Vocalist.org archive


From:  Margaret Harrison <peggyh@i...>
Margaret Harrison <peggyh@i...>
Date:  Sun Oct 29, 2000  8:29 pm
Subject:  Really Good Singer Interview


Here is an interview with soprano Benita Valente, on the occasion of her last
performance
in Philadelphia (at age 65). She talks about all kinds of interesting issues
we've
discussed on the list. This interview was found in the Philadelphia Inquirer
on the web
<http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/10/26/magazine/BENI26.htm>

The song is over



By David Patrick Stearns
INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC

Benita Valente nearly sneaked out of her 40-year singing career without saying
goodbye. At
age 65, the woman who was known for decades as America's smartest soprano will
sing
Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem with the Mendelssohn Club Sunday at the
Academy of
Music - the last time audiences in her adopted city will hear her.

There will be no galas, no tearful adieus. That's never been Valente's style.
Her emotions
have always been contained within a small, discreet frame, most suitable for
the Mozartean
heroines she sang from 1973 to 1995 at the Metropolitan Opera and the German
art songs
that formed the cornerstone of a distinguished recording and concert career.
Talking about
leaving it all required some persuasion.

Standing at the door of her Rittenhouse Square-area home, Valente doesn't look
much older
than in 1960s photos from the Curtis Institute of Music and the Marlboro (Vt.)
Music
Festival, where she met her husband Tony Checchia (founder of the Philadelphia
Chamber
Music Society) and made her classic 1960 recording of Schubert's The Shepherd
on the Rock.

Valente's voice hasn't aged much, either. Thanks to solid training that began
in her
native California (she grew up on a farm near Delano) and continued at the
Curtis
Institute and the Freiburg Opera, she hardly sounds ripe for retirement.

"That's the way I wanted it," she said.

Question: What tells you it's time?

Answer: My body. This is the 41st year of my so-called professional career, and
it's very
strenuous.

Q: Leonard Bernstein said he'd trade it all - all - to be a singer at the
Metropolitan
Opera.

A: It is a wonderful thing. Nobody is luckier. I've always tried to be with
colleagues who
are uplifting. I've always sworn that people who sing Mozart are friendlier
than those who
sing Wagner. I remember walking backstage to congratulate James King, who was a
friend
even before he was a tenor. He was doing Wagner, I was doing Mozart. He said,
"You sing
the easy stuff." I wanted to kill him. I said, "You try it, mister!"

Q: Did you long to sing Wagner?

A: Yes! When I was in Freiburg that one year, they asked me to sing Gerhilde [a
small role
in Die Walküre]. It was such great fun to go out there and yell your head off.
I've always
said, give me the voice of [Wagnerian soprano] Birgit Nilsson for a day and
I'll sing for
24 hours. I guess you always want what you don't have.

Q: You're known for your intelligence. That's sure to get you in trouble with
insecure
conductors.

A: I always had very strong feelings on how things should go musically. And
I've gotten on
the bad side of some conductors. But I always say to myself, "If they don't
know any
better, I don't need to work with them."

Q: Were there many?

A: I always had a list of maybe three people: If they ever ask, I'm busy. I'm
not going to
name names.

Q: And what about your relationship with Eugene Ormandy?

A: He and I went through our highs and our lows. I'd seen him be so rude. He
made a friend
of mine cry onstage [during a rehearsal]. I said to myself, "He'll never do
that to me!"

My husband often saw Ormandy, who'd say, "Your wife hates me! She passes me on
the street
and she doesn't even speak to me!" Tony would be so embarrassed he'd say, "She
doesn't
hate you! She wears contact lenses and sometimes doesn't have them in." I said,
"Go back
and tell him I hate him.' "

Q: Didn't you work with him?

A: I did something with him I never should've done - Bach's Cantata No. 51 - he
didn't
have the foggiest idea about [conducting] it. At one point he said, "You sang a
B-flat
there and it's supposed to be a B-natural." I said, "I did not!" From then on,
he wanted
me in everything.

Q: Speaking of Bach, I found this recording of Bach's Cantata No. 30 you made
with the
Brattleboro [Vt.] Bach Festival ages ago. Would you like to hear it?

A: No. It's a very emotional thing to hear yourself, especially now that I'm
quitting. I
was just sent a live Bach tape, and I thought, "My God, there was a time when I
really
knew how to sing. This proves it!" It's a very elusive thing: Whenever I went
on vacation
. . . by the fourth week I'd start thinking, "Do I really get up on a stage in
front of
thousands of people and sing?"

Q: Let's talk about your breakthrough in the 1984 production of Handel's
Rinaldo at the
Met. You'd been singing at lots of other visible places for years. But isn't it
odd that
many people only discovered you with Rinaldo?

A: Tony used to say there's no market for quality. Well, there is, but it takes
a long
time for people to realize it. I'm not the sort that gets in your face. My
manager used to
say that when you walk into a room, everybody should know you're here. I think
knowing
your stuff is more important.

Q: Shall we talk about a not-so-high point? Like that 1986 concert version of
the Debussy
opera Pelleas and Melisande with the Philadelphia Orchestra that had a
record-high walkout
rate?

A: I had heard wonderful performances of Pelleas at the Met with half the
audience gone.
It has too much mystery, that Pelleas. During a rehearsal, one of us said that
a lot of
people are going to leave. And he [conductor Dennis Russell Davies] said nobody
is going
to leave my performance. He learned! There was one man in the second row
reading a
newspaper, with it all spread out like he was doing it on purpose. He was asked
to leave.

Q: One of the most important people in your post-Rinaldo career was the
glamorous Greek
American mezzo-soprano Tatiana Troyanos. You did many great concerts together.
How did
that duo come about?

A: Columbia Artists wasn't getting her concerts. But Janice Myer [then at
Columbia] put
the two of us together. People said it wouldn't work. Tatiana was wary of
strangers,
particularly other sopranos.

Q: Was she difficult?

A: She was a split personality. You never knew who you were going to meet. I
knew just how
to handle her. I used to tease the hell out of her. I called her "T" or "Tat."

Q: She died of liver cancer in 1993. Were you close then?

A: Most definitely. She was a hypochondriac. She had pills for everything and
probably
ruined her liver. The minute she knew how bad she was, she was [broken] in two
pieces. She
took two chemotherapy sessions, and the day of the second, got out of bed to
tell somebody
to turn down their TV and just dropped.

Q: You've done a lot of caretaking in your life. You looked after your mother
when she was
dying and saw your cousin William, with whom you were close, in his slow
decline from
cancer.

A: He died on the third of August. Harold Wright [a clarinetist and friend]
died on the
11th. Tatiana died on the 21st. So that was the death month.

Q: You remember those dates still. But you've always held your emotions in
check,
particularly onstage, which is ironic since your first major teacher was the
legendary
soprano Lotte Lehmann, who was known for her devastating emotional frankness.

A: She always said you must do it your own way. I first went to her when I was
18. She
didn't know what to do with me. I'd sing something she thought was very
touching, and then
there were lapses where I was as green as all get out. She finally said, "I
have contacts
in Hollywood, I could get you to a screen test. I think you'd do very well."
But I wanted
to go into opera.

Q: Do you regret saying no?

A: I never would've had the kind of richness I have now.

Q: Your subsequent training at the Curtis Institute of Music must have given
you the
technical basis a singer needs to survive physical changes and aging.

A: Childbirth gave me an extra edge. I couldn't sing for three months before
the birth of
my son Peter. Every time I went for a high note it was like the top of my head
was going
to blow off. So I said, "That's enough of that!" I didn't sing for six months.
And after
that, it was as if somebody gave me a new voice. There was more of it.

Q: Opera singers are even less known for marital longevity. Yet you and Tony
are going on
42 years.

A: I used to claim it was because I could get away from home so often. Tony is
so
high-powered, so hyperactive. We're so different. Especially in the early
years, it was
volatile.

Q: Many travel with spouses.

A: That can be trouble. The husbands are more nervous than you are. I didn't
know that for
years. Friends said, "Don't you know how the poor man suffers?" And I said,
"Why? I'm the
one onstage!"

Q: I know you're planning on teaching a select circle of students plus giving
master
classes. But what else will you do?

A: I could go work at the zoo. I could go to Rittenhouse Square and help them
clean up the
gardens. I love being out of doors. I love animals. I love plants. And I like
people. I
like to just get out and talk.

--
Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA
"Music for a While Shall All Your Cares Beguile"
mailto:peggyh@i...

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