(Photo: MKImpresari)

Former Baritone Marcin Kopec has had a very successful career as an artist manager. In reality, he’s a mover, shaker, fixer, arranger, organizer, (he likes ‘Impresario’), and frequent savior behind the scenes of some of the most famous names in the business on some of the biggest stages in the world.

OperaWire met up with Marcin in Covent Garden where he talked about his service with TACT Artists Management, his own MKImpresari Agency and his plans for the future.

OperaWire:
Hello Marcin, thank you for speaking with OperaWire. You have been a very successful agent and artist manager now for many years, notably with TACT, but you are now setting up your own agency? Why is that?

Marcin Kopec: Hello Mike, good to meet you. Indeed, I had a long tenure with TACT, starting as a manager and more recently working as company director and co-owner. As you know I come from the UK management model of working and before joining TACT, I ran my own small boutique as well. My time with TACT was very productive and being a keen learner, I used it to explore, work on the approach to the business and musical network and create relationships with many great artists. My idea for TACT was that despite it being one of the biggest companies on the market, the set-up of personal management is the most important thing to cherish. It is not a corporate model of work, my office is mostly in the airport, with my laptop and a phone. That was always the key to the work we do. It is a very conscious decision to follow that route. Corporate firms are no longer as successful and powerful as they used to be ten or twenty years ago, and the transition into this model moved even further during and after Covid. It always comes to a team collaboration and manager/artist relationship, always hands-on.

Smaller companies can provide more personal services, make sure things run smoothly by cutting the bureaucracy, and focusing really on developing the careers. I felt I needed to release more time for this most important work for the artists as it is all about them and their work. I hate wasting time and I always make decisions very swiftly at work. It’s easy when you have a plan and I feel I am a man with a plan. I elected to create something for myself, to focus on a small number of artists with just a couple of colleagues that came with me, and fund a unique boutique company that works in a manner that is not office-based, totally unlike how the big companies are.
There has to be a long term career plan that is in place, discussed and formulated with the artist that has to be followed meticulously, because that’s the only way to really develop careers.

And what is happening on the market these days, makes the ‘middle’ range of careers very difficult. Theatres have a choice. They can always go for the highest quality…and even smaller-medium theatres try to do that. So, in order to achieve the success as a management, you really need to invest in the quality and artists who are potentially the stars or who are established already. That is my ethos in terms of my new venture.

OW:
Of course, you started in this industry as a singer yourself, I believe?

MK: Yes. I sang for 10 years. Mostly locally. I did local touring companies in the UK, so there. I am Polish, my family lives near to Kraków and I finished my studies there and after studies I decided to move here. I think you need to be very realistic in our business, and I decided that if my voice didn’t turn into a proper Verdi Fach and big repertoire around my 30th Birthday, there was no point in pursuing a singing career. My voice was quite lyric and as I say to all my artists, you need to have a plan: If you can find the niche where you’re going to be better than most of the artists in this Fach then you can be very successful. But if you can’t, then it’s going to be very difficult, because being a lyric baritone or a lyric soprano puts you in competition with 500 others. If you’ve got two notes that nobody can sing, or maybe only five people in the world can sing, then you’re something else. It’s all about making sure that you know where your strength is.

I did have some small successes here. I was in the production that won an Olivier Award for “La Boheme,” singing as Schaunard and also as Marcello. I had a long run of that production in the West End, sang many Enricos, but I followed through my plan, and finished the singing shortly after my 30th Birthday.

Together with fellow baritone Stephen Svanholm, we launched a UK-based audition platform for artists. Stephen’s now an agent in Sweden, but back then, we ran the platform for a couple of years. Singers began asking us:
“Could you put me forward for this audition? I don’t have an agent.” So, we did—just as a favor, no commission. Then they’d land jobs and ask: “Could you negotiate this for me?” Before we knew it, we were basically acting as managers. That’s when we decided to make it official and open a proper agency.

That was around 10 years ago…On our first day—early September—I looked up Operabase, listed every contact in Excel, and started calling opera houses. No real knowledge of the business, just pure determination. In that first push, I arranged ten auditions and landed five contracts. No help, no handbook—just went for it.

OW:
So do you call yourself an agent, a manager or impresario?

MK:
I would love to call myself an impresario because that’s the work I’m trying to do. I am totally against booking agents in our world because, whilst there are some very good booking agents who fill up the calendars, there are many who will book an artist for 70 performances in a year, with very short rehearsal times and no gaps. The voice doesn’t have time to rest, they’re double booked sometimes, sometimes they turn up late to rehearsals because another engagement is overlapping and the agent doesn’t really care about this. It’s a bit of a grey area in our world. But, in these scenarios the voice doesn’t have time to properly recover. There is no thinking about preserving the voice, some are thinking only about income in these cases.

So, in my world, we really try to make it aligned within the season, where we put gaps for the artist to rest, where we put the roles within the season that would sort of match in the order and the consecutive periods. We don’t go extremes. There is no Rossini and then Wagner. The voice cannot do it. It has to be really well thought through. The voice is a muscle, a bit like a gum. It needs to adjust for certain parts, so you need moments when it refreshes; when it relaxes….. and then you can stretch it again, but you cannot do this without a break because then the voice breaks.

I’m the first person to say: 
“If you feel tired…we speak with the company.” They understand how important it is for the voice to rest. The world will not collapse if we cancel two performances. My first management started around 11 years ago and I still have people with me whom I enlisted from then. It’s meant to be like this. It’s a long-term relationship that you develop. It’s not: “Oh another popular person…we book her for two years and then maybe it doesn’t work…so, we take another one and if she manages then good…” That’s not how I have ever worked and it’s not how I will ever work. And that’s what I try to teach my colleagues that I work with as well. I have no ambition of becoming the mentor but of course you know we sort of create a younger generation of agents and I really want to make sure that they have the same healthy approach as I do.

Forty years ago, when there was a new role prepared…let’s say somebody was to debut “Otello”…he would spend four weeks with his teacher and the pianist going through the role, learning it, then putting it away for six months and coming back for a week and going into the rehearsals. Today you hear that somebody can debut “Andrea Chénier,” without any stage rehearsals, learning it on the plane probably, jumping in at the last minute and performing it.

The voice is a muscle. It has to be trained the right way. You need to have the time to debut new roles and in order to do that you need to have a period of time where you practice it. You can’t perform heavy roles whilst singing in the opera house something else, because it’s different muscular work, it’s like a different routine. It’s complicated, it’s fascinating, it’s like a puzzle game for me sometimes, thinking:
”Are we doing the right thing…Or, maybe we should switch this?…Or, maybe we shouldn’t?” And then I would call the artist saying, “How does that work? How do you feel? How is the voice reacting? Is it too much? Do we take something away?” I am not the manager that, after a year, will send an artist a calendar saying:
“There you go. That’s next year booked. That’s your calendar.” That’s not how you do it. That’s the bookers approach, right? “If you don’t want to sing it, tough! It’s already done, it’s fixed. It’s contracted!”

This is MY difference. You have to have a personal approach where you really put your heart in it, and you really try to create something bigger. You have to make a bond with the artist that, of course, lasts. Because there are endless hours of conversation, issues to solve and work on. But as you can see, it makes me very excited…I have goosebumps speaking about this…I have goosebumps hearing my artist performing well. I had goosebumps hearing my young soprano making her debut as Norma recently, thinking she will be the next big star, because of the quality of her voice…how it travels in the theatre…how it sounds in the recording…the first notes that I recorded, because I played to myself on the way from the performance, this vowel that she puts there, this beautiful phrasing, you know, it’s so fascinating. And I really feel that the business of opera these days relies very much on the names that are very established, but very often, unfortunately, the quality doesn’t always follow anymore. And you go to the performance with three or four big names, and then one person actually sings the way that it should sound.

And I pride myself on this different approach, I always wanted to be the agent I never had, and also, I wanted to name my new management company “The Voice,” or something like “La Voce” but it was a bit cheesy of course…BUT the focus for us is the voice. The three of us managers come from musical backgrounds. First is Katya Deleu. Katya is a former pianist and vocal coach, she assisted many great conductors at the Met while being there. Her husband is a singer, so of course her approach and her ear is amazing. I would very often consult her asking what her particular thoughts were, because she knows the repertoire, she hears really well. She is also very careful to sign new artists. It needs really top quality, which is where we aim at, and then from artists that don’t have any presence in the west, with her approach, she can actually bring them to the Met, Munich, Salzburg, because of their qualities and her input. And then we’ve got Leszek Solarski, with whom I studied, a bass baritone, also coming from a serious musical background. He did quite a lot of work organising concerts and tours in Poland. But at some point our paths crossed again, and I said, well, how about we try to do something together and he ended up with us, building a good small roster. His approach is again more fellow singer like, no important manager/artist relationships, constructive work, investment of time that pays off, and hours put into the artists when promoting them. A great team it is!

OW:
Something that frequently crops up, when I’m interviewing artists, is their concerns about the future of opera and their fears that it may be on the wane. Do you share such concerns?

MK: I think it still has huge potential, but from the public’s needs, we need to make sure that opera comes back to its roots, to where it was. It was a place where people would go after work to see a different world. A world that is more beautiful, a bit more exciting emotionally and visually, especially with period performances. I think that is what went slightly wrong with the opera reform. I saw quite a few performances of “Carmen” in the last season as you know and I must say my favorite one was still the Zeffirelli one with beautiful costumes, with proper flamenco dancing, with Carmen dying on the stairs in front of a cross being killed by Don José, with horses, with all the attractions that you know, you may say it’s cheesy, or touristic, (that was Verona), but I think it’s beautiful and that’s what can attract 5,000 people to go there and see it.

Yes, we should definitely produce modern productions, we should produce something challenging, but then the core repertoire should be the beautiful “Bohème” that we’ve got here in Covent Garden. And people absolutely love it. I’ve seen it 15 times and I’m never bored with it because of how it is done. Maybe I have a different perspective…PLUS, if I have two voices that make me focused, that’s it. I can sit with my mouth open and forget about the whole world.

I worked with Rolando Villazon in my teenage years when he was making his debut in Aix and I remember I would go after my scene and watch the opera till the end, just listening to him. Nobody else was there for me. It was just him–the energy, the voice, that’s it. I can have terrible productions, costumes and sets, but if there is one voice that you want to listen to, then it makes it all work. You know, opera is a catharsis. You get touched to the core. You get clean by the energy, by the story, by how it’s performed and by the voices that reach out to you. They are next to you. You can almost touch them, feel the vibrations. It’s an experience that rarely happens these days, but it should be about the voice, the voice that can inspire you and it’s not always the most beautiful voice but it’s a voice with something special that actually drives and touches the mind and the soul.

It’s challenging and we’re used to five-minute reels, short movies, and watching something brief. After the pandemic, suddenly we were put in the theatre chairs, I felt it took a lot of strength to actually sit for three hours and not to be distracted. But really, I think in order to keep opera going, the core repertoire needs to be kept in the original form. The new public has to be brought to these beautiful shows. And then you do one or two modern productions; perhaps a modern staging of Mozart, Szymanowski or other operas, this way you keep the books balanced.

OW:
So talk to me briefly through your week. What is a normal week in the life of an impresario?

MK:
A normal week? My normal week starts on, probably, Monday morning when an artist calls me to tell me that he’s forgotten a passport or that there is a visa issue and how can I fix it? (laughing). That happens quite a lot. Then the normal work starts and of course you need to deal with whatever needs taking care of over the weekend, dealing with all the boring stuff that has to be done.
Then forwarding all the work to the relevant people, dealing with shoe sizes or head measurements to forward to the opera company and sending information to another person who will be in charge of the biographies, dealing with pending offers and checking whether the artist is free, whether the artist is not free. So those are the boring jobs, but then fun jobs start!

You open the calendars and it’s a bit like a war game. Or you know, “Battleship,” the game where the players don’t see the ships.
So, you’ve got your part, and you think we’ve got an empty space here, an empty space there, and that period is taken. Who does what? And you check all the calendars of the companies, and you think that could maybe fit in or make it work, there is a bit of an overlap here. But if we speak with them, maybe they will release. How about we propose? So, make a phone, you call, saying:
“Oh, have you got available Siegfried for this period?” They may say: “Well, we’ve got someone on hold, but who do you have?” That’s always the question. “Well, I’ve got this new tenor…,”
“We haven’t heard him…,”
“What do we do?”
“Well, you can come to XX for the performance. I will send you the performance list after this call and then you call me back”
So I note when the artist goes. I call them the day after saying:
“How did you like him/her?” They reply:
“Oh yes we love him/her, we want him/her.” That’s how it works. And then that continues. Then there is a “jump in.” Maybe X or Y loses Rodolfo for a night, and we need to find a tenor for them quickly….and everyone is searching.

Then there is a scouting part, going through the applications and listening to new potential artists, sending the season suggestions and following up. This takes a lot of time and determination and constant reminders and hours of input. When asked what I actually do by a couple of friends, I gave them the example of being a coach, like a football coach, that goes and watches the teenagers playing, and he picks up the one that he thinks is very special and he puts him in the place where he thinks he should be. When you spot the talent, you just need to put it in the right environment, conductors, directors, coaches, because the talent in the bad environment will be ruined. When I hear a voice, for example, in an audition, it has to be true love from the beginning. And I very often would get goosebumps when I hear the voice for the first time. If I get them, I don’t think; I just sign the person, because I know it’s my body reacting. It’s very weird.

OW:
So what is your personal vision for the future?

MK:
My vision is that we need to look and develop the next generation of artists. And I really want to invest in people in their early thirties, some even younger, who I feel have great potential and who have the right voices especially for the dramatic repertoire. I want to nurture those and create long-lasting careers. And I think that should be the focus, because if we don’t bring up the next generation, suddenly there is going to be large gaps caused by the companies constantly hiring the same artists for the role and not giving the chances to the younger artists. With Rossini tenors, with dramatic baritones and tenors. They need to be given chances and often make a transition from lighter to heavier repertoire, slowly, but consistently. For example, take Wotan. We’ve got two to three Wotans recently dropping the role because of health reasons, because of age. There is an overlap because theaters wouldn’t give a chance to younger singers to try the role out. It IS heavy. But then, if three of them drop out, and the ones that sing it need to replace them, suddenly you’re missing around six. Same with heavier roles like Hermann in “Queen of Spades,” or the titular role in “Turandot.”

We try to make this overlap and introduce the next generation like Derek Welton who started recently singing Wotan. It’s the beginning of his journey, but he performed it already in the concerts and on stage (including Opera national de Paris). He jumped in, and we already have some “Rings” booked for the future. Our Marigona Qerkezi, young lyrico spinto, making a big splash this season after her triumphant “Norma” in Frankfurt, “Aida” in Berlin, taking over Leonora at the ROB in London right now. Our Aigul Akhmetshina who, after nearly 10 years of working together, (yes, her career did not happen overnight and the input of work she made is a great example how determination and character can help to build a top-level career); is dipping her toes in slightly heavier repertoire as well, while still keeping a lot of Donizetti and Rossini in the repertoire.

Some careers do happen fast – like with Galina Cheplakova – Aigul’s fellow soprano from Bashkiria, who in one season made triumphant debuts with Maestro Petrenko as Francesca di Rimini, BSO as Violetta or Lisa at the Met. But she is a ready artist that needs a vision and support, about whom however no one in the west heard a year ago, and the input of work was of course huge.

Similarly, with Olafur Sigurdarson who became ‘world’s best Alberich,’ singing in all major opera houses and really switching to the very top level only last year. Agnieszka Rehlis becoming now a leading Verdian mezzo after 20 years of almost only a concert career, or Long Long who is now one of the leading lyric tenors of the generation, former Neue Stimme Winner. As well as Operalia Winners – Victoria Karkacheva, Elmira Hasan, Konu Kim, I’d love to mention everyone!

This is the new management’s vision: the voices and talents, no age limits, but investment in the qualities that comes first – voices, expression and uniqueness.