(Photo credit: Peter Oppenländer)

OperaWire was invited to experience the 5th annual Waiblingen International Opera Workshop led by baritone Thomas Hampson and Wailblingen-native and soprano Melanie Diener.

The workshop, which took place Sept. 15-21, included daily breathing workshops led by Claudia Stefke-Leuser and individual coaching with Hampson and Diener, two masterclasses, two performances, and an educational outreach program. The participants Valentina Bättig, Victoria Grilz, Maryam Jalalikandy, Anna Maternina, Antonia Schuchardt, Mihail Timoschenko, Viktor Jimenez Moral, Livia Luis-Joseph-Dogué, Juliusz Loranzi, Olivia Peschke, Clemens Seewald, and Giulio Putrino worked with pianists Eberhard Leuser, Prof. Cornelis Witthoefft, and Ayala Rosenbaum. At the final concert, the participants were accompanied by the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Salvatore Percacciolo.

Singers Supporting Singers

In an interview, Hampson and Diener explained their thorough approach to working with this generation of singers. Hampson started off by stating, “We believe very strongly that these singers are our colleagues.” This principle was evident throughout the remainder of our conversation, and in the way the participants performed and expressed gratitude for the program.

Hampson best described the program by saying, “We give them an island for a week to build their own index of their voices and bodies. So, when they are working and auditioning, they know how to translate the information coming at them. You must not be pulled off your center, you must know your body, you must know your instrument, and know how to, in any particular instance, be there, in that moment.” In closing, he reiterated that these foundational skills “mean more coming from a singer to another singer, than just learning it as a discipline.”

Several singers offered up praise for the intense training and experience. Schuchardt told OperaWire, “Everyday we learned a different process. On Monday, we jumped right into the breathing sessions, masterclasses, and then switched off working with Hampson and Diener from there.

It Takes a Village

Diener beautifully encapsulated her intentions for the singers when talking about the community concert. On Thursday evening, at a weekly community cultural event, the singers performed songs from their home countries, instead of opera. They even sang with a microphone. Diener’s impetus for this concert is to “connect with the people and to give something back,” and to offer the participants an educational experience of singing in their mother tongue. She elaborated on this by saying, “If you speak or sing in your mother tongue, it’s a different story, because it’s a direct connection to your emotion and to your vocal cords. This creates a different sound. We use this in training, I may ask them to sing their aria like this to help evoke that deep emotional connection. Then they can take this sensation and apply it to the other language.”

Later in the conversation, she expressed her gratitude for the community’s showering support of the program. She said, “In developing the program I wanted them (the singers) to be able to have fun and take something with them, and we are able to do this because the city said, ‘yes.’ All week, we have this entire building to rehearse and have meals provided. That’s the whole idea, they can come and focus on work and don’t have to worry about outside things, plus they get experience with an orchestra, and build connections with their host families and the next generation of musicians.”

It truly felt like the city was beaming with pride for this program. Locals showed their support for the program by hosting the singers in their homes, displaying concert posters throughout the town, and the town’s bookstore featured the singer’s book recommendations in its front window. And last but certainly not least, the community made a remarkable turnout at both concerts.