On Saturday, October 4, at Herbst Theatre, Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian will mark the beginning of a "Remembrance Concert Tour". She will be joined by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Anne Manson. The tour, sponsored by the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, will visit six cities in the U.S. and Canada, concluding with a concert at Carnegie Hall on October 20. Bayrakdarian herself is Armenian, and the concert will feature the music of Armenian composer Gomidas Vartabed (1869-1935), who was deported in 1915 when the Armenian genocide began.
The tour is dedicated to all victims of genocide, but the music, which includes Bartók, Ravel, Gideon Klein, and Nikolaos Skalkottas, along with Gomidas Vartabed, has a unifying character, according to conductor Manson. "To me, the program is less unified by the genocide theme and more unified by folk music," she said. "These are all classical composers who set folk music. The Klein is based on a Czech folk song; the Skalkottas is based on Greek folk music; Bartók, obviously Romanian; the Ravel — he calls it
Photo by Dan Rest
Isabel Bayrakdarian has sung leading lyric soprano roles at the Metropolitan Opera, Salzburg Festival, Royal Opera House, and Houston Grand Opera. In San Francisco she has performed with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Her repertoire includes Mozart's Susanna (in The Marriage of Figaro) and Zerlina (Don Giovanni), the title roles in Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea and Kurt Weill's Marie Galante, and a particular favorite of hers, Blanche in Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelite, which she performed in Robert Carsen's production at Chicago Lyric Opera. I spoke with the soprano in anticipation of her San Francisco Performances recital, and asked her how she first came to singing.I sang Armenian songs as a child and I wasn't doing justice to these beautiful songs, so I wanted to take singing lessons. I was in university for biomedical engineering and I started to take singing lessons on the side. I didn't start out wanting to be a singer, but it just came along. When my teacher gave me arias, I fell in love with it.Tell me more about your relationship to Armenian music. I started singing in church when I was very little. So, the Armenian Church forms the foundation of my singing. In Armenian church music, you may have a prayer based on old Armenian prayers in which two pages of music may have six words. The perfectionist in me wants to sing it perfectly, so I try not to interrupt the words. Indirectly, it taught me to have good breath control and long legato. So Armenian music was very much a part of my upbringing, and so was the music of Gomidas.I grew up in Lebanon, so I wasn't surrounded by Armenians. We were a subculture. Therefore, our exposure to Armenian music was very limited. [On her CD titled Gomidas Songs, which Nonesuch is releasing this week], most of the songs — not all of them —were songs that I was familiar with from a very young age. But we did a lot of research.
Before he was deported, there are some old recordings of him on the piano, with cello and violin and a tenor singing. He was just about to start orchestrating when he was deported.
Is the traditional Armenian instrument, the duduk, used in these arrangements?
Yes, it's very important. [The instrument] is made from the apricot tree and is specific to Armenia. It's a beautiful complement and has a very beautiful melancholic, haunting sound, which is kind of what we all feel.
(Manson elaborated, "It's got a very unique sound. It's not just like an oboe but rawer — to me it sounds like something between an oboe and a saxophone.")
Why was it important to you and to your husband that this tour be dedicated to all victims of genocide and not just those of the Armenian genocide?
The thing is that genocide is happening today. It is not something that ended in the 20th century. There is a universality to genocide. It doesn't just affect those who survive it or those who lost their lives. Obviously, in this case, Gomidas himself was a victim of the Armenian genocide. But his music is heard not just by Armenians alone. And who knows what other genius or other great works of art are lost or not created because of genocide? Not just Armenian but it's happening in Darfur, it happened in Rwanda, and before with the Jewish Holocaust.
Because of the universality of the music itself — in my humble opinion, of course — one doesn't have to be Armenian to enjoy it. So music is a universal platform. It can have roots, but it has a mass universal outreach. That's why I'm working with the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. They are the ones who are sponsoring the tour: to raise awareness. Gomidas was just one great composer whose work was cut short because of the ethnic cleansing that happened.
Growing up with this family history, do you feel that it shaped you as an artist and inspired you to become a singer?
Definitely. Because I've sung it from a young age, when I sing Armenian [music] it doesn't come from the mind. It comes from the soul. Not even the heart, because obviously my heart is in whatever I sing, but from the soul, and most times I don't even think of technique. I rejoice, that's what I do; I rejoice when I'm onstage when I'm singing it, and when I do that, as you do when you're in your car and singing with the radio, you don't think about technique, you're just enjoying it, you're in the moment.
That's what happens when I sing Armenian music, whether it's Gomidas or other composers. Because of how instinctive the language is, one block is removed already. I know Italian singers love to sing in Italian, because you know you are singing with the conviction that you almost wrote it, it's your music. There's a different register in your brain between what is a learned language and what is your mother tongue. So the information goes straight to my soul.
How important is it to you that Turkey still doesn't recognize the events that happened as genocide? Is there some hope that a tour like yours might bring further action in that area?
That isn't my aim at all. My aim is not to involve politics at all. It is just to raise awareness that it happened. I am in the direct line, and it is still happening. There are much better scholars who can speak about documents and facts that are out there and what needs to be done. My aim is to convey and sing and express music that I feel passionate about, and I hope that the listener is going to discover something new. Because that's the whole aim of a concert and recital, isn't it? To discover new things, whether newly written things or newly rediscovered works. To discover a new dimension, enjoy it, and just be a bit more educated or a bit more sophisticated by being exposed to different music.