Ben Heppner Talks About Peter Grimes And The Rake’s Progress

Both this and the first run seven
years ago were rehearsed by revival director François de Carpentries and, if last time was anything to go by, he holds to the German
director’s vision with a taut and visually beautiful take on the opera.  There’s not a hint of sea or fish to be seen
and some may baulk at the austere grandeur of the staging that’s a million
miles away from the traditional view of 19th Century East Anglian life.

“People often want to see the
boats, the nets and a pictorial representation of the Suffolk coast,” Heppner tells
me,“but that misses the point of the opera which is about the whole interaction
of the people.  This production achieves
that.”

“Coming back to the production
seven years later I found I could remember nothing.  That’s because there’s nothing there!  No furniture, just the people.  And the rake we have to work on!   It’s variable; at the lowest it’s, I think,
16%, which is a very intense rake already but the pub scene is at 24%, which is
very steep and then the hut scene, the crux of my role, is at 27%.  It’s a tough job.  In the hunting scene (which I’m not in), it even
goes to 30%.”

I ask him how that affects the
singing, remembering something Bryn Terfel told me about the difficulties of
performing on the raked set of the Royal Opera’s latest Der Fliegende
Holländer.  “It’s very hard to sing,” he says, “for the
hut scene, you have to manage your breath supply very carefully.  It makes a very demanding part even more
difficult.  But it creates an inner
agitation in the audience and heightens their awareness so there’s a real sense
of danger.”

Heppner has been playing the role
of the wayward fisherman for nearly 20 years now.  His first appearance as Grimes was at the
Barbican in a concert performance conducted by Rostropovich and I throw back at
him something he said in
an interview at the time: “there are certain moments you have
to say that only Pears could do without hurting himself.”

He guffaws, not quite remembering
that he’d said that: “I think that probably refers to ‘The Great Bear.’  It has to be eerie and unearthly.  An E natural, depending on your voice type,
is right in the range of your passaggio, a difficult
acoustical point in your voice.  I’ve
probably gotten better at doing it and it is easier now.  I can remember Andrew Davis squinting at me
once and pointing down, indicating that I was singing sharp; one of the big
dangers for tenors.  We don’t sing flat
but slightly above the note. But the role has such complexities in it and I
love coming back to it.  It’s dark,
complex and a real joy to do.”

 

 

As one of the finest heldentenors
of recent decades, Heppner is perhaps most often associated with the great Wagnerian
roles and the last time we saw him at the Royal Opera House was in Christof
Loy’s controversial Tristan und Isolde. That production also eschewed any sense of the
sea, setting the opera in a whited palace room.   I ask him if he was aware of the fury that
it aroused in some Covent Garden regulars. 
“No, tell me,” he says, “I never read the reviews and I don’t scour the
internet to see what people are saying.”

He talks passionately about Loy’s
production, which sent some of us (me included) into raptures and others
screaming for the exit. “It’s fine as long as a director doesn’t force
something on to the opera that isn’t there and I don’t feel he did that.”  I’d agree, although there are others who wouldn’t.

We don’t talk about vocal troubles or cancellations (which surfaced again during Tristan), as
those things have been well-covered elsewhere, but Heppner brings up the
subject himself of his pulling out of the Met’s new Ring
cycle, in which he was due to appear as Siegfried next season.

“I just felt the window of
opportunity for me has passed.  I
probably should have started it earlier, when I first did Tristan, at the age
of 42.  I’ve done the opera at Aix-en-Provence but now that I’m in my mid fifties it’s no longer doable.  James Levine said to me for the forging scene
’Just hammer the crap out of it and every once in a while sing a high
note.  Don’t take it too seriously.’ But
I felt I should step aside and let a younger generation have a go.”

He tells me that he has no new
roles imminent.  There are Tristans to
come and next year he’ll reprise his role of Captain Ahab in Moby
Dick by American composer Jake Heggie, best known for Dead
Man Walking (The Melville adaptation was Dead Man Strapped to
Whale he laughs).  Sadly, there’ll be
no more Aeneas’s, a role he performed so memorably in concert with Colin Davis
and the LSO.

It’s always fun to chat with opera
stars about their favourite singers and influences and Ben talks admiringly of
Wunderlich and Björling (“Oh Wow, Oh Wow”), Pavarotti and Domingo (he’s less endeared
to female voices although cites Tebaldi and Sutherland as spectacular
exceptions).  Of Domingo, he talks about  “the extreme musicianship, amazing singing
and great acting.”   

It would be easy to say the same
of Ben Heppner and London operagoers have the chance next week of seeing the
tenor in one of his finest interpretations.

– Simon Thomas

Peter
Grimes opens at the Royal Opera House on 21 June and plays for five
performances.