with Sutherland, that was fantastic. I got to sing with Leonie Rysanek a fair bit. Actually I still keep in touch with her... do you call a male a widow? Widower? Anyway, who else might I have liked? Oh, Leonard Warren. Oh, wow. I heard a recording 'cause part of my radio show thing is I was listening to YouTube excerpts of this or that and I came upon... It's the Tosca. The... I guess it's the end of Act One, that big kind of... It's not called Credo. That's Otello. But there's that big sort of where he really outlines what he's all about, he's pure evil Scarpia. And that was YouTube clip and it's just unbelievable how fantastic it is. It was recoded one week after I was born. And I thought, wow, I would have wanted to do a song with that guy, Leonard Warren was among those. S?: Well like they did with Natalie Cole and Nat King Cole, maybe something like that can come to this. [laughter] BH: Ben Heppner singing with dead relatives, yeah. [laughter] S?: Hi Ben. Peter Grimes is a really interesting role because it has been interpreted in so many different ways by so many different kinds of singers. And it has been sung by Heldentenors like yourself and Jon Vickers. It has also been sung by much more lyrical voices like Peter Pears and Philip Langridge. BH: Yeah. S?: So I just wondered, is there a particular approach, apart of course from your own, or a particular kind of voice in the part, or even a particular singer that you particularly like in the role, and why? BH: Well I really like Phil Langridge and in fact he wasn't quite the same line as Peter Pears. I mean, he was a little bit more... What's the word I'm looking for. There's a bit more acid in there and there's a bit more core in his tone. I had Philip and his wife, Ann... His wife's name is Ann Murray by the way. I had them up to our house when we were in Salzberg and just an amazing fellow. They're a great couple. And there's something about the... When you bring your own honesty. I think if you're just about the singing, I don't think it's interesting. But if you're about bringing what you've got to bear on the role and coming at it from that point of view, I think that's what interesting. I just... By the way, speaking of various singers, I just had a conversation with Michael Schade who was singing at... Next I think in Hamburg. I had just a brief texting exchange with him. And so he... It's more light, but it has been done by the whole range. Talk about a well-written piece. It could handle all of that, that range of weight and voice. S?: Thank you. BH: Thank you. S?: I have two questions. You spoke about Peter Grimes and his character, and I'm wondering if you think that Britten gives us any clues about why Peter Grimes is a monster. BH: I think you have to go back to the time, and I'm going to be just guessing a little bit here. Britten and Pears had come to North America in early '40s, I don't know the exact year right now. But I think they landed in Montreal, if I'm not mistaken, spent time in New York, spent time in, I believe, Escondido, California, which is kind of interesting because it's not a very well-known town. I have friends that live there, not on the coast or anything. And I think they began to miss... They were a homosexual couple and that wasn't talked about, not on the '40s. And they were... I don't know about Pears so much, but Britten was a pacifist and he really did not like the way that all the British industrial complex seemed to be willing to sacrifice their own sons to that end, to the war effort. And I think he felt an alienation. There are two fronts already. BH: And I've also heard someone say that, in a sense, he hadn't experienced a musical open arms in Britain. They were very kind of outside to him. They hadn't brought him into the centre of their musical family. And so he felt on three levels, a sense of alienation. And so when he and Peter had become aware of the Crabbe poems, The Borough, they recognized something. I think Britten said, or maybe it was Pears, that when they had discovered these poems, that it was at once... That he had to write an opera about it, that was one thing, and where he belonged, which was back in England. And so I think there's a place of longing for home. There's a thing about alienation and something about the story resonated with them both. And they apparently wrote most of... They sketched most of the story on the voyage back in 1942, I think it was 1940. I mean it was mid-war. And they sketched out most of the story then they brought in Montagu Slater to sort of help get things flowing. BH: And, you know, there has been a lot of interpretation about his personal life and all these other things, and I think as soon as we start to play toward that, we lose the strength of the opera. I think that it serves as a very good background and a reflector as to why he might write what he did. But it's about alienation and that mean spirit of the borough, somehow he felt it personally. And it's his second opera, and it might well be considered his best. S?: Thank you very much. My second question, was there a teacher who helped you discover the full extent of your abilities? BH: Yeah. Bill Neill was here in Toronto. He and Dixie. They're married to each other. Bill sort of did the technical things and Dixie did the musical coaching. And probably because of the way that I learn, Dixie is probably more important in getting my feet and, you know, the rubber meeting the road, and to able to... Bill was the first, or Dixie maybe, because I met Dixie first, was the first one to say, "There's way more inside there." I have a crazy story. I was called in at the last minute to fill in for a concert in Edmonton with somebody who was in Toronto, here, with the ensemble, and was sick, couldn't go. So I had to learn his music really fast. One of those pieces was the Mozart aria "Un'aura Amorosa" from Cosi Fan Tutte. It was the last piece I did with her before we finished our session, and I was gonna go on the flight to Edmonton. BH: So we finished the coaching and she put the score back and gave it to me and she said, "I want you to promise me one thing." "What's that?" "You go to Edmonton and you're gonna sing great. It's gonna be just great. Everything is gonna be fine. You're singing really well, but never, ever sing this piece again." [laughter] Which was the Mozart, which is so exactly the opposite of what Lotfi had said, and Dixie was right. S?: Yeah. That's interesting. I just wanna leave everybody with one word of encouragement. About the COC, you don't have to spend a fortune to hear Ben Heppner. I got a rush seat on opening night of Tristan und Isolde for $20. So, bravo. [chuckle] S?: What I found really interesting or ambiguous was when you talked about the audience and you said, "I cannot... 'Cause you've been talking... I don't know... Anyway, when you talked about it earlier and you said that, "I cannot be if the audience is against me because I'm a villain, I cannot feel that I am a bad person." But I thought that as a character, if you were the villain and the audience hated you, that that would be a positive for you... BH: Yeah. Not every performer is able to let themselves be disliked. I actually had a conversation with a very famous Spanish tenor. And he wouldn't do Peter Grimes for that very reason, that he just didn't feel that he would be... He didn't like the character. He thought it was too mean and he didn't want to portray that kind of character. I think it's very interesting. I like those characters actually in some strange way. S?: But you ended up liking it? BH: Oh, yes. S?: Okay. So you... BH: Yeah. You have to accept what is your responsibility rather than trying to appeal directly to the audience. As I'm talking here, you need to be able to relate to the character on stage and respond that way, to the character in a situation and the drama that's on stage and to forget about the audience and if they don't like you, so be it. S?: Thank you. S?: Hello Ben. Two quick questions: Firstly, I'm wondering how, operationally, you will host "Saturday Afternoon at the Opera" with your ambitious international performance roster; and secondly, if there is an aria or a lead that's your friend that you most love in all the world? BH: An aria. Well, let's start with the radio thing. The timing is perfect for this. I have a busy Fall, Peter Grimes with the Canadian Opera Company and then I go about a week later to Vienna and rehearse and perform Peter Grimes there as well. But during... There's a... There's a certain... There are two parts to the radio thing. One part I can pre-tape and then there's another part where I need to be live. The live part needs to be when the Metropolitan Opera is broadcasting there. That's what I need to do, to be live. Actually, from the first Saturday of December, which is December 7th this year, all the way through the season which ends the second Saturday of May, I miss one. So, yeah, the timing is good for that. An aria that I personally love? S?: Yes. BH: In the tenor repertoire? S?: Yes. BH: All the music I sing is just... I love this stuff. One of the ones I haven't done the role but I love the aria, is 'O Freund, Ich Werde Sie Nicht Wiedersehen" from Die tote Stadt, The Dead City by Korngold. And it's just something about that music that just, oh, makes my heart just absolutely resonate. S?: Thank you. BH: Thank you.?: Did you ever dare repeat a rendition of "Una Aura Amorosa" despite the advice to avoid it? And what is your general feeling about performing Mozart operas, in particular Cosi Fan Tutte? BH: I've had very little experience with Cosi. I did it as a student when I was in University of British Columbia, from where I have a doctoral degree or an honorary doctoral degree, and so I didn't have a lot of experience with it. We just did a section from the end of Act I, and "Una Aura Amorosa" is part of that and I've never sung it publicly for money [laughter] since sort of... I've sung it just sometimes just for fun, maybe if I was giving somebody a coaching or something and you might sort of sing a phrase. And I think I sing it better now, or at least five years ago. I've never sung it again. I'm sorry, what was your second part? S?: What sort of a feeling do you have about... BH: About Mozart. S?: Mozart operas in general. Yeah. If... BH: I've only done two Mozart operas since '88 when I won the Met and that was Idomeneo which was my Metropolitan Opera debut, and then "La clemenza di Tito" which I did in Salzberg and I did performances in San Francisco filling in for somebody who had to go home because of his wife was suffering. Those are slightly different operas, so they're more... They can be sung by a little bit bigger voice. The tessitura of the Mozart opera sitting right there in what we call passaggio, which is sort of like up above a C, like E to G, that's a really crucial little part. Those are hard to negotiate. Mozart's not that high, but it sits in the most uncomfortable part of a tenor's voice. It's just mean, [laughter] at least seemingly. So I'm not having a lot of experience. I'm having only the experience of the Idomeneo and the Clemenza. I really enjoyed them both, but I haven't gone back to them very frequently. [pause] S?: I wanted to say thank you for taking on the Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. I've heard your broadcasts and I really enjoyed them. BH: Thank you. [applause] S?: The question is, how do you learn a part on very short notice? Or in general, if you have a large repertoire, how do you learn so many parts? BH: I've had... I don't have as many roles as you probably think I do because those have sort of come in one at a time over the 25 years since I won the Met. And learning the part, I'm glad I don't have to learn a lot of new ones right now 'cause it's taking longer. [laughter] And I have to say, when I learn a role, I kind of learn the words and the music together. For some reason, it helps me if I associate the words with tunes and then they sort of come in. And then after I've gotten the basic thing going, then I do a translation of it. Just maybe some of the important words that you don't know yet or don't understand, you put them in. But I tend to learn it to kind of in a cohesive whole rather than study this, you know, study the musical or the drama and translate and then learn the music. I kind of mess it altogether and it just becomes a bit of a hodge-podge. S?: Thanks. [applause]