Mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux is at the top of her game. As she prepares for her performances with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, singing some of the sensational arias written for the castrato Farinelli that helped put her on the map, she can reflect on a blossoming career that includes 46 roles so far, 29 of which are sung in male attire (“trouser roles”). Her equally impressive discography includes collaborations with some of our finest early-music conductors and singers.
Take, for example, the two most recent additions to Genaux’s recorded repertoire. One is the premiere recording of Vivaldi’s Ercole sul Termodonte, in which Fabio Biondi conducts a stellar cast that includes Diana Damrau, Patrizia Ciofi, Joyce DiDonato, Romina Basso, Philippe Jaroussky, Rolando Villazón, and Topi Lehtipuu. Most recently, she costarred in a hilarious outer-space Baroque DVD of Haydn’s Mondo della luna, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
Surprisingly, the confidence with which she approaches her fiendishly difficult repertoire was a long time coming. Her technique, too, took years to mature. In a deeply revealing chat, during which we discovered that we can both whistle a mean trill, she shared key aspects of her journey.
You articulate your runs so well. Besides the trill, your ability to clearly sound each note sets you apart as a true coloratura. But your lips move a lot. I assume that has nothing to do with your technique?
Correct. I’ve always had that; it’s part of my musculature. I don’t know. Some people say it’s tension; others say, “No, you’re so relaxed, your lips just move.” I have no idea what it is. I talked with my teacher about it, perhaps 15 years ago, and she said, “Don’t worry about it. Everybody has something that makes them unique, and that’s yours. Forget it. If it doesn’t bother you technically, don’t worry about it.’”
The first time I heard a Baroque band... [it] felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, when she lands in Oz from Kansas, opens the door, and it goes from black and white to color.
Your name is as exotic as your looks. Is it one that your parents gave you?
When I was born, everyone including my two teenager sisters had a say as to what my name was going to be. They all brought home suggestions, but everyone knew someone who either had the name or whom they didn’t like. Finally, my father, who is a professor of biochemistry at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, had a student in his class named Vivica with a different spelling. No one else knew a Vivica, so they all okayed it, and that’s what I got.
Name by committee.
Oh yeah. It was a definite approval process. Actually, I once convinced a stage manager that it was a stage name, and that my real name was Mary Garden. He didn’t know that was the name of an actual opera singer.
How did you get involved in singing? Was there music in your family?
There was music in my community. My father played a mean record player, and loved Bruckner, Mahler, and Beethoven. Anything that Leonard Bernstein ever did, he had a recording of. He had the greatest collection of mostly symphonic recordings, and some pop, but not opera.
Mom loved listening to opera on radio broadcasts. One of my claims to fame is that I got pocket money from cleaning the house. I’d vacuum very strategically at the time the Texaco broadcasts were on the radio. Before I was 13 I played piano, studied violin, and studied ballet. There were all kinds of opportunities in Fairbanks. Even kids could take classes at the university, with special permission, and I got it.
I grew up singing with choirs, and took part in everything I could. My mom taught languages in high school, and had to leave early [in the day]. So I would go to band rehearsals at 7 a.m., and part-sing Singin’ in the Rain with them. I’d finish off the day with jazz choir, then go to aerobics and modern dance or ballet or chorus rehearsal. I had a very rich extracurricular life in the arts, primarily music but also dance.
When did you decide to pursue singing as a vocation?
Pretty much a semester after I decided to major in genetics at the University of Rochester. I was so miserable. The only thing I had was an a cappella vocal group, which became a mainstay of my life. I just loved singing so much. Finally I decided if I was going to be that miserable, I might as well be a starving artist. I transferred to Indiana University in January of ’91, and got a bachelor’s of science in voice. I stayed an extra semester as a visiting artist so I could prepare some arias for auditions. I had been studying with basso Nicolai Rossi-Lemeni, but when he passed away before I graduated, I continued to work with his wife, soprano Virginia Zeani.
I did an audition for the Ezio Pinza Council for American Singers of Pinza, run by his daughter Claudia Pinza, and studied with her in Italy the summer of 1992. She said I could return to the States and continue to work with her. Next year will be our 20th anniversary.
Joseph Campbell always said that you have to play. It has to be fun. You have to play with whatever your passion is. I spent a lot of time with his DVDs and books when I was first studying, because I had a lot of psychological hang-ups that prevented me from being psychologically and physically free onstage. It was the time that Robert Bly was writing about “Iron John.” Campbell, talking about mythology, ideals, stereotypes, and mythological fixtures that are in various cultures and their function, helped me.
What are some of the hang-ups you were dealing with?
Insecurity. I was scared to death of the world in general. In my first season of working professionally, I debuted in Rossini’s L’Italiana, Barbiere, and Cenerentola. It was a riotous year. I worked so hard. We’d rehearse L’Italiana for six hours, and then I’d go home and work another five or six hours on staging and music.
I dreamed about the staging and what I had to do, because I felt I was just so behind everyone. And that feeling lasted probably the first seven years of my career. I was skinny as a rail because I couldn’t eat, because I was so nervous. I had a mood ring that would turn black whenever I had to go to rehearsals.
I was always that way. One of the first things I got to do onstage at Indiana was Hello, Dolly! The stage director didn’t like me very much because I was a really timid little kid, the last thing that you’d imagine singing Dolly Levi. But I really worked hard. I think, by the end, he really respected me, but I’d go to rehearsals with my stomach so tight and nauseous, and hurting. I was crying going to rehearsals. But I said to myself, This is what you want to do with your life. You’re going to have to get used to this feeling. Are you sure this is what you want to do? And I said, Yes, this is what I want to do. So I lived with it for seven years.
I think I’m putting more value into the words than I ever did back then.
I was such a scared little girl when I was studying. I never allowed myself to ask a question, because that was a sign of weakness, and that you weren’t capable of understanding. That was throughout my scholastic career, as well. I thought asking a question was putting myself out for ridicule.
I really think it took me 10 to 14 years of work with Miss Pinza to truly understand my breathing muscles. It took me a long time of singing every single day, and finally asking questions, to know it.
What moved you from Rossini to Baroque repertoire?
Matthew Epstein. He was my fairy godfather. I only had this one meeting with him; he was never in my life as an agent or coach. But the right people somehow had the habit of showing up in my life or being dragged into my path at the right time. I was completing my third year of only singing Rossini, but I didn’t know what else to do. Someone arranged a meeting for me with him where I explained the situation.
He said, “You should sing Hasse.” And I replied, “Who’s Hasse?”
A month after I spoke with Matthew, I was offered an audition at the Berlin Staatsoper by René Jacobs for an opera by [Johann Adolf] Hasse. That was the second and last time I was hired on the spot.
It was the first time I heard a Baroque band, Concerto Köln. Our first orchestral rehearsal felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, when she lands in Oz from Kansas, opens the door, and it goes from black and white to color. It was exactly like that. It was just beautiful, rich and warm ... so many details in the sound, and colors. I could sing and try to imitate those colors, and they were going to try to imitate me, and I’d try to imitate their trills, which I couldn’t do then.
You couldn’t do trills?
No. Before the orchestral rehearsal, we had three weeks of rehearsals with René and just cembalo. It was the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to heaven. He has so much energy and focus, and I was so intent on the music and happy and desperate not to lose this chance that we worked for three hours nonstop. He’d always say, “Now, with the real trill!” and I didn’t have one.
Finally, after the Hasse opera, I was doing a performance of Semiramide with soprano Brenda Harris and she had the greatest trill. I asked her to teach me, and she gave me some exercises that I then took back to Miss Pinza. We worked on those for a month before the Farinelli recording, and I actually learned how to trill!
In your program with Philharmonia Baroque, you're singing some of the arias from the Farinelli album you recorded a decade ago. How have your voice and approach to the repertoire changed in the interim?
The Farinelli Project was completely orchestrated by René Jacobs. He always puts so much work into his projects that you agree to either do the repertoire together or not do it at all. I’ve respected that throughout the years. So it’s really interesting to go back to these after 10 years.
Initially Philharmonia invited me to do the Farinelli arias with Jacobs conducting. When René had to pull out because he had a conflict, and Nic McGegan said that he would take over, René said I could use the ornaments he wrote for the project, which is so kind of him. Then I offered some Vivaldi.
I haven't sung this repertoire in 10 years. It’s really nice to feel it all in the body again. The second time you sing it, muscle memory kicks in. It’s like riding a bicycle.
I think I’m putting more value into the words than I ever did back then. That’s something fundamental in singing — to really use the pronunciation, and color each word. If it you have a word like sospiro, which means to sigh, it’s so beautiful you can almost taste it.