He is considered one of the finest dramatic tenors nowadays, not only in the Wagner repertoire, but also for the most demanding roles: Verdi's Otello, Berlioz's Aeneas, Der Kaiser in Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten, Britten's Peter Grimes... At the age of 32, in 1988, he won the International Birgit Nilsson prize. Since then, his beautiful voice and his exquisite singing got him worl-wide acclaim. Ben Heppner has performed with the best conductors in the world and has established new standards in his repertoire. Last July, he was back into one of his lighter roles, Calaf, in several performances of Turandot at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. And Wagnermanía was there. (Lee esta entrevista en español)

Ben Heppner greets us at the door of his dressing room in the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. We introduce ourselves and he invites us to enter. In the dressing room, an upright piano, a fan (the temperature was very high during the whole week), an armchair and some stools. On a corner you can also see the boots he was wearing on stage, where he sang a superb Calaf (not withouth problems, as we will see) in a performance of Turandot. He sat on one of the stools, leaving the more comfortable seats for us. As we started our interview, I noticed that I was talking to an artist who had nothing to do with a divo: warm-hearted and friendly. At that moment, I couldn't help remembering a quote from Astrid Varnay's autobiography, when she was talking about her friendship with other dramatic sopranos: “I just like to think that big voices and big hearts go together”. That was certainly the case with Ben Heppner. In fact, he was so friendly that he made us feel as if we were good friends having a normal conversation (not at all an interview). And I am especially grateful to him for that. It is no wonder then, that a friendly conversation started talking about the weather.

Ben Heppner: Oh, it takes about half an hour, one hour almost, to stop the heat from coming off of you.

Germán Rodríguez: I can imagine. Here it is also hot.

BH: Yeah. Almost like Spain!

GR: I think none of us was missing Spain today. Because it was so hot here

BH: Yeah. I found yesterday and today warmer than the very high temperatures of earlier in the week, because it was more humid.

GR: Was that a problem for the performance?

BH: Well, a little bit, yeah. Today, Georgina [Lukács, who sang the role of Turandot] said it was affecting her a little bit. And I think it affected me as well. I had a huge problem, I don't know if you realized, but you wouldn't have seen it. But in the middle of the first act, when Ping, Pang and Pong were around me, somehow I got something in my eye. And it was really really hurting. So I finished the first act, and in the intermission, I pulled the contact lense out and threw it away. But it hurt like crazy, so we put lots of liquid in, but then what happens is, because I was crying, my nose also began to run, and then you know, when you cry, your voice is also affected.

GR: Yeah, choking.

BH: So I struggled a little bit in act two, and then it was ok for act three. And my eyes… it goes ok now. But then I'm blind. [laughs]

GR: Well, your assistant probably told you that we come on behalf of Wagnermanía.

BH: Yeah, Wagnermanía. I looked quickly just at the front page of the website…

GR: Can you read Spanish?

BH: You know, a little bit, because it makes a little sense to me, a little Italian, you can sort of figure it out…

GR: That's good. Did you like it?

BH:  Yes, yeah, looks good. Obviously, it's a labour of love, I would assume…

GR: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I wrote down a few questions I would like to ask you. First, I have to say that I felt thrilled today, because the first time I heard you singing on record, the first thing I heard about you was… “Nessun dorma”.

BH: Ah, yes, ok…

GR: So, after 13 years now, I can hear you live, “Nessun dorma” again, whole Turandot. What are the differences between that record you did for RCA? How did you develop this role of Calaf?

BH: Oh, Calaf is completely the light end of the singing spectrum that I have. It's probably the lightest of all my roles. So 13 years ago, it was much easier to sing “Nessun dorma” and some of the earlier pieces, but more difficult to sing from the Alfano ending on, “Principessa di morte”. I always found that to be more the challenge. And now, what I'm noticing is, that's easy! That's just like bread and butter for me. And some of the things that used to be a little bit easier, you know, like “Nessun dorma”, it's always like “Oh, boy, everybody's waiting for the high note”.

GR: Yeah [laughs]

BH: Your voice matures and ages. Of course, there's been a lot of Wagner under the bridge, as I'd say, so… your voice changes and matures, but I'm so happy I can do everything in the original key.

GR: Yeah, that's true. I also noticed that one of your “trademarks” was this huge crescendo in the high note. I noticed that both in the “Vincerò”, at the end of “Nessun dorma”, and also in the recording of Meistersinger, when you sing “Parnaß”, in that high A, you also did that fantastic crescendo. I seemed to notice you can still do it.

BH: [laughs] Oh, good that you noticed. I didn't think about it today. You give what you have and move on. Yeah, I remember when I did the recording of Turandot. They had two or three endings from me, good endings, but the choir somehow hadn't come together, so they said ‘ok, we're gonna do it again, but Ben, you don't need to sing the high note, it's ok, we got it in the bank, just relax.' But I did it anyway, and when I got to the high B, I thought, ‘hey, I'm going to take a risk' and I went into a crescendo, which is very hard to do at that moment, and it worked really well, so that's the ending they used.

GR: well, actually, I think they issued the three recordings….

BH: But it was always the same.

GR: No, I don't think so, because I have the three of them, one in a sampler disk, the other one in the Great Tenor Arias, and the other one in the full Turandot recording.

BH: But I think in the recording the voice is the same: it's the same vocal recording. When we finished, they said ‘Ok, we would like to take a concert ending', so they take the concert ending.

GR: I still think it's different, because I listened to all the nuances and even to the pronunciation

BH: You are more observer than I am [laughs]

GR: I listened so many times to the three of them that I can tell the differences. [laughs]

BH: Maybe, maybe

GR: Well, many people think of you just as a “Wagner tenor”, but you are also singing more roles in your repertoire, like Aeneas in Les Troyens, Otello, and at least on record (I don't know if you ever sang it live) Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos…

BH: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. I used to sing that very much when I was in my early career. Less often now. Quite frankly it's less interesting, because I have all these other great roles that I get to sing. Bacchus is hard, and you know, you don't really get that much notice for it, I suppose. But now I still do Turandot, which is fine for me. I do Idomeneo in September. I also will be doing Andrea Chenier, in the MET, in Spring. Finally I will do Lohengrin in Paris and I believe, in Vienna. But it's actually a lighter year, because Lohengrin is the heaviest of the year, as far as Wagner is concerned …

GR: But you are also doing the Wagner recital.

BH: Yes, I'm doing this on tour, in various places. So about my being a Wagner tenor, I spend 75% of my time doing Wagner and I think I always will. But I like to have a change to do something if it's obviously something of interest; to sing other repertoires is fun. I mean, Turandot had its difficulties but it's not very long. Calaf is…When you realize, you are finishing Act One, and Act Two has very little in it at all, and then Act Three is “Nessun Dorma”, a few little sentences, and then the “Principessa di morte” singing with Turandot. So it's a shorter role and that's a kind of fun to do as well.

GR: Did you plan to add still more Italian roles to your repertoire?

BH: Well, at this point, I don't have any offer. If people gave me offers, then I certainly would consider it. At this moment, I don't have… Andrea Chenier I did in 1996 and I'll do it again ten years later now, in Spring 2007. The Otello, I don't have any more at the moment, but I'm sure that will come. So I've got lots of things and as you know, the Siegfried comes in in two years.

GR: But I thought of maybe the more dramatic tenors like Cavaradossi, Canio or maybe Radamés in Aida…

BH: Yeah, at this point I don't have any offer for them, but it's certainly something I would consider. I don't want to feel completely closed in with the Wagner repertoire. And really, I only do three productions a year. This year's been a little bit more, but normally I only do three operas in a year. And I like it that way, because I like to do concerts with orchestra and then recitals with piano.

GR: Did you ever sing Der Kaiser in Die Frau ohne Schatten?

BH: I did, I recorded it.

GR: I know.

BH: I recorded it, but then I actually didn't sing those performances when they recorded it. I did it separately because I was sick during those time periods. And then I did it only once, in Vienna, I don't know exactly how long ago… six or seven years, maybe? Anyway, I did it with Sinopoli conducting, Deborah Voigt, most of the same cast, Gaby Schnaut, Falk Struckmann…doing the main leads.

GR: Do you enjoy singing Richard Strauss?

BH: Yes, I'd be glad to, doing Wagner, of course, it's something I would still do, if I had the right opportunity.  They don't offer it to me very often. But I certainly would take it, I think. And Die Frau ohne Schatten… I've been offered Apolo in Daphne, it didn't work out, because I didn't have the time for it. That's a role that gives you… nightmares, I think. [laughs] Because I saw it, I saw a performance of it in New York, at the City Opera. I think I can sing it, but it's ungrateful, you know, you work very hard. If you sing badly, everybody notices, but if you sing really well, it's not such a big deal…

GR: You know, they say that Straus hated tenors and that's why he wrote their parts…[laughs]

BH: Yes, yes, that's right… [laughs] Yeah, but I do enjoy it. Do you have the Strauss recording of mine?

GR: Of Die Frau ohne Schatten?

BH: No, it's a Strauss disc with the Toronto Symphony, and it has…

GR: Yeah, yeah, I got it because I wanted your version of “Di rigori armato”.

BH: Ah, yes, yes, yeah. So, well, I do it, but there's not that much Strauss that comes my way.

GR: Well, I hope more Strauss will be coming.

BH: Thank you.

GR: I'd like to talk about your concert singer side. Especially with works like Mahler's Eighth, or Das Lied von der Erde, or the Gurrelieder… I also have your recording of Beethoven's Ninth.

BH: Yeah, that was a long time ago, in Salzburg. I loved doing those three you named, particularly the Gurrelieder is one of my all-time favourites, I just love that piece. When I first heard, I was asked, would I look at it and say if I would do it, so I bought the score and I bought the CD, and I put it on, and within 3 pages I was hooked and I knew that I had to sing it, that it was written for me, that I was meant to sing that role. Lied von der Erde is… you know, I've done… you know, that's been… that's put my kids through school, if you know what I mean, it's paid for the university for my children. I've done a lot of Lied von der Erde.

GR: You've done two recordings at least: Gary Bertini…

BH: Yeah, that was from Japan…

GR: … and Lorin Maazel.

BH: …and Lorin Maazel, I have those two. And so, I'm lucky to get one, let alone two. I do it very frequently, and no performance is out of place here. And Mahler's Eighth I love as well. I always say: if the conductor would let me sing the baritone aria as well as the tenor aria [laughs], maybe they could hire somebody else to sing the first part, because the first part is really very difficult… and then the second part I just adore that music. Really, it's the kind of music that gets me inspired.

GR: I have your recording with Riccardo Chailly and I find it fantastic.

BH: I've also done it with Colin Davis as well.

GR: Ah, yes, but that one I don't have… yet. I wanted to ask you about Beethoven's Ninth, because when I first heard your recording with Abbado, I said: “What's this?”, it sounded a bit awkward to me, but then I got the score and then I realized: “He's singing all the silences, all the rests”, you did it quite…

BH: [he starts singing exactly the part I was referring to, marking the beat with finger snaps and doing all the rests] “Froh, Froh, wie seine Sonnen…” Yeah, Beethoven Ninth is lovely and I don't really sing it anymore. If a major conductor with a recording came up, then I'd say: “Ok, I'll do it”. But the truth is, it's very difficult…

GR: Many singers say it's ungrateful.

BH: It's ungrateful. You know, if I sing it –I'm gonna be very honest with you– if I sing it, I'm gonna make them pay me a lot of money. And quite frankly, I don't think it's worth their while to have me do it. Because it's not something that it's easy to do, it's not something that I do particularly better than other tenors, so I say: “Give it to a younger tenor who can do it” [laughs]

GR: [laughs] Can we publish this? Can I write it?

BH: Oh, sure! I said, I passed on Beethoven's Ninth now. But if it ever came up with a major conductor a recording, yeah I'd do it. But I don't think that it's something that I bring anything special to, in all honesty. I think I have other pieces that I think I have something special to give.

GR: Studying the score you realize that all the parts are really difficult, it's more like choral music…

BH: I recently did the Missa Solemnis, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, and it's difficult enough to sing, but for some reason, the coordination is like if you are out of your concentration for just a brief moment, you get out. And the way James Levine sort of explains it, he said this music is very much from the interior of somebody's mind. Beethoven no way could even hear this, because he was deaf by this point. And so everything is very, very dense, and compacted in there, so your line now fits in together with all these other things in the orchestra, it's very compacted together. And it makes it a rather difficult piece to do. Because the tendency is to just slip for a second and then you go wrong.

GR: Well, let's go into Wagner. I told some friends that we were going to interview you and the first question which came to their minds was: “Why didn't he sing in Bayreuth yet?”

BH: Well, they did ask me, and it was maybe ten years ago, I think it was for the '99 production. They wanted almost 3 months, and they wanted you several years in a role. So I said, “No, I don't have that time”. I limit how much time I'm away from my home, from my family. And I didn't want to give that much time to it, at that point; it would be a little bit easier now. But having said ‘no' once, they don't ask you again.

GR: Really?

BH: Yeah.

GR: You were banned?

BH: [rejecting that word] Well, I won't say “banned”, but they tend not to ask you again, because you obviously have an independent spirit, so… [laughs]

GR: I know that Bayreuth requires a lot of dedication. Exclusively.

BH: Yeah, and I didn't have that kind of time to give to it. So I said, just honestly, no, maybe later, and they haven't come back and asked a second time. And I think that's probably the way they operate. Because if they asked me if I could do it, and I would be able to do it, yeah, I would do it, for sure.

GR: Could we ask which role were you asked to sing?

BH: Lohengrin.

GR: Oh, yes… for the 99… oh, it's a pity, I would have seen you.

BH: In the 99, was it new?

GR: Yeah.

BH: Because sometimes I mix up the years.

GR: That year I was there, for Lohengrin. It would have been great to have seen you. Well, what is your future in the Wagner roles? I read a few years ago in your website that you still didn't want to go into Siegfried, now you're into Siegfried…

BH: Yeah

GR: So it's… Tannhäuser left.

BH: Right. There's a Siegfried  and then the following year I'll do a Götterdämmerung. And there was an offer for Tannhäuser that didn't work out, the house that offered it to me had to change the plans. It would have been two years from now. So that's coming. But I will be doing some of the Ring for a while. I do it at Aix-en-Provence. And then there are some pending offers of doing the Ring in its entirety that are coming.

GR: But you will be doing only Siegfried, not Siegmund.

BH: Not yet, yeah, yeah. It'd probably fit me fine, because now I've done Parsifal. The reason why I haven't sung Siegmund yet or Parsifal until just May was that they're low for me. They are still quite low. So I thought it would be better to concentrate on my high voice and then there will be plenty of time to sing Siegmund in, you know, say starting in five or six years.

GR: Did you already study Tannhäuser?

BH: No. I sang the small role of Walther in Tannhäuser… how long ago? Almost 18 years. I remember then watching the Tannhäuser struggling through the first two acts, and then he always turned in –it was the late Richard Cassilly– he always turned in the most magnificient Romerzählung. You know, he struggled in act two a little bit but his act three was just fantastic. So I haven't really started to look at Tannhäuser in a significant way. If someone offers it to me, it will be in three or four years, so I have lots of time to look at it.

GR: I always thought that, however difficult or hard to sing both Siegfried and Tristan are, I find Tannhäuser even more difficult because of the differences between each act.

BH: Yes, that could be. I can't... you know, when people say, “Which is the most difficult role?”, “I don't know”. The most difficult role that I sing is Tristan, right now. But I haven't done Siegfried, so I may change my mind when I get to Siegfried. Or when I get to Tannhäuser. There is a story I tell: when I was rehearsing Tristan in a theatre in 1998, someone said: “Tristan must be the most difficult role for the tenor, don't you think?”. And I said: “No. No, it isn't”. And he said: “Oh, what could it be? Siegfried? Otello? Tannhäuser? What could it be?”. And I said: “It's the role of Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville. Because as God is my witness I cannot sing it, [laughs] so it must be the most difficult role”.

[general laughs]

BH: The conductor thought it was very funny, because you know, for me it's impossible, but for other people, they do it easily. So I will find out which one is more difficult when I get there.

GR: Ok. Did you have any special singer, that you followed his path?

BH: Well, there are those who are sort of my favourites. Maybe that's the easiest way. I wouldn't say there's any sort of… example. But most of the singers I listen to, in terms of tenors, are lyric. When I was at the University, I started listening to Wunderlich first. A few weeks later I started listening to Jussi Bjorling. And they still remain my favourites. And I think in all honesty, anybody who is my age or younger, owes a great gratitude to Luciano and to Plácido, because their recording careers were so big, and you know, Luciano had this incredible technique with his most glorious singing, and I remember hearing the record “The King of the High C's” and the first time I heard through the The daughter of the regiment aria, I was so excited I couldn't even sit still, I was pacing back and forth, and I was waiting for it to finish, because I wanted to go practice, because I was so inspired by it. Also anybody who is my age or younger will look at the incredible career of Plácido Domingo: he has a great voice, but he has these other sort of intangibles that just are very… musicianship is superb, he has great color, he's a very fine actor, and seems to be able to do whatever he puts his mind to. So those are kind of my heroes, in that sense. And another one, also Spanish tenor, interestingly, is somebody whose career I highly, highly respected: it was Alfredo Kraus. He sang exactly what suited him and he sang it fantastically well for years. I mean, I saw him at the Met, probably not long before… maybe a couple of years before he died, and I can't remember the role, I saw him at the cafeteria, I was at rehearsals, and he was fantastic, and I loved the fact that he didn't seem to bothered by the fact that… other tenors might be more… better known… and he just knew what he was about, and from the distance he seemed to have a real solid knowledge of who he was…

GR: I know, I followed his career and I was amazed to see him singing Alfredo in La Traviata, singing a high C, and he was…

BH: And he was probably sixty.

GR: Sixty-eight.

BH: Mio dio!! [laughs]

GR: It's amazing that he had been able to sing high C, but he could do it.

BH: He was amazing. But I think not so much because of his choice of repertoire, but because he was true to himself. And that's why I feel he was a great example.

GR: You know, he never changed his repertoire. He kept doing exactly the same since he was 28 till he died.

BH: And he knew what suited him and what worked.

GR: Well, what are your future recording plans? Do you have more Wagner to record?

BH: There's nothing… We're sort of working on a new disk, but we don't have any repertoire to talk about yet. So it remains to be seen. We're still talking about possibilities. And there's no operas. Operas are very rare to get recorded these days, and if they are recorded, probably they are going to be live performances.

GR: On DVD?

BH: Yeah, on DVD. Most likely. Because the cost for studio production just doesn't justify the cost for the return of your investment.

GR: Well, then… will we never have Tristan with Ben Heppner on CD?

BH: Well… I hope you do, I hope you do. [laughs] Isn't there that one from the Met?

GR: Yeah, but on DVD.

BH: Yeah, a DVD. Well, [laughs] I haven't seen it, so I don't know…

GR: Yeah, but that's the only one…

BH: Yeah, it's the only one.

GR: Well, I remember back in 2002, there was a rumour saying that there would be an all-star recording of Meistersinger, with you singing Walther, Christian Thielemann conducting, Bryn Terfel…

BH: Right. I don't know what happened. It just disappeared.

GR: I have to say that that was the saddest day of my life, because I was looking forward to it.

BH: Yeah. I was looking forward to doing it. It fell away, I don't know how much in advance. I don't know the reasons, whether it was a cost issue or there were other reasons involved.

GR: I remember I talked to Mr. Thielemann in Bayreuth and asked him also, and he made a face like “this is not going to work”.

BH: So maybe he knows more than I do then. [laughs] Keep asking him.

GR: Yeah, if I run into him, I will. [laughs] Well, do you have any favourite Wagner part for you?

BH: Well, I think my favourite part has always been Walther von Stolzing. It's something that I came to very early and I think I related to the character, because I came to the operatic career kind of late. I won the Met competition when I was 32, that was in the '88, so a year later I sang Stolzing for the first time in the entire ‘89. There was something about the character, he was sort of new, unschooled, unknown, but there was a German talent in there. And so I always kind of related to that character, and I LOVE that music. I probably will sing it less. I sort of said that I may not do it anymore. I'm getting embarrassed that the Eva is now the age of my daughter. [general laughter] So you feel like her father, not like her lover. But hey, if Alfredo can sing Traviata at the age of 68… he would probably be the father of the person singing Germont…

GR: Yeah, I remember that it was quite funny to see him saying: “Padre mio!” to a young guy.

BH: I saw a production of Traviata in Stockholm back years and years ago, and whoever was supposed to sing Violetta was sick, so they brought in somebody who had recently retired and it was one of her major roles, and then the tenor was very young and looked even younger than he actually was. It was so funny, because this man looked 24 and she looked her age. [general laughter]

After this, Ben Heppner signed some booklets for us and we took some pictures with him. We thanked him and then he bid us farewell with a Spanish “Adiós” to each one of us.