Lotfi Mansouri: An Operatic Journey

14. Lords and Ladies of the Larynx, Potentates of the Podium: Mansouri’s Gallery of Illustrious Colleagues

• 14 • Lords and Ladies of the Larynx, Potentates of the Podium Mansouri’s Gallery of Illustrious Colleagues Y es, many of the singers and conductors I have had the privilege of collaborating with over the years are pretty eccentric. Considering the challenges they have to face, they almost have to be. Beyond the actual rigors of performance, any singer with a major career is expected to carry a large repertory of roles in his or her head, develop a fair degree of fluency in a variety of languages, and be ready to give convincing portrayals of this vast array of characterizations often at a moment’s notice. Stories about an artist being pushed onstage or sent into the pit without rehearsal, sometimes racing from the airport while the theater holds the curtain—with radically varying results—have almost become a cliché. This would fray anybody’s nerves, and any artist who meets these challenges over and over again without seeming to be under any strain, giving a discerning audience all it bargained for, and then some, is worthy of tribute. I’d like to offer my readers some memories of the best of the best, along with one or two portraits of some genuine oddballs, who required some endurance on my part as they strutted and fretted through their professional lives but who, in the final analysis, proved more than worth the effort it took to put up with their shenanigans. Let me begin with one of the best. When I came to Canada, I met mezzo-soprano Judith Forst, who inspired everyone not just with her sunny nature, but also with her consummate professionalism. Gifted with a glorious, solidly focused voice and exceptional musicianship, as well as acting ability that breathes life into every character she de- Mansouri’s Gallery of Illustrious Colleagues { 261 lineates, she has given definitive performances in an enormously wide range of characterizations, including such diverse parts as Rosina and Cenerentola and ranging all the way to Augusta Tabor in The Ballad of Baby Doe, Kabanicha in Kat’a Kabanová, and Klytämnestra in Elektra, plus all the stops along the way. Yet she is self-aware in the best sense: she knows her limits. She is objective, pulling signals out of the air and knowing how to discard the useless ones. She has the gift of watching, listening, and experimenting. She asks pertinent questions and demands to be convinced on an intellectual level. She continues to seek out new challenges and goes on setting an example for colleagues eager to have a solid professional basis, free of illusions and other nonsense. In this, she joins a very few others who derive their artistic satisfaction exclusively from the art. Dame Joan Sutherland is one of these. Her historic partnership with Richard Bonynge was magical. It remains a beacon to others, a glowing example of personal realism, and demonstrates a willingness on Joan’s part to collaborate. Richard placed very high demands on her work and told her in no uncertain terms when she failed to reach the standards he set for her. I recall one orchestra dress rehearsal of Traviata in which he called her down with such vehemence that she walked off the stage, leaving me to mark the title role. Joan Sutherland had a long and glorious career because she took advice , sought a partner who could provide it, and never lost her infectious, earthy sense of humor and self-irony. This was a far cry from the highly gifted Maria Ewing. She failed to follow the example of Sutherland or Forst and wound up paying a terrible price for her illusory approach. She started as an alluring mezzo who could convince audiences possibly better than anyone else that her enchantingly sung Cherubino was really a boy, while countering this performance with a frothily feminine Dorabella. But she started to become enormously complicated as she drifted into the leading soprano repertoire. My last experience with her was a nightmare. I engaged her as Salome for our Strauss Festival at San Francisco in the summer of 1993. She became difficult, stubborn, and wrongheaded. In the easier sections, she would drag the rhythms, then rush like crazy in the more difficult parts. To his credit, Donald Runnicles did his best to cope with her. Married to Sir Peter Hall at the time, she expected to be addressed as 262 } l o t f...