Two

ON THE ROLE OF AGENTS
Edelmann also has strong opinions about agents. “I have several agents,” he says. ”I’m not connected with one specific agency. That’s a special European thing. I think that in the United States, singers have to sign with one agency, which doesn’t exist in Europe. You can do it, but you don’t have to. I decided to work with a few, especially German and Austrian agencies. They work for me worldwide. Each agency has different contacts: One works more with theaters in Italy, one with those in Germany, and another, with South America. When you sign with one [agency], you actually close doors, which is not very smart, I think.”

As to the differences between European and American agencies, Edelmann believes that the American agencies might be more efficient. “My experiences with European agents are probably not the same as the experiences Americans have with American agents,” he explains. “The European agents get called by theaters to fill a special part. The agents then call several singers and say, ‘Do you have time? Do you have time?’ And then the one who has time and is accepted by the theater [management] gets the job. I think that in America they do things differently. I think that they [the agents] call [the theater directors] and say, ‘Do you have work for my singer?’ They don’t do that so much in Europe; so probably, the American way is more efficient.”

ON MODERNIZING OPERA
As for his opinion on the current trend to update and modernize operatic productions, he discloses: “I was in one production of ‘Der Freischütz’ that was a nightmare. It was a weird production without taste, without respect for the music and story. I just lost the mood to sing as soon as I came onstage. I’m not very conservative, but I like naturalism. I don’t believe you attract younger audiences by doing less naturalistic productions. I think you need directors who have a sense for dramatic effect. Opera lives from that, and not just from this minimalism and intellectual stuff. I think the audience shouldn’t just sit in the theater and have to think about what the director meant. I think the best effect is when you sit in a theater and you forget about the theater and just dive into the story, like at a good movie. You forget about time, and then after the movie is over, you say, ‘Oh, I was sitting in the cinema,’ because you were involved in the story. I think that’s how it should be with opera, too -- when you just lose the control. As long as the audience sits there and says, ‘Oh, he meant this; oh, that’s what this symbol meant’ -- I think that is not the goal of opera. It shouldn’t be.”

Edelmann says that he tries to portray his characters realistically. “I like the comic buffo parts very much,” he says. “But I like completely different roles as well, like Count Almaviva in ‘Le Nozze di Figaro’ and Eugene Onegin. The Count is a totally different type of character -- arrogant and powerful. With him, I can show a different part of my personality.”

Even how a singer projects his or her voice out into the theater varies. “I sing lighter in a big house,” Edelmann explains. “In smaller houses I don’t hear my voice as well, so I sometimes push.” In many instances, whether or not an orchestra drowns out a singer’s voice depends on the conductor, he says. “The development of the profession is sad because I cannot compare it to the times of my father. As a singer you had totally different possibilities and much more support from the conductors then. You could work much more with them. Today they come so late that you are just happy to be together. It’s not like working together like my father did it with Karajan -- actually studying the parts with the conductor, which is a totally different thing when you are standing onstage and the conductor really knows you, really knows how you sing and notices also when you have problems and is there to support you. That is very rare today; of course, it happens, but it is very rare. Nowadays, the sound of the orchestra is often much more important to the conductors than supporting the singers. The orchestra should accompany the voice, not the other way. The Leoncavallo orchestra is very strong, so you need a conductor who really knows the music perfectly and really reduces the volume. In ‘Pagliacci,’ all the strings are playing the melody with the singers, so you can be covered by the orchestra all the time, which is not possible, for example, with Tchaikovsky. With Tchaikovsky, the singer has the melody, and the orchestra is just the carpet under it. It’s a totally different orchestration. And with Tchaikovsky, you have much less of a problem with loud orchestras than with the verismo of Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Puccini. You need really good maestri.”

PHILOSOPHICAL ABOUT HIS FUTURE
Edelmann is very optimistic about the future. His fiancée, Siphiwe McKenzie, will move to Vienna this summer when both have more time. She has had a fixed contract with the Stadttheater Nürnberg since the year 2000, but will only freelance next season. Edelmann said (in February) that he planned to join her in Parma, Italy for her stint as Papagena at the Teatro Regio di Parma. And after their dual engagement in San Diego, she will join him in Tokyo, where he is set to reprise his role as Dr. Falke, with a cast that includes Wolfgang Brendel, Nancy Gustafson and Sergei Leiferkus.

“Now we try to get contracts together,” Edelmann says. “When not [possible], each of us supports the other. I believe that in a relationship, you should try to be together as much as possible. In this profession, you are often apart, so when it is possible to be together and live life together, we want to do that; and with singers, you can only do that when you are both freelancing.”

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY
According to Edelmann, he and his fiancée are very atypical singers. He says that his singing colleagues usually only talk about opera, singing and their careers. “But we have some friends that don’t have any idea about opera, and we never talk about it,” he says. “We live a normal life. We go to pop concerts and listen to pop music as well as classical. We are not typical serious opera singers. So often when you meet opera singers and you ask them how they are, they tell you about their calendar or schedule, and I find that really ridiculous. I always say then, ‘I ask you how you are, not where you sing.’ It’s inbred in our society today that when you work and earn a lot of money, you are successful and somehow happy. I haven’t seen that with a lot of singers. They are often successful, but a lot of them have no home and no family because they invest everything in the career. I learned from my dad that a family and a home are very important, because one day, the career is over, and then what do you do? You listen to your records? Then nothing is left. So I think you cannot invest everything in your career. You have to live your life, too. I think a good balance between professional work, which I love, and family is important. Some weeks you should forget that you are a singer and just be a person and enjoy life.”

But how do two opera singers live together under one roof? Do they need separate rooms at opposite ends of the house to work on their roles? Not according to Edelmann, who has turned part of his parents’ Vienna Woods home into a separate apartment, where he plans to live with his new bride. “I prefer to study at home, she doesn’t,” he says. “She goes to the theater or to the coach and sings there, and she doesn’t sing at home. Some days the coach comes to me, or I go to the coach or listen to records. She sings most of the time in the theater because she wants to be a private person at home.”

Edelmann’s brother and sister live near him in Vienna, but in the city. His brother Peter, 43, is also a baritone, but his voice is lower and more dramatic, Edelmann says. “My voice is ideal for Mozart, Rossini and Donizetti.” Besides Papageno, roles in his repertoire include: Figaro in Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” Guglielmo in Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte,” Dr. Malatesta in Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale,” Valentin in Gounod’s “Faust,” and the list goes on. He has performed in numerous concerts and Lieder recitals in theaters including the Wiener Konzerthaus and Musikverein, the Salzburger Festspielhaus, and venues in the United States, sometimes double billing with his brother. Most recently, he sang Mozart and Salieri under the baton of Maestro Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Musikverein.

As for his performance as Papageno with the San Diego Opera, he concludes: “It [San Diego Opera] is a wonderful place with wonderful people. Of course, we work, but it’s nearly like being on a holiday.”