When should opera stars take a final bow?
As Plácido Domingo, 75, returns to Covent Garden, Rupert Christiansen wonders why so many great singers resist retirement
When should one call it a day? An agonising question for any great performer, and for opera singers an especially difficult one.
Actors can shrink their horizons and take on age-appropriate repertory (John Gielgud played Lear at 90, Sybil Thorndike was still doing dotty old gels at 87); dancers simply have to obey the physical imperatives of their muscles. But in opera there are few satisfying roles for seniors and no inevitable watersheds, so all too often the big stars carry on even when their pitch wobbles, their tone hardens and their stamina fades.
Why? Partly – to be brutal about it – because, like the rest of us, they want the money; partly because loyal fans still turn out to applaud a reputation and sustain the illusion; and partly because they can’t be weaned off an addiction. They may realise it’s not what it was, they may even have been told by others that it’s over. But they can’t stop themselves. The result is a toxic psychological cocktail.
Tenors seem to be particularly prone to such vanity. Last month saw José Carreras, 70, give a dismal over-amplified concert at the Royal Albert Hall that only served as a painful reminder of how wonderful he was three decades ago; and next week Plácido Domingo, his senior by at least five years, returns yet again to Covent Garden to sing the title role in Verdi’s Nabucco – even after his previous appearance there (in Verdi’s I due Foscari) was scorned by the critics and cognoscenti. Still, he has managed his passage into the twilight better than some. Domingo no longer presents himself operatically as a tenor, acknowledging his inability to sustain notes above the stave. Instead, he uses his musicality and experience to negotiate a path through high-lying baritone roles. On a good night, he can just about pull this trick off, but anyone who heard him in his prime will be painfully aware that the glow has now faded and the power diminished. Others have made bigger fools of themselves. In 2000, Carlo Bergonzi, that most stylish and tasteful of artists, couldn’t resist hiring Carnegie Hall for a concert performance of Verdi’s Otello, whose title role he had never previously sung. After making some dreadful noises in the first act, he had to throw in the towel, claiming that airconditioning had desiccated his throat. He was 75. Star sopranos aren’t immune either. Edita Gruberová turns 70 this year, but in Munich and Vienna fans still turn out in force to hear her weirdly idiosyncratic technique applied to the dramatic coloratura of Norma and
Lucrezia Borgia. Renata Scotto and Ileana Cotrubaș are two great artists of the Sixties and Seventies who carried on long after sweetness and steadiness had deserted them and who must have been aware of how gruesome they sounded.
Other seniors more wisely confine themselves to the less pressurised field of solo recitals, in which the replacement of an aggressive orchestra by a gently supportive piano reduces the challenges – the fabled Italian soprano Mariella Devia, also 70, will take this course at the Wigmore Hall on June 14. Songs offer fewer physical hurdles than operatic arias and allow a mature sensitivity to nuance and colour to compensate for any sclerosis in the execution of vocal acrobatics. But everyone must sing steadily in tune, and that is never as easy as it sounds.
Gerald Martin Moore, a distinguished vocal teacher and coach based in New York, explains the physiology that governs this process. “The vocal cords get thinner, weaker and less elastic with age, and the mucosa that keeps them supple tends to dry up. This is particularly problematic for women as they go through hormonal changes at the menopause.”
If baritones and mezzo-sopranos tend to have a longer shelf life than tenors and sopranos that is because “the cords need to stretch for higher pitches and this becomes more difficult when they are weak, and the muscles surrounding them weaken too”.
As with any other aspect of ageing, some will strike luckier than others. Maria Callas and Rosa Ponselle were both sung out before they were 40, but plenty of Freedom Pass holders continue to sound marvellous – the American tenor Gregory Kunde, for instance, has just won male singer of the year at the International Opera Awards at 62 and Magda Olivero famously made a sensational Metropolitan Opera debut as Tosca at 65. Based on strong foundations, Ernestine Schumann-Heink and Alfredo Kraus both sounded tremendous into their early seventies.
But the grace to go before decline has consolidated and dignity is compromised is a blessing granted to few: Janet Baker’s retirement from opera at 48, when the musical world was at her feet and her technique pristine, was truly exceptional. For others in the business, losing one’s voice is a prospect too painful to contemplate.
‘All too often, the big stars carry on even when their pitch wobbles, their tone hardens and their stamina fades’
Plácido Domingo sings in Nabucco at the Royal Opera House, London WC2 (020 7304 4000), June 4, 9, 13, 23; Mariella Devia is at the Wigmore Hall, London W1 (020 7935 2141), June 14