Germán Enrique Alcántara on Simon Boccanegra

Opera Rara's recent recording of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra with Sir Mark Elder and The Hallé not only offered a rare opportunity to hear the original 1857 version of the score in all its glory, but also introduced many of us to a thrilling new talent in the shape of Germán Enrique Alcántara, who stepped into the title-role at the eleventh hour and covered himself in glory. The Financial Times applauded the young Argentinian's 'grit and authority' as the troubled Doge of Genoa, whilst Gramophone deemed him 'utterly equal to all aspects of the role' and compared his 'warm, easy' baritone to that of Renato Bruson.

In a break from preparations for Don Carlos in Kiel last month, Germán spoke to me about getting under Boccanegra's skin at extremely short notice, how his upbringing in Argentina (and an inspirational grandfather) taught him that musicians 'aren't more special than other people', his two transformative years on the Jette Parker Artists Programme at Covent Garden, and why he firmly believes that it 'takes a village' to raise an opera-singer...

Am I right in thinking that this huge assignment was your recording debut?

Yes! This project was also my real Verdi debut, and since then I’ve sung Renato [in Un ballo in maschera] and Rigoletto on stage. I did Marullo in Rigoletto and the Baron in Traviata as a young artist, but those character roles have very little to do with proper Verdi singing. When I arrived in the UK to take up my place on the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme I was doing a lot of bel canto and Mozart, then after my first audition with Peter Katona he said: ‘You sing these roles very well, but I think there’s something more for you waiting round the corner…you should open the Verdi door and see what happens.’

So alongside the lighter roles I was singing during my first year on the programme I began the process of stretching the voice, taking on new colours and working on the Verdi style. For the second year my big assignment was to cover Plácido [Domingo] as Rodrigo in Don Carlo. That was a huge responsibility because he wasn’t going to be around for the whole period, so I would have been doing a lot of the key rehearsals…then the pandemic started and life as we knew it changed. But by that stage I knew I could ‘afford’ to sing this type of repertoire. 

Once we emerged from the pandemic I started out on my international career, which typically means a lot of last-minute jump-ins - and in my case a lot of unfamiliar music! My first big curveball was Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro with the Klangvocal Musikfestival Dortmund: hardly anybody actually knows that opera, but I’d done Lucia di Lammermoor so I figured I at least knew the style. When you go through that experience of coming on board so late in the day, you sink or swim - and I swam! So when they called me up for Boccanegra it wasn’t my first rodeo…

Was that a very last-minute engagement too?

Insanely! The original singer had to cancel, and then his replacement got sick the week before rehearsals began so somehow Opera Rara ended up going to my agent…He rang me up and said ‘This is crazy, but what do you think?’ and I said ‘I’ll do it!'.

I was 36 at the time, and nobody expects to debut Simon Boccanegra that early in their career – normally you’d come to these ‘father’ roles later on, after doing Rodrigo and the rest…I’m sure other people have sung it at that age, though: in the nineteenth century people didn’t live as long, so 36 seemed almost middle-aged!

Did you have to do a lot of work unlearning the standard version of the score?

I don’t know about the rest of the cast, but I hadn’t spent much time with the later version. I’d heard the piece live maybe twice, but I’d never even held the score in my hand – it’s not one of those operas that you sit down and read through at the piano, and there isn’t an aria as such, unlike Renato or Rigoletto. The soprano and tenor have them, but Simon himself is just…a complete role.

In a sense it helped that I came to it with a blank slate: when I was presented with this unusual version of the score everything seemed very natural to me because I wasn’t comparing it with something I already knew. I know a lot of listeners will enjoy playing Spot The Difference, but I think if you approach this version with an open mind then you’re in for an amazing adventure.

How do you prepare for a role like this at such short notice?

My first instinct was to read as much as possible: I approached it as you would a play. Sure, I wanted to get straight to the piano and start learning the role, but how many hours a day can you spend shouting your way through Verdi?! There’s a lot of silent work to do in terms of translating the text and marking up any tricky rhythms or pitches, but for me reading around the character and the opera is the easiest way to get into the piece very quickly. With a role like this, it’s not just about understanding the historical character - it’s also about understanding why Verdi was attracted to him, and why he chose to frame the drama in this particular way. 

The first thing I found was a very interesting study of the two different versions, which gave me a clear picture of how troubled Verdi was by the ‘failure’ of the original. There are letters between Verdi, his publisher Ricordi and various impresarios who said that the work would never take off because the singers simply found it too difficult: the role of Boccanegra in particular lies very high in this version, and the original singer found the range of colours and articulation very challenging. Knowing all of that backstory made me feel a real sense of responsibility to achieve everything that Verdi wanted - and most of it is right there on the page. 

Was your diary already quite busy when you got the call?

I was in Belgium at the time, doing yet another very late jump-in for a production called Nostalgia at La Monnaie which involved extracts from various obscure early Verdi operas. I arrived back in the UK on the Sunday, ready to knuckle down and learn Boccanegra when I got a call from Covent Garden…Artur Ruciński was unable to make the first week of rehearsals for Lucia di Lammermoor, and they wondered if I could step in. I told them I had one week to learn Boccanegra, and they offered me a deal: if I came along to do the Lucia rehearsals in the mornings, they’d get me a coach to work on Boccanegra in the afternoons! So there I was, rehearsing Lucia in the mornings followed by Boccanegra coaching sessions with Mark Packwood, Patrick Milne, Ingrid Surgenor and David Gowland.

Given that I learned virtually everything I needed to become an opera-singer through those two years on their Young Artists programme I was only too happy to help - and very touched that they were continuing to support me in this mad endeavour...I also want to thank Gary Coward in particular who took the time to work on my technique with me.

On the Friday Opera Rara sent a pianist round to my house to see how I was doing; after about half an hour he said ‘OK, I’ll let them know that we’re in very good hands!’. Honestly, if it wasn’t for all of these wonderful people pulling together like this, I don’t think I’d be where I am today. 

So this was your first time working with Opera Rara?

Yes: I think it’s amazing that in these troubled times for the arts we have Opera Rara, the industry’s own Don Quixote! So few labels do studio recordings of complete operas these days, and it’s not like Opera Rara are doing Butterflys and Bohèmes: they’re investing in these beautiful pieces that are waiting for somebody to say ‘Come and play with us!’. And alongside that they’re also creating all these opportunities for the next generation of singers. Nobody loves historical recordings more than I do, but we don’t have to be 100% faithful to Pavarotti’s Decca Bohème for the rest of our lives - it’s not ‘cheating’ to be open to someone new!

It’s very easy to go to the opera with the mindset that nobody will be better than Pavarotti or Joan Sutherland, even if you never heard them live. But there are so many singers out there today - and I’m not just talking about the big names - who can shake your heart if you’re willing to show up and allow yourself to be seduced in the moment. That’s what’s so wonderful about opera, whether it’s the core Romantic repertoire or new masterpieces like Turnage’s Festen.

I read somewhere recently that the UK is no longer a place for opera, especially in light of the recent cuts at Welsh National Opera. How can anyone really think that? It’s just wrong historically. Look at Handel – London is where he became the operatic genius he was always meant to be. And Covent Garden has a huge history: how many important debuts happened there, how many premieres? The place is like a lighthouse in the opera world.

Had you worked with Sir Mark Elder before?

I’d never met Sir Mark before this project, but I’d been given a heads-up by one of my coaches for Boccanegra that he works in forensic detail. So as I was preparing the role I knew that I would have to keep everything super-clean and be very strict with myself.

Honestly, those first rehearsals weren’t easy. Sir Mark knew exactly what he wanted, and when someone has spent two years thinking about precisely how to shape a phrase then you have to make damn sure you’re right if you want to argue otherwise! When we started, it was challenging for me: it wasn’t that I felt that I wasn’t enough, but I had to be clear about what I could offer in that particular context and be humble enough to step aside if it didn’t meet expectations.

But something powerful shifted the first time we ran the opera and got to Simon’s death-scene. It’s a beautiful moment because he’s no longer caring about his life – if indeed he ever was - but caring about his people and the family he will leave behind…Unfortunately I had lost my brother just months earlier and my mother two years before that, so I’d been having a really tough time personally; as I sang Simon’s line about changing the thorns into roses I saw their faces materialise before me, as real as if I could touch them. I had to step outside for five minutes, and David Gowland from the Jette Parker Programme (who’d come up to Manchester to support me and Eri Nakamura) ran after me and took me in his arms. I didn’t want Sir Mark to think I was crying because he was being strict or I was being weak, so when he followed me out I said ‘Sorry Maestro, that will never happen again…’ But he put his hand on my shoulder and said ‘Never apologise for crying for art. It’s not only making you a better artist, but a better human’.

From that moment, the huge challenge in front of us unfolded in a way that’s hard to put into words. Here I was walking on for my first Verdi role alongside Sir Mark stepping out of his role at the Hallé, and it was such a beautiful example of our two generations working together. I want to do every other Verdi role in my life with this guy: yes, he’s tough, but so are these roles! They literally sort the men from the boys, and it’s not about having the biggest voice or looking tall and imposing – it’s about finding the truth of the character, and Sir Mark is passionate about helping you to do that.

You seem to have a very ego-free approach to making music - is that related to your upbringing in Argentina?

Artists aren’t more special than other people: we’re just human beings who happen to open our mouths and sing sometimes. My grandfather instilled that into me from a young age. In Argentina we have these meet-ups called peňas, where people come to your house to pass around a guitar, a bandoneon and an accordion and sing together. That’s how I came to music as a little boy: I was always amazed by these guys, and my grandfather gave me my first guitar so I could join in. To sing this music is such a responsibility, because you simply can’t do it if you have nothing to say. The same goes for folk music and tango: if you don’t have life experience it doesn’t work.

The first time I went on stage as a soloist was with my grandfather and other musicians; I was walking on ahead, and he grabbed me back and said ‘What are you doing?! You have to be part of us: we aren’t your backing-group!’ In my country we make music as workers: you literally roll up your sleeves to sing. Grandfather was very political, and he insisted that you have to be a member of the public to sing with their voice. And Verdi understood that – look at 'Va pensiero', look at the Refugees’ Chorus in Macbeth, look at Simon Boccanegra himself…There’s a humility about these people, and I think that’s something that we as performers should explore more. Sometimes I feel the international opera world forgets this, but in my country we sing because we have something to say that’s bigger than ourselves.

I’ve always believed that we’re never alone in this profession: it may go against the common perception of opera, but there’s no such a thing as a star. There are people born with incredible talent and artistic sensibility, but so much of it is down to training, hard work, and all the people pushing with you to get you there. And we must never lose sight of that: we all love to see a good play or movie, but so often we forget how many people are behind it and how much society as a whole needs to pull together to achieve the artistic results we all enjoy.

Opera Rara announced its 55th season last week, with plans including the 1921 version of Puccini's La rondine (starring Ermonela Jaho as Magda) and a salon recital of Donizetti songs with Alcántara and pianist Anna Tilbrook.