Interview, Carmen Giannattasio on Opera Rara

Last Friday saw the re-release of Opera Rara's landmark recordings of three works which Rossini composed in 1819: Ermione, La donna del lago and Bianca e Falliero, the first two featuring Carmen Giannattasio in the title-roles; Gramophone described the Italian soprano as 'mistress of every phrase' when Ermione was originally released back in 2010, and the recording went on to win the Opera Category at the Gramophone Awards the following year.

In between coaching-sessions for her upcoming new roles, Carmen spoke to me about the 'romantic beginning' of her relationship with Opera Rara, the many friendships which she made whilst working with the label, the difficulties of finding a healthy life/work balance whilst sustaining an international opera career, and the new direction in which her voice is leading her...

Photo credit: Cory Weaver.

Whereabouts are you at the moment, and is your performance-schedule getting back to something approaching normal?

I’m just at home, taking a break from practice! I’ve been using this enforced downtime over the past year or two to do a lot of technical work, settling into my changing voice and getting to grips with new roles. I’m very much stepping into the second phase of my life as a singer now: in the first part of my career I was a bel cantista, and now that the voice has grown and is more mature I can approach more Verdi and verismo repertoire. That requires a lot of study, and you can’t undertake it lightly!

I’m getting ready to record Catalani’s La Wally with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, which is a challenging new role – it’s very complicated and very heavy! Later on I will sing Tosca at the Bolshoi Theatre and after that I’m saying my goodbye to Mozart, in a new production of Don Giovanni in San Francisco. It’s quite stressful to move between my old and new repertoire, but this was an old contract and I’m undertaking it with great pleasure: I can still manage my coloratura well enough to do a good Donna Elvira!

Then I have other new roles coming up, including Giorgetta in Il Tabarro, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and La Gioconda. There will also be more Toscas in Vienna, Stuttgart and Berlin, so there’s plenty of meat on the grill! Since I started with my new repertoire I’ve been working with a dramatic soprano who was one of the greatest Turandots ever, and she’s taking such special care of me. Yesterday we met for a coaching for La Wally – having been such a fantastic singer herself she’s a very demanding professor, but I trust her entirely and treat all her advice as precious gems!

When did you first become aware of Opera Rara – and vice versa?

It was quite a romantic beginning! When I was a conservatoire student we had a lot of promotional brochures for Opera Rara in our library, so I started buying their recordings and dreaming of becoming one of their artists one day…I particularly remember coming across a wonderful recording of Meyerbeer’s Il Crociato in Egitto, and being blown away not just by the performance but by the beautiful packaging and documentation.

My dream eventually came true after I sang Maometto Secondo at La Fenice in Venice in 2005 – we did the Venice version with the happy ending (very different from the original tragic one), which includes Elena’s rondo ‘Tanti affetti’ from La donna del lago. David Parry at Opera Rara saw the DVD of that production and thought I’d be great for their La donna del lago recording, so that was my debut with them. When I first stepped into their main home in Old Street (which was their base at the time), it was a very emotional moment for me. And after the live recording at Usher Hall in Edinburgh Andrew Clark at the Financial Times wrote ‘A prima donna is born’, so here we are!

Could you tell me a little about the friendships and working relationships you forged during your many projects with the label?

The Opera Rara team are extremely professional, but at the same time extremely warm and human – right from taking my first steps with the company I honestly felt that I belonged to a family. Everyone always made me feel absolutely at ease, from the recording-crew to the conductor David Parry, who became a very close friend as well as a regular colleague.

There were also some beloved colleagues who don’t sing any more and are living a completely different life, like the wonderful tenor Colin Lee who sang my lover Oreste in Ermione and also Gerardo on our recording of Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro. Colin was such a great singer, but after a while he decided to say goodbye to the world of opera and go back home to South Africa to lead a normal life. He’s so much happier now, and I completely see where he was coming from because life as an operatic singer can be so stressful. I feel so lucky and blessed to have the kind of career I have, but at the same time we’re also human beings, and this kind of lifestyle can rob you of so many things in your private life. It’s always about compromise, but if you feel it’s time to step away completely then you should trust that instinct: otherwise you’re left with regrets, and who wants that in their life?!

Was Ermione already in your repertoire before you recorded it for Opera Rara?

It was completely new to me, and also completely different from La donna del lago, which I’d done just before. Ermione is really Rossini in true opera seria mode, and a lot of the writing feels so modern: there are passages of real genius, and with this piece and also the Stabat Mater he’s paving the way to what comes later with Verdi. Even the coloratura is very dramatic, and the structure is different from his earlier works, because it’s less numbers-based: Ermione doesn’t really have a proper aria as such.

I’m especially proud of our Ermione recording, because that won Opera Rara its first-ever Gramophone Award, in 2011. It’s a very complicated opera, but the cast was just amazing and I think we did a great job!

Have you found that more opera-houses are scheduling these works thanks to Opera Rara’s ‘live operatic archaeology’?

Sadly I’ve never done any of the roles I recorded with Opera Rara on stage, with the exception of La donna del lago which I sang at the Garsington Festival in 2007. I did get an offer to sing Ermione at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples right before the pandemic, but I had to make a choice between doing that and Tosca, and I went with Tosca because it’s now more suitable for my voice. The opportunity came just that little bit too late – it would’ve been a dream if it had happened around the time we made the recording, but now that voice is bigger and more dramatic it’s impossible to get around all those coloratura pyrotechnics!

How did you enjoy working at Garsington?

I loved it: it was such a great show, because as well as David Parry conducting we had the most fantastic director in David Alden. I was very young and it was one of my first international contracts, so I was so excited to discover a new place and to be working literally in the countryside! Yesterday I was talking with my parents about the release of this new boxed set and they were reminiscing about coming to visit me and see the show: my father said he remembered the rain beating down during the performance, and I said ‘well, that’s very usual in England!’. The only thing I didn’t like were the insects, but I guess that’s also part of being in the country…

Are there any bel canto roles that you feel have passed you by now that you’re moving in a different vocal direction?

I have maybe just one regret that I could’ve done at the beginning of my career: Lucia di Lammermoor. Of course I can’t sing it today, but otherwise I’ve pretty much done everything that was in my repertoire as a bel canto specialist. And looking through my calendar, it’s great to be in the position where I’m scheduled to sing exactly the roles I want to sing: once you have twenty-three years of career on your back you can pick and choose, and you also know what your voice is suited for. I’m now in a position where I’m not shy about saying no to certain roles, whether it's because I don’t like them or don’t think my voice works for that kind of music, or because it’s maybe just not time yet!

Do you have any recording plans with Opera Rara which you can share at this stage?

The nice thing is that, like me, Opera Rara is now moving towards the verismo repertoire – just before the pandemic they got in touch again and asked me about a couple of projects including Leoncavallo’s I Zingari, but sadly things didn’t work out because I was already booked. But I would love to discover some new rare verismo roles with my old family in future…