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“I try to use my voice not only as a singer but as an actor, and to create 'suffocated' colours in the voice.” (Electronic Telegraph April 2001 / Paul Gent) “I was always bizarre. Nobody was able until now to make me do things I do not want.” (Birgit Popp, 1998) “In Act One he is an Old-Testament Ché Guevara. In the second act we see that Samson completely misunderstands the spiritual meaning of his life. He was of the flesh – a man filled with animalistic adrenalin – and that is why he was so easily corrupted.” (Lyric Opera News, Fall 2003) “Operalia, which was transmitted to 70 countries, turned a young artist who lived in a restricted circle into somebody very well know and in whom many theaters were interested. It was almost as if, after a long pregnancy, I was suddenly born.” (Opera Actual, Divos de hoy, 1999) “The greatest influence of the singer on the conductor is the fact that I pay extremely close attention to phrasing, that the music is played ‘horizontally,’ not ‘vertically,’ not bar after bar, but in phrases which create another kind of energy within the music. And as I have to stick very much to phrases as a singer – because without phrasing you cannot sing – the influence of the ‘singer’ on the ‘conductor’ is very big.” (Klassik Heute /January 2003) “Verdi was the genius. We are not. Our job is to be expressive of what he wrote.” (Master Class, Bloomington, Indiana, 12 Jan 2004)
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"I am ready to fight whoever insists that there are no voices today as there were in the past. There are great voices out there, and we just need to find them and help them." (Classical Singer, January 2006, C Necula)
“When I was very young and I was searching for the kind of music I wanted to perform and trying to find my style, I always turned to my mother . . .. I am so grateful to her.” (on his early music influence, from The Lady, March/April 2001)
“When you have a conductor who is prepared, you can discuss and have a wonderful communion of work. When you have an asshole, there is nothing you can do.” (Birgit Popp , 1998)
“...it is a complex combination of courage, technique, professionalism and most of all charisma.” (on the secret to becoming a great singer, RemarX Winter 2002)
“I belong to that rare group of human beings who used to be called kamikaze.” (London Times Magazine 4 May 2002)
“Don't call me the fourth tenor, it looks like someone who did not qualify for a medal. Just call me D'Artagnan.” (Il Corriere della Sera, April 1998 / Valerio Cappelli)
“A real artist is always serious about their work. But even when you reach the peak of your technique you remain a child, you have to have a kid's 'fantasy.'” (Classic FM, December 2000 / Henry Kelly)
“A true art based on beauty and harmony elevates our souls and gives us hope for the future.” (Moscow, 2002)
“I used to feel I wanted to be the angel of revenge and to cut off the heads of all the people who were so cruel to me, and the people who kept talking about me unkindly. Then one day I thought the contrary and said to myself, “Maybe I should thank them for what they did and said, because that all pushed me to go forward and eventually reach where I am now. I think my memories of the past of full of positive things....” (discussing the hardships in his early career, The Lady, March-April 2001)
“If you have the luck in our job to be physically nice enough and you don't take care of yourself--you are stupid...What I am saying is that I might have been blessed with a certain look, but I am also a former body builder, a black belt in Kung Fu, I taught gym, AND I keep on training. And I make sacrifices... Looking after the way I look is part of the job for me.” (Opera Now, September 1997)
“I'll be busy for the next couple of years for sure. A week ago I arranged an orchestra rehearsal that will take place on 5 May 2010!” (Sukces, June 2003)
“Some mornings I wake up and wonder if I am doing the right thing for the artist and me, as opposed to the career.” (Time Magazine, March 2, 2001 / James Inverne London)
“The legend you know but this is what really happened. I said: 'I am here to sing for the people. I am not here for those whose behavior stinks.' One often says that in Spanish. It was translated as 'these humans stink.' That is simply stupid. How could I know from the stage how someone smells in the last rows? I am no dog.” (translated from Kurier, Jan 26, 2001, in reference to Madrid Il Trov)
“The need to conduct was born in me.” (Il Piccolo de Trieste, Aug 5, 2001)
“Tradition should be respected, but intelligently. Leaving aside the questions of taste or historical legacy, I don't see why every interpretation should always follow the same lines, without deviation. Don't you think it's a shame to lock the dramatic possibilities offered by certain characters within the same cage, however gilded?” (Verdi Arias, 2000)
“What is it to be a servant of the music if it is not to make
everybody understand that this music is as great, as fun, as any
other kind of music?!”
(Electronic Telegraph, Apr 2001 / Paul Gent)
"Yesterday I said to a journalist that we need much more good than bad news in the media. If you have experienced the positive energy at this opening ceremony and saw how focused the athletes are on their sporting aim, then you know the big difference to those people who have only senseless destruction in their minds. Perhaps we will have a lot more positive news in the papers in the coming ten days." (Duisburg World Games, July 2005)
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”Whenever someone needs me, I would like to be a light for that person.” (Prinsengracht, 1998)
“The Verdi tenor is a man who lives on the border between the light and darkness which exist in all our souls.” (Verdi Arias, 2000)
“Before, if one was not singing at La Scala, one would not have had a career. I have sung there several times and cannot say that it has changed my life.” (La Nacion, March 2003)
“I claim the right to be elastic in my career ... I don't want to behave like a tenor 365 days a year!” (Opera Magazine, Oct 99 / John Allison)
“I think the word 'secure' was canceled from the dictionary.” (USA Today / David Patrick Stearns)
“[Turandot] is sung because the music is magnificent, because it is beautiful, because singing it gives true pleasure.” (L'Arena, July 2003, Translated by Monica B)
“Anybody who can stand on the stage and pretend he is someone else must have folly and the heart of a child in an iron cage.” (Vogue, Sept 99 / Rhoda Keonig)
“I consider my art to be a mixture of joy and love and sufferance - that's life.” (The Singer, June/July 1998 / Antonia Couling)
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“A career is like an iceberg, most of it under water.” (Opera Magazine, Oct 99 / John Allison)
“Quite frankly, my only perplexities regarded my acting for this specific role; I did not feel comfortable standing in the middle of the stage with my legs wide open planted there like an impaled potato.” (La Stampa, 10 April 1998 / Sergio Trombetta)
“The music world is fond of labeling people, but at the end of your life you will have to explain to that being who gave you your talents why you were so cowardly as to not use them all.” (The Times, 20 March 04)
“I am not so arrogant that I will do it on purpose, just for the sake of breaking everybody's patience. You do it to tease yourself, to provoke yourself, to investigate, to try different things, to maybe find a new language, a new formula.” Commenting on conducting and singing simultaneously (Electronic Telegraph April 2001 / Paul Gent)
“An artist is somehow like a doctor who cures people's souls.” (Pravda, 25 Oct 2002)
“I can be as loud as I want if I have to. But I don't think shouting is the solution to performing this role.” (LSO Living Music re Otello /Mark Pappenheim)
“I have to be careful about the press--if I have dinner with a girlfriend, they write that I'm having an affair. If I have dinner with a man, they write that I'm gay, and if I'm seen walking my dog they write that I have sex with animals.” (The Times, October 12, 1999 / Joanna Pitman)
"In the beginning," he says, "everyone was trying to put me in the shoes of the three tenors. In the beginning, when I started, I was not myself. I was 'the fourth.' Trying to wear the shoes of the fourth tenor. For a couple of minutes, I tried. But I couldn't walk in those shoes. So I removed them....But the fact of not wanting to wear those shoes doesn't mean I cannot walk." (Chicago Sun-Times, 1 Feb 2004, Debra Pickett)
"For me, opera is another musical experience, one that I will be doing for as long as I can, the way I believe it has to be done: with good acting and by giving it my all when I’m on stage.” (To Vima, July 2004, Thanasis Lalas)
"The danger of Otello is like the danger of being in touch with perfect things. It takes you everywhere. It changes your life and what do you do then? You finish the opera and you cannot get out of the character. What can you do? That is Otello." (Interview, 1997)
"Yesterday I said to a journalist that we need much more good than bad news in the media. If you have experienced the positive energy at this opening ceremony and saw how focused the athletes are on their sporting aim, then you know the big difference to those people who have only senseless destruction in their minds. Perhaps we will have a lot more positive news in the papers in the coming ten days." (Diusburg World Games, July 2005)
“It’s a wonderful way of earning a living, but real life is more important. I’m lucky to have the security of a happy family to come home to. Yes, I am a diva on stage, but at home I am a normal man. I am passionate; I have seen sadness and I am a man who cries very easily . . . “ (Times, 19 Nov 1997, J Pitman)
(Classical Singer, January 2006, C Necula)"From 1999 to the beginning of 2004, I [was] under the harshest of … attacks from many different sources: people calling theaters to convince artistic directors not to engage me, and journalists being paid to write that I was history, that I was a falling star. But we persisted....After four years of struggle, we are now successful and very happy with our work."
"I moved from Argentina to Europe in 1991. I worked for two or three years in restaurants—my wife worked with me, washing dishes—and we did many things that a lot of people wouldn’t even think about doing. We had a very hard life. We lived in a garage for one year because we couldn’t pay the rent, and we heated the garage with a small fire, with me gathering wood in the middle of the night!" (Classical Singer, January 2006, C Necula)
Last Updated: Sunday, October 26, 2008
© Copyright: Kira
