A Conversation with Superstar Tenor Piotr Beczala

One of the most celebrated and in-demand tenors of our time, Piotr Beczala is back at the Metropolitan Opera singing the Duke of Mantua in the new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto. I had the opportunity to speak with him between performances and I am very grateful that he took the time to give us this in-depth interview. (For more information about Piotr Beczala, please visit his website, mentioned at the end of this interview).

How does it feel to be back at the Metropolitan Opera singing the Duke of Mantua?

I have my history with this role, as you know, since many years. I did my debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 2006 in Rigoletto, and I did the new production in 2013, so it’s a very familiar role for me. My last stage experience here was five days before the opening night of Werther in March 2020. I was missing this wonderful theater a lot. It’s almost a trauma, after you are here every year with the public, with the people around Metropolitan Opera, with colleagues, and then you have such a long break, for almost two years. I was really happy to perform in this Rigoletto.

What did you do when you had to stay home? 

We left New York with one of the last flights actually, on the 31st of March 2020. We spent the first two weeks in quarantine. Then, we spent two months completely doing nothing, just cooking baking… After that, I was very quickly coming back to performing. In Europe the regular season was, of course, canceled, but when somewhere something opened, they called me to perform, or to do some TV program or concert or charity event, whatever was possible. So I was pretty busy in 2020 and 2021. It was very strange because normally we have opening night and the whole run of performances, but then we only got a couple of weeks rehearsals just for one single performance without public, like in the Vienna State Opera, for example. Performing without public is for me very complicated because the public is a part of my energy circle, so we’re missing a lot of energy when nobody’s sitting in the audience.

Piotr Beczala as the Duke of Mantua in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera in the current production by Bartlett Sher – Photo: Ken Howard / Met Opera

We’ve been missing it too, having to watch performances through a screen…

When you sing for an online public at home, you have only the cameras. But the opera gala [the “Met Stars Live in Concert”] performance I did with Sondra Radvanovsky in Germany brought a little normality, because we had the camera teams, the producers, about 20-30 persons around. But when you are on the stage and you sing for a completely empty house, this is really…how do you say it… spooky.

During the time at home, did you have any revelations about yourself, about your art?

Well, I built my pizza oven and I tried to make my baking skills better; I had time to do this!  But, of course, I also made time for some vocal experiments, searching for my limits in singing. This was very interesting, because normally we don’t have time for that when we’re performing often. Of course, I have to study new repertory in between performances, but there’s no time for experiments. When I was home and had nothing to do for two months, there was a lot of space for exploring, to extend the range, experiment with some sounds that I could use in the future. I am very interested in this kind of… maybe to call it science is too much… but checking technical skills in vocality.

I understand that you like to teach, so do you plan to demonstrate some of these new ideas when you teach?

Absolutely! It’s a part of my job. I have no time to teach more as I wish because I’m too busy. But I was recently in Zurich, and I had the opportunity to work with young singers there; I did that also here in New York for the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. I will do a masterclass in Salzburg next summer, so I’m trying. You know, when you do these masterclasses, you also take responsibility for these young people. In my case, I don’t have time to really continue my work with all of them, so that’s really a pity. But through social media I can at least follow what they do, on Facebook and on Instagram.

 Piotr Beczala as the title role in Wagner’s Lohengrin at Semperoper Dresden – Photo: Daniel Koch 

Maybe you will do more teaching later in life…

Yeah, that’s my plan actually, if opera still exists.

It has to exist! And judging by the number of people in the audience who are braving Omicron to come to the Met, the enthusiasm and love of opera are still there.

Yes, there’s still hope, I know. It’s really complicated because the gap between the students, the people who now start to sing, and us is bigger and bigger. They need more time, more sacrifice to make the next steps in their career. There are no rules. I mean, of course there are some rules to be followed but there’s no recipe for a career. You have to adapt to all the situations each season, especially now. 

We both come from Eastern Europe. I grew up in Romania when the dictator, Ceausescu, was in power, and my family and I experienced the hardships and oppression of that regime. At the same time, education, especially in music, math, languages, and other subjects was so solid there. Later, I was grateful for the kind of strength and endurance I gained by growing up there as well as for the level of education. Do you think that this core formed in us during those times helps in having a long-term kind of stamina, an ability to focus and to endure difficult times? I feel that it has been helpful to me, like an anchor. How do you feel?

I feel the same. I was educated in Poland, and it’s really like that. Of course, the basic level of education was very good. But the vocal education was on some very strange poor level. So, I had to take private lessons after I started already singing as a professional. I had to find a vocal teacher to rebuild my technique completely. But you’re right, growing up in in Poland, we had very clear ideas also about how to behave, how to be social. I am thankful for my education in Poland in the 70s and 80s because the professors and my parents gave me this kind of education and knowledge of behavior. 

And yes, the strength we have from the way we grew up… I’m absolutely agreeing with you.  It’s good for us to have this kind of anchor and we can build our life on it in the kind of world we have now in 21st century. Things are changing all the time. I’m just an opera singer. I try to bring to people some excitement from the stage, some energy, and to tell a story. But to be honest, it is entertainment, maybe on a very high level, but it is still entertainment. Lives do not depend on us. When you see what is happening in the world now, all the really dangerous situations, people struggling with real life problems…

I think that what you do is more than entertainment. Opera offers beauty, solace, excitement, catharsis; it uplifts, and it can make people forget the challenges of life for a few hours. Opera was a refuge for me growing up behind the Iron Curtain, and it is one here during these challenging times. So, it transcends the idea of entertainment.

Of course, it depends on the times in which we live. In hard times, like you had in Romania, like it was in Poland, and with the hard times we have also now, yes, it is a kind of escape to another world. And at the same time, you are part of a life creating and feeling emotions. That’s what makes opera so special. It’s special for me also because I play characters. But maybe the Duke in Rigoletto is not a very sympathetic character.

Piotr Beczala as the Duke of Mantua in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera in the current production by Bartlett Sher – Photo: Ken Howard / Met Opera

But in your interpretation, he doesn’t seem that bad. Or is that part of a trick, that you are seducing the audience into thinking that he’s a good guy?

He’s not a good guy, but he’s not as bad as everybody’s thinking. Yeah, of course, when you think about it in 21st century New York, he’s a bad person because he seduces women, he touches everybody, you know, he’s a bad person. But Rigoletto tries to kill somebody. The Duke doesn’t kill anybody. He wants to have fun, in his way. You can agree with that, or you can judge him. I know, he doesn’t care who he hurts, but the real crime in this opera is the relationship between Sparafucile and Rigoletto. The trigger of the whole story is Rigoletto because of his problems and his complexes. I enjoy the role of the Duke because it’s beautiful music to sing. But when somebody tries to find something deep in this role, it’s wrong; he’s not a very deep character. Maybe in some moments in the duet with Gilda, there are some sincere lines. In the first act, he’s playing. The second act big aria is really his most honest moment in the whole opera, and I try to portray him like a man who has two faces. He enjoys being a Duke, but in that aria, he sings that maybe she will save him, that maybe, through her, he could be a better human being. 

You transmitted those nuances…

Yeah, I hope, but maybe it’s not enough for some. I have a lot of experience with this opera. If Verdi’s wish was to portray the Duke as a very bad person, he would never give him this wonderful music, because Verdi was a very theatrical person. He was always thinking about emotions and music as connected, describing what happens in the person who is singing.

Speaking of Verdi roles, you’ve said that you love Gustavo/ Riccardo in “Un ballo in maschera” (A Masked Ball). Having written about “Don Carlos,” an opera I absolutely love, I have to ask: would you ever sing the role of Don Carlos?

No, I will not, because I don’t like it. Again, Verdi was such a genius to write for the role of Don Carlos the music to describe the role’s weak character. Of course, in the opera, and you know this better than me, he’s a much better person. In real life, he was a horrible person. To adapt his character to the rest of the story, Verdi made him much nicer. Yes, the opera is a masterpiece, every role is fantastic, but the role of Don Carlos is the least interesting. Maybe I like to sing too much, and I prefer roles that are really developing through the whole opera and have more to say, like Gustavo as you mentioned, and Rodolfo in Luisa Miller. Rodolfo in Luisa Miller is very underestimated as a tenor role because it’s not such a popular opera, but in my opinion, his immense development through the opera is really fantastic. It’s coming from bel canto through mid-Verdi and the last scene is almost like Otello, very dark and deep. This is interesting to me. 

I’m doing new roles: just before this production I did Manrico in Il trovatore in Zurich. I enjoyed every single moment. Manrico is an amazing role to sing. It’s not big compared to Gustavo, for example, but it’s really beautiful. Everybody’s thinking the cabaletta “Di quella pira” [Of that pyre] is the most important moment. In my opinion, it’s not. This is just three minutes, but the whole opera, the relationship with the mother and Leonora, it’s all psychologically deep and fascinating. Now I’m preparing Radames in Aida for the summer in Salzburg, so finally, I have some new Verdi roles in my repertory.

Are you thinking about singing Otello at some point?

You know, I spoke with Nello Santi, who was one of my favorite conductors, about development in Verdi, and he told me that in Otello you have to bring all your experience in Verdi music in one opera. A little of the Duke, a little of Radames, also a kind of soldier type as in La forza del destino. When you put all this together, the result is Otello. I don’t know if I will ever sing the role, maybe my vocal life is too short for it, but who knows? I would like to try it maybe someday, but I’ve still got a lot to do before that.

Piotr Beczala with his wife, Kasia, and his Opera News Award

You have had such a steady progression in your vocal development. Sometimes young singers jump into heavy roles too soon and in a few years they’re done. It’s also harder today for singers to take their time. Building a long-lasting operatic career takes a lot of strategy and patience…

That’s true. But you can never manage this by yourself. Those strategies, those decisions… you never make them by yourself because you’d get lost. I’m in this very fortunate situation that my wife was also a singer. We studied with the same vocal coach. We speak a lot about development, music, technique. My agency is also involved in this process. I also talk with the conductors, with people I like and respect. Of course, the last word is mine, I can say yes or no. But you need to make some decisions in the right moment. I’ve been on the stage for 30 years, that’s a long, long time…

And you sound so fresh…

Because that’s my job. As the Duke at the moment, you know. I don’t change my voice, but I change my attitude, I change some colors. I have to adapt a little my voice, my technique to the role that I’m singing. I’m singing Cavaradossi in Tosca a different way than the Duke, because Cavaradossi needs a completely different sound. I still can sing Mozart, but I don’t want to. I did enough Mozart in my life, and I was playing with these sounds needed to sing Mozart, but that is over. When I’m working with young singers, like I was in Zurich, I have to explain to them also how to sing Mozart, and I have to be able to find these kinds of sounds, to show them what they have to look for. 

For me, my kind of development is normal because it was always my plan. I didn’t have a plan to sing at the Metropolitan Opera and these big houses. My plan was to sing better and better, to have technical freedom, not to be pushed in one direction. When I started to sing German repertory like Wagner’s Lohengrin a few years ago, it’s also a different kind of projection and building of sound because I don’t need high notes for Lohengrin; the highest note is A natural. It means I can focus more in the center of my voice. This is the kind of thinking you have to do as a singer to be able to do your job well.

Piotr Beczala as Gustavo in Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera at the Vienna State Opera – Photo: Michael Pöhn 

Your album “Vincerò!” was released in 2020. In it, you venture into Verismo territory. [Realism in late 19th-century Italian opera characterized by melodramatic, often violent plots with characters drawn from everyday life.] How do you feel about singing Verismo operas in which emotions are so raw? Some singers let that raw emotion take over, sometimes to the detriment of the voice. How do you do it? 

Verismo is really honest singing. It means you have to really bring out the sound very well supported. It costs the voice a lot less when you do that. Some people try to save the voice through half of the opera and then make some Verismo dramatic effects. That’s the worst way to sing it. You just find the real sound that is so connected with emotions. But these emotions have to be controlled by the technique. If you don’t do this, you can lose your voice in one or two seasons. It can be dangerous for young singers. You need to find a way to “scream” in a very healthy way; that’s the miracle of Verismo. My teacher told me that the beauty of the voice for Verismo happens in the hall or kind of on the way to projection there. It’s not the beauty of the voice that happens immediately when you produce it. 

With Verdi and bel canto it is different, you have to produce the sound, which is already beautiful, a melty sound, like for the Duke, for example. But for Cavaradossi or operas by Mascagni, Leoncavallo… you have to spin the sound into the hall, and it becomes quality after some milliseconds. It needs a lot of support and energy, thinking and imagination. It’s not easy. Some people are born with this kind of Verismo way to sing, like Franco Corelli. Corelli and Giuseppe Giacomini were typical Verismo singers. When you go back and you hear Beniamino Gigli sing Verismo, for example, Andrea Chenier, it sounds ridiculous because he’s always thinking about the perfumed sweet sound that he used for bel canto and Verdi. I love him very much, but it just doesn’t work. When you hear Corelli singing Werther, it’s ridiculous; the sound has to be French and not a wide tsunami of sound. I love to go through YouTube for hours and I find some very special things. 

Of course, I know I will never be a Verismo specialist. In the same way I will never be a Wagnerian tenor, but I know how to use my voice to be good in this repertory… maybe not exceptional, but you can’t sing everything exceptional. After Mozart, Verdi, French and Slavic repertory, and now Verismo and Wagner, I also sing songs and operetta. You can’t be like an omnibus and sing everything perfect, but you can try.

You have a recital coming up in Barcelona. What are you singing there?

I’m singing arias and songs from Italian to French to Polish to Czech and Russian music. A few days later, I have a typical song recital in Luxembourg with pianist Helmuth Deutsch. In the first part we sing Dichterliebe by Schumann and in the second part Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. We recorded, just a couple of months ago, a new CD for Pentatone with Russian romance songs by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff; it will be probably available in May or something like that. 

There’s such a special intimacy between artist and public created in a song recital…

Oh, yeah. In recitals you are on the stage as a private person, you are not hiding behind the Duke of Mantua or a King, like on the stage. It’s just you and your pianist and you try to tell stories in very small, delicate, and intimate way. I like it. At the beginning, I wasn’t so happy with that because I’m an opera singer, I’m used to hiding myself behind the character, being a different person, and the story is about two-three hours, maybe four. In a recital, you have sometimes two minutes to explain a story. But when you are honest with yourself and the public, and with your pianist you develop some storytelling way, it works fine. 

You also promote Polish repertoire…

Yes, I try really hard. Since many years already, I’m always putting some Polish songs and arias in my recital programs. They get an incredible response. Last year, I did a concert in Madrid at Teatro Real, and it was a fantastic mix of some Verismo arias and Polish arias from the same period more or less. It was also interesting for me to compare the Polish composers like Zelenski, Nowowiejsky, Moniuszko with Giordano, Mascagni, Puccini. It’s unknown music and really beautiful, and they were happy to hear it. 

Also, a project of my last ten years was to put a Polish opera on the stage of a West European opera house, and we did it in 2019: Halka by Moniuszko in Vienna, at Theater an der Wien. It was really a fantastic experience. Everything worked. It was coincidentally the year of Moniuszko. We have a great collaboration between Theater an der Wien and the Opera in Warsaw; they did this as a co-production. The production opened in Vienna and was revived in Warsaw two months later. It was sold out; and everybody was very happy and enthusiastic with it. People were expecting that we would do this in some traditional costumes because it is a national opera in Poland. At the beginning of the process, I said that we have to avoid that; we have to make it a modern social drama. The production was very energetic with a very good cast and the music is beautiful. It will be on DVD in a couple of months; I really recommend it. The Firma Unitel that will put this on the market, made the subtitles in seven languages because they want to bring this to all corners of the world. 

Piotr Beczala enjoying winter in New York

You have made New York City one of your homes. What is it like for you to live here?

Now it’s very quiet. I’ve been here since 2006, every year for one production sometimes for two so I spent a lot of time in New York. It was always fast, noisy, open minded, with an amazing energy. We have a place here and we know a lot of people. We also have friends with houses outside of the city so we can go to the woods sometimes, which is also very nice. 

Something special I remember about New York: a few years ago, I got an invitation to see Shakespeare’s Othello with Daniel Craig as Iago at New York Theatre Workshop. I was singing in La bohème at the Met in this wonderful Zeffirelli production. So, from the glamour of the Metropolitan Opera performance, I’m coming into this theater with maybe 200 people in the audience for a modern interpretation. Daniel Craig was fantastic, and I am a very big James Bond fan. I mean, to see Craig who played Bond in movies for millions of dollars take the time to do this work, this is kind of heroic. They played for two months, sold out. It was a really inspired experience. This variety is part of what makes New York so special!

Any special message for your New York fans?

Come to the Metropolitan Opera, there are still tickets for Rigoletto. With the restrictions, of course it’s a hard time for everybody, but we produce the same show and the same energy every performance; you will not see any difference in us if we have 2,000 or 4,000 people in the audience. I love this monumental production; it’s really well done. I’ve known Bartlett Sher for many years, we did Roméo et Juliette in Salzburg in a very nice production, and he’s a guarantee for a very good show. We are giving our best, so come have this live experience with us!

Piotr Beczala’s website

Don’t miss Piotr Beczala as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera (on 1/22, 1/25, 1/29) – additional information and tickets available here

Top photo: Piotr Beczala – photo by Jean-Baptiste Millot

About Maria-Cristina Necula (181 Articles)
Maria-Cristina Necula’s published work includes the books "The Don Carlos Enigma: Variations of Historical Fictions" and "Life in Opera: Truth, Tempo and Soul," two translations: "Europe à la carte" and Molière’s "The School for Wives," and the collection of poems "Evanescent." Her articles and interviews have been featured in "Classical Singer" Magazine, "Opera America," "Das Opernglas," "Studies in European Cinema," and "Opera News." As a classically trained singer she has performed in the New York City area at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Florence Gould Hall, and the Westchester Broadway Theatre, and has presented on opera at The Graduate Center, Baruch, The City College of New York, and UCLA Southland. She speaks six languages, two of which she honed at the Sorbonne University in Paris and the University of Vienna, and she holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The Graduate Center, CUNY. In 2022, Maria-Cristina was awarded a New York Press Club Award in the Critical Arts Review category for her review of Matthew Aucoin's "Eurydice" at the Metropolitan Opera, published on Woman Around Town. She is a 2022-24 Fellow of The Writers' Institute at The Graduate Center.