When I spoke to Steven Ebel last July, he was in the office of London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, primed to graduate from that company’s Young Artist Program later that month. How did this Wisconsin native—who is not only a singer but a composer, too—end up across the pond, the only American in the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme (JPYAP) last season? I set out to find out.
Where in the United States do you come from?
I’m from Jefferson, Wis., a small town of about 8,000 people between Madison and Milwaukee. When I was in school there, I took part in musicals and school plays. I also played trumpet and tuba in the school band. As a result, I learned how to read the treble and bass clefs, but I did not begin to study music seriously until I was 17. Then I began voice and piano lessons. Piano helps with sight reading and ear training, so I took lessons for a number of years.
When I was a child, I listened to my parents’ music, which included Pink Floyd and Garth Brooks on cassette. When we eventually got a compact disc player, I began to look for my own music and bought classical selections. I started with Mozart and Beethoven. Thinking I should start at the beginning, I bought Beethoven’s first and second symphonies. There was an element in the first chords of Beethoven’s First Symphony that spoke to me in a way that more popular music did not, and it made me feel that I was home.
Classical music afforded me a profound experience because it demanded my attention. Each time I listened I was rewarded with something new. You can be much more deeply moved by the classics than by “pop” music from the best artists. A Mahler symphony is far more complex and far more direct in delivering its message because it has a depth of meaning far beyond that of a normal pop song. It is a work of art.
When did you begin to compose?
I began at the turn of the millennium, in the year 2000. Before that, I knew I wanted to compose but I did not have the skills to write out what I heard [in my head] until I was in college at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. When I compose, I never worry much about melody—it usually just comes to me. I assume this is because I’ve spent so much time learning and performing melodies. I am mainly focused on harmonies while composing.
Since I had never received any instruction in classical music in high school, I gorged myself on it when I got to college. I loved my History of Music course. I had so much fun learning the material covered that I did not have to study for tests. Keeping my scholarship was easy at that point.
Once I finished the survey courses, I could be involved with more advanced studies. One of the best was a seminar I audited on Franz Schubert’s harmonies. The professor analyzed the music so we could see how Schubert created his harmonic relationships. We learned how he used the harmonies to support his melodies and how he used harmonic shifts to achieve his magic. This was the expressive language I had been hearing and loving in Mahler and Debussy. That class was the take-off point for my compositions, and I still use a great deal of what I learned there.
How did you learn your music in college?
Like most singers, I played it on the piano and sang it until I knew it. Then I had a coach or teacher correct it. My role as a composer does not give me an extra edge on this; my instrument must still be physically taught how to make the right sounds. I have refined the process over the years and have expanded it into a long time frame. I learn the rhythm with the text, then the notes. Usually, I will have the piece played for me early in the process so that I have the sounds fully in my head. I start to learn my music at least four months before I need to have it memorized and I work on it once or twice a week.
How would you describe your music?
I can write completely tonal music and I have written atonal material. Above all, I would describe my music as communicative. I want it to speak directly to the listener. If there is a text, I want to put it across. If there are no words, I want to project the meaning of the work. I hope my music is timely. I don’t think it’s old fashioned, but its not 30 years ahead of its time, either. It’s for today’s audiences as I know them. I learn about my audience at every concert. For any piece to be successful, it needs to say something important and interesting to the listeners. Of course, I also have to enjoy listening to it.
My opera, Mogens, is a kind of pastoral. It takes place mainly out of doors and its music is very lyrical. The libretto is a story of love and loss based on a Danish novella by Jens Peter Jacobsen. It takes place in a world abstracted from ours. The story and the characters exist alone, and we follow them and love them without the context of a larger society in which they belong. This makes it a perfect piece for a black box theatre or small venue. I find that when we recognize the time and place portrayed in an opera, it seems strange that the characters are singing instead of speaking. For example, in Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, which is set in the California gold rush, characters sing to each other in Italian while wearing 19th-century Western clothing and talking about whiskey and card games. It’s just one of the road blocks that we sometimes have to get past in order to appreciate opera. In Mogens, I chose an essentially timeless subject in the hope that the audience will accept it without a thought.
What did you learn from your voice teachers?
My first voice teacher in Wisconsin was Ilona Kombrink. She helped me with stage presence and musicality as well as with vocal skills. She taught all of us how to take command of the stage. I was not able to absorb everything she gave me at that time, but I did learn how to fill a space with my breath.
When I moved to New York, I needed to find a teacher, so I began calling teachers at the conservatories. I got no responses. I had planned on attending one of the following: The Juilliard School, The Manhattan School of Music, or Mannes College–The New School for Music. However, I wanted to find a teacher I liked before I applied and paid my hard-earned money. A friend with whom I had sung in Wisconsin, Diane Schoff, recommended Neil Semer. In 2002, she had placed in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition semifinals and I loved the way she sang, so I called Neil.
To my surprise, he invited me to his studio the following week. I did not have the money for a lesson right away so I became a busker! I sang unaccompanied Irish folk tunes like “Danny Boy” and “Sally Gardens” in the subway. Although I’m only one-eighth Irish, I made it work for me. I was really scared singing my first song, but it soon became easier. How I enjoyed seeing that first person put a $1 bill in my box! It was a new experience seeing someone pay me directly for singing. My busking money paid for my first few lessons with Neil Semer. As time went on, I budgeted my funds and did not have to sing in the subway, but it helped to know that it had worked for me.
Why did you leave New York City?
When I was in NYC everyone kept telling me to go to England or Germany where the opera companies would be more apt to appreciate my voice. I already knew that my sound was better suited to English and German music. Most of my engagements in the United States had been for that kind of music. My biggest roles had been in Mozart, Britten, and Weill operas.
For me, it was a struggle to get auditions with American opera companies. In the States, there is a huge preference for Puccini, Verdi, and Donizetti, and it is my impression that my sound is not quite right for those composers or for most American Young Artist Programs. There are other tenors who sound better in Italian opera than I do.
I am 6’ 5” tall and my somewhat distinctive voice is rather dark for a tenor. It has an edge that feels and sounds right in German and English music. While in New York City, I was also dismayed by the lack of concert opportunities outside of the major arts institutions. Without $10,000 in seed money, you could not get an audience to hear you. I saw how my friends lived in Berlin, even those who were not successful musicians, and I realized that living and working in Germany was less of the rat race and closer to the life I wanted to live.
In 2004, I took a trip to London and saw a performance of Faust at Covent Garden. I then found out that the company had a Young Artist Program. When I arrived home, I applied but was told to wait a few years and build up a résumé. I did that and applied again in the fall of 2008. By that time I had sung with the New York City Opera, Opera Delaware, Opera Cleveland, Empire Opera, and the Tanglewood Music Center, among others.
In the fall of 2008, I sent the same recordings and application materials to three American programs and the Royal Opera. I did not get even an audition in the States, but I was given a spot on the audition list for the Royal Opera’s JPYAP. I decided to make the most of my trip and, at the suggestion of Neil Semer, I also arranged for a few auditions in Germany before I arrived at the Royal Opera House. He has been most helpful in defining my sound and technique and helping me locate the area in which I should seek work. I had just won the Wisconsin District Met Auditions, so I had some money. I then asked a generous woman from Cleveland, to whom I am ever grateful, to sponsor the rest of my trip.
After a few auditions in Germany, I arrived in London for the Royal Opera screenings. The process took a week. It consisted of three rounds during which I sang four different arias and a song I had written. It culminated with a terrifying audition on the main stage where I could not hear the piano at all while singing. There were four tenors in the final round, so I was quite surprised when I was asked to join the program. The judges liked what they called “my cleverness” and they said my individual sound was something they wanted to cultivate.
Performing small roles such as Gaston/Victorin in Die tote Stadt, the Fourth Jew in Salome, and the Messenger in Aida as part of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera has helped me a great deal. Of all the roles I’ve done there, Malcolm, the young man who becomes king at the end of Verdi’s Macbeth, was the most central to the opera’s plot. Although my other roles involved entering, singing a few lines of background information, and exiting the stage, they were also challenging and great fun to do.
When I realized Malcolm’s importance, I jumped on it, especially since I was given a wonderful red costume trimmed with white fur. Wearing that, I knew I could really take the stage. One performance of Macbeth was transmitted live to cinemas around the world. That has not hurt me in the least. Jette Parker Programme members get to sing larger roles at the Linbury Studio Theatre, which is an important experience. There, I sang Gernando in Haydn’s L’isola disabitata during the Meet the Young Artists Week. I also sang a staged version of Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe. In 2009, they staged the premiere of my song cycle, Diary of a Young Poet.
So much of singing has to do with luck and timing. If you cover a role and the original cast member becomes ill, you may or may not get to sing it onstage. If the company can easily find a singer who has done the part, you don’t get to go on. If, however, they let you sing and someone important happens to hear you, it could be your big break.
How long is the Royal Opera program?
It runs for two years, starting in mid-August and ending in mid-July of each year. Besides singing small roles or covering larger ones at Covent Garden, you learn a great deal of new material. There are two to three hours of coaching each day with different accompanists and language coaches. Group classes covering aspects of performing such as movement and fighting are held twice a week. There is singing instruction by different voice teachers at irregular intervals—but at this level, singers should already have a secure vocal technique. We do get an allowance to use for lessons with our own teachers. I still work with Neil Semer.
Can you tell us a little bit about the song cycles you’ve written?
Diary of a Young Poet is a 40-minute piece for tenor, narrator, and piano composed to a German text by Rainer Maria Rilke. The musical language is dissonant but tonal. It was staged as part of the JPYAP at the Linbury Studio Theatre Young Artists’ Performance in 2009.
As I Walk from Her Grave is a work for soprano, string quartet, and piano. It involves a woman grieving over the death of her mother. She sings: “As I walk from her grave to my car, Napoleon’s armies cut through snow crossing Russia. Hannibal’s armies take the Alps. Stonehenge is laid.” To her, her mother’s death is as important as any of these historical events.
My Divan Songs are set to texts from Goethe’s West-östlicher Diwan. He studied Sufi poetry and Islam in his later life and some of what he wrote is extremely beautiful. He writes: “Those who know themselves and others, know that the Occident and Orient cannot remain separate.”
The Being of All Things is a 15-minute cohesive cycle to a text by contemporary Kentucky poet Wendell Berry. His poems come from a deep practical and spiritual place. I find them to be consoling for those of us who can feel a little out of place in modern times.
What is next on the horizon for you?
Having now finished the Royal Opera program, I have decided to stay in Europe. One reason is that I have fallen in love with Sophie, a German violinist. The other is that I believe the climate in the States is not as favorable for my talents as it is here. We will be married this summer and we expect to live in her hometown of Karlsruhe. I have a commission for a song cycle and a 30-minute monodrama, so that will keep me busy for a while.
