Interviewer: Bel canto is at the heart of what you do. Just start by talking about your long relationship with that particular art form?
Richard Bonynge : I grew up with a family of singers. I sat at the piano and they sang, so I grew up very used to the human voice. I did lots of concerts even before I left Australia in the ’40s, some with Joan, and later on I found a score of Puritani and that I went crazy about because it’s so like Chopin. If you play Bellini opera on the piano, it really sounds like Chopin (who I was crazy about, and still am). It all went on from there.
When I went to London in 1950, Joan followed me a year later. I was fascinated by 18th- and early 19th-century music, and so, naturally, I got her singing it. At first she wasn’t too interested because she had been brought up by her mother and her early teachers to believe that Wagner was God. She was able to put up with my experimentation and we played around with all the Mozart and bel canto roles, and some early Verdi. We had a great time discovering all these new works. They were new in those days, completely unknown.
Once Joan sang Lucia at Covent Garden she became world famous and so she was able to do what she wanted to do in the theatres. So she had a little prodding by me and we managed to discover all sorts of wonderful pieces which she was able to sing. This helped greatly in the revival of bel canto music Maria Callas had begun after the war. She was encouraged by Tullio Serafin – who was a very great conductor and my idol – to sing Puritani first and then she did a lot of big revivals at La Scala. And then we sorted of followed on, and then along came Madame Caballé and it caught on and now everybody wants to sing bel canto whether they can or not.
Interviewer: What do you think you would be doing if you hadn’t met Joan?
RB : I might have continued the piano. Sir Eugène Goossens was [at] the Conservatorium and he was a wonderful old martinet and we were terrified of him. But I was lucky enough to play the Liszt E flat with him, and the Beethoven Fourth, too. It was he who sent me to the opera class in the Conservatorium because whoever was playing for the opera class was ill. I was obviously successful playing the classes as they put me in Falstaff, and that was much harder – a very, very difficult piece for a young pianist to read.
There was an old violin teacher at the Conservatorium called Florent Hoogstoel, a terror of the first order. His great enjoyment was to make the girls in the lower class get into floods of tears. He didn’t get me, but he did say “F-sharp, you stupid pig!” Which I thought was rather charming. So when people tell me I am tough on them, I say “You should have been around when I was a student”.
Interviewer : You waited a while before conducting?
RB : I fell into conducting. I didn’t really have an intention of being a conductor.
Interviewer : So what happened?
RB : Joan was doing a concert in Rome, and the day before there was nobody to do the concert. So Joan’s agent said “Get in there and conduct!” I was stupid enough to say yes. I learnt my career in public, and I worked with every orchestra that you can think of.
I was given a very good bit of advice by Marilyn Horne’s husband, Henry Lewis, a very good conductor. It was my American debut in the Hollywood Bowl, and I told him what I was doing: Rachmaninov Second Concerto. He said, “Look, when you don’t know quite what you’re doing or what to do, do nothing. Just look at the orchestra”. I did just that and the concert went swimmingly. So, when in doubt, I do nothing!
Interviewer : Ballet is another love of your life.
RB : I’d rather go to the ballet than the opera any day. Perhaps I know less about it, so I like it more.
I started going in the ’40s, then, when I went to London I discovered Festival Ballet and then the Danes, French and American ballets came. I was very lucky, I met Dame Alicia Markova, a divine lady. Decca suggested that I make a recording of ballet music dedicated to her. I went to talk to her about it, and she used to sit down at the tea table and dance all the ballets for me with her fingers on the table. It was extraordinary!
Interviewer : You’re known as a singer’s conductor. Has it always been the case that you’ve had this extraordinary ability with singers?
RB : I grew up with them and it was second nature to work with singers. I love the human voice, it’s the finest instrument of all, when it’s a good one and properly produced. I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with many great singers: [Renata] Tebaldi, [Montserrat] Caballé and [Elisabeth] Schwarzkopf, we could name them over and over again. And I’ve learned from them all [and] from my wife.
Interviewer : What’s left to conduct for you?
RB : I’d like to do much more Mozart, and there are plenty of Donizettis, early Verdi, and a couple of Bellini’s I’d like to do; more Massenet, more Offenbach. And I love operetta. I would love to do more Kálmán and Lehár, maybe some French 19th century. I love Auber. I love the Irish composers [Michael William] Balfe and [William Vincent] Wallace. I just recorded an opera by Wallace called Lurline and it’s a wonderful piece. Nobody knows one note of it as far as I know, but it’s worth hearing.
Interviewer : What about Wagner?
RB : I love Wagner [but] I don’t want to conduct Wagner. I did a bit, all the pop bits, but when I went to London in 1950, [Kirsten] Flagstad was still singing and I heard her sing Isolde, Parsifal, both the Brünnhildes, and Sieglinde. She was unforgettable. I have never heard anybody in Wagner sing that could approach her.
In that period, also, there was Gottlob Frick, one of the finest basses I’ve ever heard. Hans Hotter was singing, and the Konetzni sisters [Hilde and Anny], who were wonderful both of them. Our own Sylvia Fisher was a pretty good Wagnerian, a wonderful Sieglinde. My wife sang all the Rhine Maidens and Valkyries through the ’50s. After that, I’ve been generally disappointed. A lot of the singing is a little bit second rate. People think I’m anti-Wagner. I’m not anti- Wagner, I’m just anti the singers that sing Wagner.
Interviewer : It’d be wrong, I think, to call you a traditionalist, but you’re a person who treats music with respect.
RB : I try to. I really do, because I mean, let’s face it Bellini, Verdi, Mozart, they knew a lot more about it than I do. All these young people that come along and they’re not interested in the composer! They’re not interested in the libretto! They want to put their thoughts in front of the public, and that is ego and nothing else.
Interviewer : Have you had clashes?
RB : I did a Perichole here, one of my favourite pieces of Offenbach. It was directed by a lady who should be nameless… well, it was Lindy Hume. And I hated her ever since. Not only did they sing it in English, they commissioned a new translation. It wasn’t in English, it was in strine, if you don’t mind, and it was horrendous. She also had a whole lot of modern jokes about the royal family and parliamentarians. It was nauseous, and I’ve never forgiven her for that.
Interviewer : What about Gilbert and Sullivan?
RB : Love it. And that is something they do very well out here because Stuart Maunder [ex-Australia Opera Executive Producer] has done some lovely ones and I’ve conducted Mikado, Iolanthe and Trial by Jury here, and I love them. They’re great fun and the music is very chic. It’s maybe derivative – he’s pinched from Auber and Offenbach, and you know who – but he pinched wonderfully. After all most composers pinch a bit don’t they – even Lloyd Webber.
Interviewer : Are you a fan of musicals?
RB : I love musicals, especially, the old ones. I saw the first musicals that came out here after the war – Annie Get Your Gun and Oklahoma – and I was bowled over by them. I find the older musicals are better than the new ones. Although I liked Phantom [of the Opera]; I’ve seen that six Georgia,Times New Roman,Times; and I enjoy it very much. If they do any musical revivals of the ’30s and ’40s, I always go. I have a feeling that in the coming centuries, the pieces from this century that will be remembered might be Kiss Me Kate and My Fair Lady and things like that as opposed to some of the modern operas.
Interviewer : Let’s go back to the Sutherland/Williamson season – that was such a turning point for opera in this country.
RB : It was a wonderful time. When the Melba/Williamson company was formed [Sir Frank Williamson] said, “I started my career that way. And I’d like to finish it with the Sutherland/Williamson Season”. He wanted us to come with Bohème and Butterfly and Tosca – the sure-fire sellers – but we said, “No, that’s not what we do”. And we talked and argued for a long time and, eventually, he gave in, which I thought was very noble of him. He was a lovely old man, really marvellous.
He brought us to Australia and we performed for 14 weeks, eight shows every week. We brought seven new productions and wonderful singers like Pavarotti and John Alexander and Elizabeth Harwood and, oh, so many of them, and we had some young Australians. Robert Allman was in the company in those days, way back in ’65. It was an amazing time, and you know, there were no unions around. We rehearsed around the clock, we’d frequently be rehearsing until midnight. Nobody ever complained. Everybody loved it and wanted to do it. The main singers understudied each other, they sang small roles when required and it was a fantastic opportunity. I don’t think it could ever happen again because nobody could ever afford to put something like that on anymore. It was a great, great experience.
Interviewer : Tell us about the young Pavarotti…
RB : Pavarotti as a young man was absolutely wonderful and the voice was a gift from God. He had an amazing ability to react with the public. It was as if he was singing to everybody individually. He could not read music at all, and over his long career never did. Which was an unfortunate thing because it made him very nervous. I remember him [and] Joan, especially when she sang Puritani with him – which is a very nasty role for tenors, very, very high. She’d come off the stage with her arms black and blue because he got so terrified he was hanging on to her. But that was a very great voice.
Interviewer : New generations come, but nothing really replaces, because every voice is different, every person is different.
RB : And everything changes. You know, I remember working with the Tebaldis and Simionatos... They used to come along to rehearsal [and] you’d think they just stepped out of Dior or something. They dressed always and they went out of the stage door looking like very glamorous divas. Nowadays, they go in and out of the stage door looking like they’re about to scrub the floor or something. Nowadays, they go in and out of the stage door looking like they’re about to scrub the floor or something.
Interviewer : It’s a different age.
RB : It’s a very different age. It’s hard to get used to someGeorgia,Times New Roman,Times;.
Interviewer : You’re a bit of a magpie – you collect everything – but also, the scholarship that you’ve indulged in and the operas you’ve actually managed to unearth… that’s detective work.
RB : It all came out of the collecting. When I was young in London, I used to go around every junk shop in the town. And I used to go to Paris and to Brussels and I bought every opera score I could lay my hands on. So I’ve got a house full of them, much to my poor wife’s disgust. I used to play the scores at the piano all the time or read them in bed, and in that way, I discovered a lot of music and then having discovered it I wanted to perform them.
Interviewer : You have done so many recordings. What makes them special as distinct from live performances?
RB : I love recording. I don’t know why, but I do. And the thing about recordings is to try and make them alive and jump off of the disc. It’s wonderful if you can record pieces that you’ve done in the theatre. If you haven’t, you’ve got to use a lot of imagination and bring them to life and there are a lot of recordings out there. Some of them are wonderful, but a lot of them are dead boring, and if they’re boring they’re no good.
Interviewer : [Has] everything been recorded?
RB : The bottom has fallen out of the record industry, up to a point. When we were working in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, we were paid very much to record music [and] we had high royalties. Nowadays, the singers are barely paid to make recordings. They want to make recordings, but half the time they have to pay themselves. And people are downloading all this music and not paying for it. It’s ruined the recording business up to a point. We are lucky that somebody like Maria [Vandamme], with Melba Records has the courage to do unknown works, because a lot of the companies won’t.
Interviewer : Tell us about your association with Melba Recordings and the Richard Bonynge Edition which sounds as if it’s boundless so you could re-record everything.
RB : I suppose I could go on forever but I’m not likely to.
Interviewer : Conductors do.
RB : Some of them too long! I’ll go along as my health is good and as long as I can. And as long as Maria lets me do some things of interest. She’s been very lovely to me and I like working with Maria because she’s got a fantastic pair of ears – as I have often said – and she won’t let anything sloppy go by. She pulls us up all the time: she says that’s flat and this is too slow, and this is that. She’s wonderful!
Interviewer : You’re coming up for 80, but conductors can only improve with age. Is it something to do with the muscle structure or just the will to keep going?
RB : Will has definitely something to do with it. You have to have it in your head what you want to do and know what you want to do. I think you have to be in fairly good physical shape because you know you are standing up there for three hours or more. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s instinct. I follow my instincts and it’s worked for me.
Interviewer : When Joan retired, did you think of retiring?
RB : No, I never thought about it. I think a lot of people thought I would be retiring when she retired, but I had to disappoint them.
Interviewer : How much time do you spend at home?
RB : Not enough! I would really like to spend more time at home because I’ve got so much that I like to do there. I have a big collection of porcelain, and paintings and autographed music, and I’d like to spend time with it, catalogue it. Not to mention printed music – cupboards galore full of stuff, I forget what I’ve got half the time. Autographed letters. I’ve been collecting for 60 years, so you accumulate.
Interviewer : Both of you had the most astonishing, fulfilling, great lives. It’s one of those great musical partnerships. You can’t think of one of you without thinking of the other.
RB : People say to me how can you conduct now that you don’t have her up there? And I say, “Well, I just have to think in the present day, of the singers I’m working with and do the best that I can with them”. I don’t believe in comparisons. You have to find the good things in every singer, and most of them, they’ve got something to offer if you can draw it out of them.
Interviewer : Is opera still an art form that’s to be reckoned with, to be considered, to be appreciated?
RB : Oh, I don’t think the opera is going to go away. Opera is not dead. I wish people were a little more traditional about it. I don’t like all this experimentation with opera because I mean the people, who for example, have gone to hear Tosca here, they haven’t seen Tosca, they may have heard Tosca, but they didn’t see it. And none of them with proper locales and it was done in a dingy occasion. Everybody looked dingy, and horrible. Why? I can think of no reason on earth to do that.
