Alfie Boe Discusses ENO’s Pearl Fishers

He’s
relaxed and chatty, despite still wearing his tattered costume, eastern
sarong meets t-shirt with holes, the results of a violent denouement
rather than a fashion statement. I begin by congratulating him on his
recent performance in Katya Kabanova, in which his yearning and naturally easy Kudriash saw the tenor at something like his best.

“I
really enjoyed doing it,” he tells me, “it was the
first time I’ve worked with David (Alden) and he’s
a wonderful director. If you trust in his vision and you open yourself
to the ideas, you can achieve so much and really develop as an artist.
When you go into the rehearsal process you don’t know what to
expect and, although you have your own ideas, you can’t
always rely on your own judgment. David’s very respectful to
the music. I’d love to work with him again.”

“Not too traditional a production”

He’s
full of praise too for the director of the Bizet, Penny Woolcock who
impressed last year with her production of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic.
“Penny’s fantastic. Her ideas are wonderful.
It’s not too traditional a production, pink drapes and all
that, but very real and gritty,” he says, “the sets
are tremendous, set in a shanty town on stilts with garbage lying
around. But it’s still got some mystique. I can’t
wait to get onstage and get into costume, get the lights and effects
and have the orchestra. That’s when a show really starts to
gel for me.”

I
ask him about the challenges of the high-lying lines of his part,
particularly in “Je Crois Entendre Encore,” the
tenor’s demanding solo aria. “It can be
tricky,” he admits, “but once you’ve got
it sung in, it sits really well. A lot people think it has to be sung
so pianissimo, so delicate and fragile. That’s there, but
there’s also a lot of passion in it.”

“It should be heard more often”

I
ask if it presents problems getting the balance of power and delicacy
in a house as big as the Coliseum. “Actually not,”
he says, “people have the perception of the Coli being a huge
barn but it lends itself to this stuff. There are great positions on
stage which really help and benefit the sound. It’s a bit of
a myth that you have to belt it out here. Of course, it helps to have a
sympathetic conductor in the pit. In Katya
we had Mark Wigglesworth and here we’ve got Rory MacDonald
and they really create a big sound but are great on balance. Directors
like Penny and David give tremendous support in this area
too.”

It’s inevitable that we should compare the opera with Carmen, never far from the opera stage, while The Pearl Fishers,
very much in its shadow, is seldom performed. I ask Alfie why he thinks
that is. “Don’t ask me,” he says with a
dash of Northern bluntness, “ask the people who run the opera
companies. There’s wonderful music in this. The big act two
duet I have with Leila is probably as close to Carmen as it gets. The music’s beautiful, so it should be heard more often,” he enthuses.

“One of the nicest leading ladies I’ve worked with”

I
ask him about his co-stars. “That was Leila,” he
says of an attractive young American who pokes her head into the room
at that point, before withdrawing discreetly.
“She’s great. We worked together in Jonathan
Miller’s La bohème
here last year (Hanan Alattar, the soprano in question, played
Musetta). She’s lovely to be with on stage. One of the nicest
leading ladies I’ve worked with.”

I
get the feeling that he’s not going to say anything nasty
about anyone but his enthusiasm seems genuine and he’s full
of the likeable charm that comes across onstage. “Quinn
Kelsey who plays Zurga is a wonderful fellow. He’s from
Hawaii originally,” he adds, “it’s a
small principal cast and we’re very tight-knit.”

Boe has sung the famous tenor/baritone duet from The Pearl Fishers
in London in recent years, with an unlikely partner: stage star Michael
Ball, in the ground-breaking Proms concert at the Albert Hall three
years ago. It was maybe the strangest part of a slightly bizarre
evening. “I loved that,” he says, “it was
great doing it at that venue and with Michael, who’s a good
friend.”

“Ego and petty squabbles”

Thankfully he brings up the subject of the disastrous ENO Kismet
earlier that year, an experience he also shared with Ball, which saves
me having to. “We went through hell together on
that,” he confesses, “so it was nice to do the Prom
soon after.” I ask him when they became aware that things
were going awry with Kismet.
“Day one,” he laughs, “we tried to make
the best of it but there was nothing anyone could do. There was a lot
of childishness and frustration and it got completely out of hand. It
was all ego and petty squabbles. Best forgotten, though the show itself
has loads of potential. I’d like to do it properly. It was a
great shame. The best thing about it was getting the chance to work
with (the late) Richard Hickox.”

I ask him what other roles he aspires to. “I’d love to do Nemorino (The Elixir of Love)
and I don’t know why it hasn’t happened.”
With a successful new production only recently staged by Jonathan
Miller at the Coliseum, I suggest that it may happen yet.
“Hopefully,” he says, “I’d also
love to play Faust, Don Jose, maybe eventually Cavaradossi but you can
never tell which direction your voice is going to take you.”

“I’d love to do some musicals as well”

Favourite
past roles inevitably include Rodolfo (which he sang again last year
for ENO and will return to in the autumn), Albert Herring (“a
great role to play”) and Kudriash. He has a long list of
tenors who have inspired him: Björling, Tauber, Gigli, Gedda
and Carreras. “I listen to Carerras a lot and he’s
very inspirational,” he tells me.
“There’s so much passion in his voice.
He’s a great artist. Then of course Pavarotti and
Domingo.”

After The Pearl Fishers,
he’ll be taking a break and going home before returning to
the Royal Opera House in October to play Tybalt in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Then it’ll be back to the Coliseum for La bohème and The Mikado. “I’d love to do some musicals as well,” he says, “West Side Story, Les Mis, Sondheim, stuff like that. And of course I’d like to do Kismet again, but in a very different production!”

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Alfie Boe will open on 1 June in Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, which will play for 11 performances until 8 July. Full details at www.eno.org