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| Cheryl North :: Interviews |  | |
Classical Music:2011 Interview with Swedish Soprano Iréne Theorin, Opening Night Turandot that year for the San Francisco Opera Column by Cheryl North, published September 2, 2011 by the Bay Area News Group under the headline, "Swedish Soprano Theorin chills the blood, warms the voice for her turn in Turandot."
Wagner's Brünnhilde? Absolutely. Puccini's Turandot? A stretch of the imagination. Those were the first words that ran through my mind as warmly smiling, strikingly blond and statuesque Iréne Theorin strode into the San Francisco Opera press room last week for our interview. Theorin is making her San Francisco Opera debut in the title role of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot, beginning at 8 p.m. Friday at War Memorial as the company opens its new season. Turandot, the quintessential "cold fish," or more politely, "ice princess," of Puccini's fictional ancient China, has come to hate all men after learning that one of her ancestors was cruelly raped. She hates men so much that when various princes travel to China to woo her, she gives each three impossible riddles to solve. Failure leads to a chopped-off head. Finally, Calaf, an exceedingly handsome prince of Tartary with a voice that sails up to a series of high C's, arrives on the scene — and worse yet, answers all three of Turandot's riddles correctly. When he realizes her dismay at the prospect of marrying him, he tells her he willingly will go under the ax if she can find out his name by the next morning. To tell the ending would spoil the suspense, but be assured, it's worth waiting for. Theorin was one of six children raised in a forested Swedish village with a population she estimates at "no more than 200." Everyone in her family played some sort of musical instrument. Her instrument was the trumpet. She also sang in the local church choir from an early age. Her formal musical studies were in Sweden and later, at the Royal Opera School in Copenhagen. Surprisingly, a recording of Alban Berg's jaggedly expressionistic, atonal opera Wozzeck caused her to think seriously about an operatic career. "I seemed to fall into the big, heavy things right away — and I am a very hard worker," she mused. A scholarship enabled her to study in London, where she was befriended by the great dramatic Wagnerian soprano Birgit Nilsson. According to Theorin, Nilsson has been one of her primary musical inspirations — and indeed, the repertoire propelling Thorin to fame closely resembles Nilsson's when she was as the height of her career in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. This includes Brünnhilde in Wagner's Ring, Isolde in his Tristan and Isolde, Puccini's Turandot and Tosca, Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos and the title role in his Elektra. When she was still a student, Theorin sang Freya in Wagner's Das Rheingold and later made her professional debut as Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni in Copenhagen. During our chat, Theorin's comments and stories often were punctuated by her dramatic expressiveness and laughter. These came to the fore as she animatedly told of her remarkable experience singing Brünnhilde in a Stockholm performance of what is now called the "Copenhagen" production (a modern feminist interpretation) of Wagner's Ring Cycle. The saga is presented as a series of flashbacks in Brünnhilde's mind. The final scene has a very much alive Brünnhilde holding Siegfried's baby in her arms. Theorin's eyes widened as she gleefully confided, "I was actually pregnant with my third son during the Stockholm performance. It worked perfectly with the director's concept that Brünnhilde becomes pregnant with Siegfried's child during the course of the cycle." "The only problem was, I actually started feeling contractions and labor pains during the final strains of Götterdämmerung. My own baby was born only a few minutes later downstairs from the stage." While the role of Turandot is a polar opposite from Brünnhilde, Theorin still finds sympathy for the so-called ice princess. "She doesn't really hate men, she is only afraid of them. She is playing a sort of power game with Calaf and, at the end of the opera, genuinely falls in love with him. The music, even though it is not kind to the voice, has an edgy aspect to it that really reflects Turandot's anguish. "But," she added with a bit of mischief in her voice, "do write that the Turandot character is not at all like me — I am only acting!"
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