After discussing our menageries, we got down to musical matters . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:    Tell me the secret of singing Mozart!

Margaret Price:    Oh, hard work.  That’s the secret, it’s hard work.

BD:    Is it gratifying to sing Mozart?

MP:    Yes.

BD:    Is the hard work of Mozart the same as you need to have for Verdi and for Wagner?

MP:    It’s not quite the same.   Sure, everything that you sing is hard work, but with Mozart it’s a special kind of discipline where you’re forever polishing every note so that they are even, that there are no flaws in a phrase.  I always like to say that it’s like a perfect set of pearls.  That’s what I strive for when I sing Mozart, that every pearl is of the same quality and size.

BD:    Can it ever be too perfect?

MP:    I don’t know.  I don’t think that anything can be too perfect.  There’s always the danger, of course, that one is criticized for being mechanical, that it’s like putting a recording on.  I would be very happy if someone said that to me.   That’s what I strive for

To read my Interview with Marilyn Horne, click HERE To read my Interview with Jon Vickers, click HERE To read my Interviews with Zubin Mehta, click HERE

BD:    That’s nice of you to say.   Maybe we can entice you back more often!

MP:    Oh, I hope so!  I’d like to come back.

BD:    Do you like being booked two, three, fours years in advance?

MP:    In some ways yes, and in some ways no.  The positive side of it means that you know that in the next three years you’ve got work.  That means that you’ve got money flowing into the bank, and that, for me, is rather important in so much as I don’t have a husband to look after me.  Whatever I do, I have to provide for myself.  The negative side of it is that you commit yourself so far in advance to doing something, that when something more interesting comes along you can’t do it.  You have to say no.  And that is invariably the case.  If, for example, I have to commit myself up until 1990, it could be that a dream recording comes along.  Everyone knows that recordings are never planned that far in advance, so it means that I can’t do it, and that’s sad.  Also it could be that a wonderful concert comes with a fantastic conductor that you really desperately want to work with, and I can’t do it!   Sad, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles!

BD:    I hope that there are other things that you’re looking forward to, certain things that are coming up that are in your schedule.

MP:    Oh, sure!  The things that you accept are all exciting things, and things that I personally want to do very much with conductors that I love working with.  That’s not really the case.  It’s just that it can happen that such and such a conductor says he is doing something and desperately wants to record that role with me.  The answer has to be no, I can’t do it.

BD:    I wonder, though, if that’s forcing you to be a little more prudent with your life.  If you accepted this and accepted that and accepted everything, maybe you’d be working too much.

MP:    That is a risk that a lot of singers have to take, and then they decide if they’ll do that.  I, however, don’t sing that much.  I only sing between fifty and sixty performances a year.  Sixty is the very, very maximum.

BD:    You look in your schedule and you absolutely say no more than that?

MP:    Yes. 

BD:    Why?

MP:    I want to keep my voice!  It is that simple!  [Both laugh]

BD:    A simple, but prudent answer!  We’re talking a little bit about recordings.  Do you enjoy making records?

MP:    Yes, I do.  It’s a different technique altogether to live performances, but I enjoy doing it. 

BD:    Do you find them artificial?

MP:    No, not when I’m there no!   When I’m there doing the work, I’m working so I can’t honestly say I feel any tension or any artificiality about it.  Sure, when you’ve done something maybe three times and you’re the one who’s done it right in all three times and somebody else is lousing it up for you, you could put your foot somewhere.  But basically it’s working towards a kind of perfection that I actually like.  I enjoy doing them.

BD:    But for the recordings you can cut and piece for an added dimension of perfection.

MP:    They do that.  For a recording I did recently of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, there are no cuts in it at all.  We did it from beginning to end as a cycle.

BD:    But that’s just you and the piano.

MP:    Yes.  One can’t control what those little men do with their knobs when other people are involved.  But certainly on the recital recordings that I’ve done, I’ve been very impressed.  There are very few cuts, and certainly not splicing into notes, or splicing in order that you can sing the phrase in one breath where you know perfectly well no one is capable of singing it in one breath.  [Laughs]  You listen to some of these things and you think,

  [Both laugh]  Then I know that’s because they’ve cut into it and they’ve joined it all together.

BD:    At what point then does this kind of editing become a fraud?

MP:    That’s an example that I think is a fraud.  It’s also a fraud when they electronically alter the pitch.  This means that if you’re not capable of singing a top C on that day but only a B or a sharp B, they can actually bring it up to a C.  If they were ever to do that, I think that would be fraud.

BD:    Even though sometimes you can sing the C without any problems?

MP:    Yes.  I think then they should come back in a few days’ time and have another go at it.  So many of the recordings today are made that way.  You get a situation where either the soprano goes ill or the tenor goes ill, and you have one week of recording or two weeks of recording with fifteen minutes per day because if you’re doing a three-hour session, you’re only allowed so many minutes of music to record during that day.  So if one of the artists is sick, that throws the entire recording out.  So what happens then is that they voice their part over at some other given date in the studio.  That I don’t mind providing it is genuine sickness.  Where I think one should draw the line is because an artist wants to do a job somewhere else.  Then that artist comes and does the voice-over at some other time.  The result of that is everyone else sounds maybe a little tired because they’ve been there working every day, and the other person comes in sounding perfectly fresh.  They are also in a different studio – which we have to take into consideration – and the acoustic is different.  It is always more favorable.  That I don’t like very much!

BD:    So you couldn’t possibly do this in Mozart because of all the ensembles?

MP:    Well, it’s done.  We had a circumstance with the Mozart Requiem that I recorded in Dresden where Araiza was really sick.  I mean he was feverishly sick, and just simply could not do the recording.  No way could he do it.  He was desperately ill and he had to voice his part over.

BD:    Why couldn’t they get a different tenor?

MP:    He had already started and had done the first couple of days’ recording, and then got sick.

BD:    Is recording harder work than stage work?

MP:    No, I don’t think so.  Depends on what you’re recording.  I’ve recorded Tristan and Isolde in Dresden, and that was hard going.  I had to be very, very careful with my own personal discipline with that because we were rehearsing with Kleiber in the morning from 11 until 1, and then from 2 until 6.  Every night we recorded.  That was hard going.

BD:    Were you able to impose a Mozart sound onto the Wagnerian line?

MP:    I just sang it with whatever instrument I have.  I sang it with my voice.  I didn’t try to emulate any other Wagnerian singer or try to have a Wagnerian sound for this.  He specifically chose me because he didn’t want that.  So I sang it the way I sing in all of my roles.  People can hate it and can people can like it!  It’s there and there’s nothing I can do about it.

BD:    Do you like the recording?

MP:    I haven’t actually yet listened to it from beginning to end.  I’ve heard the first act and I’ve heard the Liebestod, but what goes on in between I haven’t fully heard.

BD:    Speaking of Isolde, did you delve into the character at all or did you just do the recording?

MP:    No, I worked very, very hard.  I spent a whole year studying the part of Isolde musically.  It didn’t take me a year to learn the notes, but what I mean is the actual studying of the opera, the characterization.  I was under a slight disadvantage in as much as I had never done it on stage, so I didn’t have the possibility of working with a producer who would help me with an interpretation.  I had to find my own interpretation, and I could only do that by reading books and reading the legend over and over again, and various interpretations of that legend.  The original legend was written by a Welshman, so I was very proud of that, of course!  I just was reading up all of the information that I could get my hands on so that I could formulate in my own mind my interpretation of this piece.

BD:    This was while you were doing other concerts and other operas?

MP:    Yes, yes.

BD:    But you prepared it essentially the way you would if you were bringing it to the stage?

MP:    Yes.  The only thing that was missing was bringing it from memory.  That I didn’t do because I knew it was not necessary to do that.  Although, it is surprising when you don’t think you have to do it from memory, it comes very quickly from memory.  It’s only when you know you have to memorize something that I get a blackout and I worry.

BD:    Do you like having all of the various roles in your memory?

MP:    I have a lousy memory, I must honestly say.  It is my downfall.  I learn very, very quickly but I forget it just as quickly.  I can absorb things very, very quickly but, my gosh, it goes.

BD:    Then do you rely on the prompter?

MP:    For certain operas that I haven’t sung a great deal, yes, I do rely on a prompter.   For a piece like Otello that I must have sung over 200 performances by now, I don’t require her for anything unless something dangerously wrong; if it goes sour on stage or where someone forgets chunks of music.  Then I look down at her to make sure I’m still on the right track, or if, for example, I’m unconcentrated, which can always happen.  You can have a bad day and you’re thinking of something else totally, and then your mind wanders and you suddenly find yourself forgetting a word or a couple of words, or whatever.  Then, sure, the prompter’s very, very useful.

BD:     But Otello is not one you have different cuts in various places.

MP:    It can be cut, and I’ve done performances where the children’s scene in the second act musically has been cut.  I’ve also done performances where the big ensemble in the third act has been cut.

BD:    Does that not do violence to the music as Verdi has set it?

MP:    There are parts of that ensemble that could be cut.  It’s not sort of fantastic music, not his best music, and since it’s repetitive, it can be cut.  It’s not a great cut.  I don’t mean the whole section, just that there is a possibility of a cut in that big ensemble.

BD:    Oh, I see, just a little tightening then?

MP:    Yes.

BD:    Do you prefer with the cut then?

MP:    No, I don’t mind it either way.  I personally prefer to do everything from beginning to end without cuts, but I can see the point.  It can be a long opera, and it’s also a matter of finance, especially with the cut in the second act.  If they haven’t got the children...

BD:    How about Mozart with the cuts in the recitatives?

MP:    Oh, that’s a pain!  [Both laugh]  Don’t talk to me about that!!  That is the biggest headache God ever created, especially in Così Fan Tutte.  It’s the worst.  There are no cuts for the Countess in Figaro, there are no cuts in Don Giovanni, but Così Fan Tutte, that is painful.

BD:    And every production is different?

MP:    Practically every opera house that you go to has a different set of cuts.

BD:    I assume it’s all in the recitatives, not in the arias.

MP:    No, it’s all in the recitatives, but that can really throw you.  I think I’ve learned all the permutations over the last twenty-two years.  I've done every permutation of cuts in Così!  [Much laughter]

BD:    Has anyone done it all?

MP:    Only on record.  It would become disastrously long.  We’d be there a week!  My gosh!

BD:    Then why did Mozart write all those recitatives?

MP:    I don’t know!  It is long.  Così is a long opera.  All Mozart operas, curiously enough, are long.  One doesn’t realize that until you get down to the nitty-grittys, and

BD:    Tell me about the character of Aïda.  What kind of a woman is she?

MP:    Oh, dear.  I hate it when people ask me these questions because somehow I don’t go into in a psychological way what kind of woman is she.  I work it out more musically than psychologically.  So to ask me what kind of woman any of the things are, I wouldn’t be able to answer you.  

BD:    Okay, let me change it around a little bit.  Do you like the woman, Aïda, and do you like portraying her?

MP:    Yes I do, very, very much.  I find her a very sympathetic person to portray.  Musically I find it very difficult.  I think it’s probably the most difficult role in the repertoire.  It can certainly be the most frightening!

BD:    [Surprised]  Frightening???  How?

MP:    When it comes to the third act, you’ve already sung the Triumphal Scene and Ritorna Vincitor, which are all block-busters.  Then you have the most lyric part of the opera to sing, which is the Nile Scene.

BD:    He wrote it backwards!

MP:    It’s almost that way, yes, and it’s certainly very, very difficult to overcome.  I don’t think it’s necessarily just me alone.  I think that all of my colleagues who’ve sung that role would say the same thing.  As soon as the Nile aria is over, they can breathe a sigh of relief.  Once the Nile Scene is over, then you’re home and dry.  You’ve still got the duet to sing, but certainly once you’ve sung the Nile aria, then you can start breathing again. 

BD:    Do you spend most of the time in the theater that night anticipating all this? 

MP:    Under pressure, yes, definitely, definitely.

BD:    I was going to say the same is true of Isolde, but then you didn’t have to work that up to sing it in order.

MP:    No.  Well, in fact I did more or less do it that way.  I did persuade them, as much as possible, to take it in order so that I would sing everything chronologically.  But I didn’t have to worry about doing it all in one go, if that’s what you mean.  That’s true. 

BD:    You didn’t have to pace yourself so the Liebestod would sound fresh. 

MP:    Yes, that’s true.

BD:    Are the Verdi characters that you sing different from the Mozart characters?

MP:    No, not very different.   I always tended to sing the people who are hard done by in life.  [Laughs]  If you look, for example, at the Countess in Figaro.  She’s hard done by.  She’s fallen in love with a man who’s not faithful to her.  She has a hard time until we get to the last part of the last act where they all come together.  That’s something else, but the life that she’s got is not easy.

BD:    When you’re doing the Countess, do you ever think about the third drama of Beaumarchais?

MP:    No!

BD:    Not at all?

MP:    No, nor the first... not when I’m actually singing the Countess.

BD:    But the operatic public can be aware of it

MP:    You can’t possibly think that way, not while you’re singing the Mozart because automatically you’re thinking of Barber of Seville, and she was at that time a very frivolous person.  When you come to doing the Countess in Figaro, she is older and she’s certainly not frivolous.  I know it’s a trilogy and one should, I suppose, think of Rosina and then Countess Almaviva, but Mozart didn’t write it that way. 

BD:    He wrote it to stand on its own?

MP:    Mozart wrote that particular role for a mature person, not for a frivolous young girl, so you can’t interpret it any other way that Mozart wrote it.

BD:    Sometimes I like to ask questions about whether they are happy in the act after the final curtain, but in that case we know what happens.

MP:    Ponnelle has an interesting end to Figaro.  It’s a long time since I sang it in his production, but as far as I remember, after everyone had finished singing, he then had the Countess go running off into the woods with Cherubino.  That’s interesting! 

  Then after a lot of friendly persuasion, she succumbs to the charms of Ferrando.  I honestly believe that if she can’t have him, then she doesn’t want anybody because she’s ruined her life for Guglielmo.  She’s proven to herself that she doesn’t love him anymore, and therefore this could only be artificial if she goes back to Guglielmo.  With Ponnelle, as far as I remember – it’s hard because I haven’t done his production for such a long time – but I’ve got the feeling that she does not go back.  There’s a very funny change at the very end where all the music has finished.  He’s actually got her going to Ferrando, as far as I remember, but I could be wrong about that.  But certainly with Boy Gobert they go towards each other.  Dorabella, because she’s a flighty person anyway and she’s not as serious as Fiordiligi, so she automatically goes back.  

BD:    It’s been a passing fancy for her?

MP:    It’s just been a passing fancy!  Fiordiligi just somehow makes it clear.  She does not say,

with Papageno.  After that, you have to be poised enough to sing the duet, and curiously enough he’s written it in a strange part of the soprano’s voice.  I always used to find a little tricky, in as much as a bit low after you’d been speaking.  But the other horrible thing about singers speaking on stage is they tend to be terribly dramatic!  [Imitates a dramatic Pamina speaking the dialogue]  Mother, mother, mother!  [Both laugh]  It becomes terribly comic after a while.  

BD:    Should singers then, especially the ones who sing those kinds of roles, take acting lessons?

MP:    Who would teach them, other than an actor?  [Pauses a moment]  Most singers, you see, are too mean to do something like that.  I speak against my colleagues, but they think that once they’ve learnt something, it’s learnt.  They never actually go back and revise anything and re-study anything.  I don’t know whether it’s because they don’t get paid enough or whether they think they’ve done it so they know it.  I don’t know what the psychology is behind it.

BD:    For a revival, do they just pick up the score and brush it up and it’s done?

MP:    Right!

BD:    You don’t do that?

MP:    I don’t do that, no.  Not that I’m a goodie-goodie, it’s just my way of working.  I’ve always done that.  I’ve always been taught to do that.  We’re coming back to the financial thing.  I don’t have immediate financial responsibilities other than myself to have to think about, therefore I can spend that money on working with a coach, or going to an actor saying to spend a couple of hours with me.  I want to do it professionally, therefore we talk about the fee they give me a few lessons on how to do this.  That I would certainly do, and I have done all my life, but I’m afraid singers don’t tend to do that.  It’s a pity.

BD:    Are we, the public, getting short-changed?

MP:    No, I don’t think you’re getting short-changed.  That’s going perhaps a little bit too far the other way.  But for their own progress, for their own development, it would be better for them if they actually went to a coach to brush up because you forget an awful lot.  You’re running around the place, you get into bad habits of singing things in a way that maybe they shouldn’t be.  If you’ve got a cold and therefore you’re singing through a cold or over a cold, you resort to tricks of the trade that should only be for that performance.  You should then take a few days off until you’ve got over that cold, or over whatever the problem is, and then restudy that bit.  Be aware that you did something that was not right or that you shouldn’t have done.  You had to do it to get over that particular problem on that night, but that shouldn’t become a regular habit.  There’s where it’s important to go to someone just to brush it up, just to go through it.  If you’re a clever person, you should know where the places were that weren’t as good as they ought to be, or where you’ve played a little trick on yourself in order to get over a difficulty.  But if you don’t correct that, then it becomes a habit that you will never get over, and the more you do it, you’ll never get out of it as you rely on that for each performance.  You think,

BD:    Where’s opera going?

MP:    I am not quite sure where it’s going.  It has so many evil influences coming into it, but I suppose in a way it always has.  In one part of the century you’ve had the Prima Donna making stipulations that ruined the opera. Then you’d get the tenor making his stipulations, which would ruin the opera.  Then you’d get the conductor, and now it’s the turn of the producer.  So I honestly don’t know where we’re going.

BD:    Are you not optimistic about the future of opera?

MP:    It will always continue to be there.  Experimenting is a good thing, but so long as we have producers who want to go a little over the board with their experiments at the sake of the music, then I don’t think it’s a good thing.  And so long as you get artists who hold a gun to the management’s head when making particular demands, I don’t think that’s a good thing either.  I was brought up in a Mozart ensemble, so I don’t think that way.  I suppose if I’d been brought up at the top, right from the start as a Verdi heroine, maybe I’d think that way as well?  I don’t know.

BD:    You’re moving more into the Verdi now?

MP:    Yes, and I’m doing a little Strauss.  I’m singing Ariadne and I’m singing Norma, which is a great thrill.

BD:    Norma is a huge role!

MP:    Yes.  She is a nice person though.  She’s not evil.  Only when you really press her and do something that’s not nice will she become nasty.  She’s been very sweet and nice to Adalgisa.  She said,

, as I call them.  I like to produce beautiful sounds as far as possible.  It’s not always physically possible because I’m not a machine and I’m not a recording, therefore I have my own weaknesses.  I can’t continually go every night to produce beautiful tones.

BD:    But you try!

MP:    But I try!  That’s my aim in life.  I do try to do that, whereas with Wagner it’s not necessarily the quality but the quantity that counts.  With Bellini it’s still the quality of the sound, not necessarily the quantity.  It’s great if you’ve got both but it’s not absolutely necessary.  I think Norma can be sung by a voice like mine.  The only problem I think that ruined it for people like me is that everyone has got in their ears Callas’s interpretation of Norma, and that’s only what her fans will accept.  There have been others who sing it more lyrically.  Joan Sutherland, for example, is a great Norma.  She doesn’t go storming around the stage making big, big noises.  Therefore I think it can be sung very, very much so with a lyric voice.

BD:    Any other new parts on the horizon for you?

MP:    Yes, I’m going to be doing Trovatore.  I just take things very easily as they come.  I don’t plan things as to what I want to do, and I’m going to do that at such and such a time.  People ask me what would you like to do, and I think, my goodness, I don’t know!  I really don’t know.  I tend to want to do what I’m doing now.  When Trovatore was suggested, I said it was not a piece for me.  I knew I could not sing the cabaletta.  I’m not a ‘bird warbler’!  So I turned down a great offer to do Trovatore but it kept coming back.  It’s very strange.  So I decided to study the cabaletta.  I gave a concert for Prince Rainier of Monaco in August, and he asked me if I’d give an operatic concert for him, so I said, okay.  I decided, all right, in goes in that first aria and we’ll see what it’s like, and it was super!  [Both laugh]  I enjoyed it!  I enjoyed it very, very much, so I’m going to open the Vienna State Opera season with Abbado conducting and Ponnelle producing a new production of Trovatore. 

BD:    Will you be back in Chicago, I hope?

MP:    I hope so.  Ardis Krainik is going to have a little chat with me one of these days before I leave, and see if we can come up with something.

BD:    How do the different houses affect your vocal production, if at all?

MP:    That’s always of interest.  There are certain pieces, for example, that I would attempt to sing in a small theater which I would not attempt to sing in a large theatre, like Norma or Aïda.

BD:    But you did Aïda in San Francisco!

MP:    It was the first time I ever sang it, and I was not too happy with my singing of it there.  I would prefer to save it for a smaller theater until I’ve got more performances under my belt and I know how to control my own emotions in singing.

BD:    I just don’t see Aïda on the stage at Glyndebourne.

MP:    No, I don’t either, although they’re doing very peculiar things there these days.  They’re doing Carmen, which I cannot see on the Glyndebourne stage, and all sorts of peculiar things.  It’s going a little away from what it was originally intended for, I’m afraid.  It’s a very small stage.  I did most of my Mozart things there at the beginning.  Norma I wouldn’t do on a big stage, not at the moment; not until I’ve really got more performances under my belt.  Curiously enough, one tends to sort of think of the Met as being an enormous barn, but when you’re standing there and you’re singing, you can sing with your own natural voice and without forcing, and one’s voice does actually go over and everyone can hear.  I was very, very nervous about the Met a few years ago when I went to hear a performance there, and a singer who shall be nameless – a friend of mine – was singing, and I was terrified because where I was sitting, I could not hear her.  That worried me as to what on earth I could ever sing there because most of the roles that they’ve asked me to do have been whoppers! 

BD:    How does the theater here in Chicago compare with those other houses?

© 1985 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded in her apartment in Chicago on October 9, 1985.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB the following year, and again in 1991, 1996, 1997, and 1998.  This transcription was made in 2014, 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.