Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 15, Number 48, December 2, 1988 Interview: Richard Bonynge 'All music comes from the human voice' Mr. Richard Bonynge, leading international opera conduc­ wild.In Milan and Vienna 've had it up to 448, it's ridic­ tor, is also a historian of the bel canto school and artistic ulous. It not only puts a strain on singers; to me it's guide for his Wife, soprano Dame Joan Sutherland. During absurd because it makes sound so bad.The sound comes a brief stop in the U.S. in October, Dame Joan and Mr. out over-bright, and the notes are hard-and both for Bonynge enthusiastically signed the Schiller Institute's peti­ singers and for orchestras. I think you are hearing a tion to the Italian Parliament in support of a pending bill to different sound than that of the composers conceived. establish standard pitch for all government-subsidized mu­ sical performances at A = 432, instead of today's Interna­ EIR: What motivated you revive bel canto opera? tional Standard Pitch of A = 440, or the often higher tunings Bonynge: Probably about 1 , we heard the first Callas which prevail in many symphony halls and opera houses record of [Bellini's] I Y"'"lTfl,'" today. not only light sopranos can the bel canto repertoire.It Mr. Bonynge gave EIR correspondent Kathy Wolfe both had been limited to light <:nrlr""n<: in the 1930s, 1940s, and their thoughts on the subject Oct. 25, as Dame Joan was 1950s.We began as early 1951, working on things like indisposed. Puritani, and the very florid roles, and then moving By way of background, A =432 was the standard pro­ later into all sorts of bel posed by Giuseppe Verdi in 1884 as the equivalent of setting Because when Joan first middle Cat 256 vibrations per second, which had long been they gave her heavy UII:;1)--rtIUU and Un Ballo in Maschera. known as the"scientific pitch" and which was the tuning fork of the classical composers from Bach onward. A bill has now been introduced into the Italian Senate by Senators Boggio in the theater many times. and Mezzapesa, to return to the "Verdi A." The historical the Marschallin [in Richard research and scientific investigations to support the "Verdi and they wanted her to under­ A" based on C=256, have been carried out by Schiller [from Wagner's Ring cycle]. Institute members at the encouragement of Lyndon H. La­ Rouche, Jr. EIR: You're kidding! The campaign for the current legislation was started in Bonynge: Yes, and we against it, because we thought April 1988 at a Schiller Institute conference in Milan ad­ it was the wrong direction her, and we had many fights. dressed by soprano Renata Tebaldi and baritone Piero Cap­ And for a long time she singing both the heavy and the puccilli, who are among the world's leading opera singers light repertoire, until they way after three years and of the postwar era. The "Verdi A" is pitted against the gave her the doll [Olympia, high coloratura role] in Offen- "Goebbels A," the A =440 tuning, imposed in 1939 at the bach's Tales of Hoffman. instigation of Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels' s However, they gave her Radio Berlin, which cannot claim either a scientific or a week.They'd give her historical foundation. Olympia on Wednesday. success as Olympia was o\\envn(!inung--alrl.<1 EIR: Mr.Bonynge, the Schiller Institute particularly sought changed the tide.After that out Dame Joan and yourself for signatures, because you two as] Gilda in Verdi's led the movement to revive the great bel canto operas. Lucia in 1959. Bonynge: I'm glad you did that.... I must say 1 feel quite They thought she was a , a dramatic soprano. strongly about it, because the pitch in some places has gone They were grooming her to the Wagnerian singer for the 60 Music EIR December 2, 1988 © 1988 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. house. Well, she is a dramatic soprano, insofar as she is the rise of the pitch, too. capable of singing Turandot, Norma, and Donna Anna.She Bonynge: I don't know, but once we had done a lot of certainly could sing the big Wagner roles, if she had gone performances in Milan and Vienna, we realized that this ' into them. A = 448 is just ghastly! But she preferred to go the direction of the bel canto; because there is so much more to it, she could go so much EIR: When did you start doing it that high? further, it opened up the repertoire for her so much. Bonynge: Oh, I suppose already in the 1960s, they were using that very, very high pitch. In Vienna, they loved to EIR: I always thought it was a rather large voice for Lu­ have a high pitch there; and Milan was very bad. Milan cia ....You agreed with their diagnosis, you just didn't like recently has dropped again, because so many of the singers the repertoire? have made such a fuss about it. Bonynge: I like Wagner, I just didn't think it was right for her.It wasn't that I thought she couldn't sing it, it was just EIR: You have stressed that the importance of bel canto is that I wanted her to sing so much else.But I think that if she that music is based upon the human voice.... had sung Wagner, under present conditions, the pitches of Bonynge: I think all music comes from the human voice, course as they are, and the orchestras as absolutely open as because that's how music began; and then men invented they are today-Wagner did not intend for his operas to be instruments to go with the human voice, and things became sung with this huge amount of orchestra.He wrote all of the more and more sophisticated as time went on.For example, big ones for [the covered orchestra pit at] Bayreuth; in the I am not crazy about going back to old instruments, because earlier ones, the orchestras were under the stage, anyway. we have developed the instruments so much.But I do think And thevoices were not supposed to have to yell all the time. this raising of the pitch is a horrendous thing; because what You listen to Wagnerian singers today: Most of them don't one is hearing constitutes things which are not the way the sing, they yell! And I didn't want her to get into that way of composer wants them. singing, and she has been able to avoid it all of these years. To be very specific, in Puritani, for example, the tenor's music is written exceptionally high. EIR: Just for Dame Joan, or is the bel canto route better for all singers? EIR: Including an F above high C.. Bonynge: It would probably be better for all voices.I be­ Bonynge: It's general to drop that a semitone today.If it is lieve very strongly that all voices should study the bel canto, dropped a semitone it sounds much more beautiful-very, it doesn't matter whether they are male or female, or dramat­ very much more beautiful-because the sound becomes more ic or what they are-what size has nothing to do with it. dulcet and more round.There are a couple of tenors who are ' They should all study the bel canto, because if you can sing able to sing it up, and then of course because they are able and master the bel canto repertoire, I think you can sing to, they want to show that they can.But I don't think it sounds anything.The modem repertoire becomes easy if you are better, I think it sounds better down. proficient in bel canto, because you know how to place your The same goes for the high piece in Lucia: It sounds too voice and where to put all the notes.If you are started in the brittle to me.The composer, Donizetti, wrote Lucia di Lam­ heavy repertoire, and the modem repertoire, you never learn mermoor for Fanny Persiani (1812-67), who had a very, very to sing-all you do is get into some terrible faults. high voice, so he wrote it up there; but when the other singers started singing it, they all sang it in a lower key.Actually it EIR: Was it the conductor Tullio Serafin who started the bel was almost never published in the higher key. canto movement? Bonynge: Serafin cared a great deal for bel canto, yes, he EIR: Henry Pleasants, the opera scholar, in a recent article started back in the 1930s with Rosa Ponselle-and he intro­ being published by EIR, reports on a new finding of the duced her to Norma.. .Covent Garden sent us to Venice in Donizetti autograph of Lucia. which shows Lucia's famous 1959 to study with him.And that was quite wonderful, be­ mad scene was actually composed in F, not in E-flat, but had cause he was supposed to work on Lucia with us, but after a to be taken down because of the subseqent rise in the couple of days of Lucia, he said, "Why don't you just bring pitch .... Norma and Sonnambula and Puritani?" [all operas by the bel Bonynge: This is quite true-it was composed that way for canto composer Vincenzo Bellini] and then he worked on all Persiani.