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Sunday 7 September 2008

‘You’re always learning’

Henrietta Bredin talks to Sally Burgess about taking on the role of Carmen

Burgess clearly relishes working on a role in the context of a new production but how different an experience has it been when she has had to fit into a revival of an existing production, originally created around another singer? ‘The circumstances can differ enormously. I sang Carmen in Portland, Oregon, in a production by Keith Warner that he originally did in Omaha. That was a really good experience because he was there to direct it himself. But it’s disappointing when you turn up somewhere like Munich, for example, when — if it’s a revival rather than a new production — you get three days’ rehearsal. There’s no time to develop anything or get to know your colleagues; you just have to get on and do your act. If your fellow singers are good actors you can work up some sort of frisson but it’s difficult. You can be up against a Don José who just doesn’t react in the way you expect him to so after a while you start reacting to what you think he ought to be doing and hope for the best. That doesn’t necessarily work if you come across a singer who’s doing the same thing. Jacque Trussel, an American tenor, is a brilliant actor and we coincided once for two performances in Berlin. We were both trying to do so much dramatically that it was complete overkill. Instead of question and answer we were just doing question question question. Exhausting!’

In Bregenz, Burgess had to contend with goats and horses, muggy temperatures and hungry mosquitoes; in Auckland, New Zealand, she rehearsed for three weeks during which it rained every day before one night’s performance on a football field which, thankfully, turned out dry. ‘I had three microphone packs taped to my back, with a feed into one ear so that I could hear the orchestra. We were like rutting deer, with these microphones sticking out, and if we got too close to each other or went in for a kiss we’d get tangled up. It was very funny.’

The Burgess sense of humour would appear to be something of a godsend but I suspect her tolerance was stretched to the limit by Joseph Volpe, ex-director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. After her first performance there he sent a note via a staff director — in future could she please make sure not to sit with her legs apart. How did she react? ‘Well, I thought about it but, frankly, a Carmen with her legs together is hardly Carmen.’ Quite.

Sally Burgess is singing Mistress Quickly in Verdi’s Falstaff in a new Scottish Opera production opening at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow on 13 May.

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