Music festival promises high-level performances
Superstar Canadian tenor Ben Heppner with his pride and joy — his motorcycle.
It’s that time of year again when the smiling face of artistic director Jonathan Crow on a multicoloured brochure announces the appearance of the oasis in our traditional warm weather musical drought.
Yes, the Toronto Summer Music Festival opens shop on Thursday with a Koerner Hall concert by the Borodin String Quartet, a second concert by the foursome following a day later in Walter Hall.
There is no way of knowing from season to season exactly what to expect from this festival, other than performances at a high level, many of them focusing on vocal and instrumental chamber music
This season’s instrumental artists include musicians from Parry Sound’s Festival of the Sound, the New Orford String Quartet and Crow himself, applying his violin (his regular job being concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra) to a tribute to Yehudi Menuhin, one of the greatest violinists of the last century.
Vocal artists include German baritone Christoph Pregardien, Montreal’s Studio de Musique Ancienne and one of the greatest tenors Canada has produced, Ben Heppner.
And in case you were wondering, the answer is no, Heppner will not be singing Verdi and Wagner; he will appear July 26 at Koerner Hall with the Toronto Mass Choir in a program titled “O Happy Day.” I know, I know. I was puzzled, too. But the gentleman from Dawson Creek, B.C., insists that his operatic days lie behind him and what makes this day happy is that he can return to his Mennonite roots, singing gospel music.
“I really wanted to retire from opera five years earlier, I wasn’t happy travelling all the time,” he acknowledged over lunch recently. “My family was growing — three kids and five grandchildren — and Karen (otherwise known as Mrs. Heppner) loved her job (as an ordained minister). I also had a couple of glitches along the way vocally.”
Glitches! Anyone who remembers that sad night when his voice gave out and he had to cut short a Roy Thomson Hall recital might call his use of the word an understatement. Some singers are luckier than others, but they are all vocally vulnerable and, in his last operatic years, Heppner was simultaneously at the top of his game and intermittently in vocal trouble.
In any case, among Canadian singers only Jon Vickers enjoyed a comparable career as the leading Wagnerian heldentenor or his day. Except that Heppner insists he wasn’t really a heldentenor at all. “I was just a big voice lyric, but you do the work you are asked to do and everybody is desperate for a Tristan (in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde). I should have stopped with Lohengrin and ( Die) Meistersinger.”
Those of us who heard Heppner’s Tristan (I did at both the Salzburg Festival and Metropolitan Opera) might be tempted to disagree with him. I heard Vickers in the role as well, in Dallas, and they both outsang every other Wagnerian tenor I have so far encountered.
The world of opera will surely miss that bright, ringing, sweet-toned voice, perhaps even more than its owner, who used to listen to Kitchenerbased conductor Howard Dyck introduce opera programs on CBC radio and covet his job.
“I was in Paris, heard his last broadcast and wrote him,” Heppner laughs.
“He retired five years too early for me.”
But in 2013 an offer did come from the CBC and one of opera’s greatest stars happily changed careers. He can be seen today, minus the trappings of a Wagnerian hero, tooling around the streets of Toronto between broadcasts on a big Honda motorcycle, sometimes with his spouse riding behind him.
“I always wanted to do radio,” he says.
“I get to tell backstage stories and host Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. As for singing, I don’t want to do the really difficult stuff anymore. The voice is still there, but I don’t have the stamina. I do little concerts now, a solo turn, and then get out of Dodge.” Another laugh.
The event for Toronto Summer Music provides an example of one of these “little” concerts, taking him back to his small-town roots. As he explained in a press release: “My love for gospel songs started at a young age. When I was 3 my family was asked to sing at a little country church. They thought I was too young to sing with them, but that didn’t stop me. I just belted out the alto part right from the pew.
“Gospel music is a thread that weaves through my entire life. Even though I took a detour through the world of opera for a few years those songs of the church held me together. In fact, I would warm up in my dressing room with ‘Great is Thy Faithfulness’ or ‘Amazing Grace.’ So I’m delighted to come back to sing the songs of my youth and to share the songs of my heart. The circle is unbroken.”
“Gospel music is a thread that weaves through my entire life ... I’m delighted to come back to sing the songs of my youth and to share the songs of my heart.” BEN HEPPNER CANADIAN TENOR