From Russia With Song
By MOORE, Christopher
Her voice has been described as gutsy and sensual. Russian singer Elena Bocharova talks to CHRISTOPHER MOORE.
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The voice from a hot and humid New York city is unmistakably, unequivocally Russian.
The personality filtering across the satellite link is also very Russian – expansive, warm, passionate, qualities which, according to a growing number of critics, are echoed in Elena Bocharova’s operatic performances.
Barely 16 years after she arrived in the United States as a teenage singing student, the 31-year-old mezzo- soprano says that she has just embarked on her artistic journey. Despite this, sensual, thrillingly gutsy and magnetic are among the descriptions of a voice which Christchurch audiences will hear when Bocharova sings the role of Azucena in the Southern Opera production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore next month, singing with the American tenor Carlo Scibelli.
It’s the first time that Elena Bocharova has sung the role of the demented obsessional gypsy woman in an opera with a plot that defies belief but which contains some of Verdi’s most inspired music. Bocharova is no stranger to Verdi’s dramatic mezzo roles – she recently sang the role of Amneris in Aida.
“It’s an interesting experience,” she says, “especially as I’m currently moving into the dramatic mezzo repertoire. Il Trovatore is my second Verdi opera. He’s interesting about mezzos – there’s usually so much drama surrounding you. In Il Trovatore, everything depends on what I can create with the character. A lot also depends on your colleagues. In this production they are older – I’m still quite young for this repertoire.
“Here I am in my early 30s playing a mother with a stage son who is in his 40s, and I’m not even a mother in real life. Interesting. But I have motherly feelings. Dramatically, I don’t think I’ll have problems. A challenging role for a singer? You don’t know me well . . .”
She has read the libretto “again and again”and still can’t understand whether Azucena is obsessed by revenge or an enduring attachment to a dead child.
“I suspect that she’s emotionally unstable. I don’t know whether she’s obsessed about revenge at the beginning. I cannot think that she has planned everything in advance. That would make her a wicked, wicked person which I don’t think she is. There are a lot of layers to this story . . . I have to go through the various storylines and work things out for myself.”
Born in Magadan on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far East, Bocharova can’t remember any particular childhood dreams of becoming an opera singer. However, she came from a musical family – one of her earliest memories is sitting beneath the family dining table with her friends listening to their parents singing above her.
“They weren’t professionals, but everyone seemed to sing in perfect harmony. They couldn’t read music – everything came instinctively. My mother wanted to sing professionally, but the war prevented it. Perhaps it’s all in the genes. It’s certainly a very Russian thing.
“Just after I was born, one of my mother’s friends looked at me while I was screaming my head off. ‘She’s crying so loud that she’s going to be a singer,’ she told my mother. I always liked singing. At about five or six, I told my mother that I wanted to go to music school. She took me along to the provincial school where I passed the entry exams. In all weathers, in all seasons, it was a case of regular school and music school.”
When she was 14, she met Father Michael Shields, a visiting Roman Catholic priest from Anchorage (twin city of Magadan), Alaska. “At the time I was singing with a choir. I sang solo occasionally and my teacher suggested that I could sing at services being held by Father Shields. My parents were not believers, but I started to go and sing.
“After about two years, when I’d finished school, I was asked whether I’d like to travel to the United States to audition for music school and pursue a musical career. I’d planned to do this anyway in Moscow or St Petersburg so I agreed.
“I didn’t speak a word of English, but at 16 that’s what you do. You are indestructible. You think nothing about simply moving to another country. But it was a big, big step.”
Accepted by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the young Russian singer won a full scholarship. She received a bachelor’s degree and was awarded first prize in the Bay Area Opera League competition and the San Francisco concerto competition. She became a member of an ensemble of young singers in a travelling production of La Traviata. Bocharova found herself singing the role of the maid, ” a role no-one else wanted to sing – a few lines to sing, lovely dresses for everyone else, heavy black wool dress and a wig for the maid. You felt like a sheep . . .
“Then fate stepped in. I got a good review in the San Francisco Chronicle. A whole paragraph about me. It was the perfect revenge and basically the start of my career.”
In 2003, she made her New York debut as Carmen with the New York City Opera at the Lincoln Center. European concerts and performances with the San Francisco Opera followed. She has performed some of the meatiest roles in opera – Butterfly’s Suzuki, Samson’s Delilah, Aeneas’s Dido and Wagner. Verdi’s Requiem in Norway will follow her season in Christchurch.
While Bocharova is poised to tackle even bigger roles, she’s also cautious about moving ahead too quickly and has no intention of becoming part of the international operatic marketing machine.
“A voice is like a good wine. It sits there. You cannot hurry it. It’s going to be ready when it’s ready and not before. Some power has given me the opportunity to structure my career without anyone interrupting it. Today everything is firstly about looks. If you look right, then they see whether your voice fits into the scheme. It’s sad. In the golden age of opera it didn’t matter how you looked. This wasn’t the greatest thing either, but there must be the right balance. I’m an opera singer, right? You shouldn’t simply say I’m a physically ‘beautiful’ opera singer. If you are gifted with good looks, fine, but what if you are not? What if you have the voice of an angel but not the looks? What do you do then?
“Being grounded, being pragmatic about my musical career has never been a problem for me. My life hasn’t been easy. There have been ups and downs. That’s normal progress for any singer, for anyone in the arts. You put everything out there. It humbles you tremendously when you are singing and people like you. There are so many levels to a performance. You can have good nights and bad nights.
“But always the audience will give you the energy that you crave. In a positive sense, it’s almost like a drug. You feel so good when you have a good performance.
“It’s like an orgasm of the soul.” Southern Opera, Il Trovatore: Isaac Theatre Royal, September 30, October 2, 4, 7, 9; Regent Theatre, Dunedin, October 11. Book at Ticketek.
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(c) 2008 Press, The; Christchurch, New Zealand. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.