Soprano  Ashley  Putnam

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie



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Ashley Putnam (born August 10, 1952) is an American soprano from New York City. Her professional singing career began in 1976 and has spanned over 30 years. She began her music career playing the flute. Her mother was an amateur singer and was a regular soloist at the church where she also sang in the choir. The young Ashley began playing the flute and attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts in the summers during high school. Upon graduation from high school, Ashley enrolled at the University of Michigan School of Music as a flute major. There she sang in the university choirs and realized she had vocal potential when she was given solos in choir. She soon switched to a vocal major, and in 1973, was an apprentice singer with the Santa Fe Opera during its summer festival.

She completed her Bachelor of Music degree program in May, 1974, and then began her graduate studies at UM. She returned to Santa Fe's Apprentice Singer Program in the summer of 1975, and then finished her Master of Music degree in December. She studied singing with Ellen Faull, and in the spring of 1976 was one of two winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

After winning the MET Auditions, Ashley's career took off. Her operatic roles have included Violetta (La traviata), Mimì and Musetta (La bohème), Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), Arabella (Arabella), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Vitellia (La clemenza di Tito), Anna Maurrant (Street Scene), and many others. She also gave memorable performances in contemporary operas, including the American premieres of Musgrave’s Mary Queen of Scots and Henze’s Das Verratene Meer. She also sang Czech repertoire, performing Jenůfa, Kat'a Kabanová, and Rusalka. In addition, she was invited to sing at the White House for Presidents Carter and Reagan.

Known for her wide-ranging repertoire, expressive acting, and glamorous presence, Putnam has performed in the world's most prestigious opera houses, including Covent Garden, Vienna Staatsoper, Berlin Staatsoper, La Fenice, and in the US, the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera and San Francisco Opera. Her concert credits include performances with the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw, and the San Francisco Symphony.

Putnam is now [2024] a member of the voice faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, and has a private studio in New York. She has taught masterclasses throughout the country, adjudicates for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and has served on the voice faculties of DePaul University and the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester.

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



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Ashley Putnam in two of her four roles in Tales of Hoffmann,
Olympia (left), and Antonia (with Archie Drake as Crespel),
conducted by Henry Holt.  Seattle Opera, 1980
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In January of 1987, Ashley Putnam sang Musetta with Lyric Opera of Chicago.  Also in the cast were Kallen Esperian as Mimì, Francisco Araiza and Richard Leech as Rodolfo, Patryk Wroblewski as Marcello, Paolo Washington as Colline, and Renato Capecchi as Benoit and Alcindoro.  John Mauceri conducted and John Copley directed the production by Pier Luigi Pizzi.

On a day between the first two of the four performances, she graciously agreed to sit down with me for a conversation.  Even at that early time in her career, she had mastered quite a variety of roles, and we began with one that she had recorded . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:   One of your famous parts is Mary Stuart.  Tell me about the similarities and differences between the Donizetti [program from the New York City Opera in 1981 is shown at left] and the Musgrave [live recording of the American Premiere by the Virginia Opera, April 2, 1978, is shown at the top of this webpage].

Ashley Putnam:   They’re actually completely different, except for the fact that the character is the same.  Mary Queen of Scots takes place from the time that Mary returns from France and goes up to the point that she flees to England.  Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda takes place while she’s in prison up until her execution.  Also, Mary Queen of Scots is a contemporary opera and Maria Stuarda is typical Donizetti, bel canto writing.  However, they’re equally dramatic.  The libretto for the Donizetti has a lot of strophic work and repetition of text, whereas Mary Queen of Scots is very much like doing a play, because you’re dealing with dialog that’s set to music.  People are speaking to each other in a normal fashion.  Aside from that, Mary Queen of Scots takes very little liberty with history up until the end of the piece, at which point events are telescoped inward and condensed in the last scene to indicate a number of things that happened in history.  But it gives you the impression that they all happened very quickly, and in fact, they did not happen that way.  The Donizetti takes quite a lot of liberty with history in the way that the Schiller play did because it’s based on the play.  Supposedly, Mary and Queen Elizabeth never met in the flesh.  So, the big confrontation scene that’s the centerpiece of the opera was invented.  Its one of the things that the opera is famous for, and it’s great dramatic food, but it apparently never happened.  [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at the top of this webpage, see my interview with Gloria Capone.]

BD:   That’s the way it would have happened if it had happened?

Putnam:   Right, but those are the basic differences.

BD:   Let’s talk about the Musgrave.  Does she know how to write well for the voice?

Putnam:   I think so.  I haven’t done that much contemporary music because I really don’t enjoy it that much.  Usually it places demands on the voice and the technique that I’m just not interested in putting my own instrument through.  For instance, Lulu is a part that I’ve been asked to play a number of times, and I just am not interested in doing that particular kind of vocal athletics.

BD:   [With a gentle nudge]  Donizetti is not vocal athletics???  [Vis-à-vis the program shown at left, see my interview with Barry McCauley.]

Putnam:   They are a different kind.  Singing is a totally athletic exercise.  It’s a very unnatural thing to ask the human voice to do, compared to what the speaking voice is required to do.  But these are differing demands that different composers place on the voice.  It’s a matter of choice for the singer.  I’m not saying that Berg is unhealthy to sing.  It’s just not my cup of tea.  It’s not a glove that I feel like putting on, because my training and my basic perspective about singing have to do with a different kind of lyricism, and a different form of expression.  That’s what I feel comfortable in, and that’s something I’m still working to perfect, and probably always will.  So to go a totally different direction would be really throwing a wrench in the works.  In terms of contemporary music, the Musgrave was very lyric, and did not ask for strange vocal effects at all.  It also employed normal rhythmic relationships, normal key signatures, and did not necessitate any huge kind of interval changes, such as movement over an octave in intervals that we’re not normally accustomed to hearing or singing.  I found it as difficult to learn as most contemporary music, in that it’s just not as harmonic and melodious as we would associate with Mozart or any of the Classical composers, but it was really very accessible to sing as far as the technique was concerned.  She’s also written an incredibly satisfying libretto, which was really exciting.  She had asked someone else, a poet friend of hers, and apparently she just didn’t feel that the work she was getting back was exactly the way that she felt like setting the piece.  So, they decided to not collaborate on that particular piece, and for lack of anything else right at the moment, she wanted to get started.  So she just decided to try her own hand at it, and it turned out to be so dramatic, and so poetic, and beautifully written.  It really evokes the time and the country that it’s supposed to take place in.  It was a super job.  She also managed to make the dialogue immediate in terms of a dramatic scene, but at the same time have a certain archaic quality to it.  Certain sentence structures and words that were used are some that we don’t really use on an everyday basis anymore, and the combination was really brilliant.

BD:   Is that at all because of the fact that she is Scottish?

Putnam:   Oh, I’m sure, yes.  She is definitely part of that culture, and that helped, of course.  I’m sure it’s the same reason that the Scottish Opera commissioned it.

BD:   Did you do the premiere?

Putnam:   No, I didn’t do the world premiere, but I did the American premiere.

BD:   Is it a letdown then to go back to the Donizetti, which is farther removed?
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Putnam:   Not at all.  It’s a wonderful challenge and opportunity to be able to portray both, especially within a few weeks of each other, which was what the New York City Opera productions afforded me.  It was thrilling.  Donizetti did a great job dramatically as well, in a totally different kind of idiom and in a different way.  They’re both very satisfying.  The Donizetti is not any less challenging vocally, but in totally different ways.

BD:   Why is it that we don’t have more contemporary operas being written in the same style as the Musgrave?

Putnam:   I don’t know.  It’s problematic for composers these days, because, as we’ve seen with the Musgrave, it doesn’t seem to get regular play.  That particular opera had received more performances and productions in its first five years than most.  Most new operas get one performance, and then somehow, they are forgotten.  It’s a combination of a lot of things, but I really would like to see things like the Mary Queen of Scots, and any of the Pasatieri operas and the Menotti operas.  Our contemporary composers receive a lot more exposure at first than they seem to get after the initial performances.

BD:   How can we get the public to want them a little bit more, and to clamor for them?

Putnam:   I don’t know.  A lot of it is that the public ear at this point is not necessarily attuned to that kind of harmony and that kind of lyricism, and somehow there’s always a desire to go back to the typical classical harmonies and form of opera making.  Probably in time it will come into its own.  It’s a question of orienting the public ear, and eye, and psyche to a new experience, and it’s just going to take a while.

BD:   Are you optimistic about the future of contemporary opera?

Putnam:   I am, but I also have to admit that under normal circumstances, if you ask me what I prefer to hear at an orchestral concert — very contemporary music or more classical music — I’ll opt for classical.

BD:   But at an orchestral concert, you can have three or four pieces, and they might have a contemporary work along with the classical pieces.  But an opera is the entire evening.

Putnam:   Exactly.  That’s the point.  It’s just a typical thing of liking what you’re used to.  There are a lot of cultures whose tonality to us sounds very foreign, and our typical form of classical music must sound very foreign to them.
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BD:   You sing both in America and in Europe.  Are the audiences different from one side of the Atlantic to the other?

Putnam:   Yes, I would say they are.  It’s hard to really put your finger on it, but I think it’s a sense of tradition.  In terms of opera, audiences over here are just getting to know the art form.  I’m not talking about the 10 or 20 percent of people who are brought up with it, and are exposed to it and love it.  They are really what we would call opera buffs.  But the general public is definitely waking up to opera as a normal form of entertainment, just something that they would think of, perhaps, in the way that they would think of going to a movie or a play.  Just a possibility for a weekend entertainment.  So they have a lot to learn about opera in the original language, about doing their homework before they come to operas, about the human voice, and what’s good singing and what’s bad singing.  Tearing up a stage doesn’t necessarily make a good performance.  They need to learn what the finer points of the art form is about, while at the same time, it’s up to us to make it accessible and enjoyable as a theater experience.  European audiences seem to already have that knowledge of the art form, and the understanding of what good singing is.  When they hear a good singer, when they hear a good voice with a good technique, they’re really ready to applaud it.  Then, if they hear something they don’t like very much, or that’s even somehow middle-of-the-road, they’re really ready to let it be known.  They have a knowledge of the background of the operas, and the plots, so when an opera is given in a language that is other than their own, you don’t necessarily hear a lot of grumbling.  Actually, you hear more grumbling with this new use of surtitles in Europe than you do here.

BD:   [Genuinely surprised]  Really???  Why???
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Putnam:   I don’t know.  Maybe it’s hundreds of years of tradition.  These people have been watching and listening to these operas since they were written, and we haven’t.  We’ve only been a country for 200 years, so we don’t have that same tradition of the art form.  In Europe, you will see much more avant-garde and unorthodox productions, theater-wise, of operas.  Operas like The Marriage of Figaro or any of the things that we see as standard productions over here, are being exposed to the most amazingly unorthodox looks.  This is because they’ve been seeing standard productions of them for years and years and years, and it’s time to take a new look at things.

BD:   Are these productions going too far off the deep end?

Putnam:   In my opinion, yes, frequently, but I tend to be a little bit conservative.  The thing that bothers me most about a really unorthodox look at a piece is if it takes the onus off the performers to interpret the piece.  If the effects are made with lighting and with strange stage machinery so that the production becomes the vehicle, and the singers are somehow machines by which the sound is cranked out, you, as a singer, are not really permitted to express yourself in a normal way.  The voice is the vehicle for expression in opera, and if you are in a straitjacket because of whatever the view of the production is, you’re not allowed to express yourself in a way that you’re the one that’s giving.

BD:   Let me ask the Capriccio question, then.  Where is the balance between the music and the drama?

Putnam:   In my opinion, it has to be very 50-50.  When I got into singing, it was because I enjoyed being on stage. It seemed to be my ticket to be able to be on stage.  I knew I liked portraying things dramatically, and I also knew that I didn’t seem to have a talent at it with the spoken word.  But I seemed to have some possibility of doing some singing.  So that was my perspective then.  Basically, I wasn’t that interested in singing as an art.  I was interested in being a singing actress.  My perspective on that has taken a complete 180, so my feelings are different now.

BD:   [With mock horror]  I hope you haven’t thrown the acting out.

Putnam:   [Laughs]  No, but I will never do anything now dramatically at the expense of my singing.  The main thing is that I’m thinking about my singing 100% of the time while I’m on stage.  I tend to try things dramatically in rehearsal, and if it’s possible to do those things while I’m doing the best possible technical work singing-wise, then that’s fine.  But if it takes away at all from what I can do technically, I won’t allow myself to do it.  This is a really big change for me, from when I started out 10 years ago.

BD:   Is there any chance that you’re asking too much of yourself?

Putnam:   [Matter-of-factly]  No, no.  It also gets back to the question of the difference between European audiences and American audiences.  There’s a large percentage of people in the American audience who wouldn’t really know if I wasn’t singing my best, such as if I gave 20% less because I wanted to make some dramatic effect.  In Europe, I don’t think you can get away with that.  I don’t think you should try to get away with it.  It’s our responsibility to the music.

BD:   Do you ever feel that opera is a contest between the performers and the audience?

Putnam:   No, I wouldn’t use that word at all.  It’s possible that you can go out and give your best performance, and for some reason, you just don’t reach that audience.  There are situations you can get into in certain houses, and because of certain other singers who sing your repertoire it is somehow engineered that you’re having a fight.  Or if you’re not having a fight, there’s just no way that you’re going to be able to convince the audience of what you are trying to do.  That’s unpleasant.  That’s not opera, and that’s not even worth doing.

BD:   Do you ever feel you’re competing against gramophone records?
 
Putnam:   Yes, I really think we’re in a problem about that.  Things that are being done on recordings these days are wonderful.  When you go up in front of a microphone and you know that you have the possibility to put on a disc your perfect rendition of a given aria, it’s exciting because you know you can stop, and you know you can fix a note.  You know that you can just tell the guys in the control room to just slip that in, or make that quieter, or whatever.  Technology has reached a wonderful point, and it does make for fantastic listening at home.  Unfortunately, there’s not a possibility in the world that we can ever reach that when we’re in the flesh, out there in front of a live audience.  Aside from just the daily variances of the human body, one day you’re in great voice, and the next day, for some reason or other, you’re not.  That happens, and that’s where technique comes to play.  You just hope that you’re in the top 20% of your possibilities, but there’s nerves, and there’s everything else.  Sometimes you’re working with people you don’t know, and you’re never going to be able to reach that kind of perfection.  The problem is that listening to all these recordings creates an expectation that can’t be met.
 
BD:   Isn’t there a possibility that some night in some theater everything will just click and you’ll do it even better?

Putnam:   Sure...  Maybe not better because everybody in the house doesn’t have earphones on.  That is the kind of perfection that I’m talking about.
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BD:   At what point does the recording become a fraud?

Putnam:   It becomes a fraud when just about every possible flaw is corrected.  When you’re recording a big aria, it’s never going to go perfectly in performance, no matter what kind of shape you’re in, and no matter who you are.  There’s always going to be some place or other that you get tired because it’s a long scene, and it’s a lot to ask of a singer to make all the range and all of the dramatic possibilities happen.  In a recording, the same kind of thing is going to happen, and what would be fair would be to take the aria and the cabaletta separately.  Let the performer sit down and have a little rest before starting the next section.  However, I do not think it’s fair to sing along and stop every few bars, and then record a few high notes at the end that can be slipped in depending on which one’s best.  Artists should try for continuity, and really not do this kind of splicing that goes on from note to note.  That’s really too much.

BD:   When you are recording, would you want them to allow this kind of splicing?

Putnam:   No, I wouldn’t.  I would want the possibility to be able to stop after certain sections.

BD:   Go for the long take?

Putnam:   Go for the long take, and if one long take didn’t work out because one note was wrong, do a whole long take again.  Don’t record a couple of high Cs, or E-flats, or whatever it is that went wrong.

BD:   Now, you’ve made some recordings...

Putnam:   Not very many.  The Bohème is the only really professional recording session I’ve ever lived through.  [Vis-à-vis that recording shown at left, see my interview with Robert Lloyd.]  The Mary Queen of Scots was a live recording from performance, so they either got it or they didn’t.  I only listened to it once a long time ago, and I remember feeling reasonably good about it.  I felt great about doing the part, and about how it felt to me both dramatically and vocally at the time that I did it.  So if the recording captured any of that, I would be happy with it.  The Bohème was interesting.  It was on very quick notice.  Caballé was supposed to be doing Musetta, and she canceled.  They’d already started the recording sessions, and I was flown over to London on the Concord.  I was a newcomer to Phillips, and we wanted to get the recording done.  So I did all long takes, and I think my singing on the recording sounds pretty organic.  It sounds like me, and it all has one volume level.  There was a lot of fixing that went on with some of the other principals who are exclusive Phillips artists.  The technicians and producers know them really well, and they know which things they wanted to fix.  I found that the sound quality a lot of times came in and out a little bit.  That was a real lesson to me about doing too much fixing, because one phrase would be very immediate-sounding, and another phrase would be just a little less.  They’d be right next to each other, and you could really tell that a lot of fixing had been done.

BD:   You start hearing splices?

Putnam:   You really do.  Obviously, it depends on how well it’s done. Somehow it seemed obvious to me on that particular recording, or maybe it just seemed obvious to me that mine wasn’t monkeyed with and other things were.

BD:   Has this dissuaded you from doing other recordings if you’re asked?

Putnam:   No, I’d love to do some recordings, but I don’t seem to be asked.  It’s the bane of a lot of our existences in opera.  If you’re at a certain level, there are a couple of ways to reach the next level.  One is to do a lot of work with one conductor who decides that he likes your artistry, and keeps asking for you in concerts, and operatic situations, festivals, and recordings.  Another is that a recording company becomes interested in you, and you make some recordings.  Somehow, that helps your accessibility, but it’s sort of a catch-22, because it seems that one doesn’t come without the other.

BD:   [With concern]  I trust you don’t want to be marketed like a commodity.

Putnam:   No, I would not mind…  Well, it’s hard for me to say.  I wouldn’t mind a little more visibility in terms of the repertoire that I’m doing now, compared to what I was doing 10 years ago.  I definitely don’t want to be marketed as a commodity.  I got close to that for a while, and it was very uncomfortable.  I didn’t like being that public a person, and I really didn’t like doing my growing up in the public eye.  Those were lessons that I had to learn, and I’m much more comfortable now.
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BD:   What roles have you done most?

Putnam:   There are a number of roles in the bel canto repertoire that I did a lot, which I’m really not doing anymore.  I did a lot of Lucias and a lot of Traviatas.
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BD:   Why are you moving out of those?

Putnam:   Because my voice has changed a lot.

BD:   It’s getting bigger?

Putnam:   Yes, lower and bigger.  It’s just really not a coloratura at all.  I started when I was 23, when most sopranos have that extension and that kind of flexibility.  It just depends on the color of the voice.  I happened to go into a repertoire at that point that I felt very good about, but it turned out to be a mistake to think that that’s where I would always be.  So now I’m doing mostly lighter, lyric repertoire.  It’s a little bit German-oriented as opposed to Italian-oriented.  I do some of the lighter Strauss roles, and just about all the Mozart soprano roles.  So these days, the roles I’m doing the most are Donna Anna and Fiordiligi.  I’ve also done a lot of Arabellas, but this has all happened in the last four or five years.

BD:   Tell me the secret of singing Mozart!

Putnam:   I don’t know ‘the’ secret.  My secret is to sing it full out, and with as much heart, and soul, and warmth as I would sing Italian repertoire.  People make a mistake when they try to be too precious with it, and sometimes you’ll find conductors asking you to tone it down.  I’m not talking about being sloppy with it.  It has to be sung very cleanly.  Conductors will ask you sometimes to sing less than what is your really true sound, but I like to hear Mozart sung with nice, big, full voices.  I just heard a wonderful soprano in London named Karita Mattila sing Pamina.  She’s around 25 years old, and the minute I heard it, I thought, this girl’s going to be singing Wagner.  It was so wonderful and beautiful to hear Pamina sung with a really big, mellifluous voice.  Obviously, it is one that can handle all the demands, and not be sloppy about it, and not get into trouble with it, but that’s just an example.  I prefer a really big voice Pamina as opposed to what Americans are used to, which a lot of times is a very light, light lyric voice.

BD:   Have we, as Americans, already gotten stereotypical ideas of who should sing what?

Putnam:   Yes, but that happens in a lot of cultures, not just American.  At the same time, sometimes Americans are much more open-minded to new possibilities for a voice.  I’m finding that it’s taking me longer to orient opera administrations to my new repertoire.  It’s easy to get a mindset about people, and it’s taking time for them to understand that I’m not doing the bel canto repertoire anymore, that I’m doing something new, and that it’s valid.

BD:   Do you miss the bel canto at all?

Putnam:   No.  I did at first, and every now and then, when I go to a really exciting performance of something in that repertoire, I miss the tightrope walking and coming out on the other side victorious.  That’s very exciting, and that’s what the audience finds exciting about it, too.  But I’m finding it much more fulfilling to do the roles I’m doing now.  Just in terms of composition, Strauss is much more complicated as far as texture is concerned, and I find it very satisfying to be involved in that kind of music.  Mozart I can’t get enough of, and I love the ensemble work that’s required in Mozart.  It’s lovely to know that the performance is resting on many shoulders instead of just mine.
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BD:   Let me ask you a little bit about bel canto.  The kind of characters that tend to show up are very frail, very fragile ladies.  Is it hard to bring those to audiences in the 1980s?

Putnam:   I don’t think so.  They’re very accessible characters.  When people come to see an opera like that, they definitely have to take it for granted that the reason for that type of vocal writing, and the stories about crazy people is that madness afforded the composer the biggest possibility for florid writing, and for the voice to show off.  That’s why the vehicle was used.  All of us have seen people who are a little bit off the beam, and it’s just another way of presenting a story.

BD:   You don’t feel that it’s out of place to try and present a helpless woman?

Putnam:   No.  With some of the ones that I portrayed, it was possible for me to show that they had some backbone in them somewhere.  Lucia really stands up to her brother for a while, until there are no other possibilities to convince him of what she wants to do.  Usually, it’s possible to find something in there where you can bring out a little bit of strength.  Then again, there is Ophelia in Hamlet, who is basically a very, very weak character.  But it’s totally valid to accept the fact that sometimes you are portraying a victim.  Most stories need a victim and an aggressor.  The way the story goes depends on the characterization, but it’s not anachronistic to go to a Shakespeare performance of Hamlet these days, because we accept that that’s what the character was.

BD:   Do you sing any other French repertoire besides Ophelia?

Putnam:   I’m dying to sing some more French repertoire, such as Faust.  It makes perfect sense, and I don’t know why I haven’t done it before.  It just hasn’t happened for some reason.  I did a lot of Antonias [Tales of Hoffmann] in the past [photo from the Seattle production of 1980 is shown above].  I love singing French repertoire.  Manon is probably the one role that I wish I’d done before it became evident that that’s really not where my voice was lying anymore.  It’s not really in the cards.

BD:   So then your voice dictates which roles you will accept, and which roles you will decline.

Putnam:   Sure.

BD:   Of all the roles that fit your voice, how do you decide which ones you will select?

Putnam:   There’s very little that’s offered to me these days that’s not appropriate.  When you say I’m a lyric soprano, and I sing mostly Mozart and some of the lighter Strauss, every now and then I’ll get an offer for something that’s too heavy, like Salome.  I just know that that’s not an orchestral texture that I’m going to be able to get my voice over at this point, and that I must wait until later.  But you’ve been doing it as long as I have now, you know what your possibilities are, and you also know the direction you’re headed in.  Somehow it becomes clear what’s dangerous and what’s not.  You make mistakes, and you learn from them.  You try things with piano, and lot of times you can tell by listening to a recording how thick the orchestration is without actually having to hear it in the flesh to know that it’s either good or bad for you.  You can look at a role and see where it lies, and for how long it stays in some of the difficult places in the tessitura.  Then you know whether it’s going to be possible for you.  Sometimes you can tell by the length of notes.  If you look at a score and it’s all black notes, you know the thing’s moving along pretty quickly.  You can tell by the tempo markings.  I did look at a Strauss score that was offered to me that I was very interested in doing, but all I saw were big, long whole notes.  It looked more like a Wagner score than anything I’d ever done, and they were all in the middle register, which is not the strongest part of my voice.  I just had a feeling that this was not the kind of writing I was used to, and I wasn’t really ready for it.
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BD:   Does the dramatic part of the character enter this at all?  Would you rather play strong or believable characters?
 
Putnam:   There was a time when I would have distinguished that way, though there aren’t very many roles that I wouldn’t be interested in.  I’ve never been that interested in playing Salome.  I like to play sympathetic characters.  Lulu is something that because of the writing but also because of the character I’m completely uninterested in approaching.  But every now and then, you do roles that are not really comfortable as far as the character is concerned.  I don’t find Donna Anna very interesting, or close to the kind of character I like to play.

BD:   Would you rather do Elvira?

Putnam:   I would much rather do Elvira dramatically, but I feel that I’m much better suited vocally to Donna Anna.  It’s a real challenge vocally, whereas Donna Elvira would not be a vocal challenge at all for me.  It would be an easy night’s work.  It’s very satisfying when I get through a performance of Don Giovanni and feel like I’ve done a good job, whereas if I did Donna Elvira and felt like I’d done a good job, it somehow wouldn’t be that satisfying, because it’s just written in a way that I would not find difficult.

BD:   You’ve also done Fiordiligi [shown in photo at right].  That seems to be like a long night’s work.

Putnam:   That’s a long night’s work because of all the ensembles which lie in a difficult place in the voice.  They’re high, and the arias are very low, and it’s a very long opera.  So because of the combination of trying to keep yourself comfortable in the ensembles, and then have enough low voice left to really make a good night’s work of the arias, I don’t always enjoy singing that role.  I do love that opera.   I love the music.  I love everything about it, but it’s definitely a long evening.

BD:   Who should Fiordiligi end up with?

Putnam:   I don’t think that’s really important.  The point about Così fan tutte is that there’s always a big question mark.  Probably she should end up with the one she starts out with, but somehow it should be staged so that there’s some questioning moment where all four of them are looking at each other thinking this could have gone in any direction.  That’s what life’s like.  There are always problems when you talk about fidelity and caprice, and what happens for the moment, and what should happen for longer than that.  The question that’s in mind is that things can go any direction, and it’s a matter of will and really strong decision to come to an end at that opera.

BD:   Do you ever have any input in with the director as far as how things should be portrayed?

Putnam:   Sure, but it depends on the director.  Sometimes you don’t, and that’s frustrating.  I don’t mind directors who have a total view of a piece and are looking for a certain thing, as long as it’s within that structure, and I’m permitted to ask questions and give some opinions, and just basically make my perspective known.  I don’t think it’s possible for a singer as a human being to not express himself or herself.  We have opinions, and we have feelings, and we have hearts, and we’re using a part of the body in order to express those things.  When you go totally against what a singer believes or feels, you’re not going to get the performance you want as a director.  Somewhere along the line, you have to find a balance between what you, as a director, are asking for, and what the singer feels deep down about the role.
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BD:   Do you sing differently from large houses to small houses, and does that change your technique at all?

Putnam:   I don’t think it should, but probably it does.  I don’t enjoy singing in very, very small auditoriums.  My particular voice is helped by the space of a larger house.  At the same time, Chicago Lyric is the largest house I’ve sung in for a long, long time, and I’m more comfortable in something a little smaller than that.

BD:   Are the acoustics good here?

Putnam:   They are.  I haven’t been out in the house when the orchestra’s playing and my colleagues are singing, but I was out in the house when they were singing with piano, and it sounded wonderful.  It’s hard for me to say because I haven’t actually been to a performance as an audience member.
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BD:   Are you a good audience?

Putnam:   Oh yes.  I’m very enthusiastic, and always very excited and ready to be impressed and moved.  I find it very difficult to sit judgmentally in any capacity.  I’m very excited by the whole process, if nothing else, by just the sheer courage it takes to be doing what all those people are doing on stage, and on the podium, and in the pit.  So I think I’m about the best audience anybody could ever ask for!  If you do it and you have any trepidation about your own performance at any time, you can really root for your fellow colleagues in a way that you’re just really proud of them to be able to take that step onto the stage.

BD:   You talked about the European audiences not liking the supertitles.  Do you think supertitles are a good idea?

Putnam:   I have mixed feelings about them.  It’s been said by a lot of the press over in Europe that the singers hate them because it takes the audience’s attention off their individual performances, but I don’t feel that way really.  It can be very satisfying for the audience to know exactly what you’re saying, instead of just having a general synopsis of a scene.  When you work that hard on portraying every word and every tone color, and you spend weeks and weeks at it, it’s lovely if they really get every word.  If you’re pointing at the specific word in a sentence, and they know exactly what it is that you’re doing, it’s wonderful.

BD:   Do you work especially hard at your diction if you’re singing in the language of the audience?

Putnam:   No, I work hard at my diction just as a matter of course.  That’s part of my technique, and part of my responsibility.

BD:   Do you think that surtitles are going to mean the death of opera-in-English?

Putnam:   No, not at all.  I’m very 50-50 about surtitles.  I don’t like it when I can see them in a way that it’s a white light that’s imposing itself on what’s happening on the stage.  When you have dark scenes, it’s very difficult to make surtitles subtle.  But I like the fact that the audience knows what’s going on.  It’s going to create a lot more public interest in opera, especially in America.  It’s wonderful for things like Rossini comedies or Mozart comedies to go ahead and do them in English, because there are some very good translations around.  However, I don’t enjoy singing Mozart in English.  It’s not fun.  It’s much more difficult technically.  I never feel that my voice blooms in quite the way that it does if I’m singing in the language that Mozart wrote.  There’s a real difference, but it’s wonderful when you sing a line and the audience gets the joke.  When I’ve gone to productions of Così fan tutte in Washington, D.C. in Italian, the audience doesn’t get the jokes.  Even with surtitles, there’s too much delay-time.  They can be used, and can be effective.  It just depends on your situation, and your audience, your public, what you’re trying to do, who you’re trying to reach, and what you’re trying to accomplish.
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BD:   Let’s talk about a couple of characters.  You’re doing Musetta here in Chicago, and you’ve recorded the role.  What kind of a woman is she?

Putnam:   She’s obviously somebody who enjoys life to the fullest, though it may appear to be a kind of superficial enjoyment.  She’s full of spunk, and she’s hot-blooded.  She likes making a scene, and she loves attention.  She’s probably very vain, but she also has a real good heart.  I am always really grateful that the fourth act of Bohème exists for Musetta, because we see that side of her.  We’ve all had friends like Musetta who are too loud and go on with too much joking around, but who are really people who care.  They are people who live for the minute, for sure, but really deep down are wonderful friends.

BD:   When it comes down to it, she’ll give you the shirt off her back... or the muff off her hands.

Putnam:   Sure.

BD:   Do you play any evil characters?

Putnam:   A few.  Electra in Idomeneo, though I wouldn’t call her evil.  I definitely would say she is driven in the most selfish possible way, and is tormented, actually.  She’s a tormented person and jealousy is eating her up.  So, she behaves in ways that could be termed evil.

BD:   Does she border on being pathological?

Putnam:   Yes, exactly.  Then there is the Strauss piece, Die Liebe der Danae.  That’s a very satisfying piece to do because the character goes through a real evolution.  She starts out as a very, very selfish, shallow person who’s interested in wealth and superficiality of possibilities, and then goes through a whole evolution to finds out what life is really about.  She learns that simplicity in her life and love are very important to her at the end.

BD:   As a general rule, how much digging do you do into these characters?  Do you go into the background and the psychology of the women you portray?

Putnam:   I do a lot.  I also am helped by whatever background the director has gone into.  When I did Mary Queen of Scots, I did a lot of reading about her.  If it’s a historical character, it’s very easy to get a lot of information.  I wouldn’t say I overprepare, but I prepare in a way that I feel comfortable, and feel like I know something about the person to find my way.  The music tells me a lot, and the other characters in the opera will tell you a lot about the role you’re playing by what they say about the person, what they say to the person.

BD:   Are there any characters that you’re looking forward to portraying?

Putnam:   Yes.  Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, Tosca, Faust.  I would be very, very interested in doing Octavian [Rosenkavalier], or the Composer in Ariadne.  But it’s a tradition that doesn’t exist so much anymore to have sopranos do it.  Strauss wrote the roles for sopranos, so I’m going to have to find somebody who’s looking for a soprano to have in those roles.  All of the famous Marschallins of the past did Octavian first before they did the Marschallin.  Some of them even did Sophie before they did Octavian.  So, it’s not an outrageous idea.
 
BD:   Have you done Sophie?

Putnam:   No, I was always a little bit tall for that.
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BD:   You seem to be moving into the Strauss repertoire.  Tell me about Arabella.  [Vis-à-vis the photo shown at right, see my interviews with Bernard Haitink, and John Cox.]

Putnam:   Arabella’s very satisfying to portray because she goes through an evolution.  When we meet her, she’s really very dissatisfied with life.  In a way she is selfish, and everything comes to her very easily as far as men are concerned.  But she knows she’s looking for something else, and hasn’t found it.  It’s a wonderfully romantic story, and if you find two people portraying the main roles who have a chemistry, it can really be a very satisfying evening.

BD:   Are you a romantic at heart?

Putnam:   Oh, sure.

BD:   Do you like being a wandering minstrel?

Putnam:   No, it gets pretty tiring.

BD:   Are you now where you want to be in your career?

Putnam:   Yes.  [Pauses a moment]  It’s hard to say.  I don’t feel frustrated.  I feel like it’s going in the direction I want it to go.  I’m spending almost all my time in Europe, and I like that.  I just have to find a way of making daily life a little more easy because I haven’t gotten a place over there yet.  I just need to organize how I’m going to live, where I’m going to live, and how I’m going to make things a little more comfortable.  It’s hard when you go over for six months and you’re living out of suitcases for that long.  It gets a little old.

BD:   Do you like coming back home to the U.S.?

Putnam:   Yes, sure.

BD:   Do you build times into your schedule when you are not going to sing for three or four weeks?

Putnam:   Oh, sure.  A lot of times you’ll see that you have two new roles coming up, and you just have to spend the time preparing.

BD:   Will you be back in Chicago?

Putnam:   I don’t know.  I would love to.  As far as I know, at this point there hasn’t been any discussion about a return engagement, but I would love to come back.  It’s been wonderful being here. There aren’t that many houses in this country that are on this level, and as a singer, you are very anxious to be in this kind of situation.

BD:   Thank you for being a singer, and for spending this time with me today.

Putnam:   Thanks. My pleasure.



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See my interviews with Virgil Thomson, Mignon Dunn, and Raymond Leppard




putnam

See my interview with Rockwell Blake







© 1987 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on January 20, 1987.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB later in the year, and again in 1997.  This transcription was made in 2024, 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.