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The two tenors: Ben Heppner and Ernst Haefliger are voices above the crowd in 'Gurrelieder'
Friday, September 17, 1999 By Robert Croan, Post-Gazette Music Critic
Gurrelieder," Schoenberg's gigantic monument to 19th-century Romanticism, calls for an expensive lineup of first-rate soloists. But it's a quirky lineup, as well. Not only is there a stereotypical Wagnerian couple (Heldentenor and dramatic soprano), a mezzo-soprano messenger and secondary roles for tenor and baritone, but also a "Speaker" who does not exactly speak in the traditional way, but declaims in Sprechstimme -- a new kind of recitation invented by Schoenberg for one particular section of this work. In this mixture of speech and song, the words are declaimed in precisely defined rhythms, but on pitches that are approximated rather than precisely sung.
It has become traditional that this Sprechstimme role be performed by an esteemed older singer. In the present performances that artist will be retired Swiss tenor, Ernst Haefliger, 80 -- a stalwart of the LP era, whose recordings of the Mozart opera, mostly conducted by the late Ferenc Fricsay, are classics of their kind still unmatched by anything produced in the era of CDs.
The upcoming performances will showcase the venerated Haefliger alongside a top tenor of the present generation -- Canadian Ben Heppner, 43, whose performances of Tristan (in Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde") have been among the hottest classical music tickets of the last two seasons.
I nearly let Ernst Haefliger walk by me in the lobby of the Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers, because he looked and walked like a much younger man than 80. When we did make contact, he talked about arriving the preceding evening from Japan, where he had just completed a rigorous two-week stint at the Kusatsu Academy, where he has been teaching every summer for the past 17 years.
That included a recital of Poulenc and Ravel songs as well. "The Japanese like the elderly," Haefliger explains. It also happens that his summer schedule included the music festivals in Tanglewood (Massachusetts) and Marlboro (Vermont).
Born in the Swiss resort of Davos -- the setting of Thomas Mann's novel, "The Magic Mountain" and a town 1,500 meters above sea level -- the tenor admits "you have to get used to the altitude to sing there." He says he's used to it, and that he still lives there part of the year, dividing his time between Davos and a new apartment he bought close to Vienna.
He attributes his vocal longevity to careful choice of repertory and a solid technique imparted to him by older tenor Julius Patzak (1898-1974), "who was like a father to me."
Haefliger also points out that he limited his operatic repertory to Mozart and the lighter Italian roles. "I recorded Florestan [in Beethoven's "Fidelio"] but never sang it on stage. I started out with the Evangelist in Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion,' when I was 19. Much later, I sang Mahler's 'Song of the Earth' in concerts -- with [conductors] Otto Klemperer, George Szell, Eugen Jochum. You don't sing Tristan when you don't have the voice for it. You have to feel what is good for you."
He calls the Speaker role in "Gurrelieder" "a very funny part. He tells a story about the wind, which blows away every dream. All the flowers have to die, everything is prepared to go away. It's funny but it may have the deepest meaning in the entire work."
"I heard from a friend of Schoenberg," the singer goes on, "that Schoenberg felt the Sprechstimme passages in his works were the most expressive parts. He was searching for the most expressive musical language, which he found in the atonal style by the time he had completed the 'Gurrelieder.' "
Haefliger describes as a high point of his seven-decade career a performance of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" in which the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau" was the Speaker (in this opera, a principal singing role). "It was a special moment of togetherness," the tenor says. "And Fischer-Dieskau must have thought so, too. He wrote to me on my 80th birthday and reminded me of it."
Haefliger's two sons are poised to continue the family's musical tradition. Andreas, the younger, is an established concert pianist, while Michael -- who will visit Pittsburgh for his father's performance -- was Intendant of the Lucerne Festival, where the Pittsburgh Symphony enjoyed a big success last month.
"Ben Heppner will be the best Tristan," Haefliger says, when the younger tenor's name comes up in conversation.
In person, Heppner, 43, eschews the stereotypical trappings of an opera singer. "I'm a singer who sings opera," he says, then adds, joking about his size, "although I look enough like an opera singer to play the part."
First and foremost, he loves to sing, and it's obvious throughout our conversation. "You have to love singing to find the import of the words," Heppner says. "From my earliest memories," he adds, "singing was part of our household. My mum's side of the family provided the musical genes."
This writer happened to be a judge on the Metropolitan Opera District Auditions in Cleveland in 1987, when Heppner won and went on the score in the finals, thereby launching his career.
"That was a turning point," Heppner recalls. "The day after the final competition, I was standing in my driveway, talking to neighbors, when the phone rang. 'It's the Met,' I heard. I used to make a joke that if the Met calls, tell them I'm busy. This time, they were telling me that in addition to being a finalist, I'd got the Birgit Nilsson Prize. At that point I knew I had made it."
He had made it, indeed, but the "watershed" for Heppner came with his first Tristan -- a 1997 Seattle Opera production that also featured superstar soprano Jane Eaglen as Isolde.
"There's a mountain of mythology surrounding the role of Tristan. They say it's a tenor killer, but when I look at any given role, I always try to find a lyric phrase, the tune. I work from the lighter side of a phrase, even in 'heavy' music. Still, it's true: I make my living on the most difficult things.
"What I wasn't quite so much prepared for was the enormous media attention that came with it. It quickly became obvious to me that this was a Ground Zero event in the classical music world. And I knew it had gone well because I felt that I had sung better at the end of the evening than when I started."
Tickets for his Tristans at the Metropolitan Opera this season -- opening Nov. 22 -- are already among the scarcest items in New York.
When it comes to the "Gurrelieder," Heppner calls it "one of those pieces that I would cross continents for. It's so lush and romantic, Schoenberg takes Romanticism to the end of what he could do with it. The very first time I heard it, I bought a recording, took out the score. When I put on the recording, I became so excited I couldn't sit down."
Success hasn't spoiled Ben Heppner. He still lives in Toronto with his wife, Karen -- who plays the piano -- and their three children, the oldest of whom just left home to attend Wheaton College, near Chicago.
"I never lived in New York," Heppner explains. "I consider that to be one of my strengths. I don't know how I would have survived the crucible of studying in New York."
He cites his debut at Italy's prestigious La Scala Opera, as Walther in Wagner's "Die Meistersinger," in 1990. He says he "was too naïve to be nervous about it," but also admits there had been some low points along the road to success "in those 10 years previous to winning the Met auditions. I'd get up Monday morning and scan the help wanted ads. I'd ask myself what else could I do to fulfill the musical longings in my heart?
"I taught, I directed music in churches, my wife taught piano at home. You know, if you're a singer you're always paying off the money you've already spent."
Now, he says -- with Tristan quickly becoming his signature role -- " 'Meistersinger' has become my party piece!"
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Speaking with the 'Speaker'