Emily Magee Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Soprano Emily Magee

An Early Conversation with Bruce Duffie

See my interview with Christoph von Dohnányi

Emily Magee (October 31, 1965 - ) received her education at Westminster Choir College and Indiana University, where she studied with acclaimed dramatic soprano Margaret Harshaw. From there she began her operatic training at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where she also made her professional debut, returning to that company to sing in several leading roles, including Fiordiligi, Liù, Marguerite, and Ellen Orford. Shortly thereafter, she began her European career with Daniel Barenboim as Elsa in Berlin and as Eva in Meistersinger at the Bayreuth Festival under the direction of Wolfgang Wagner. She enjoyed a very productive relationship with the Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin for a number of years, singing many leading roles, followed by a closely collaborative partnership with the Opernhaus Zürich, where she sang in a wide variety of roles for many years, and still performs today. Emily enjoyed six seasons of performing with the Bayreuth Festival and then several seasons with the Salzburg Festival. She has sung on the stages of all the great opera houses of the world and become one of the most in demand artists of the present day.

Critically acclaimed for her interpretation of Strauss' complex and wide ranging heroines, alongside those of Wagner and Puccini, Emily's celebrated portrayal of the Kaiserin in Die Frau ohne Schatten has taken her to some of the world's most famed houses - La Scala, Tokyo, Hamburg, Zürich and, most recently, the Royal Opera House. It has become one of her signature roles, alongside Ariadne, which she has sung in Zürich, at the Salzburg Festival, at the Semperoper Dresden as well as the Bavarian State Opera. She has also triumphed in the roles of Elsa in Lohengrin, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, and in further roles of Strauss, such as Salome, Arabella, Capriccio's Gräfin, and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. Recent role debuts include the role of Leonore in Fidelio as well as the heroines of Puccini's Tosca and La Fanciulla del West. In recent years, she has also performed in a wide variety of other roles, including Ursula in Mathis der Maler, the title role in Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini, and as Janáček's Jenůfa.

Recent highlights include her Metropolitan Opera Debut as the Foreign Princess in Rusalka, and a series of concerts of Strauss' Four Last Songs with the leading orchestras of the day.

Emily makes her home in Boulder, Colorado.

== Biography excerpted from the artist's website
== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

In the fall of 1997, Emily Magee was back with Lyric Opera of Chicago singing Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes, along with Ben Heppner and Brent Ellis, conducted by Mark Elder and directed by John Copley. Between performances she graciously took time to have a conversation with me about her rising career.

Bruce Duffie:   You’re singing Ellen Orford, which, according to the program note, is a favorite role. You also sing Mozart, and you’re about to move into Wagner. How do you decide which roles you’re going to say yes, and which roles you’re going to say no?

Emily Magee:   That’s a good question, and being relatively young and in the beginning of my career, everything that’s offered to me is a huge decision-making process. Should I sing it? Shouldn’t I sing it? Where should I sing it? So far, so good, and I haven’t made any huge errors. I usually consult my voice teacher, who is a very experienced singer.

BD:   That’s Margaret Harshaw?

Magee: Yes, and I talk to my agent. Sometimes I will ask people that I know, and conductors who know my voice very well, and then having gotten all that information, I just go on instinct! [Laughs] Generally, some feeling in me says yes or no.

BD:   What if someone says you must do this, or no, stay away from that?

Magee: Then I take notice. My voice seems to be in the middle of a Fach [category]. It’s not the lightest lyric, and yet it’s not the fullest lyric.

BD:   Does that make it even tougher to select the roles?

Magee:   It’s tough for me, because each conductor, each impresario, and each organization or whoever is casting will have a different opinion. I’ve been offered everything from Poppea [Monteverdi] through Sieglinde. I’m just starting out, so I do have to think about things carefully. I do get opinions not only just to see where my voice lies, but for the history of the part. Who has sung it? What kind of voice do people have in mind for it. I also consider the temperament. It’s not just the voice. Can I make the character believable? Can I find it in myself somewhere? It’s difficult.

BD:   Your voice range helps to dictate what roles you can accept. Do you like those characters?

Magee: So far I’ve liked every one that I’ve done. Probably the most problematic is Donna Elvira [Don Giovanni], not because I don’t like her, but because there seems to be such a huge variety of approaches to the character. Maybe because I’m young, or perhaps just because I don’t know which way I want to go with her, I’ve tried different things, and done different kinds of productions, and it’s been the most frustrating role to find a handle on. Maybe that’s good for me. Maybe it doesn’t need to be the same every time.

BD:   Do you then rely on the stage director to help you?

Magee: Hopefully, if they have a certain concept they can help. All the stage directors I’ve worked with have helped. Some really wanted me to do my own thing, and they plan on that. So it depends. However, I’ve had some stagings where there isn’t really anything planned, and those are the most difficult for me, since I do not have twenty years of experience singing a role. I came in and had to just fend for myself. That’s very difficult for a young artist.

BD:   When you’re preparing a role, obviously you’re preparing pitch and duration, and entrances and exits, but do you also prepare the psychology of the role and get really into her?

Magee: That is something I feel is coming more and more with each role I do. I’ve been brought up in a very vocal tradition from my voice teacher because I started out as a pianist. I come from the musical side. Not that I don’t enjoy the acting or the thought-process, but the more I do, the more I’m coming to it from the other way. This is also partly as I get more sure of myself vocally. I don’t wonder if I can sing this, I know that I can sing it! But I still wonder if I can make the character come through me. So I’m more and more each time approaching it from the acting side, or from the characterization side.

BD:   Without being specific, is there a chance that you might turn down a role because you hate the character?

Magee: I suppose there’s a chance, not because I would hate the character, but more if I felt I really couldn’t do it. For example, I don’t think my voice is suitable to it at the moment, but if someone offered me Tosca I would say I’d rather wait a few years. I’m a gentle type of person. I’d rather wait until I can find that character somehow. It’s just an example that came into my mind. Also, something that’s highly emotional, like Butterfly, I might wait until I’m a little older and more mature to be able not to put all that emotion into my voice and kill myself! [Both laugh] So, we’ll see! So far, I’ve been cast pretty wisely in terms of character.

BD:   Do you find yourself putting too much into any role, and then being vocally drained?

Magee: So far, no. Part of the process for me is to try to find the correct pacing in terms of the temperament and emotion in the voice to make it possible to go through the show. I find Ellen Orford a very emotional role, but primarily at the end of the opera when I have less to sing. So it works out fine for me. I can give over to it, and cry, and do whatever I want because I don’t have to sing so much at the end. But if you have a very emotional scene in the middle of the opera, and you have to sing an hour after that, it can be draining.

BD:   Did Britten design it that way, or it is just the way it worked out?

Magee: I don’t know. It worked out wonderfully for me. The pacing of the role seems to suit me really perfectly.

BD:   What does she do after the opera is over, in the ‘fourth act’?

Magee: In general, I think that she finally gives up. She finally realizes at the end that her plan didn’t work. She couldn’t make it work.

BD:   She doesn’t run off with Balstrode?

Magee: I don’t think so, but it’s hard to know. Ellen’s such a steadfast kind of person, somehow she would pick up and go on with her life. But I don’t think she would ever be quite the same. I don’t think she would ever be as trusting or as loving. She would care, but I see her perhaps just turning a bit bitter, becoming one of those older women who are just quiet, and who don’t give much of themselves, which is a tragedy because she has so much to give. She tries and tries, and it just doesn’t work.
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BD:   Is she a good school teacher?

Magee: I would imagine she is, yes. She’s an educated woman, and she believes that she can help people. She believes that she can teach, and help, and educate, and make things all right.

BD:   Was she trying to teach Peter, or was she really in love with Peter?

Magee: That was one of the questions I had when I started the role. Did she have a love for him because she felt she could help him? It’s probably too strong to say that she felt she could mold him. Was it that womanly caring, or did she really love him? Working with Ben Heppner, it came to me that they really could love each other. Maybe it was because he is a lovable person in real life, but it came to me, at least in this production, that there is a genuine love between them. Perhaps it isn’t the most passionate kind of modern love that we think of, but there was a genuine love between these people. She knew of some of the problems that they would face, and some of the problems he had, but she thinks that she can make it all work out somehow.

BD:   If he’d been a little more stable, they could have been happy?

Magee: Perhaps. I also think that she could have helped him to be more stable. Within Ellen is very much warmth... at least this is what I’m feeling when I’m doing the role. She’s taking it on herself.

BD:   Does she feel she failed him?

Magee: Oh, absolutely! I feel that very strongly at the end in his mad scene. He says her breast is harbor. In that moment I really feel that comment, and take it to heart. It’s his scene, but that’s what she’s going through. Even in the second act, she says that we failed! You’ve not done what you should have done, or you haven’t lived up to your side of the bargain. We couldn’t make it work. I couldn’t help you, I’m sorry. It’s very sad.

BD:   Does she agree with Balstrode’s solution?

Magee: [Hesitantly] I’m sure she wishes that something else could be done, but she sees the inevitability of what’s going to happen if he doesn’t do away with himself. Things will just be even worse. At least he can have that final moment of pride, and die while standing up for himself in some way, rather than being humiliated yet again. Of course, I don’t think she wants it to happen. As a woman, her last hope is of a happy, love-filled life, perhaps with a child. She sees the whole thing with the boy apprentice and Peter as maybe her last chance, and she sees that go down at the end.

BD:   She is a widow. Was she happy with her first husband, Orford?

Magee: I don’t imagine so! [Laughs] My feeling is that there was some kind of sadness in the marriage. Whatever the duration, it wasn’t happy. I like to think of Ellen as a little younger, because I don’t feel like she’s had much life experience. Perhaps her husband fell ill and died.

BD:   He was an older fellow?

Magee: Yes, or something happened that their marriage was very short-lived, and she feels stilted somehow inside. Either way, I think that her married life was not a happy one somehow.

BD:   Does that make her a little more prepared for Peter?

Magee: Perhaps. They say that women tend to enter into those same kinds of relationships over and over again, or that they marry their fathers. You fall into those traps, and perhaps her first husband could have been abusive in some way, or addicted to something, and she’s fallen into that again.

BD:   Peter’s addicted to money?

Magee: Yes, absolutely, more so than the violence. Everyone seems to be stuck on the violence, or on the abusiveness to the boy, and in our production we don’t really do that so much. Though that’s an issue, really the obsession is the money, and the ‘I’ll show them’ mentality that ultimately gets him in trouble.

BD:   Is it possible that you can delve too far into these characters?

Magee: I don’t know if you can go too far, but there is a limit for me in how much I can bring. I can think about things forever. I’m a multi-faceted person, so when you ask me a question you never get a definite answer, because I’ll think of fifty million sides to it. The hard thing for me is to just to decide in that moment which way we are going to go this time. Fortunately there’s no definitive interpretation of any role. People think there is, but there isn’t. I thank God for that, because if there was, they’d never produce Peter Grimes again. If somebody didn’t want to see anybody but Jon Vickers in the part, we wouldn’t have Ben Heppner.

BD:   But then people wouldn’t have wanted to see anybody but Peter Peters!

Magee: Exactly, exactly, and it goes on and on. In that moment you have to find what you want to do, and then there’s room for change, too. In each performance there can be some variety.

BD: Do you grow in each performance?

Magee: Oh, definitely. The most frustrating thing for me is that the reviewers attend on the opening night. Sometimes you wish they would come for the fifth performance. I thought that the most recent performance was the best yet, and it was the sixth [of ten]. But that’s the good part, too, especially for this being my first time in the role. I just feel that it will grow and grow with my years of experience. Hopefully ten years from now I will still be singing it, and I’ll have yet another take on it.

BD: It is a role that you look forward to coming back to?

Magee: I’d love to, yes. It suits my voice very easily and very well, so those are the kinds of things I could keep singing for a while, and change the interpretation as they go.

* * * * *

BD:   In this role, or in any role, when you walk on stage, are you portraying the character or do you actually become that character?

Magee: A little bit has depended on the character and the production. The best for me is when I feel that I can really become the character, and yet have the technical wherewithal to sing correctly. Sometimes if you become the character too much, you run the risk of not being absolutely on the right track technically. Singing is a very intellectual affair in terms of the physical production of the voice, and what’s challenging about it is to keep some percentage of your brain really focused on the singing as an art, but allow enough of the reality to come through. Each part is different. There are some moments when I feel I have to be absolutely intellectual, and try to make the drama come through by some means. Then there are other times when I feel absolutely in the character. The productions are different, too. Sometimes they’re very stand-and-sing, and those are less satisfying, while sometimes they’re very, very involved. Those are the ones I enjoy the most, but sometimes they are more difficult.

BD:   Because they’re more complicated?

Magee: Yes, your mind has to be working on six different levels.

BD:   At the end of a performance, are you able to throw off that character and go back to being Emily again?

Magee: Most of the time. It takes me a little time after Ellen Orford, because it’s just so tragic at the end to see Peter go mad. It is such a sad ending to the story.

BD:   Do you see Ben or do you see Peter?

Magee: It’s a good question! I see Peter because Ben is a fine enough actor, with the interesting and good parts of Ben shining through somehow. It also depends... Ellen is not my longest role. For instance, when I sing Elsa, it’s such a long role, and in the production I was involved in, I was on stage for the entire show, and handled most of the drama by myself. It was an abstract German production, and at the end I was exhausted, sometimes into the next day. It was not so much being still in the character, but as a character I felt like I had been run through the wringer. It’s exhausting sometimes.

BD:   Physically and mentally?

Magee: Yes, absolutely.

BD:   Would that influence you not to accept that role too often?

Magee: Yes. There are some roles you feel like you could sing every night. Ellen Orford is one for maybe not every night, but I could do it if I had to. Elsa in general is heavy duty on my voice. It’s a long role, and for my personal Emily Magee Fach, it’s on the heavy side. So I don’t want to do it too much at this point. Maybe later...

BD:   Are you pacing yourself to make sure you only sing in a certain number of performances, and a certain number of engagements?

Magee: I try to. Being in the beginning of my career, I’ve had some pauses in between things. Not huge pauses... I’ve been working steadily, but here and there I’ve had a couple of weeks to rest, or breaks in between, and I would like to keep it that way. I see some of my colleagues jumping on and off planes, singing here and singing there. It must be terribly exhausting. I don’t have that kind of energy, and I don’t care to. I would just as soon be able to give my all to what I’m doing, take a little time off, and then give it my all again.

BD:   Then move on to the next?

Magee: Yes. It’s very exhausting work for me, especially with everything being new. Perhaps when I’ve sung the Figaro Countess hundreds of times, I’ll think I can toss that off any night! But for now, it’s all new.

BD:   Of course, that’ll be the night when the Count breaks his ankle in the middle of the show.
magee

Magee: Exactly! [Both laugh]

BD:   Tell me the secret of singing Mozart.

Magee: The secret of singing Mozart is just good singing. It’s vocal music, and there’s a certain purity of tone one needs. I don’t think you can paste it on if you don’t have it, but it suits my voice pretty well. Then being free enough within the music and knowing the style well enough, you can experiment with the characters and bring them to life. The Mozart style is not the most dramatic when compared to verismo-type characters, so the trick for me is to make that very technical and very instrumental music personal, and have the character.

BD:   Perhaps not so much with the Figaro characters, but certainly with the Così fan tutte characters, is it particularly difficult to be on stage as this person, and yet know that you’re communicating with women who are now about to head into a new millennium? They’ve come through wars, and revolutions, etc.

Magee: I think you can. There are some people who feel guilty about it. There are some people who don’t like Fiordiligi, for example, for that reason. There are a number of things you can do. You can try to bring that emancipation and that new millennium into the opera as I imagine Mozart would love. I never met the man, but I would think that it was pretty great, and pretty funny.

BD:   [With a wink] Really??? You don’t think you’ve met him, even though you have been singing his music and become intimate with him that way?

Magee: [Laughs] I guess that’s how I can form some sort of opinion about what he would have liked, but you can change things around for yourself. The genius of Mozart is that all of this is possible when making these characters. For example, as seemingly frothy and silly as Così is, for me it can be just the opposite. It can be very human and really telling, or you can approach it in a completely frothy way, and have fun with it and laugh at it. That’s part of opera too! It shouldn’t always be so serious. But that doesn’t bother me at all with Fiordiligi. She’s funny, and gets herself in trouble, and that’s what people do.

BD:   Is she really human?

Magee: Sure, I think she’s human. She’s young, and for me that’s the key to some of it. When I think about what I was like at fifteen or eighteen, or twenty-five, in many aspects I’m still that way! [Both laugh] Think how silly one can be, and let’s face it, the guys in that opera are pretty silly too. [Much laughter]

BD:   They’re just out for a romp.

Magee: They’re just kids sometimes.

BD:   Now the big question... who should wind up with whom at the end?

Magee: [Smiles] That’s another thing. Fortunately, I don’t think there is one correct answer. For me, part of the humor or part of the touching quality is that they really are with the wrong people. I’m sure I could change my mind every second, but if I were to mount a production, I would make it clear that Fiordiligi and Ferrando are made for each other. This is because of their music. Somehow the poetic quality of his singing and of his words seem to go with Fiordiligi and the word-happy person that she seems to be. Dorabella is a little sillier, a little more fun, a but less intellectual and bookish, and certainly less steadfast than Fiordiligi. The baritone seems the same, more fun-loving and less serious. It depends on whether you think opposites attract! [Both laugh] Whether they come together at the end of not, I don’t know, but on some level they’re meant for each other. Perhaps you could have it so that they meet the wrong people at the end, and that’s part of the joke. But it’s so obvious that those two belong together, and yet it doesn’t go that way. Perhaps they turn each other on during the course of the opera, but at the end they go back with the previous ones because it’s more comfortable.

BD:   I just wonder if there are any regrets at the end.

Magee: I think there are some either way. Either they’ve met somebody really great, and thought about them, and went back to the other one, or they’ve met somebody new and had to say good-bye to the old one. It’s the human condition.

* * * * *

BD:   The music that you sing is obviously Classical Concert Music. Is this for everyone?

Magee: It could be for everyone, but it probably isn’t, and that’s fine. Heavy metal isn’t for everyone either, thank God! [Both laugh] It’s not my favorite, but whatever excites you... I’d like to think that there is at least something in the repertoire for everyone, because opera runs such a huge gamut from stand-and-sing classical music, to something that’s funny, to something like Peter Grimes. It’s amazing... A woman told me last night that this was the first opera she ever saw. She’d never seen an opera before!

BD:   [Gasps] My, what an introduction!

Magee: Yes, and my first thought was to wonder what that must have been like. She must have been thrown. But she said, “The production was dramatically viable. It was such a wonderful theater piece that I didn’t even think about it being an opera! I looked at it as a wonderful drama, and was turned onto opera through that!” So, I thought it was a wonderful piece to see the first time.

BD:   I wonder then what will happen when she goes to something like Così.

Magee: Hopefully it will always be meaningful. We know it’s not always that way, but I’d like to think there’s something in the repertoire for everyone, whether it’s the old war-horses like Carmen or Aïda, or if it’s modern opera. Some people only like modern opera. You never know.

BD:   It used to be that the most frequently done operas at the Met were ABC — Aïda, Bohème, and Carmen.

Magee: Opera is good because it gets a mixed audience. There are some people who are very educated and informed, and there are people who have no idea what they’re singing about. I met a fellow yesterday who clearly had no idea of anything about opera.

BD:   Yet you’ve got to penetrate to all 3,600 people who are sitting out there.

Magee: Right, people who find it boring but who are there on a date, to people who couldn’t be more excited. For some, it’s their dream to come once a year, and then there are people who come to five or six performances of each opera. I wonder how I can make this different for them tonight.

BD:   Do you want to make it different, or just better?
magee

Magee: Better, always better! I’m always trying to make things better, and sometimes it’s not better. The vocal instrument is a very human thing. It’s prone to faults, and there is only so much you can do some nights. But I always try to make something better.

BD: Should the audience be aware of how difficult it is to sing properly?

Magee: [Thinks a moment] No, I hope not, but sometimes, when somebody says, “You make it look so easy,” or, “Your voice is just so natural. You must have always sung like that,” [laughs] it kind of makes me a little mad, because I’m working so hard to try to get it to look natural. So I take it as a compliment.

* * * * *

BD:   Let me ask the easy question. What’s the purpose of music?

Magee: Oh, that’s a really easy question! [Both laugh] It may surprise some people because I think so technically about my singing sometimes, but for me music has always been about how it makes you feel. It’s been about emotion.

BD:   Is that more about you the artist, or you the audience?

Magee: Both, I would say. I was speaking more as an opera fan. My first opera record was Luciano Pavarotti doing top ten arias. I used to put on ‘Che gelida manina’ [La Bohème], and sing along with the words that I didn’t even know, but I would make them up. Sometimes I would just listen to it, and it would make every nerve of my body stand on end. It moved me to cry and feel something, and that was why I liked opera, and particularly certain kinds of opera. I never tire of Butterfly, or Suor Angelica. Things that are very sad are the ones I always liked. But to me, that’s it! Why have opera when, for instance, you can have an orchestra concert? To me it’s the drama... not that there’s no drama in an orchestra concert, but you can add drama through the text. The human voice is a completely unique instrument because it comes from someone’s soul. There are so many times it amazes me. Even in a voice lesson, or when I’m working technically, you can’t figure it out. You can’t really explain how to do it. It just comes from you, and that’s the humanity which comes out through the voice. That should be what moves people, and that’s why there are so many different voices. There’s no voice that is really the same as anyone else’s, and if you find a part that really suits you and can bring that humanity out of you, it can be tremendously moving for the audience. It’s really an art form on the stage, and you cannot allow yourself to really feel what your audience is feeling, which can be frustrating. That’s your job to get it out there and let them interpret the presentation. The more mature I get and the more experience I get, I realize that more and more. It’s a very giving experience, more than a taking experience. The audience should be the ones that receive and are able to feel something from you.

BD:   Can I assume you feed off the energy that comes back from the audience?

Magee: Yes definitely. Every place is different, and every night is different. It’s amazing to me... here in Chicago, for example, with such a big house full of people, there are nights when you can hear a pin drop, and that’s good. There are other nights when people will applaud at moments you don’t expect it, and that’s good too, because something about it excited them. Then there are houses where people talk through the performance. I was in Bayreuth this summer to sing and also attended some of the performances, and I was uncomfortable in the audience because it was so quiet. I was afraid to breathe, but that’s a different kind of energy. It was a reverential kind of hushed tone, and it’s wonderful when you’re on stage to hear that ‘nothing’.

BD:   Do you like moving now into the Wagner repertoire?

Magee: Yes, but I don’t want to move too far into that realm yet. I very much enjoyed singing Eva. I felt like it suited me very well.

BD:   Tell me a little bit about Eva.

Magee: She’s easy for me to find because she’s young, and perhaps naïve to a point.

BD:   Is she too happy?

Magee: She is a little sunny. [Both laugh] I don’t think she’s led a very difficult life. She was in a relatively sheltered environment. On the other hand, there’s no mother around that we see, so she’s clearly had something lacking there. She’s probably been doted on for her whole life by her father.

BD:   Could she have been happy with Hans Sachs if he had wound up winning the contest?

Magee: She thinks she could have been happy in a way, but the magical thing about the opera is that he’s right, and it ends up right. She sees that he’s right when she finally meets Walther. I’m sure in the first second she thinks, “Oh! That’s what Sachs was talking about! I didn’t know what it was, and now I know.” She is a little cunning, and once she figures that out, she would do anything to make it happen. She would have run away with Walther had they gotten to go away. She would have been upset about it, but she would do anything to end up with that kind of happiness.
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BD:   Would she have done anything to make sure she didn’t wind up with Beckmesser?

Magee: [Laughs] Probably! Maybe even more so! It’s such a lovely wonderful relationship between Hans Sachs and Eva. It’s fatherly and yet it’s not. It’s something completely generational, and it’s a wonderful thing. You wish that every young girl would have someone like that to show her what love is, and then be kind enough and strong enough to pull back at the right moment and say, “I’m not the one for you. You have to find somebody of your own.” It’s lovely, and very touching.

BD:   Her father, Pogner couldn’t do this?

Magee: Not the way he’s characterized in the opera. You would hope that fathers could somehow do that, but my feeling is that Pogner is a little overwhelmed by raising this girl by himself. That’s partly a hole that Magdalena can fill. He doesn’t understand that kind of thing. I see him as a befuddled father, loving but perhaps maybe not knowing quite what to do. You feel it too when you’re doing the opera. With all those men around, you are one of the only women in the cast. I picture what Eva’s life must have been like with all those men around all the time. How she must have adored them! How she adored Sachs, this charming man who gave her so much of his time, and taught her, and showed her something about life. She adores men, and primarily adores Sachs, but then when she finally meets Walther, it’s a whole different ball-game.

BD:   She has a different kind of adoration for Walther?

Magee: Yes, and she learns that in the course of the opera. That’s really special, and the audience and the character are really going through this at the same time. She has this realization and her life has changed during the course of the opera.

BD:   Are she and Walther happy then in the ‘fourth act’?

Magee: I think so. I hope so! I don’t know how Sachs ends up, but I think he’s happy to see her happy.

BD:   We can go back into the history, because Sachs was a real person, and we know there was only one Midsummer Day when he was available. [Hans Sachs (5 November 1494 – 19 January 1576) was a German mastersinger, poet, playwright, and shoemaker. After apprenticeship and journeyman years traveling to many towns, in 1516 he settled in his birthplace of Nuremberg and stayed there for the rest of his life. On 1 September 1519 he married Kunigunde Creutzer (1502–1560). They had seven children, but all died while he was still alive. He married again on 2 September 1561, this time to the young widow Barbara Harscher.]

Magee: That’s true, but in the course of the opera, we don’t know that.

BD:   [Wistfully] I wonder if after Eva and Walther are fixed up, maybe Eva tries to matchmake for Hans Sachs.

Magee: I wouldn’t be surprised, or he may have finally he had to find someone so as not to be alone. Hopefully they all find some happiness.

BD:   Do you like working with Daniel Barenboim?

Magee: He’s been good to me. I have worked with him now more than any other conductor, and just like everything, you have to develop your language, your own relationship. But he’s been very good for me, and he’s taught me a lot. He’s very good at finding the characterization within the music. That’s something I’m always working on, trying to find more and more of the drama through the line of the music. It all goes together, but in a very strong way.

BD:   We’ve been talking about opera. Do you also sing concerts and recitals?

Magee: Not so many yet. My schooling was almost all song repertoire, and I love it, but I’ve never felt terribly comfortable in recital — less comfortable than in opera — but I’m trying to remedy that. I’m trying to plan some recitals for the future, but one problem is finding the time. I don’t know when, but I’m hoping to do some. I love doing concert work, singing oratorio primarily. That’s part of my background, but I’d also like to try some song recitals.

BD:   I hope that’s in your future.

Magee: Yes, me too.

BD:   Are you at the point in your career that you want to be at this age?

Magee: [Hesitantly] Yes. In some ways I feel I’m further than I want to be. At my age, I never thought I would be singing at Bayreuth, and debuting in roles like Ellen Orford at the Chicago Lyric, as well as singing in Paris and all over the place. I thought I’d be in Sheboygan [Wisconsin, a city of 50,000 between Milwaukee and Green Bay] again for a while, or in a Fest contract in Germany. But I’m thrilled for where my career is, and hope I can live up to it. That’s what I feel like.

BD:   You were part of the Lyric Opera Center?

Magee: Yes.

BD:   Was that good solid training?

Magee: It was the best. [Among her roles was Vee Talbott in Orpheus Descending by composer-in-residence Bruce Saylor.] I wish sometimes that I had had maybe a little bit different kind of training in school, but considering that I was never sure if I was going into opera or teaching, then what can you? But to me the best education for opera singing is opera singing. That way you can learn dramatic techniques. Obviously you have to learn how to sing, and you can learn diction and all the things you need, but the best education is if you can get on stage and do it, hopefully with some rehearsal period and some guidance, but sometimes not! Sometimes you just have to get out there and fake it, and for me that’s been the best education. I was always kind of shy, and I didn’t have a lot of stage experience before I went to graduate school in Indiana, where we had a huge opera program. They just threw me out on the stage, and I learned as I went. I made some mistakes, and learned, and by the time I got to the Lyric, I had some experience on stage. But being on stage with the artists who were here made a big difference. I got right out, and they let me perform a major role right away. So I learned a tremendous amount from that, not just about being on stage and singing, but from the whole thing. I learned about colleagues, conductors, the press, everything! That’s the best way to go. I was lucky. It’s a wonderful place to work for a variety of reasons. The atmosphere is lovely, the people treat you just wonderfully, plus what goes on the stage isn’t bad either! [Both laugh]

BD:   It’s absolutely first-class.

Magee: I’m very proud to be part of the Lyric Opera family.

BD: I wish you lots of continued success.

Magee: Thank you!

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on October 23, 1997. Portions were broadcast on WNIB a few days later, and again in 1999 and 2000. This transcription was made in 2024, 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.