Tenor up to the challenge
Opera should take a leaf out of cricket’s book to appeal to the masses more, a Kiwi singer tells James Croot.
New Zealand opera singer James Benjamin Rodgers could be forgiven for not feeling exactly himself over the past fortnight.
By evenings, the usually New Yorkresident tenor has been performing as the scurrilous Spoletta in NZ Opera’s production of Tosca in Christchurch, while simultaneously rehearsing during the day for his leading role as the garrulous Candide for the upcoming Auckland season of Leonard Bernstein’s challenging operetta. However, it’s a challenge he relishes.
‘‘It’s actually the way opera is done in places like Austria and Germany,’’ Rodgers explains. ‘‘The ‘house singer’ might sing three different major roles three nights in a row. There, you have to be willing to be a lead and play something smaller that still fits your voice – it’s about being a team player.’’
While it certainly helps that Spoletta was a smaller role, the Wellingtonborn singer admits it was hard to ensure he didn’t bleed into Candide.
‘‘You do get yourself into a head space for certain characters and Spoletta is an evil person, particularly narcissistic, violent – and that is difficult to shed after doing it. To really play it, you have to go there and it’s not an enjoyable place to live.
‘‘Candide is basically the polar opposite of that and, in this context, I am finding it quite difficult to make sure that, when I am Candide, I’m not carrying over the degree of aggression that exists in Spoletta.’’
Describing Candide, inspired by an 18th-century character created by French philosopher Voltaire, as akin to Forrest Gump (‘‘this central figure who has all this weird craziness happening around him that he doesn’t have any control over’’), Rodgers admits it is a challenging, almost schizophrenic piece, for performers and the audience. But that is also part of its appeal.
‘‘It has always had a degree of difficulty about it. It has been pieced together and chopped up. A lot of the work in rehearsals has been about creating continuity in the version that we’ve decided to do.
‘‘It is a complication, questionasking piece. It just leaves you going, ‘what?’ But the questions you are asking are important in terms of what is our function in society and what defines a good person? What are we hoping for in the world? That is the strength and difficulty of it – at the same time. We have to present it and be okay with the audience being challenged.
‘‘We are providing an evening of awesome music where they are going to ask questions of themselves and of the people they love – and the people they don’t love.’’
A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Rodgers loves dividing his time between America and Australasia and between his twin loves of opera and musical theatre. He believes the New Zealand opera scene is in ‘‘a pretty good place, especially relative to when I first started to pay attention around 2000’’.
‘‘NZ Opera is trying a lot of different things to reach out and expose more people to opera.’’
And while he thinks that even the sheer fact that NZ Opera is surviving is an indication it is doing well, he’s impressed by the quality of shows. ‘‘I think it is very high for such a small country.’’
Rodgers puts that down to the ‘‘obligation’’ that he and other successful Kiwi singers (like Simon O’Neill and Teddy Tahu Rhodes) feel towards performing on our shores and those here who have ‘‘worked tirelessly for as long as I can remember to keep opera alive’’.
He cites as an example Candide director Stuart Maunder, describing the Australian as ‘‘the heartbeat of the opera industry here’’.
Rodgers isn’t so optimistic about the American opera scene. ‘‘It is a little dire, to be honest. There’s not a lot happening away from the big companies like New York’s Met or Chicago’s Lyric, which makes me feel fortunate that I cross over and do musical theatre as well.’’
He believes opera needs to take a leaf from sports like cricket or rugby to secure its future and appeal to the younger generation.
‘‘Cricket has Martin Crowe [and his Cricket Max which eventually morphed into Twenty20] to thank for saving it and rugby is terrible game to watch unless it’s packaged right. We have to find a way to make this art form accessible and viable financially. Without that, I don’t see a future for it, because it’s not relevant to a regular person. They don’t have an understanding of what it is to create a role, the years of training that go into it to do something a regular human being isn’t capable of.’’
Rodgers thinks building on the success of the Met and other opera companies’ cinema broadcasts programme is the way to go.
‘‘As well as offering the audience glimpses behind the scenes, I think it is also the way best to watch opera. The negative side of going to somewhere as big as the Met is the size of auditorium – you can be a long way away, so seeing Mozart there is almost a waste ot time because you don’t see any of the intricacies of the artists.
‘‘For some pieces, that’s OK, but I want to see the acting. I want to be the best singer I can be, but I sacrifice tone for the theatricality of the piece – which isn’t always a popular point of view among opera singers. If you can’t see what people are saying then it’s just music, which you can listen to on a CD.’’
The NZ Opera season of will take place at the Auckland Town Hall from March 23-25. For more information, see nzopera.com.
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Candide