Barbara Daniels Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Soprano Barbara Daniels

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Barbara Daniels (born May 7, 1946) is an American operatic soprano.

Born in Newark, Ohio, Daniels studied music at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music. Among her roles there was Diana in the American premiere of Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto in April 1972. Her professional debut came the following year with West Palm Beach Opera, where she sang Susanna in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. From 1974 until 1976 she was on the roster of the Tyrolean State Theatre, singing such roles as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte and the title role of Verdi's La traviata. From 1976 to 1978 she was a member of the Staatstheater Kassel, where her repertory grew to incorporate Liù in Puccini's Turandot, the title role in Massenet's Manon, and Zdenka in Arabella by Richard Strauss. She also participated in performances of Unter dem Milchwald by Walter Steffens. In 1978 she moved to the Cologne Opera, where she would remain until 1982. There she sang the title role in Flotow's Martha, Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen, Musetta in Puccini's La bohème, and Alice Ford in Verdi's Falstaff. It was during this time that she made debuts at the Royal Opera House (1978, as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss) and San Francisco Opera (1980, as Zdenka). Her Metropolitan Opera debut, as Musetta, followed in 1983, where she would go on to perform 119 times.

In earlier years, Daniels possessed a lyric voice, and her repertory encompassed such parts as Adèle in Rossini's Le comte Ory, the title roles in Handel's Agrippina and Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Mimì in La bohème, the title role in Smetana's The Bartered Bride, and Marguerite in Gounod's Faust. Later in her career her voice became more powerful and dramatic. In 1991 she performed Minnie in Puccini's La fanciulla del West at the Metropolitan Opera, and she added the title roles in Puccini's Tosca and Manon Lescaut, and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss to her repertoire. She continued her career into the 1990s with Nedda in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Senta in Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer. She has also worked as a voice teacher, living in Innsbruck.

Soprano Barbara Daniels appeared several times with Lyric Opera of Chicago. A complete list is in the box at the bottom of this webpage. In September of 1986, she took time from her busy schedule to sit down with me for an interview. She was warm and gracious, and there was much laughter interspersed with the conversation.

Portions of the chat were used a couple of times on WNIB, Classical 97, and now I am pleased to present the entire conversation. As usual, names which are links refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.

Since she had devoted most of her career to appearances in Europe, that is where we began . . . . .

Bruce Duffie: Let’s talk about being an American singer in Europe. When did you first decide to go to abroad for a career?

Barbara Daniels: I was the product of a very new apprentice program in Cincinnati, and a graduate of Cincinnati University. I developed in the young artist apprentice program at the Cincinnati Opera. They gave me my very first start, but I realized it was going to take more than that. I had been very impressed as a student by Europe, and by what I had seen, and I realized there was something over there that I wanted... if nothing else to brush elbows with another culture. So I just decided to go, and I took my soprano arias and went. That was in 1973, and I auditioned hard and long for about two months. I had many auditions, many promiseful auditions, and actually the job that I landed was the perfect one for me. I was a beginning soprano, having been a mezzo soprano for ten years. I remember conductor Thomas Schippers saying, “My God, dear! Are you sure you want to do this? It could be a drastic mistake!” Actually, being a soprano was the real thing. So, I took my soprano arias fresh off the press, never having sung one of the roles, and went over and got a job in Innsbruck. I sang Fiordiligi in Così Fan Tutte thirty times, fifteen of which I would never forget, and fifteen were the building blocks of a new career as a soprano. They reengaged me for the following season as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, and Violetta in La Traviata, and these three roles are, to this day, some of the best roles that I sing. I sing them all the time. They were received under great loving care. It was a small theater of just one thousand seats, with an excellent orchestra, a lot of Slavs in the string sections, a lot of heart and soul. They make good music.

BD: Were Così and Traviata in Italian or German?

Daniels: German, as was Die Fledermaus of course. Practically all of it I didn’t understand. You can translate, and you can say that you understand, but until you speak the language, you really don’t. I remember learning miles of dialogue, and not understanding why they were laughing. They weren’t laughing at my pronunciation, which was rather quite good (as they told me)! It just was clear to them that I didn’t know that I had just made a joke, and, of course, I didn’t understand any of their jokes. But I learned German in that year, and from there I went on to Kassel. I was under very good tutelage of James Lockhart, who was Margaret Price’s mentor for years, and a wonderful conductor. He was the General Music Director there, and we did wonderful things.

James Lockhart was born on October 16, 1930, in Edinburgh and studied at the Royal College of Music. He worked as a répétiteur (singing coach) at the Städtische Bühnen Münster, Germany from 1955 to 1956. He was music director at Welsh National Opera from 1968 to 1972, and at the opera of the Staatstheater Kassel from 1972 to 1978 — the first British born person to hold that position with a German opera. He conducted a rare German outing for The Yeomen of the Guard in Kassel in October 1972. He was the Royal College of Music’s director of opera from 1986 to 1992.

I picked up eight roles in two seasons, including Marguerite in Faust, Nedda in Pagliacci, The Merry Widow, and La Traviata in Italian. That was very good because he was a language specialist, and had helped all the young budding divas when he was at Covent Garden. From Kassel I went to Cologne under Sir John Pritchard. The development was perfect for me, and I felt I was in good hands. So I did the right thing. There are other Americans who begin their years here and then go there later, but it seems to be more and more an unavoidable step from what I’ve seen and heard. At one point or other, it’s good to make a break and go there, just for your own enrichment if nothing else.

BD:   You’ve sung some operas in both German and Italian. Do roles work well in translation? [Note that her two recordings of La Bohème demonstrate this. The one shown below-right is in German, and the one shown below-left is in the original Italian. Vis-à-vis the German version, see my interviews with Francisco Araiza, and Jan-Hendrik Rootering.]

Daniels: The Mozart operas work in any language because of their nature. Even something as heavy as Don Giovanni can work in English, and it can work in German. La Traviata is something else. I was very grateful for being able to be understood, and to realize that an audience was hanging on every word of the second act, not just Germont’s aria, or the next big tune. I had studied the first act aria and much of the second act in Italian in college, but to learn the whole role in Italian and work at it in Italian took a hundred pounds off my throat. The German language is difficult to sing if it’s an Italian phrase that was written by an Italian for his own language. Yes, some things are easily translatable, and easily singable, but singing the Italian repertoire in German is very difficult, except things like Don Pasquale perhaps, or The Elixir of Love.

BD:   Do you work harder at your diction when you know that everyone will understand every word?

Daniels: Yes!

BD:   [With a wink] Does that mean you’re otherwise sloppy with your diction?
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Daniels: [Laughs] No! You can be very good at all diction, and I think Americans are especially conscientious. We’re well-trained, but the minute you start thinking in another language, and you can speak it, your diction transcends another barrier. You start making other sounds, and speaking through the language. You start singing it another way.

BD:   Here in Chicago, you’re singing in both Italian and German with supertitles. Do you have any feeling for them yet?

Daniels: There are so many mixed feelings about that, but I dropped all of my negative feelings last summer when I was involved in a production of Faust in Cincinnati, where they have been using surtitles for a couple of years. Faust can be a long evening, and French is a language that not many people speak fluently, or understand what’s going on. They have the giggles because Méphistophélès is comical in his own way. The Devil he is, but he has a heck of a lot of funny stuff to sing.

BD:   He’s hideously funny.

Daniels: Then, you can bring the whole audience with you if people understood what poor Marguerite was talking about, yammering away in the second act about her brother, and her mother, and who died, and who went to war. It was a family evening, and you were thankful for the surtitles. That was at Covent Garden where they have surtitles. I was also doing Alice Ford in Falstaff, who’s basically considered a real party-pooper the whole night. She’s running around planning nothing but her husband’s demise, and Sir John’s demise, and suddenly she became someone that the audience could sympathize with, because they knew what the lady was saying! There are some people who are very highbrow, and who think surtitles are not acceptable in a major opera house, but I don’t know. For instance, when we do Die Fledermaus at the Met, where we are singing in German and speaking in English, are they going to understand it in that barn? I don’t know.

BD:   Which bring up the question as to whether opera is art or entertainment.

Daniels: Opera was composed in many cases for the masses, and for their enjoyment as theater entertainment.

BD:   Then where does the art come into it?

Daniels: I think for the talents of the composer through the brilliance and the classical timelessness of the text perhaps, and the timelessness of the music, and the artist perceptions that you have for that music. Some people consider The Magic Flute as a children’s piece. I don’t, but many never come to that conclusion if they haven’t gone somewhere where it’s considered adult entertainment, as is Hansel and Gretel.

BD:   Those works are for children of all ages!

Daniels: It’s in the eye and ear of the beholder. It can be great art, but at the same time it’s got to be entertainment if it’s operatic.

* * * * *

BD:   We’ve talked about several roles. How do you decide which roles you will sing, and which roles you will not sing?

Daniels: It depends on where, and when, and with whom. If it’s a role I feel is bordering more on the dramatic side of my repertoire, I will invariably choose a smaller house to try it, and work it into my body and into my voice. Then, perhaps, I will go on and sing it in a larger house a little bit later. The conclusion about a role is if you can sing it in a larger auditorium and make it work for you. There are some roles that you don’t sing in Chicago [3600 seats] that you do sing in Cologne [1300 seats].

BD:   Do you like singing in big houses?

Daniels: Yes! I like big houses!

BD:   Better than small ones?

Daniels: For certain operas, yes. There is the more bombastic opera repertoire that needs space. Verdi is exciting in a 2,500-seat auditorium or bigger, and Puccini definitely. In smaller houses, it’s like crashing a cymbal in a small room. The acoustics in small theaters is often unable to sort all of that out, so you put the voice under more strain. But you are visually more accessible to the audience. They have a better time understanding you because they can see you. It’s like lip-reading, seeing your facial expressions. In a large house, such as here in Chicago, you have the feeling that your voice is the front-runner. What comes behind that is your personality, and what maybe the first ten rows see of you is secondary.

BD:   Then let me ask the ‘Capriccio’ question. In opera, which is more important, the music or the words?

Daniels: [Laughs] Goodness gracious! Hofmannsthal would be ashamed of himself because his text is so great! In many German operas, the text is very essential to the music. They go hand-in-hand. I don’t want to say that’s not that way in Italian opera, because it is just as much, but on another scale. It’s harder to divorce the German literature from its music. It’s very difficult to get high rating in a German house with sloppy diction all night long. They’re not giving you points for the top ten tunes, whereas in Italian opera that is perhaps the case. If you sing a splendid rendition of a certain Cavatina, without having been really understood, maybe only a few people in the house will hold it against you. I’m talking here about the American audiences. If you go to Italy and mispronounce, you may get booed, but it will not be held against you if your voice is beautiful. Often you have conveyed your message through the music, regardless of the text. Coming back to your question, the one is just as important as the other, depending on how you use it for yourself.

BD:   [With mock horror] Is opera really a contest where you get scored on points???

Daniels: Sometimes you think so! [Both laugh] Maybe it shouldn’t be that way, but it’s a very fast-moving business these days, starting with the very young development, right up the end which comes way too soon! It’s become a little bit like Hollywood with all this jet-setting around. You inevitably take on probably too much, sing too much, or travel all over the map too often. It didn’t used to be that way.

BD:   How difficult is it to say no?

Daniels: It’s really difficult because you have the feeling of ‘out of sight is out of mind’. You try to adjust your schedule during the year so that you’re not chasing your own shadow, because it’s unhealthy and it will catch up with you. I’ve done it, but very sparingly when I think I can get away with it, and when I think the odds are with it. If the conductor is so special, or if the cast is so special, and if the moment is advantageous enough, then you say okay. I might sing Fledermaus tonight in London and tomorrow night in Vienna, but it’s rough.

BD: Once in a while it’s all right?

Daniels: Once in a while...

BD:   ...but you have to be careful when it comes twice in a while.

Daniels: Yes! Then you take two and a half to three weeks of vacation, and don’t sing anything! [Both laugh]

BD:   How long does it take you to learn a new role?

Daniels: It depends on what it is. If it’s something that I just love, I’ll get it learned pretty fast. However, if it’s something that I’m not so convinced about... [Pauses a moment] I took on something a year ago, and I thought it was going to kill me, and it practically did! In the long run, it ended up giving me more than I could have ever dreamed. This was Handel’s Agrippina, where I sang the title role. I was talked into doing it by Michael Hampe, who is the Intendant of the Cologne theater, and is now moving on to Salzburg as von Karajan’s right hand.

Michael Hampe (June 3, 1935 – November 18, 2022) was a German theater and opera director, general manager (Intendant) and actor. He developed from acting and directing plays at German and Swiss theatres including the Bern Theater, to focus on directing opera and managing opera houses, first at the Mannheim National Theater, then the Cologne Opera from 1975, a position he held for 20 years. During his tenure, the Cologne Opera became one of the leading opera houses in Europe. His productions of works by Richard Wagner and Gioachino Rossini are remembered, as well as his engagement for the operas of Benjamin Britten and Leos Janáček. His 1979 production of Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto became a worldwide success with performances in London, Paris, Edinburgh, Venice, Stockholm, Washington, Tokyo and Dresden, and was awarded international prizes including the Olivier Award. [DVD with Daniels is shown below.] He returned to Cologne in the 2015/16 season to direct Puccini's La bohème, a season later Beethoven's Fidelio, and in the 2020/21 season Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

Hampe was on the board of directors of the Salzburg Festival from 1983 until 1990, where he was the stage director for productions, often in collaboration with the scenic designer Mauro Pagano. His productions included the world premiere of Henze's adaptation of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria in 1985, Don Giovanni conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1987, Rossini's La Cenerentola conducted by Riccardo Chailly in 1988, and Le nozze di Figaro conducted by Bernard Haitink in 1991.

Hampe served as a guest director at major opera houses and festivals. For The Royal Opera, London, he directed Andrea Chénier (1984), Rossini's The Barber of Seville (1985) and La Cenerentola (1990). Other organizations where he directed include La Scala in Milan, as well as in Paris, Munich, Athens, Stockholm, Helsinki, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Sydney and Tokyo, and at festivals in Florence, Pesaro, Ravenna, Drottningholm, Edinburgh and Lucerne Festival. Many of his productions were recorded for television broadcast or made into films. The total number of his productions is more than 260 as of 2020.

He was professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln since 1977, and after the reunification of Germany, the Dresden Music Festival for which he commissioned and directed world premieres. Hampe was also in demand as a theater construction expert, and was vice president of the German Theater Technology Society. He consulted for the buildings of the Opéra Bastille in Paris and the New National Theatre Tokyo, as well as renovation and modernization of older theaters.

He’s an excellent régisseur [director], and he wanted to do a film at the Schwetzingen Festival, which is a very well-known Baroque festival in Germany. The film [shown below-right] was made, but my God, the time that it took to learn those recitatives! I never want to spend that much time doing it again. It was absolutely the most insurmountable object at first.
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BD:   Yet you say it gave you so much.

Daniels: Yes, it gave back more than I definitely would ever have suspected. In the end, it was a role that filled every nook and cranny in my personality, and brought me out of me. She had eight or nine arias, and kilometers of Baroque Italian. We’re doing well enough to be able to translate all the Italian that Verdi wrote, let alone all the Baroque Italian. It was quite difficult, but I loved it.

BD:   How was the reception from the public?

Daniels: They loved it! It’s a great film! It’s available in this country with English subtitles. It’s also out in Germany with German subtitles.

BD:   This was just made as a film?

Daniels: Oh, no! We did it on the stage in Schwetzingen, and later took it onto Cologne. But it was filmed and recorded in Schwetzingen conducted by Arnold Östman, the well-known Swedish conductor, and a lot of Americans. Michael Hampe likes Americans. He’s got a lot of good American singers over there in his opera house.

BD:   Why does he like Americans? Are they better trained than Europeans?

Daniels: I think basically they are. He knows especially when he’s doing projects of that type that he can get an awful lot of mileage out of American singers. They’re durable and they work hard. They also happen to have very good voices every now and then! He’s got a lot of good Americans in his house, and does a lot of work with them.

BD:   Is this something a singer should do, go over to Europe and plan to stay there for a few years and come back, or should a singer plan on making the whole career in Europe?

Daniels: I don’t know. It all depends on when you start, whether you go there first, as I did, and virtually begin there. I had had my beginning in Cincinnati, and they have generously held onto me. I enjoy going back there, and do so often. But my actual international start was from that side of the Atlantic. There are other Americans who have sung here for four or five years, and find they come to a lull that is impermeable. They realize the only way to go is to try their repertoire on new audiences, and to get more press. With sixty houses in Germany, and five or six publications, if you do three or four premieres a year, you’ve already solved the problem of publish or perish. You’re there and you’re constantly in the limelight.

* * * * *

BD:   Which role have you done most?

Daniels: I’d say it was a toss-up between Violetta and Musetta and Rosalinde. I know it’s a strange combination...

BD:   Tell me a bit about Violetta. What kind of a woman is she?

Daniels: She’s the consummate of every woman’s deeper passion, given the circumstances. You are not a courtesan as Violetta was, but perhaps even a modern-day woman, very independent, very well-read, very socially apt, as the courtesans were in those days. They weren’t just two-bit hookers! These were ladies who entertained large circles of people, and interested men for many reasons, but perhaps hadn’t found the love of their life. Perhaps there had been many men, and none had been the right one. But if you learned that you were going to die in a short while, how would you spend those days, especially if you’d just happened to run into Mr. Right? I don’t often update roles, but it’s important sometimes to keep in touch with your own feelings about things, because I like to act. It’s difficult for me. You can’t see me through this microphone, but I’m a pretty healthy-looking girl. I need all the outer trappings of Violetta to become Violetta visually for someone. I have to feel even more inside what a woman would go through. You can’t be Violetta the way she was because those were different circumstances then, but you can maybe think about it the way it would be for someone today.

BD:   Does she speak to today’s woman?

Daniels: I think so. It’s a timeless story of a woman’s struggle with her deepest emotions, given the incredible odds of death. There’s no future for the love that she has finally found, after all these senseless affairs. That was her life. That was the only life, and she enjoyed it in a way. Perhaps it was futile, but it wasn’t as futile as death. Death is forever, and suddenly she finds love right in the middle of that. The love must have been all-consuming, and she knew she was going to lose it with her death.

BD:   Is it a grateful role to sing?

Daniels: Oh, wow! My very first experience of La Traviata was with Beverly Sills. I was still a mezzo-soprano, and I sang Flora. This was in Cincinnati, and I was overwhelmed. Beverly was a wonderful Violetta. She communicated to her audience. She sent the entire audience into complete euphoria. She had a wonderful spinning pianissimo that tinkled the crystal chandelier, and I just cried along with everyone, never realizing that I’d ever have to get up and sing those notes myself. She talked to us as young artists while she was there, and she said, “This is the one role that I’ve kept with me.” Violetta changes in color and scope and size and dimension every time I sing it.

BD:   It touches you as an artist?

Daniels: Absolutely! It’s one that gives you 150% if you give 100% of yourself every time you do it... and you must! Beverly also said that she never could hold back. She could never fake that evening. She said she would never go out and sing on her interest and save the capital. No way!

BD:   Do you ever get too much involved in a role that you take it home with you after the performance?

Daniels: I did with Agrippina. She took me over quite a bit. She was sort of the Joan Collins of the Roman Empire, and I must say I got into being that character. Violetta I can leave at the theater. It was more difficult when I was first doing her, and when I had more rehearsal on it. Then she dominated me a little bit. But with my Fiordiligi, the director would say, “I can tell you’ve been working on Violetta this week. Get out of there! This is Mozart!” It rubs off musically and vocally if nothing else. But the role that has taken me over in the last few years and has dominated my head, has been Agrippina. She’s gone now. Handel had his big birthday, and I doubt if I’ll ever sing it again, but it took me over a little bit dramatically. It made me a ‘type’ for a while.

BD:   Are you sad to see Agrippina go?

Daniels: Yes and no. I don’t want to keep that Baroque Italian fresh. It’s not a role that I would jump in anywhere. I can get a call to go and sing Violetta somewhere, or Musetta, or Rosalinde, but they’re not playing Agrippina anywhere now.

* * * * *

BD:   Tell me about the role you’re singing now, Musetta.

Daniels: Oh, I just love her! There are roles that I consider a natural outpouring of Barbara Daniels, and that’s her.

BD:   Is she perhaps too close to Barbara Daniels?

Daniels: Sometimes! Friends of mine, people who know quite well, say that. In particular, a lady who’s in Cincinnati said, “I’m not coming to see you do that because it’s just you playing you! You can sing me some other tune!” I know that’s neither negative nor positive. My husband says it’s always a joy, and yet it’s like watching me. It would be like me getting up at the breakfast table and singing a song. It’s a role that I enjoy. She was one of my very first, and she has stayed with me forever. I have also sung Mimì [which she also did for one performance during the Chicago run]. I sing it quite well, but I have a hard time being her.

BD:   Why?

Daniels: It’s not like Violetta. I never think of Mimì fighting for herself. The most intelligent thing she does all night is drop that key on purpose. I’m not saying she’s stupid, but she goes right down with the ship.

BD:   She gives up?

Daniels: This girl’s a goner. She’s got ‘gone’ written all over her. I have a tendency to sympathize more with a character like Violetta. She does fight. Manon fights because she has that French type of spirit.

BD:   Is Mimì French because of having been written by Murger, or is she Italian, having been set by Puccini?

Daniels: That’s the big question. [Pauses a moment] I’m taking on something very interesting in the next couple of years. I love Manon of Massenet, but I don’t get a chance to sing her very often. In Europe they have a tendency to cast that role much lighter than they do in this country, but I’m going to try Manon Lescaut [Puccini] in 1987 in a small house, about 1,000 seats, and then in 1988 a new production with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle in Cologne. I now know both pieces. I have not yet sung the Puccini, but I have worked on it enough, and know the whole thing vocally enough to realize that there is a tremendous difference musically and vocally in the approach to this one character by both composers. Obviously the Puccini is the heavier role. I’m going to do what I would consider a Dorothy Kirsten approach. I’m not a dramatic soprano. I’m a lyric soprano with dramatic overtones. I know I’m going to enjoy it because I like the character. I also like a lot of the vocal music, but it’s ponderous. It’s heavy.

BD:   Is she the same woman in both operas?

Daniels: I don’t think so. Puccini has musically and dramatically through the music, given Des Grieux a chance to bear his soul, and to show more of himself, especially vocally, than Manon. This is perhaps more true to the novel, in which he tells his story. However, Massenet is closer to the spirit of the event, and captures that feeling. It’s got a little more pinpoint to the heart and soul of that era, and it seems to speak to me more. But I also love the Puccini, otherwise I wouldn’t do it.
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BD:   Do you have to love every role before you do it?

Daniels: No. I did Donna Elvira, and I didn’t like it until I was finished with it. It was actually the second time I did it that I liked it. The first time I wasn’t quite sure about it at all. I liked some of the tunes, but... [Both laugh]

BD:   You liked Mozart not Da Ponte?

Daniels: Yes, and I’m not even sure about Mozart. I do very well by Mozart but Mozart doesn’t do very well by me. Basically, I have only sung Mozart in Europe. I’ve never sung it here in the U.S. where the theaters are a little larger. I can create a little bit more space. I sang Pamina for years, but it was just never a winner over there. People liked it, and they clapped, but I felt physically too large in the role because the people are too close to you, and I don’t look like what they think Pamina should look like. Vocally they’re looking for a different sound, a little whiter, a little more on the Germanized side of the vocalization.

BD:   Is the public wrong in its expectations? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interviews with Angelina Réaux, Jerry Hadley, Thomas Hampson, and Paul Plishka.]

Daniels: No, they’re just used to hearing certain things, and perhaps are enamored of that. You’re allowed to set your own traditions.

BD:   What do you expect of the public that comes to hear your performances?

Daniels: I don’t expect anything. I’m hoping they expect something of me, and I hope that I give them, perhaps, not what they expected. I’m an entertainer. I like those people out there. I couldn’t do it in a box. This art belongs on the stage.

BD:   Then do you have trouble making recordings?

Daniels: Yes, really! I don’t like that mike in front of me. I recently did a recording of La Bohème. A recording company perhaps takes a while to know your voice, but I was aware of the fact that the mikes were very close. Okay, that’s the way they do it, but for Musetta I had to back-up twenty paces to make the entrance. When my husband heard the recording, he said that the only time I really sound like me is in the third act when I was about seventy feet from the orchestra, with my back to them, singing with the ladies who were doing that for an effect. The engineers kept saying we don’t have to sing as much for these recordings.

BD:   Were they right?

Daniels: I don’t know. Why should you croon, or sing half-voice for a recording? It’s a strange phenomenon, but that’s irrelevant. It’s something I may learn to adjust in time, depending on the given situation.

BD:   Aside from all that, are you pleased with the recording?

Daniels: No! I didn’t think it sounded like me. You can’t always be happy with the way you sound, but if someone else who knows my voice says that it sounds like me, that is fine. Otherwise, I’m not sure having microphones jammed right in front of you makes for a true reading.

BD:   Do you have any other recordings coming up?

Daniels: There are a couple of things that I’ve talked about but they remain under wraps. That’s one of the stipulations in contracts of that type, that you don’t say anything until it’s for sure. The recording companies have a lot of problems these days, and while making plans, they often want it signed and sealed and on paper, and even then, it can be dumped. I was supposed to do a recording of Busoni’s Arlecchino for RCA. It was signed and sealed for over two years, and finally went down. It often happens these days because the market has changed radically through videos and discs. The record industry is having to change its perspective.

BD:   When you are performing on stage, do you feel that you’re competing against recordings both recent and historic?

Daniels: Yes! I don’t always think about that, but it comes to my mind often. Maybe every new generation of singers feels that the older recordings are a shadow under which they have to function for years until they have established their name and their own style. I don’t think that’s bad. I listen to recordings myself just to hear how someone else did it. But in the case of many critics, for instance, they have walls and walls of records, and have listened to everybody who used to do it way back when. Perhaps that leads to a certain intelligence about what they are going to listen for when they hear Miss X do it live on a stage, but more and more with the stereo systems, and with the equipment that they have, I don’t want to use the word ‘distorting’, but things are changing now. That’s what a perfect, quadrophonic approach definitely influences, especially for the layman. There are people who just can’t understand why they have to work so hard to hear people in an opera house. They wonder why it doesn’t sound like their stereo. My husband heard a very well-known tenor for the first time sing live. He had just bought two of his records and was greatly enamored of him. Still, he said that the tenor didn’t sound anything like the record! Is the record industry starting to make our lives difficult as the television industry? The big theaters, such as the Met and San Fancisco and Chicago do live television presentations, and they get right in there on top of the sweat. You see everything. In Europe they have a tendency to do a lot of pantomime to records, or special films of operas for television. They’re beautiful to look at, but they’re not always satisfying.

BD:   Do operas work on television?

Daniels:   Much of the time it’s too close. You don’t want to see the soprano’s mouth open that far, and you don’t want to see Mr. So-and-so who’s too fat, or Miss So-and-so who is cross-eyed. From far away she looks great, but you don’t want to see that close up. Those are the visual things that disturb normal people. I’m not talking about the singers. We’re in the middle of it, so enthralled that we love the voice and the music, and so what if this person doesn’t look perfect? But I know there is a tendency where they’re casting by the way the people look.

BD:   That’s a mistake?

Daniels:   I don’t know if it’s always a mistake, but in many cases it has been a mistake, and it will lead to other mistakes. But it’s the prerogative of the person who’s running the show.

BD:   Is it the director, or the conductor, or the management, or the singers who are falling for all of this?

Daniels:   It’s a trend, and some of the directors are leading it, and the management is more than happy to go along with it. They’ve got the lists of people. An Intendant told me that they have lists, A, B, C, D, and E, according to popularity and price, and you must be aware that they don’t gamble! Casts are set long in advance of the performance dates.

BD:   Do you like being booked so far in advance?

Daniels:   Yes and no. It gives you a chance to plan your life, and your life is hectic in this business.
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BD:   Too hectic?

Daniels:   I’m trying to make it less hectic. I had ten heavy years between Europe and the United States, running back and forth, and now I’m trying to keep blocks of time open in between to come down to recoup, and also to spend time with my family and my life. I have a life, and it’s a wonderful life, and we all need that. Mirella Freni told me that, as far as she was concerned, her voice was completely dependent on the state of her private affairs. When she was privately happy, she sang well, and when she wasn’t, she didn’t. It’s very important to remember that our voices are in us. It’s not something we can put back in a box and close the top.

BD:   How much of that can be professionalism, that you can get over feeling lousy? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Frederica von Stade.]

Daniels:   You can, and you must, but it doesn’t help you to always say ‘on with the show’. At one point or another, it will catch up with you. It will make you tired, or it’ll just literally take you by the throat. Some people have great stamina, and can withstand more pressure than others for longer periods of time. But when it gets too hectic for too long, you either have a case of someone getting sick, or they just say they’ve had it. It is more important that you look ahead in your calendar, and see that you don’t do too many of those dove-tailings, where you literally run from one engagement to the other. It’s one thing to do one performance of Die Fledermaus, and the next night sing another performance of Die Fledermaus, and then have a gap of a week. But if you go from one big production to another big production where you’ve spent four to six weeks in the one place, and you’re looking forward to four to six weeks in another place, you’re going to be wrung-out at the end. That is when you say no, this summer I’m not doing anything. That’s what I did this summer, nothing. I had a big year last year, and I needed to come down after that, and just plant my feet, and do nothing!

* * * * *

BD:   Let’s talk about trends in stage direction. Do you like all of the new ideas that are cropping up?

Daniels:   Which side of the Ocean are you talking about?

BD:   Is there a huge difference?

Daniels:   The United States is ahead of Europe by ten to fifteen years in everything but opera. [Both laugh] That doesn’t mean that being ahead is good. I’ve been involved in some absolutely maniacal productions.

BD:   How does a stage director get away with that?

Daniels:   I don’t know. I don’t know why the public has to put up with some of it, and I don’t know why they call it art. Some of them are very well-known, and some of them are people who are coming from the theater. The theater has been in and out of trouble, especially over there. To me, it seems sort of like fleas jumping from one dead dog onto the next, surviving, and imposing pure theatrical stage tactics on opera singers. That was quite severe at one time in Germany, and it led to some brilliant things in the updating of the way opera singers are. You don’t find too many people who just stand around and extend one left arm and one right arm. They move, they jump, they swing, and they do things that opera singers basically would never have done a generation ago.

BD:   Is this good or not?

Daniels:   I don’t know! I’ve done some things that I wish I hadn’t done, but I had to do them at a time because I was young, and I was coming up in the ranks. That was our version of ‘publish or perish’. It seems like the critics were tuned into the régisseurs. They wanted to see something new and different. There were some scandalous productions where people actually stood up and left, which I think is nice. People should be stronger about their opinions. It’s difficult to watch the second act of La Traviata with a completely blackened background, and Violetta standing underneath Germont, who is sitting on a suspended tree. If it’s called being out on a limb, then he was! [Both laugh] But it was very difficult for me. I did one production in Frankfurt which was done in the Jugendstil, or the Art Nouveau. They were very enamored of that, and they still are. They like that look, but it was a horrible look for me because the costumes demanded that you be very tall and slim, and have no bosom. I looked like my grandmother in a potato sack. I hated that! The best-looking people in the third act were the men, and half of them were naked! There was a disco dance floor, and a golden calf that opened up into a gambling table. I remember one of the worst parts of it was the second act in which we were in a pavilion with flowers and a running fountain. The fountain was chaos, starting with the orchestra who said if they don’t shut it off, they were all having to go to the bathroom! You could hear it because it echoed through the shell effect of the pavilion. In the fourth act, they had a big black round bed with a lot of candles on the floor, and a mirror over the bed. I think they needed to do that to keep it in the press. They also had a famous Aïda which was also done in Art Nouveau. Aïda was the cleaning lady, and Radamès was a business man. He dug up her scull in his office, and Amneris had no hair, and wore granny-glasses. On the other hand, the Ring Cycle of Chéreau was amazing. I didn’t see it live, but I saw it on television, and was thrilled. There’s a time and a certain artistic way of doing things that is extremely persuasive. I personally have never been involved in one that came off smelling that good. I liked Ponnelle’s Madam Butterfly. There were some people who hated it, but I liked it. You can’t do it that way on the stage. You can’t do all those ‘asides’ without moving your mouth, and you can’t ever get close enough to the people in Butterfly to be able to achieve what he achieved in that film.

BD:   But that was done for film.

Daniels:   Yes, and he’s done Butterfly on the stage, and it approached that.

BD:   One thing I liked was at the very end when Pinkerton runs through the wall of the house. That was very effective.

Daniels:   Also was when she comes out in the second act, dressed in Victorian clothes, and has all but her eyes lifted to be an American. Before she even opened her mouth, I was in tears.

BD:   Perhaps that’s because you know how it’s going to end. I wonder if you wouldn’t have been in tears if he came back and they lived happily ever after.

Daniels:   Or you wouldn’t be in tears if you’d never seen Madam Butterfly. That’s what some régisseurs are hoping for. They’re trying to win a newer and younger audience by giving them things that they possibly will have no comparison for. I did an updated version of Faust in which she did not have a spinning wheel. She had a sewing machine! It was all right, and it worked.

BD:   [Making a terrible pun] I hope that was a *Singer* sewing machine!

Daniels:   [Laughs] Yes, it was an old Singer sewing machine with a pedal and everything! We did a Pagliacci set in the 1930s, and I thought that was just gangbusters. We rode on the back of an old tractor, and when Canio and Silvio did their chase, it was up an escape on the back-end of a factory building. It was very real, and very good. I agreed with that, but, as I say, there are some things that get way out of hand. There is a lot of nudity in productions over there which can or cannot enhance, given the circumstances.

BD:   [Trying to hide a bit of anticipation] Have you done any nudity?

Daniels:   No!

BD:   Would you?

Daniels:   I don’t think it’s called for. I really wouldn’t subject my audience to that, especially in this country because I don’t think they’re ready for it. Whether they’re ready for me nude, I don’t know, but just in general I don’t think they’re ready for that. Dancers can get away with it in certain scenes of certain operas. It’s almost called for... not nude, but the nude look. The stages are bigger so it looks like it’s nude. But over there I have seen people walk out. I saw The Flying Dutchman that was done on a Black Mass theme, and they hired a real streetwalker to come in and fulfill the dreams of the Dutchman. She hadn’t a stitch on! There was also a real chicken, not a live one but a dead one, and blood came out of it. People left! They got up and left, but I stayed! I’d never seen anything like that before, but I stayed only out of curiosity. I didn’t have any idea what they were singing. I wasn’t listening to the music. I was watching to see what they were going to do with that chicken, and how that girl was going to get off the stage.

BD:   At what point does it turn opera into a farce?

Daniels:   I think sometimes the régisseurs have done it as a farce. They have spit in our faces sometimes, tongue-in-cheek. In that Aïda, Amonasro was naked to the waist, in GI fatigues and combat boots, and a Don Eagle hair do that was quite nice! The guy who did this is a very well known, and a very respected régisseur, and said that Verdi would be pleased.

BD:   Do you think Verdi would be pleased?
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Daniels: I think the only people who were pleased were all the dramaturgs in the theater who just get off on that! They read all the books, and they’re into the new wave. There’s a lot that’s changing, but they’re coming back to... I don’t want to say a conservative style, but a more human style. They’re reaching out and talking to people again instead of just over their heads or under their seats, just to get in the press. The first Traviata I did in Italian was with a wonderful guy. He was Peter Windgassen, son of that famous Heldentenor Wolfgang. Peter is a charming guy. They had to switch to Traviata from a modern opera that fell through, otherwise I probably would never have learned the piece in Italian. [Both laugh] So they threw it in at the last minute, and I was just pleased as punch. But at the first rehearsal they burst my bubble. He said, “I can’t stand this piece! However, we will make the best of a bad situation, and I just want you to know if there are no tears and no bravos, I would rather go to the press with a hundred boos, and let people know that we’re here.” I said, “Speak for yourself! This is not such a bad show!”

* * * * *

BD:   We’ve been talking about modern staging, but what about modern music? Have you sung some Berg?

Daniels:   No, but I’ve sung Schoenberg. I opened my Cologne season when I debuted as the Young Girl in Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. That was enough of that! I don’t like it. It doesn’t seduce me. It doesn’t give me anything. Later, maybe. Pieces that I’ve seen that do seduce me include Marie in Wozzeck, but not for a large house, and not at this time. She is enthralling, but Lulu is a voice-wrecker. I had an offer to do that at one time, but I thought as long as I can still sing, why should I do that? I really do jeopardize quite a good deal, and if you’ve got a heavy season doing other things, it’s not something that you want thrown in the middle of it. Although, Lulu is a wonderful creature. Europe does a lot of modern works, but generally it’s dangerous for me.

BD:   Are there any modern composers who write good melodies that you would want to sing?

Daniels:   Is Bernstein modern?   He’s as modern as Schoenberg! He writes nicely. Carlisle Floyd is modern. I’d be willing to tackle some of his stuff because he writes lyrically. His orchestras are a little large and a little heavy-handed, but the roles that he writes, especially for the female voice, are quite lush and quite nice.

BD:   Do they ever do American operas in Europe?

Daniels:   Sure! West Side Story had a fling over there, and Vienna has a running production of Cats.

BD:   But are those operas?

Daniels:   They are like spieloper. Although you can’t compare Constanze’s aria [in Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio] with Maria’s [in West Side Story], there are many people who are willing to say that West Side Story is a classical musical theater piece, or a classical operetta, or operatic musical theater piece.

BD:   Is it, perhaps, a great American opera?

Daniels:   It’s one of them! The Saint of Bleecker Street [Menotti] is another. I think Carlisle Floyd’s stuff approaches that, as does The Ballad of Baby Doe [Douglas Moore]. But there is that element of operetta/musical theater that you can’t get away with, and get away from, and yet what is The Magic Flute? It’s entertainment! It is serious or not serious depending on how you take it, and what you understand, and what you get out of it for yourself. It is a fine line, perhaps, and in many areas it can be much broader. We can also throw in Show Boat [Jerome Kern], or Kiss Me Kate [Cole Porter]. They certainly call for a heck of a lot of hard singing, and situations that are just as hard as an opera house, with big orchestras and big demands. Hanna in The Merry Widow [Lehár] is difficult. I don’t like her all that much. You have to work for your evening there. You work for Rosalinde, too, but it remains classical, more so than Lehár. Lehár is like Puccini.

BD:   So, if someone offers you Hanna Glawari, you’d say no?

Daniels:   I wouldn’t say no, but I would think about it very hard, depending on what I was doing that year. You don’t want to mix her up with a lot of other stuff. The Gypsy Baron [Johann Strauss II] is also hard. I’ve never done her, but I’ve had a few offers, and I decided it was just too much of a mixed bag at the time. Fledermaus is in the groove. It goes in between many things because you can’t sing that stuff with a less than classical vocal approach. You need operatic singers on that stage who produce real legitimate singing sounds.

BD:   When you are preparing a role, do you go back to letters of composers, or do you just work with the score and the libretto?

Daniels:   Not too often, unless it’s a situation like Strauss and Hofmannsthal. You have to separate them, because at one point, if not right from the beginning, the composer’s intentions became something other than the text. It’s like doing a Hollywood film. You find out what is left of the text is not what it was originally. Occasionally I know there is something to be studied there that is definitely going to help me, but I will always read the libretto first. If it’s a Shakespearean role, then I’ll go back to the poetry, especially in the beginning when I was over there and having to change a lot of German words that didn’t fit into my mouth the way they should have because the opera was Italian and not German. You go back to the original text, or letters, to find out what he had to say about something. The idea is to see if you can find another word that would express the same thing. The musicologists have such a ball with all of that. They’re willing to talk for hours about the letters that they’ve read, and the research they’ve done.

BD:   Do they do too much?

Daniels:   I think so. They get a little bit too swept up in it, because in so many cases, especially the Italian operas, the tune is of great important, and the story is not so important. Take Il Trovatore. Do you want to try to explain it to a class of kids? It’s hard, but you just go with the story for what you get out of it, and every now and then you wonder what that means... and you don’t care! [Both laugh] At least I don’t care. That may be superficial, but many people just go to the opera to hear the beautiful sounds. It can take a lot of study to stay with the piece. Audiences don’t prepare themselves. They either read the record jacket, which is about as far as they can go on a superficial level, or they really get down to it. When they buy their season tickets, they want to understand what’s going on. Boris Godunov is a long evening, and you might wonder what’s going on in Tannhäuser.

BD:   Since you mention him, have you done any Wagner?

Daniels:   I sang the Woodbird in Siegfried with Birgit Nilsson and Jean Cox. I was just in seventh heaven. That was many years ago, and that was it. I don’t know about Wagner. I’ve had a few offers for Eva. I’m sure that at one point or another, if I march over to Bayreuth, and say that I’ve got to do a Norn or a Rhinemaiden, maybe they’d say okay! [Laughs] It might be feasible, but I’ve never had the urge. Maybe I’ll try it! It’s beautiful stuff.

* * * * *

BD: Have you done any other French roles besides Manon?

Daniels: I could have. The last production of Manon that I did was in Cincinnati with a wonderful French conductor, Jean Périsson. He very much wanted to do Mireille [Gounod], and I would have done it if it hadn’t been the year that they were proposing, in which I had too much going.

Jean Périsson (July 6, 1924 in Arcachon – February 18, 2019) was a French conductor.

A pupil of Jean Fournet, he won the first prize at the Besançon conducting competition in 1952. He was assistant to Igor Markevitch at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and was chief conductor of the Strasbourg Radio Orchestra from 1955-56. He was music director for the city of Nice from 1956-65, giving Wagner cycles (with artists from Bayreuth).

He was a permanent conductor at the Paris Opera from 1965-69 and led an early French production of Káťa Kabanová at the Salle Favart. He conducted in San Francisco, Ankara and Beijing., where he was invited by the People’s Republic of China to hold a one-month position with China National Symphony (formerly Central Philharmonic Society) in May 1980. He later conducted and recorded Bizet’s Carmen with Central Opera Theatre of China in 1982.

We ruled out Faust because Périsson didn’t want to do it. It was an old production, and he wanted to do a new production, and he thought it should be Mireille. They thought it was a good idea, but then they wanted to do Thaïs, and he didn’t want to do that one, and I didn’t want to do it, either.

BD:   Why?

Daniels:   For that reason we were talking about earlier, taking off your clothes. I didn’t think you had to just because a couple of other people had done it. [See my interview with Carol Neblett.] The director was talking about wanting to, and I wondered if there was a way of doing that without taking off your clothes.

BD:   I suppose you could wear a body stocking.

Daniels:   Fooey! [Both laugh] It’s like Salome. It’s a rough number. There are people who are not going to buy her Dance to the Seven Veils if you look like a back end of a truck.

BD:   [Gently protesting] That is certainly not the case with you!
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Daniels:   [Laughs] I’m not saying I look like the back end of a truck, but there are roles in which your visual presence is going to be either counted for you or against you, and that will make it easier or harder. Thaïs is wonderful, but it’s hard for that reason. There is an illusion that has to be made on first contact, and held the entire evening, and at one point or another you are going to have to do some heavy seducing that goes way beyond the Saint-Sulpice scene in Manon. You’re having to get John awfully distracted, and if it gets into taking off your clothes, or parts of your clothes, I don’t know. I saw a wonderful production of Manon in which the soprano rose with that wonderful music at the beginning of the second act. She was in a copper tub with bubbles in it, with her back to the audience, and she was naked right down to the knees. It was a wonderful back, and it looked like an old painting, and she then had a white towel that was draped around her... not instantly but within a very short amount of time. She looked just wonderful.

BD:   Would you do something like that?

Daniels:   No. She couldn’t sing it, so what you have to do is find a figure to go with the voice. [Both laugh] Thaïs is an interesting role, though. [We then started mentioning lesser-known versions of otherwise famous operas, such as Bohème of Leoncavallo, and Gustav III, ou Le bal masqué of Auber.]

BD:   Massenet did another opera about Manon, Le Portrait de Manon, which is set twenty years later.

Daniels:   There is yet another conception of Manon that might be interesting to do. It’s a modern piece, and I’d have to look at it a little closer, but it’s had a great deal of success, especially over there. It’s called Boulevard Solitude of Henze. I don’t like everything he does, but you did ask about doing modern things.

BD:   There should be a ‘Manon Festival’ and do all of those works. [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Sherrill Milnes.]

Daniels:   Yes, it would be nice to do a season where you could compare them, and that’s it for a decade! Then we don’t need any more! [Both laugh at the idea]

BD:   Sometimes you get a ‘Shakespeare Festival’, or various versions of Faust.

Daniels:   There are a lot of those. As far as I know, the Scenes from Goethe’s Faust [Schumann] have never been staged. They are quite dramatic, with a whole chorus there. It’s really an oratorio.

BD:   Do you also do any concert singing?

Daniels: Not a lot. Not enough. The ones I’ve done I’m very happy about, but I’d like to do more, actually.

BD:   Do you ever do any operas in concert?

Daniels:   We did an Italian version of Die Fledermaus for concert, and it was also recorded by RAI. I was called Il Pipistrello. We sang it in Italian, and we had well-known actresses and actors doing our dialogue. It was a stitch. In fact, the man who is singing Marcello in Chicago now [Alessandro Corbelli] was involved, singing Falke. It was a riot! I can’t think of anything right now. It’s difficult to standing up there doing a whole concertized version of an opera, especially if you’ve done it for years on the stage.

BD:   I would think it would be easier to do an opera you’ve never heard of, just to hear it.

Daniels:   Yes, as a show piece, just to give people a taste of what it is.

BD:   Perhaps Faust by Spohr!

Daniels:   [Laughs] Right.

BD:   Have you done any world premieres?

Daniels:   At college I sang in the U.S. premiere of Raymond Leppard’s version of La Calisto [Cavalli]. It was beautiful.

BD:   Do you like singing old music?

Daniels:   Maybe I could be talked into loving it more. Matthew Epstein was trying to interest me in doing another Handel piece, Semele, but I was not interested. I couldn’t seem to find a role in that piece that I thought would go for me. But after doing Agrippina, I might think about it another time... not that piece, but perhaps other pieces.

BD:   [I then asked about her future seasons Chicago, (a complete list is shown below), and she mentioned Falstaff.] Tell me about Alice Ford.

Daniels:   I never had any preconditions about her. I looked at the music, and I knew the story, and I thought she would just be perfect for me. I later found out that it’s often a role that’s given to sopranos who have been around for a while. [Both laugh] This is probably to achieve the feeling of the older married couple. It’s like Rosalinde. You start and you grow into it. When I started with Rosalinde, I probably looked more like Adele, but I never was Adele. Now I can say yes, I am Rosalinde. I have sung Alice Ford in some nice places with good reception, and nobody questions whether she is 35, or 45, or 55.

BD:   Perhaps it depends on how old Master Ford is.

Daniels:   I guess so. In this particular case he will be younger [once again, it was Corbelli]. All of my Fords are sort of very young. At Covent Garden it was Thomas Allen. That was a wonderful production, with Rolando Panerai, Jerry Hadley, Marie McLaughlin, and Bill Wildermann. We stole the season. It was a lot of fun!

BD:   Thank you for being a singer!

Daniels:   Thank you for talking with me about being a singer.

Barbara Daniels at Lyric Opera of Chicago

1984 Arabella (Zdenka) - with Te Kanawa, Wixell, Kunde, Langton, Mignon Dunn, Kraft; Pritchard, Decker

1986-87 [Opening Night] Magic Flute (3rd Lady) - with Araiza, Blegen, Nolen, Serra, Salminen, Stewart, Taylor, White; Slatkin, Everding
La bohème (Musetta, Mimì [one performance]) - with Ricciarelli, Polozov/Araiza/Shicoff, Corbelli, Washington, Kreider, [Brown];
Tilson Thomas, Copley

1988-89 Falstaff (Alice Ford) - with Wixell, Sandra Walker, Horne, Corbelli, Hadley, Andreolli; Conlon, Ponnelle

1989-90 Fledermaus (Rosalinde) - with Allen/Otey, Bonney, Rosenshein/Lopez-Yanez, Howells, Nolen, Adams; Rudel, Chazalettes

1992-93 Bartered Bride (Mařenka) - with Rosenshein/Lehman, Rose, Kraft, Philip Kraus, Clark; Bartoletti/Sulich

1996-97 The Consul (Magda) - with McCauley, Cowen, Zilio; Richard Buckley, Falls
Ardis Krainik Gala - with (among others) Manca di Nissa, Chernov, Marton, Vaness, Jóhannsson, Anderson, Sylvester,
Hagegård, von Stade, Malfitano, Zajick, Cangelosi, Ramey, Domingo; Barenboim (piano)

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on September 8, 1986. Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1988 and 1996. This transcription was made in 2025, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.