Feruccio Furlanetto Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Bass Ferruccio Furlanetto

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Ferruccio Furlanetto (born 16 May 1949 in Sacile, Italy) is an Italian bass. His professional debut was in 1974 in Lonigo. He debuted at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1979, in a production of Verdi's Macbeth, conducted by Claudio Abbado. He has gone on to sing numerous roles, including both Don Giovanni and Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Philip II in Verdi's Don Carlos, Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Gremin in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Zaccaria in Verdi's Nabucco, Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust, Orestes in Strauss' Elektra, Fiesco in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, the title role of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, as well as many others.

He debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1980/81 season, and has performed at the Opéra de Paris (Bastille), the Salzburg Easter Festival and the regular Salzburg Festival, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Tel Aviv Opera, and the Royal Opera House in London.

His appearances in the United States have been primarily with the Metropolitan Opera and San Diego Opera. With the latter company he has sung the title role in Oberto (1985), Méphistophélès in Faust (1988 and 2001), the title role in Don Giovanni (1993 and 2000), King Philip in Don Carlo (2004), Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia (2006), and the title roles in Boris Godunov (2007) and Don Quichotte in 2009 and 2014. He reprised his performance in Don Quichotte in Palermo and in Mariinsky Theater (St.Petersburg) in 2010. In 2011 he sang the bass role in the Verdi Requiem, and his first US performance as Thomas Becket in Pizzetti's Assassinio nella cattedrale was in 2013. In 2021 he played Don Alfonso in the San Francisco Opera's production of Cosi fan tutte [shown below].

He is also widely in demand as a concert singer. He sang in Mozart's Coronation Mass under the baton of Herbert von Karajan, in an extraordinary performance at the Vatican in the presence of Pope John Paul II that was broadcast worldwide. He has appeared often in recital at La Scala, the Berlin Deutsche Oper, the Gran Teatro del Liceu of Barcelona, the Vienna Musikverein, the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, and many other venues.

On DVD, Furlanetto can be seen as the Grand Inquisiteur in Verdi's Don Carlos, in a production conducted by James Levine from the Met in 1983. Also in the cast are Plácido Domingo, Mirella Freni, Grace Bumbry, Louis Quilico and Nicolai Ghiaurov. He can also be seen as King Philip II in the same work, under the baton of Herbert von Karajan, with José Carreras, Fiamma Izzo D'Amico, Agnes Baltsa, Piero Cappuccilli, and Matti Salminen. Furlanetto is featured in a DVD of Mozart's Don Giovanni, playing the part of Leporello, under the baton of Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the 1987 Salzburg Festival. Furthermore, Furlanetto plays the part of Sparafucile in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's 1982 production of Rigoletto with Ingvar Wixell, Edita Gruberova, and Luciano Pavarotti, conducted by Riccardo Chailly. He also appears in I Vespri Siciliani, a 1989 Scala production conducted by Riccardo Muti.

== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

In February of 1992, Ferruccio Furlanetto was in Chicago for the three Mozart/Da Ponte operas given by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, led by Daniel Barenboim. It was quite a marathon, since Furlanetto (as well as Joan Rodgers and Michele Pertusi) appeared in leading roles in all three operas. The programs are shown below, and a photo can be seen HERE.

Of the other names listed, see my interviews with Sir Georg Solti, Mimi Lerner, Graham Clark, Lella Cuberli, and Sheri Greenawald.
[Note that these three operas were recorded earlier and issued on CD with similar casts and the Berlin Philharmonic, though
Furlanetto does not appear in Don Giovanni, and in Così he sings Guglielmo, with John Tomlinson as Don Alfonso.]

On a day off between these Chicago Symphony performances, Sig. Furlanetto graciously agreed to speak with me. His English was very good, and I have only needed to tidy up a few verb-tenses in this transcript.

Our conversation ranged over several musical topics, and we began with his then-current assignment . . . . .

Bruce Duffie:   Tell me the secret of singing Mozart!

Ferruccio Furlanetto:   Secret??? It’s the privilege! When I started to study, I was basically ready for Verdi roles. I had some difficulty on the top, but from the very beginning I had one model, one idol in front of me, and that was Siepi. All basses look to him. He was doing Giovanni, Figaro, all these things, so I grew up with this will to achieve the possibility to sing his repertoire. Eventually it came, and actually it opened to me all the doors. When I started to sing my first Figaro, it was with Danny [Barenboim] and Ponnelle in Paris. After that, it was Salzburg. Through Mozart, really, I achieved some targets that at the beginning were purely dreams. So I consider it an enormous privilege to have the possibility to sing in this repertoire.

BD:   Has the Mozart style changed at all from when you were first learning it? [Notice that on the CD shown at right, Furlanetto sings arias of various characters in these opera.]

Furlanetto:   The difficulty in Mozart is that you have to give the impression that it’s easy. There’s a famous facilità [ease] of Mozart, and that’s a difficult thing. The secret, in a way, and the only key to go through this repertoire, is to sing everything with the most natural voice. In my case it came through some advice that I had from a colleague of mine, a famous bass, Bonaldo Giaiotti. Ten years ago I was singing Alvise, and this kind of tough role, where you have to be nasty and evil.

BD:   It’s what we call ‘the heavy’.

Furlanetto:   Yes. He is sometimes old, and when you are 30, you have to mask all these things and add these fake characteristics to your natural voice. The risk is to lose the spontaneity and the naturality of your vocal instrument. Giaiotti told me very simple things. He told me, “You must have the impression when you are on stage that your singing is very light. You have to have the impression inside yourself to sound like a very light baritone. Since your voice is bass, it will always come out with this characteristic. But if you sing with the natural characteristic of your voice, all this stuff that you add to be evil or old will make an enormous voice inside yourself, but it won’t reach the 10th row.”

BD:   It won’t cut through?

Furlanetto:   Yes. This advice was extremely true, and it changed my vocal life completely and drastically right away. After this, I was lucky to be involved in the Mozart repertoire, where you cannot perform anything unless you are using your natural voice. Otherwise, the brilliant characteristic of certain recitatives, for instance, or the lightness that you need for a serenade in Don Giovanni is lost. You sound like a Don Basilio, but not like a Giovanni or a Figaro.

BD:   You started out singing evil and heavy roles, but in the Mozart repertoire you don’t portray evil characters.

Furlanetto:   If you want, there is some aspect of evil in Giovanni. The finale is extremely dramatic, and it can be extremely heavy because you have a wall of sound coming from the orchestra that you have to get over.

BD:   Is Giovanni really evil, or is he just selfish?

Furlanetto:   I don’t consider Giovanni evil, but the audience sometimes does. I think that Giovanni is somebody else. There are so many who want to live more than a usual life, and so everything is condensed into a very few years. Giovanni, as is written in Da Ponte, is not an old man, but he must be a man who burned his life in the span of about 20 years, let’s say, from 18 to 40.

BD:   We only encounter him at the end of his life.

Furlanetto:   Of course. If you live in this way — and there are people living this way — sometimes you are stepping on somebody else. It’s easy. It’s normal, especially in these times. If you want to make lots of money, you have really to forget about feelings. You just have to be selfish. So, you’re right, you said it. He was a very, very selfish man, and if somebody’s watching you from outside, you could look evil.

BD:   I see the difference as being that a selfish man doesn’t care if he steps on someone, whereas an evil man will try to step on as many as possible.

Furlanetto:   Yes. There are several of these moments in the opera, but if we are talking about the concept of The Giovanni World, it’s too big, and we are going too much into philosophy. We are here performing Mozart and Da Ponte, so we have to stay on the tracks written by the words and the music. I cannot see all these fantastic aspects that somebody else sees in Giovanni. You have a very precise track to follow. You cannot think about Kierkegaard here.

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first Christian existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single individual", giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment.

Kierkegaard's theological work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the Church, the differences between purely objective proofs of Christianity, the infinite qualitative distinction between man and God, and the individual's subjective relationship to the God-Man Jesus the Christ, which came through faith. Much of his work deals with Christian love. He was extremely critical of the doctrine and practice of Christianity as a state-controlled religion (Caesaropapism) like the Church of Denmark. His psychological work explored the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. Unlike Jean-Paul Sartre and the atheistic existentialism paradigm, Kierkegaard focused on Christian existentialism.

By the mid-20th century, his thought exerted a substantial influence on philosophy, theology, and Western culture in general.

You have all the chances you want, and all the possibilities to build a character of Giovanni during the finale of the first act, because he is ready to kill Leporello in order to save himself. That’s evil if you want, or it’s being selfish to the very extreme point. The way he plays with women is nasty, absolutely nasty, especially with women like Elvira, who he already had, and who had became boring. This is the key. Why 1,003? Just because he needs novelty, something new. It doesn’t matter if Elvira is a beautiful woman. She was used as a toy, and this is nasty, but in the same time, it’s also human.

BD:   Use ’em up, and throw ’em away?

Furlanetto:   [Laughs] Yes, if you want.

BD:   Is Don Giovanni being used up by nature and then thrown away? [Vis-à-vis the video shown at right, see my interviews with Delores Ziegler, and Paolo Montarsolo.]

Furlanetto:   In a way, yes. It could be a self-defense of nature to get rid of these kinds of people. You could discuss for days and days about all the possibilities in these characters. It’s fascinating.

BD:   Maestro Barenboim pointed out that you were the one who suggested there was a line connecting the three Da Ponte operas.

Furlanetto:   Probably it was the reason for which he believed that it was possible. When we first did this project in Israel in ’87 with Ponnelle, it was really an experiment. Ponnelle hadn’t done that before, and neither had Barenboim. I never even dreamed to dive suddenly into three roles in two weeks’ time, with a month of rehearsal for all three operas. It was an experiment, and since it was a good success there, they had the proof that it was possible to conceive this trittico, not as a cycle, but actually in the last few years, it became like a cycle. Very often they are talking about Da Ponte, and sometimes they’re forgetting the name Mozart. They say ‘The Da Ponte Cycle’. [Laughs] You can find certain similar characteristics in the roles... not Figaro and Giovanni, but the Count and Alfonso. There is a lot in common among the three characters, because Alfonso kind of survives Giovanni, who unfortunately is getting old. He just didn’t have the luck to die. Can you imagine if Giovanni had survived with his problems during this opera, how cynical he could have become? Well, this is Alfonso. [Remember that Furlanetto has sung Don Alfonso (including with the Chicago Symphony, and as shown in the photo from San Francisco in the box at the top), but in the video shown at right, and on the CD with Barenboim, he sings Guglielmo.]

BD:   If Giovanni can’t have women, then no one else can have women?

Furlanetto:   Yes. Maybe Alfonso went through a life of disappointment. Maybe he was in love, and maybe he was betrayed. He was in love with somebody who didn’t love him. In real life, the result is just to become more and more cynical. Then, if you have two young guys just dreaming and thinking about how beautiful life is, and how their trust for all these girls could be, if you’re still a little proud of your nastiness inside yourself, you could try to cut their wings, let’s say.

BD:   Is Alfonso really saying it can’t happen, or is he saying it could happen, but be careful?

Furlanetto:   No, he says that it cannot happen. He says it very clearly in the beginning. Everybody says that there is this kind of affection somewhere, but nobody knows where it is, and finally we come to the same conclusion, così fan tutte [that’s what they all do]. I think that Mozart and Da Ponte would’ve had big problems to perform this opera these days, with all the feminism and other modern concerns.

BD:   The famous play called The Odd Couple is about two men, and there is a new version which changed it around and made it for two women. Could you change Così around so that the three men and three women reversed roles?

Furlanetto:   Of course, because they’re using nothing else but human weakness. They are that way, and we are the other way. This way you can point out defects in the human condition. I’m talking about human aspect. You could really spend years and years enjoying them...

BD: ...and then you’re back to overanalyzing again!

Furlanetto: Absolutely. [Both laugh]

* * * * *

BD:   When you’re on stage, are you portraying a character or do you become that character?

Furlanetto:   This is a good question, and I need to go back to my relationship with Ponnelle. He taught me that the only way to be on stage and to communicate something to the audience — especially in this repertoire, which is basically comedy — is to live the character under your own skin through the words, which in this case are sensational. The text is so modern, so perfect, it could be written today. It’s absolutely fantastic. For instance, think of the three triple (and sometimes more) meanings that you have under one word. It’s sensational. Ponnelle taught me that the only way to be really believable and to transfer some emotion to the audience is to live, and I must say that I learned this lesson, because when I’m there, I’m really involved a hundred percent on the character. Not all of them... there are roles that maybe you don’t like so much. But when I’m singing Figaro, the fourth act of this opera is something very, very special. When I’m in good health, and in good shape so that I don’t have other worries, when I reach the fourth act, it’s the only opera where I reach pure happiness. This is also true when I’m singing Giovanni, and also Leporello.

BD:   Is it because Figaro knows then that he’s in control? [Vis-à-vis the video shown at left, see my interviews with Rockwell Blake, as well as stage director John Cox, and chorus master David Stivender.]

Furlanetto:   No, no, no. It is something that I cannot explain the reason why, but I cannot say because it’s control. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the real story. That is where I’m involved. In that moment, as a singer with sensibility, it becomes really a filter between the music and an audience. Figaro, in particular, is a real character, a real man, a real life. It could be every one of the people that you meet. You are going through very normal, but deep passions and feelings and problems, and through the music you are led to the final happiness. You can feel it... at least unconsciously I can feel this wave taking over the opera, and also my character and myself to a happy ending. It’s the idea, and the fact is that you’re in control, but it’s more than that. It’s just like surfing on a beautiful wave that is taking you to a beautiful beach.

BD:   It’s all working, and it all comes together?

Furlanetto:   Yes.

BD:   Then in the ‘fifth act’, are Figaro and Susanna truly happy?

Furlanetto:   I’m sure they are. Maybe the day after something else will happen, but in that moment, this business that they went through for who knows how much, brings them happiness. Also, at least for a moment, for the Count and the Countess, it’s a kind of happiness, but with the same bitterness that you have in the couples of Cosi at the end. You may solve the problem, but all the doubts will remain. For Figaro and Susanna, it’s more real.

BD:   There are three plays of Beaumarchais, so we have the more unknown third drama, La mère coupable [The Guilty Mother]. Therefore, we know what happens to some of the characters. Should we be aware of any of those details of what will happen when we’re seeing (the second drama) Figaro?

La mère coupable was the last play of Beaumarchais (January 24, 1732 - May 18, 1799), and it is rarely revived. Like the earlier plays of the trilogy it has been turned into operatic form, but has not entered the general opera repertoire.

beaumarchais The action takes place twenty years after the previous play in the trilogy, The Marriage of Figaro. The story's premise is that several years ago, while the Count was away on a long business trip, the Countess and Chérubin spent a night together. When the Countess told Chérubin that what they did was wrong and that she could never see him again, he went away to war and intentionally let himself be mortally wounded on the field. As he lay dying, he wrote a final letter to the Countess, declaring his love and regrets, and making mention of all the things they had done. The Countess did not have the heart to throw away the letter, and instead had a special box supplied by an Irishman called Bégearss, with a secret compartment in which to store the incriminating note, so the Count would never find it. Soon after, to her dismay, the Countess discovered herself pregnant with Chérubin's child.

The Count has been suspicious all these years that he is not the father of Léon, the Countess's son, and so he has been rapidly trying to spend his fortune to ensure the boy won't inherit any of it, even having gone so far as to renounce his title and move the family to Paris; but he has nevertheless held some doubts, and therefore has never officially disowned the boy or even brought up his suspicions to the Countess.

Meanwhile, the Count has an illegitimate child of his own, a daughter named Florestine. Bégearss wants to marry her, and to ensure that she will be the Count's only heir, he begins to stir up trouble over the Countess's secret. Figaro and Suzanne, who are still married, must once again come to the rescue of the Count and Countess; and of their illegitimate children Léon and Florestine, who are secretly in love with each other.

Figaro and Suzanne convince the Count and Countess that Bégearss is a bad man who is plotting against them. The disclosure of Bégearss's treachery brings the Count and Countess together. Almaviva, overwhelmed by relief at seeing Florestine saved from marrying Bégearss, is ready to forgo his fortune; Figaro, on the other hand, has no intention of letting the villain get away with the Count's money.

The Countess adopts Florestine as her daughter and tells her not to marry Bégearss; the Count adopts Léon as his son. Bégearss returns from a notary, now in a strong legal position over the Count's money. By complicated trickery led by Figaro, Bégearss is finally outwitted and sent away empty-handed and furious. As it is now established that Léon is the Countess's son but not the Count's, and Florestine is the Count's daughter but not the Countess's, there is demonstrably no kinship with a relative with a common ancestor, and they are free to marry one another.

As with the other Figaro plays, there are operatic versions, and as with the play itself, they are not nearly as well known as those made from the two earlier plays, and unlike the operas based on the earlier plays, adaptations of The Guilty Mother are rarely performed in the modern repertoire. The first proposal to turn The Guilty Mother into an opera was by André Grétry, but the project came to nothing. Darius Milhaud's La mère coupable (1966) was the first to be completed, and Inger Wikström made an adaptation called Den Brottsliga Modern (1990). In John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, there is a subplot in which the ghost of Beaumarchais, as an entertainment for the ghost of Marie Antoinette (with whom he is in love), conjures up a performance of the play as an opera: A Figaro for Antonia, claiming that by doing so he will change history and that Marie Antoinette will not be executed. In April 2010, the opera L'amour coupable by Thierry Pécou to a libretto by Eugène Green based on the Beaumarchais play, received its world premiere at L'Opéra de Rouen. Most recently, the play has been adapted by Icelandic singer, composer and librettist dr. Þórunn Guðmundsdóttir into the opera Hliðarspor, which is entirely in Icelandic. The title is a double entendre for stepping to the side and having an extramarital affair. All three operas were staged, the earlier two pieces in new Icelandic translations, in succession in December 2024 - March 2025 with numerous singers taking part in more than one of them.

Furlanetto:   No, I don’t think so. Where and why could it be important to know that Cherubino is dying? The audience is already very close emotionally to him, looking like a young boy. He is totally emotional, not just sexually, but like a teenager.

BD:   Could Cherubino have become a Don Giovanni?

Furlanetto:   His beginnings were good to achieve that. In the fourth act, when Cherubino comes on for the finale, instead of singing his own little tune, Ponnelle had him whistle one of the arias of Giovanni. [Both laugh] It’s intelligent, and brilliant, and bright, and possible.

* * * * *

BD: Let’s talk about some of the other roles that you sing. When you’re offered roles, how do you decide which ones you will sing?

Furlanetto: [Continuing with the Mozart repertoire] Now I have the good fortune that I can choose. So if it’s Figaro, it must be Figaro. There is no other possibility. I made a recording of the Count [shown in the box at the end of this interview], and that’s okay. In a recording you can sing whatever you want... even the Countess! [Laughs] But when it comes to doing it on stage, I love Figaro too much that I cannot imagine to be in a Figaro and not be Figaro. With Giovanni, it’s a funny story, because Giovanni was the first important role that I sang in my career. I won a competition in Italy in ’77, and I did my first Giovanni that year. I was just a kid, and I continued to sing Giovanni for many years, until one day Mr. Karajan asked me to do Leporello. I was upset and astonished, because I never thought that I would sing leporello in my life. But I couldn’t say no to Karajan! This Leporello was something extremely important in my career. I was worried when I went to Salzburg for the first time to do it on stage, because I didn’t want to play Leporello in the usual German way, which is grotesque and overdone. I thought that the best key to play Leporello was to do it à la Figaro, in a human way, which is just funny through a funny situation. When we were in Salzburg and having a session of recitatives with Karajan, I realized that it was so incredible. To let us understand what he wanted as expression, he was not really singing, but interpreting these recitatives. It was so funny that even a person like him, with this face and charisma which is always serious, that it could be so funny, almost comic just through a situation. So it was very easy to do it that way because he helped me, as did director Michael Hampe. [Video of that production is shown below.] So nowadays it depends. If I have the chance to do Leporello, I like to do it. But since it was learned earlier, there is a bit of a preference to do Giovanni.

See my interviews with Samuel Ramey, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, and Gösta Winbergh

BD:   What about in the non-Mozart roles? How do you decide?

Furlanetto:   The rest of my repertoire is basically Verdi.

BD:   So you’re back to fathers and kings again!

Furlanetto:   [Laughs] Yes, of course. A few of them, like King Philip in Don Carlos [shown below-left], are good for acting, but the others are basically vocal roles. If you sing Zaccaria standing there with your stick, and you sing out just thinking about that, the makeup will do the rest. King Philip is something different. I did it in Venice just before coming here, after two years that I didn’t sing it, and it was fun. It’s beautiful to go back to a real character like that, with a tempest of feeling going on inside him. This is transferred through the magnificent music. If I have the chance, I prefer to choose the roles where I have the possibility to sing what I like... but I do like to interpret, so that’s the reason why I’ve done practically everything of Verdi so far. There is just one hybrid role that is left, and that is Falstaff. I will do it, and I then can eat some Häagen-Dazs for a while. [Both laugh]
furlanetto

BD:   Then you will never look like Giovanni again!

Furlanetto:   In that case, I will be helped by makeup and costumes. But I like those kind of intense roles where you can really dive in their feelings.

BD:   Speaking of interpretation, where is the balance in opera between the music and the drama?

Furlanetto:   What do you mean by ‘balance’?

BD:   How do you make the mix?

Furlanetto:   The mix comes by itself, because I cannot really control it, though there is a point... For instance, I remember from the very first Giovannis that I was doing in the past, in the finale during his death, there were moments that sometimes I had a kind of dizziness. Maybe it was over-breathing brought on by the situation and the music, but then suddenly there is a kind of wall. Otherwise, you could faint probably. There’s a kind of automatic balance that gives you a break from over-involvement, which will be against the music. It’s a difficult question, but there is something automatic somewhere that is giving you the limit. It could be in the brain, but I think it’s more in the heart. So far it didn’t happen that I went over that limit. I remember another case. In Aleko [Rachmaninoff], there is a beautiful Cavatina. It is extremely important because there it’s a matter of jealousy, and the music is taking you into another enormous wave to this problem. I remember that every time I would finish the aria, my hands would be shaking, and I thought that’s not right. I need to control it, but I couldn’t. I never reached that limit, but there must be a strong emotional involvement. There are many singers with beautiful voices and great technique, but they are nevertheless cold, and that’s a defect. If you’re just so good to remain cool all through this emotion that the music should give you, that’s a defect.

BD:   They’re missing the spark?

Furlanetto:   Yes. I prefer to be shaken, but not too much.

* * * * *

BD:   Do you adjust your technique for the size of the house, if you’re in a great big place or in a very small theater?

Furlanetto:   You could do that in a very smooth way. Let’s take Giovanni, for instance. In the serenade, Là ci darem la mano, you could try to do that, but how could you do that in the finale? If you remain too light to make a kind of violence because the hall is small, you’ll be cold. Maybe you will succeed in lightening it, but you will lose all the emotions. This is with exception of Glyndebourne, because this year they’re changing everything. They’re building a bigger hall. Before, the hall had 400 or 500 seats, and now there will be over a thousand. There are not so many small halls. I don’t consider this one [Orchestra Hall, home of the Chicago Symphony] a small one. It’s a good size.

BD:   It’s got 2,500 seats, about the size of a major European opera house.

Furlanetto:   Yes. Carnegie Hall is a little bigger [2,800 seats], and the Met is about 3,800. I think that the Met’s size is the limit. Bigger than that would be a big problem. Just for fun, one day I went to the last seat in the gallery up there. The stage looks as though it is that big [indicating a small size with his fingers].

BD:   That’s why they have the glasses! [Both laugh]

Furlanetto:   Yes. I don’t like at all the outdoor theater.

BD:   You wouldn’t sing in Verona?

Furlanetto:   I did, but I don’t like it. I’m so glad that I’m spending my summers in Salzburg.

BD:   Don’t they have a huge stage?

Furlanetto:   The Large Festival Hall has almost 2,200 seats, but the stage is enormous. [It is 100 meters (330 feet) wide, one of the widest in the world.] There is also the small one. [The Small Festival Hall has 1,580 seats] I never sang there, just in the Large one. My favorite place is Venice. For me, La Fenice is magic. The city is magic, and this theater is where Rigoletto and Traviata took place for the first time. To be on that wood floor, and to look at it. It’s a magnificent theater. When you are there, you see this jewel, and the acoustics are a dream. Unfortunately, we don’t have the orchestras any more that we had in Italy before. The level is low, except in Milano. I was there for the Don Carlo that I did right before coming here.

BD:   Do you sing the same in concert that you do on recording, with the same sound, same technique, and the same vocalism?

Furlanetto:   In recordings, you could do different things. The recitatives could be more confidential when you have a mic very close. If you need to make a piano, it could be really whispered. In a theater you can’t do that. Maybe the first 10 rows would understand you, but not the rest. Now they have subtitles, but I don’t like them.

BD:   Why not?

Furlanetto:   It’s very funny and not a pleasant feeling, because we look down at the people in the first rows, and they are looking up instead of at the stage where the action is. Then there is another problem. Yesterday evening they were enjoying it a lot, but they read and then they laugh, so there is always a little but sensitive delay from the moment they should laugh and when they do.

BD:   You get two laughs, one when they read it and another when they see it.

Furlanetto:   Yes. Yesterday for instance, they were laughing at certain moments, and I was wondering why. It comes later or before, but I cannot say because I don’t see it.

BD:   Of course, now you’re doing comic opera. It would be completely different in a tragic opera.

Furlanetto:   Yes, but I understand that maybe many of these people wouldn’t come without subtitles because they like to understand. I think that opera is still a kind of culture, and if I go to see something that I don’t understand, I try to prepare myself before. That should be the way to do it.
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BD: Read the libretto before you come?

Furlanetto: Yes. As an example, I was in Japan in ’81 with La Scala. We were doing Barbiere di Siviglia, and I was doing Basilio in the Ponnelle production. There were no subtitles, and the people were laughing at the right moments. That was amazing, because they probably came to the theater after having read the libretto, or having heard the recordings. They are recognizing life at that moment with a word or a phrase. That’s the way to do it, I think. I understand it’s a tricky problem, because without the titles you probably will lose some of this audience. But maybe gradually you will recover it. For us onstage, it’s sometimes distracting and disappointing.

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BD:   Are you at the point in your career now that you should be, or that you want to be?

Furlanetto:   Yes. I’m happy with what I’m doing. I have reached the repertoire that I wanted to do, and I have reached the festival which I’ve always dreamt about, namely Salzburg. I’ve already done the things that no other Italian bass did so far in the history of the Salzburg Theater, namely King Philip, Figaro, Leporello, and in two years Giovanni. I have recorded all the Mozart roles including Alfonso, Guillermo, Leporello, Giovanni, Count, and Figaro, and now I’m going back to Verdi.

BD:   Is there any Wagner in your future?

Furlanetto:   No, I don’t think so, but you never know. However, I don’t think so because the advantage that I have in the Italian repertoire with my own language would be lost there. Also, the technique is basically different. When you have a Wagnerian singer, it’s very difficult to find and hear a real way of singing piano, or a real way of singing that kind of legato. The same thing happens in sport. You cannot really excel in two or three different sports.

BD:   [Having read that he was an avid golfer...] Do you find that your golf improves your singing?

Furlanetto:   [Laughs] I love golf, and it’s very helpful to get rid of your frustrations when you are overworking and doing too much. You can wash your brain for four hours. As an example, last summer in Salzburg for the bicentennial, it was a privilege to be there for two operas. I was singing Leporello and Figaro, but I had 13 performances in 26 days.

BD:   That’s a performance almost every other day.

Furlanetto:   Almost, because I had three groups of two performances together. Also, the dress rehearsals were very close to each other. I kept golfing every day, even if I had one hour to hit some balls, or to play six or seven holes with whatever time that I had. I remember I also had a Giovanni on a Friday, and on Saturday I had a Figaro, and Saturday morning I went to play in a tournament. [Laughs] I know it looked crazy, but for me it was a kind of safety net. I love playing, and whenever I am in the States, I try to have some long weekends to fly here and there to play.

BD:   Do the people you play golf with know you’re a big opera singer?

Furlanetto:   In Salzburg, yes, because the city is not so big. Everybody who was in Salzburg in the summer is on the golf course, so all the people know who you are. Also, I am a member of that golf club, so they know me. But it’s okay. They all consider it a normal profession.

BD:   So, golf is fun. Is singing also fun?

Furlanetto:   Could be. It could be enormous fun, but it is even more a privilege. Sometimes it’s dreadful, because there are days when the last thing you would like to do is sing, such as if you have a slight sickness, or some worries, or you’re just not in the mood. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and everything is wrong, and you don’t want to do anything. When you’re in that condition, the last thing that anyone would like to do is sing, but you have to. In that case, it’s a little bit Ridi, Pagliaccio [laugh, clown]. [Smiles]

BD:   [Knowing that Canio, who sings that phrase, is a tenor] Are you glad that you’re a bass?

Furlanetto:   Yes, yes, yes. I am performing all the most beautiful roles that the bass can sing, and they are such beautiful roles. Think about Giovanni, and Leporello, and Filippo, and Boris, and Don Quixote... they’re sensational.

BD:   In several of those, you actually get the girl!

Furlanetto:   Yes! You’re not always a priest, or a king, or a nasty guy. Maybe for that reason I love Figaro so much.

BD:   Have you ever sung Mefisto? [He would later sing the Boito version, as shown in the DVD above-right.]

Furlanetto:   The Faust of Gounod, yes. I love it. In a way, he’s very close to Giovanni. He has the same kind of charm. He’s a bon vivant and yet a nasty guy, but with a kind of noblesse. And it is fun, depending on the production. If it’s intelligent, it’s beautiful, and the music and singing is fantastic. [Wistfully] I should record that... also Papageno. That was another crazy thing that I wanted to do.
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BD:   [Surprised] Rather than Sarastro?

Furlanetto:   Yes, absolutely. Sarastro actually was probably one of the very first roles that I learned in Italian, because it was very deep. There were no difficulties, but then I found that Papageno is so human. It’s so beautiful. I put the two arias in a recital, and also Sarastro. Actually, they were so satisfied with my German that they asked me for the entire opera in ’94 or ’95.

BD:   You will have to learn all the recitatives.

Furlanetto:   Yes, I will. I have a good ear for languages. I will do the same thing I did when I learned the arias. I will go to Vienna where there is a very good coach. It will happen a lot with the text, but it’s something that I want to do because it’s beautiful. I love it. I will never forget the Salzburg production that Ponnelle did there. It was a sensation, and the Papageno was so impressive. It was Christian Boesch, and since then I wanted to do it.

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BD:   Will you come back to Chicago? [He would return in September of 1993 for the CSO performances and recording of the Verdi Requiem (shown at left), and several times with Lyric Opera of Chicago (2011-17), as Boris Godunov, Fiesco, and Don Quichotte, plus a concert honoring the life of Lyric’s President and CEO, Kenneth G. Pigott.]

Furlanetto:   Definitely I’m coming back to the opera, but I don’t know when exactly. I am very happy to be in Chicago, but I would like to come here in a better (weather) season, even though today is sensational. [Remember, this interview was done in early February of 1992!]

BD:   [Nodding knowingly] We’re supposed to hit a record high for this date, but tomorrow it will be cold again. So, be careful, and bundle up.

Furlanetto:   Oh, don’t worry. I have coats for everything. We had a terrible week of cold temperatures during this week of rehearsals.

BD:   It’s been very cold, but at least we haven’t had much snow.

Furlanetto:   It’s the first time I have come here, and I heard that you can have much snow, and the lake could be frozen. Now I think so far, so good.

BD:   Yes, this has been mostly a very mild winter.

Furlanetto:   I am often in New York, but I think it’s much prettier in Chicago.

BD:   [With civic pride] Thank you!

Furlanetto:   New York has something special because it’s a very special metropolis, but the condition of that city is awful, and it’s going worse and worse. I don’t know why they don’t do something. When you come to Chicago, which is also a big city, you have immediately a sense that everything is clean. In New York, you are swimming in the dirt. The roads are like that. It looks like Yugoslavia after the war.

BD:   [Bringing the interview back to musical topics] Are the audiences different from New York to Chicago, or even to Europe?

Furlanetto:   I don’t know about the audience of the Lyric Opera. This audience [for the Chicago Symphony] is something special in any case. Probably they are partly normal fans of opera, but there is also the big group of the symphony fans. At yesterday’s performance, they were absolutely exploding at the end.

BD: I would think it’s good to have a strong and positive reaction.
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Furlanetto: In Italy, it’s a form of culture that we have had for more than a century. There is a generation who grew up in the opera, and just because they heard two or three records, or they went to the opera, they think that they can judge without knowing what is really happening there. Parma was an important place, but nowadays it is less than it was before. If you go there to sing Verdi, for instance, and you play the score without the traditions, they kill you! So, a Trovatore without the high C at the end is no good. The audience can be the most incredible and good because they are exploding, but if you start to go against them, which means against their traditions, they think they are the repository of the truth. Fortunately, I never was in one of these situations, but I know that two or three years ago, the Traviata couldn’t finish.

BD:   They stopped the show???

Furlanetto:   They stopped the show. They sent away the soprano with boos and harsh words.

BD:   Did she deserve that treatment?

Furlanetto:   I wasn’t there, but maybe if she cracked a note, that’s enough, and you’re out. The conductor wasn’t good, either, so they couldn’t let the performance continue.

BD:   [Sighs] That’s too much.

Furlanetto:   Yes. This is the extreme. Now in New York, they lost the kind of enthusiasm that they had before, maybe because now the audience is a mixed audience of tourists. People are there for work, or they are groups that have the Night At The Opera Tour. It has become a little bit too touristic. For instance, at the Tuesday night performance they have a very sleepy audience. It’s terrible.

BD:   Should opera be something that you go to after a hard day’s work?

Furlanetto:   It should be. It could be a kind of golf.

BD:   Golf for the mind and for the spirit?

Furlanetto:   Yes. You go there, you see it, and if you’re lucky you hear a good performance with some music well done. It should be a great, great gift for yourself. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn’t happen, and maybe in that case you have the right to be furious. I was in Milano for I Vespri Siciliani, the opening night two years ago.

BD:   Singing Procida?

Furlanetto:   Yes. It was a direct telecast and a live recording. Everything was happening at this performance, but the audience didn’t like the soprano and the tenor, and they started to boo at the end of the first duet with the baritone. Muti was furious, and he didn’t want to continue. There was a big fight between people pro and against. It was like in the Roman coliseum with the gladiators and the lions. [Both laugh] In a way, they were right to dislike these two people because they’re not real Verdi singers. The tenor, Chris Merritt, is basically very good for Rossini, but not for Verdi, and the soprano, Cheryl Studer, is very good for Mozart and some Wagner, but not Verdi. You cannot give to these people to this audience.

BD:   I’m glad they liked you!

Furlanetto:   I was lucky, yes. They didn’t deserve any boos. It was just a stage when this is not really good for Verdi, but you cannot boo, you cannot whistle. In Italy, when you whistle, it is a boo. You cannot do that. If you don’t think that they are right for Verdi, just don’t applaud. That will be enough. There will be a part of the theater who will applaud, and you don’t. That’s it. Why do you want to show this kind of rage? They are very good professionals. Maybe they’re not ideal for Verdi, but you cannot boo them. It’s bad because you feel you are in the same boat, and even though you have a success, and everything is okay for you, you feel so sorry for these colleagues, and for the entire result of the night. It’s not what we are searching for.

BD:   I hope you get mostly good casts. Thank you so very much for coming to Chicago, and for speaking with me today.

Furlanetto:   With pleasure.

See my interviews with Helen Donath, Siegmund Nimsgern, Thomas Hampson, Kiri Te Kanawa,
Dawn Upshaw, Tatiana Troyanos, Paul Plishka, and Renato Capecchi

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See my interviews with June Anderson, and Nancy Gustafson

Note that this Don Giovanni was composed by Giuseppe Gazzaniga!
See my interviews with Luciana Serra, and Jeanne Lamon

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See my interviews with Carol Vaness, Francisco Araiza, and Semyon Bychkov

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See my interviews with Bernadette Manca di Nissa, and Donato Renzetti

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See my interview with Gregory Kunde

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on February 3, 1992. Portions were broadcast on WNIB three months later, and again in 1994 and 1999. This transcription was made in 2025, and posted on this website at that time.

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.