(Photo: © Sondra Radvanovsky press)

American and Canadian soprano Sondra Radvanovsky is widely regarded as one of the foremost sopranos of our time. She is renowned as a leading interpreter of bel canto and verismo, particularly works by Giuseppe Verdi, and appears at leading opera houses throughout the world.
Winner of numerous awards, she has been widely recorded on CD and DVD.
OperaWire caught up with Sondra at the Royal Opera and Ballet in Covent Garden, where she is currently performing Turandot to great acclaim.

OperaWire:
Hello Sondra. Welcome back to Royal Opera! How are rehearsals going for “Turandot?”

Sondra Radvanovsky:
It’s the most beautiful production of “Turandot” I’ve ever done and ever seen. It’s really gorgeous and I love what they’re allowing me to do with the character.

OW:
She’s a different character from anything you’ve done before, isn’t she? She’s a hard character to like.

SR:
Well, the road that we’re going down with her, and the gentleman who’s staging this, Jack Furness, has really allowed me to play the softer side of her, the human side of her. I guess that’s kind of my thing, I did the same with Norma, you know, and Medea. I tried to find the softer side of her as well as the really hard, “I want to kill you” side, but we forget that she’s human, you know? Because we think, 
“oh, she’s the ice princess” and it’s a fable and it’s set in Asia… But I think that she doesn’t know what love is. Therefore, she pushes everyone away. But when she meets Calaf, I think that she feels something that she’s never felt before. She doesn’t know what it is, but in the end she calls it love. And it just really throws her. So, I play it, even from the very beginning, during the “In questa Reggia” and the riddle scene; MORE the riddle scene, that she’s already being like: “wait a second, this guy’s getting the answers right, and I’m feeling something, what’s going on?”

And so, it’s that dichotomy of, I’ve been told to act like this, which is what I think it is. She’s been told to be this ice princess, as opposed to what she’s actually feeling, which is disconcerting to her. So I’m trying to find that side of her, because I think that’s more interesting than just standing there being: “I hate you! I hate you!” and then all of a sudden:
“Hey daddy, I know his name is love.”
It’s not interesting to me. I like to find that arc of the character. I do a lot more delicate singing, but actually Puccini wrote it that way. And I think that there’s a real similarity between Turandot and Liù as well. And the way I play it in this production, Turandot is really touched by Liù, by her fidelity and unconditional love for this man, Calaf. So, when Liù dies, Turandot is mortified. Like the way we’re playing it here, it totally throws her a loop, like: “Wait a second, why are you killing yourself? What are you doing? What are you doing?”
To the point that, that’s what causes, I think, Turandot ultimately to allow herself to feel love, because she learned from watching Liù.

OW:
Of course, you have performed this role previously in Zurich, but I believe your first interpretation was a recording you did with Antonio Pappano?

SR:
Oh yes. I was so grateful and lucky that my very first time doing “Turandot” was with Maestro Pappano, and we had the time, the luxury of time, to really work on it, coach it, and then record it, and then, you know, record it again, and record it again! I mean, the day we recorded “In questa Reggia,” I’ll never forget this. I think he made me sing it SEVEN times in a row. I said to myself: “well if I can do that seven times in a row, I guess I can sing the role!” But I love just the tiny little details that Maestro Pappano brings out in the score. He really, truly is a singer’s conductor. He breathes with the singers. He demands respect from the singers, from the orchestra, and he gets it because he works so hard on the score and preparing it, and preparing the orchestra, and preparing the singers. He’s truly one of a kind and you can’t teach something like that, what he does. You cannot teach that. It is in his soul. So… it’s an art. And conducting an orchestra is one thing, but conducting singers and with an orchestra is completely a different animal. And anybody who says that it’s the same is wrong.

OW:
You’re singing with SeokJong Baek as Calaf?

SR:
It is a pleasure and a joy working with this gentleman. He is a GREAT singer. He’s going to be the tenor of this generation, one hundred per cent. And he’s a good person. He’s really meant to do this. He lights up when he’s on stage, he has this electricity and he’s so very humble, but good Lord that man can sing. And finally, I get to sing with him, which makes me happy!

OW:
You have a reputation for bringing strong dramatic acting into your roles and also being able to bring a lot of emotion and passion into your singing. You once said:
“Sadness comes naturally to me.” 
Tell me, how much of it is an act and how much of your own personal experiences and sadness do you actually use to inject into your performances?

SR:
No, that’s a good question. I think it’s important that as an artist we bring parts of ourselves onto that stage. And that’s why maybe now with Turandot, I want to play that softer side of her because I was a harder woman before when I was married. Then, when I met my boyfriend it truly was, with palms tingling: “Oh my god what’s happening to me?” 
You know? I was speechless. So I brought that, you know, my real life into the characters, and I think it’s important because it makes it personal, and it makes it special, and it makes it uniquely you as the artist. And I think it’s important to relate some part of your history. My acting teacher, when I was at UCLA said:
“What’s in your bag of goods, your bag of tricks? What are you carrying with you that you can bring on stage with you? And what are you going to use from that bag?”
And each night you can use a different thing, and that’s the beauty of being an artist. I know what I’m thinking, but the audience doesn’t always know. And you know, I’m 55, almost 56, so I have a lot of life experience behind me, and I’ve lived a lot of great sadnesses, losing my father, losing my mother, going through divorce. You know, it’s been intense. And acting has been my therapy, and being on stage has been my therapy. The “Medea,” for instance, at the Met, that was at the hardest point of my divorce. I used that darkness that I was going through and really channeled it into the character. And I’m telling you, at the end of that run, I was like:
“Oh, I feel much better now” (laughing). 
It was a kind of therapy, it really was. And you have to allow it to kind of wash over you but never let it get in the way of the vocal apparatus, and that’s the danger. I tell that to young artists, to use your past and use your sadness or your happinesses too. But I tell them, you know, there’s a line that should never be crossed when you’re using those emotions, because if you cross that line, then you close your throat. It is impossible to cry and sing at the same time. When one is blubbering, crying, you’re like, you know, you’re heaving, you can’t sing.

So that’s where pretend comes. But using life experiences up to that line, I’m fine with. And I think that’s what rehearsals are for, is to learn how much you can tiptoe over that line or walk up to the line and still be able to sing. But when it affects your voice then you have to really pull back a little bit. And I think that’s the beauty of it and that’s what makes us unique artists.

It’s bringing our bag with us on stage, our bag of life experiences and emotions and being vulnerable enough to share those emotions with the whole audience. And that’s why the aria “La Mamma Morta” is so special to me because that was the last opera that my mom saw.

OW:
I saw that performance of “Andrea Chénier” and thought your rendition of that was spectacularly moving, but I wasn’t aware until you told me afterwards that your mother had passed. It must have been so hard for you to sing it.

SR:
It was, and sometimes…I just did a Puccini concert in Chicago…fourteen nights, crazy…and the last, the very last performance that my mom saw was at the Lyric. It was a concert of “The Three Queens” that I did. And that was the very last thing she saw. So, being there and singing Puccini’s “Senza Mamma”…ah…so in the rehearsal, which is where you do all of that, you know…I allowed myself to really cry and all of that, because once you get on the stage and you do it in the performance you have it out of your system and that’s fine.

OW:
I’ve frequently seen comparisons being made between yourself and Maria Callas. Was Callas ever an inspiration to you?

SR:
One million percent. But I didn’t come to her first. Leontyne Price I came to first. She was an amazing voice. Her Verdi CD? That was it for me. It was like the big, you know, the huge light bulb over the head. That was it for me. I was studying with Martial Singher in Santa Barbara, and he said, “Go buy the CD” and so I bought it and I just was like: “Where have you been all my life! Mr. Verdi and Ms. Price?” I was, just like, wow! I wore it out and then I bought “Forza del Destino” that was my very first complete opera with Leontyne, Sherrill Milnes and Placido Domingo and I was like:
“I want to sing this opera!” Ha! Ha! I only sang it, like, two years ago.

But Callas…the colour and the beauty of the voice really touched me. And Tebaldi too. I think that people forget about Tebaldi a lot because of Callas. James Levine actually said to me, “I think your voice is more like Tebaldi than like Callas!”
But for me, Callas was it, because, unlike Tebaldi, who had a beautiful voice, but didn’t really act, per se, with her voice. She was what…when you think of an opera singer…that was Tebaldi. She stood there and she sang beautifully, but Callas did everything, and, for me, I loved theater. I loved the theater aspect of opera. The singing, yes, but for me the theater aspect. I loved what Callas would do and how she would inhabit the characters and be willing to make an ugly sound for the sake of the character. And that’s when I just went, oh wow, that’s it, that’s it. But never ever did I imitate. Never ever, because I know a lot of the younger singers nowadays, they imitate. And that scares me.

I was so lucky I had great, great people that I surrounded myself with, or who surrounded me, and protected me and they said:
“Sondra, find your own sound, find your own voice, find your own way of doing things and find you…and really take the time to find you.”

And I really think my generation is the last generation that had the luxury of having the time to find ourselves. Nowadays, we don’t have that luxury of time. You know, you go through university and school and then boom, you’re supposed to go right out into the real world. And a lot of people just aren’t ready, and especially bigger voices.

Like, my voice, I wasn’t ready to go out and sing “Trovatore” and all of that. I needed time to bake, you know, I had to cook. I had to finish cooking (laughing). I wasn’t ready to go out and luckily all the people that surrounded me, my manager Alec Treuhaft, my voice teacher Ruth Falcon, and my coach Tony Manoli, they were like: “No, no, no, she’s not ready to do this. Don’t make her do that!” and nowadays people are like: “Oh yeah I’m twenty-five….. I’ll sing Tosca?”

You want to know why I’m so hard on myself? Because my goal was always to be the best.
Martial Singher really instilled that in me, in that he said to me one day:
“I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?” And I said:
“Oh, great. I’ll take the good news” He says:
“You’re going to be a singer and you’re going to have a career.”

I said:
“Oh, great, what’s the bad news?“
He said:
“You have no idea how hard it is. The journey is going to be so hard. So if you’re going to be a soprano, you have to be the best damn soprano out there. And learn what you do better than anyone else.”

I was like:
“Oh shit…” You know? This man, Martial Singher, was so elegant and a man of so few words, so when he gave you that kind of nugget of information, you took it, and you ran with it. Because he made me go home. I drove three hours one way from Laguna Beach to Santa Barbara every weekend to go take a lesson with him. And one day I drove up and I was not quite as prepared as I should have been. I walked in and he was warming up and we started working on, we were working on “Otello.” And he said:
“Go home.” And I said: “I’m sorry, what?” He said: “First you’re going to pay me and then you’re going to get in your car and you’re going to go home.”
And I said: “Why? 
He said: “Don’t waste my time. You’ll learn from this.” And I did (laughing). And that man, he taught me so much about the way you dress, the way you present yourself, to always be on time, to always know what you’re doing and to be the most prepared in the room.

OW:
Because you mentioned it, you’re 55, coming up to 56, your career is still running very strong after almost 30 years. I believe you still sing and move like a much younger woman. What keeps you going and what pushes you to keep doing it?

SR:
Yeah, well I think a lot of it is genetics. My mom at 55 did not look 55 either. And I think I inherited a lot of that. Thank you, thank you, mom, thank you. But I strongly believe in the phrase:
“A body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest” I’m always doing something. You know, like I have singing, I have “Screaming Divas,” I have a new project in Chicago, which I can’t talk about yet. I want to create a voice Academy for young singers and I’m working on my boyfriend’s hospital that he’s building: the Brain Medicine Institute. I’m on the board of that because my mom died from Lewy body dementia, so all these things help. You know, I think as long as you keep the brain active and the body active you maintain that youthfulness and, honestly, I don’t ever think of myself as being 55. In my mind I am perpetually 35 or even 25, you know?

But also, happiness. I think that is a big key, being happy, feeling fulfilled in life loving what you do, and I mean I have the best job in the world. I mean, seriously, truly. I get to see the world, meet amazing people, get to stand in front of 2,000 people every night and sing this amazing music. AND I get paid for it! So, I think that’s it and also I work. I work damn hard at staying young too, and somebody said the other day on one of the blogs:
“Oh she’s had a little work done on her face.” I was like:
“Are you kidding me!?” 
 have not and I never will because I believe I’ve earned this face you, know? I hit my 10,000 steps and then some. I’m gonna run a 5k in August with my boyfriend. I started boxing when I did “Medea,” and boxing has been really like a godsend for me. Fantastic. I love it because it engages the core which we need for singing, and it’s also great for getting rid of all those aggressions and everything that you had just punching that bag or punching the hand of your trainer. It’s amazing.

I take care of my body I do bodywork, I have an osteopath, you know, I get my sleep. I don’t drink or I drink minimally, I don’t do drugs, or any of that because my body is my instrument. And if you don’t take care of this, then your instrument is not going to take care of you. And having lost a father at 54 years old, and my mother young, I think 82 is young; you’ve got one go around at this, and I sure as hell am going to enjoy it. So, I have a boyfriend who’s older than me, eight and a half years older than me, but he also acts like a child like I do, and we both say as long as we can do it we want to do it. So, our first trip that we took together was to Borneo and we climbed Mount Kinabalu and because as long as we can I want to, you know?, and it’s important to live life and I’m not one of those singers who’s like
“Oh, my voice, my voice, my voice”. 
I live life. Of course, I do take care of my voice. I don’t go to a rock concert the day before a show. I don’t drink the day before a show or the day of a show. The biggest key is listening to your body. You have to listen to your body because if you don’t you’re going to hurt yourself.

I was talking to my osteopath the other day and just saying it’s amazing how many people are not in tune with their body, and I think singers have to be and you have to listen to your body so when you your body says: “Hey Sondra, shut up!” You shut up, or: “Hey, Sondra you need to get some sleep now!
You get to sleep.

OW:
What haven’t you done that you still want to perform? What’s left for you to sing that you want to sing?

SR:
Two more operas, possibly three. “Fedora.” Okay?… “Adriana Lecouvreur”… “Il tabarro.” And then possibly, “The Makropulos Case.” And that might be my last opera, “The Makropulos Case.”

OW:
Eight years ago, you said,
“I dread the day I have to stop singing.” That was eight years ago. But you also said: “I think I’m singing my best.” Do you still dread the day when you have to stop?

SR:
No.

OW:
And do you still believe you’re singing your best?

SR:
Yes. But I want to leave when I’m at the top. I think we’ve seen singers hang on too long. And by hanging on too long, I think you forget everything that they did before. Because you’re only as good as your last performance, right? Leave them wanting more, right? And I want to leave when I want to leave. Not when the voice says:
“Hmm… Sondra, you gotta quit!” And I have a life now. And eight years ago, I didn’t have a life. But now I have a life. I have a fulfilling life. And a full life whereas before, my whole life was music.

OW:
Finally, I understand you’re planning on teaching more in the future?

SR:
Yes. It takes a lot of energy and a lot of time; and to teach, they need consistency. Singers need that consistency, once a week or once a month, once every other week and I can’t give that yet. But I will and that’s my goal. I do a lot of master classes now and I’m mentoring some people, and I really love it. Really, really love it. Because those singers now are the future of our business, of the opera world, and if we don’t take care of them now, our art form will not carry on into the next generation. And we have to nurture them, we have to love them, we have to really teach them everything that we know because they’re the future.

I was lucky. All the people that I got information from, being in the Young Artist Program at the Met, and I’m like a sponge. All my life I’ve been like a sponge. I just took information, and I just gathered it and I put it in my arsenal of information and you know from Régine Crespin to Mirella Freni to Renata Scotto to Renata Tebaldi, I mean all the greats, like Sherrill Milnes, that I’ve been able to watch and study and talk to, and I was never afraid to walk up to somebody and say: “Excuse me, Madame Scotto. How do you do that?,” and they love it. People love it when you ask them: “How do you do that? Show me how to do it.” And ask questions. So I have all that information in my head and I need to get it out and pass it on to the next generation.