As an English major and pre-med student at Harvard, Ethan Herschenfeld never considered a career in opera. But his vocal talent and natural charisma on stage led him on a path of study and training that culminated in debuts with companies like the Florentine Opera, San Francisco Opera, and San Diego Opera, as well as performances in Avery Fisher and Carnegie halls. This season, Herschenfeld takes his talent overseas in a string of debuts: Mephistopheles with Hong Kong Opera, Sarastro with Stuttgart Staatsoper, Sparafucile and Rocco with the New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, and Ratcliffe in Billy Buddat Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa.
The New York Times singled out Herschenfeld’s “booming basso” and heralded him as, “a singer of imposing stature, impressive voice.” And Israel’s Yediot Ahronot called him, “a true creature of the stage,” for his portrayal of Osmin. Fresh from his triumphant New York City Opera debut in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, he spoke with CS about his work.
When did you begin singing?
Freshman year in college, when basketball season ended and I had some time on my hands. My roommate was a songwriter, and we got up on stage and sang one of his songs as an audition for the Harvard Gilbert & Sullivan Players production of The Gondoliers. At the callback audition, I was actually singing the bass line an octave lower—not on purpose—and the conductor was trying to identify the source of the drone. My roommate elbowed me, and I snapped out of it. I also sang briefly with an a cappella group in college, but the bass line in those tunes can be pretty mind numbing.
Did you ever play an instrument as a child?
I took drum lessons for a few years, but never graduated to full-fledged jazz—you know, with the cigarette dangling from my lip. I also played clarinet in the school orchestra.
I had a lot of stage fright.
How do you manage that now?
The anxiety went away when I was doing a lot of acting in college. It shrunk from terror to excitement. Now, I eat it up. I love that feeling before going on stage.
You receive as much praise for your acting as for your singing. You started out as an actor?
In college, I acted in lots of plays, and after graduating, I worked in theater and TV, with a few appearances on some soaps. I know you remember me as the orderly in that dream sequence on Loving! Orderly in a dream sequence, in a cancelled soap. Where’s my Emmy? I also did standup for about two years at clubs in New York, which was terrifying and amazing.
So how did you come to opera?
I was at the Actor’s Institute in London and the voice teacher had us sing as part of our class work. Another roommate took Italian in college and had the words to “La donna è mobile” up on his wall, and I had scribbled them on a piece of paper, which I then kept in my wallet for a few years after college. So I sang it in class—an octave lower, or at least a fifth—and the teacher encouraged me to take some lessons.
I found a teacher who worked with opera singers, but also with West End-Broadway singers. We vocalized, worked on breathing and some basics of technique, and then on Sarastro. I also remember we prepared the Beatles’ “Oh Darling” for an audition I did at the Old Vic for the revival of Hair. I got through ”Oh Dar …“ and Trevor Nunn thanked me. You know, “thank you” as in “go away.”
I then started listening to a lot of opera. Boris Christoff was the one that did it for me. His recording of “Ella giammai m’amo” gave me goose bumps and I thought, “I’d like to do that.” Then I went to see Samuel Ramey in Attilla at Covent Garden, and waited at the stage door to ask him for any advice for an aspiring singer. He was amazingly generous, and just wrote down the name and number of his voice teacher, Armen Boyajian.
How did that lead to your first professional performance?
I did a few training programs. Joan Dornemann’s program in Israel, IVAI [International Vocal
Arts Institute], was key for me. I was there for three summers, and she gave me the chance to sing six roles. They were great roles, like Sparafucile, Osmin and Tsar Dodon. I got to coach Osmin’s dialogue intensively with Nico Castel, who played the Pasha. I worked there with Mignon Dunn, who encouraged me to go audition in Europe. Then, at a competition in Marseilles, I met two singers from Germany who invited me to stay with them in Munich. They helped me contact some agents.
In some ways, this was all a little premature, but I was impatient. I read in Classical Singer how Simon Estes said patience is the No. 1 thing for a young singer, and I have to agree—in hindsight. I was low on that quality, feeling like I had better get a job right away. So the agents were generally encouraging—but no jobs. And then, six months later in New York, an agent from Vienna faxed me, saying: “Go to Sweden next week. And by the way, you know the Sarastro monologue in German, right?”
“Of course!” I had to learn that entire monologue on the plane.
I landed in Copenhagen, slept a few hours, and arrived at the theater later that afternoon to find out we had a show that night, with no rehearsals. I was replacing a singer whose visa hadn’t come through. It turned out there was a two-by-four across the floor where Sarastro makes his big entrance, so that I sort of hopped on for my first entrance. Auspicious! I swore that I was going to run back to the airport and find another career within the week. But I got through that first show and ended up singing eight performances as Sarastro. By the last few, I was loving it, and feeling like a pro. I could feel the progress in those two weeks. Trial by fire!
Do you ever feel like you would have liked to study at a conservatory?
I have friends who went to Juilliard, and I see the great training they got. But I had an eclectic education—sciences, languages, literature, theater—at a great school, and that makes me who I am. I was able to make my own conservatory, in a way, with the program in Israel, EPCASO [the Ezio Pinza Council for American Singers of Opera] in Italy one summer, another program in Austria, and then learning on the job and working with my teacher. Even for conservatory-trained singers, it seems to me that it usually comes down to clicking with one teacher who becomes the key to their development, whether you find that teacher in a school or on West End Avenue.
And Boyajian was that teacher for you?
Yes. From the first lesson, he took me through his drills and gave me his diagnosis. We started with the ‘ee’ vowel on E-flat and went through the five Italian vowels on that pitch, then worked down and then up. This is how he starts every lesson, checking on the shape of each vowel and on getting an even, bright, focused tone through the entire range and from piano to forte on all the vowels, and then we work on agility. He’s meticulous, and he knows the voice in general—and the bass voice—and he knows the quirks of my voice after eight years together. He’s also a fantastic pianist, which is great for developing my musicality and for that feeling of singing with an orchestra. He plays like that.
One hurdle is learning to stick to your guns technically, to sing the way your body and voice have to sing, even when the orchestra is pounding away and creating a giant crescendo that invites you along. Especially with really dramatic music, like that cascading passage in Oroveso’s aria or “Le veau d’or,” where you want to basically do Robert Plant. Armen is great at creating that feeling, drawing you into that trap and then training you to resist and stay within your voice. This is an ongoing lesson.
You’ve also studied with Corelli. What was that like?
He was a really warm person and a caring teacher. His lessons were like a laboratory—we would get to a certain hurdle, and then he’d stop and suggest we try this vocalise or a certain phrase from a song, and he’d go at the problem from different angles, as if he were puzzling it out. People who heard him live say he was the most exciting performer, and you can get a sense of that on live recordings. But he also obviously thought a lot about technique. We like to assume—with great athletes, too—that there’s a raw talent, a gift, but it’s the years of training and thinking that make something out of that gift.
You have great energy onstage. You mentioned that you played basketball.
I was captain in high school and then played a year in college. It occupied all my free time from about first grade on. I gave it up in order to pursue theater, but I still continued to play with friends, in a league, or pickup.
Ideally, there’s an element of physical freedom on the stage like in basketball, and a similar joy in being completely in your body. There’s also that combination of relaxation and complete alertness. When you’re in the flow, you have to be charged up and hyper-aware and on your toes, but also totally calm and at ease. It’s a little paradoxical.
What is a typical day like for you?
Depends on whether I’m at a job or not. One fringe benefit of working is that your day is structured for you. When I’m home, and being productive, I’ll prepare for an audition or for a role, and my practice is focused on that project. I will see Armen as many times as we can schedule when I’m home, and I’ll work with coaches.
Your career has taken off, so you are frequently on the road. How do you deal with the stresses of traveling?
I love traveling. It also helps that I am a compulsive emailer, so I’m less out of touch than I would have been pre-Internet. I love exploring a new city and meeting new people. I am tall, so planes are uncomfortable. When I work within about 1,000 miles of Brooklyn, I like to drive to the job. It gives me some freedom to explore wherever I’m working.
Does travel take a toll on your voice?
You don’t want to get right off a plane and sing. But sometimes you don’t have the luxury of time and rest. If it’s an audition after a flight, I’ll start with something that doesn’t go too high, as a kind of warmup, and just to feel things out. If you find yourself in a room full of people already rehearsing on the day you arrive, you tend to want to jump right in. But it may be better to keep quiet, or to mark until the next day, and let people hear you for the first time once you’ve slept and relaxed.
What do you do to maintain vocal health?
The main thing for me is rest—especially the day before or after a performance—and avoiding prolonged chatting in a loud room, like at a party or a restaurant. The world has gotten really noisy. Like a lot of musicians, I’m that Scrooge asking them to “turn it down.”
Your favorite repertoire?
I love the role of Osmin. Also, Mephistopheles in Faust is tremendous fun because of the richness of the music and the character. They’re my two favorite sadists. It’s fun to play the bad guy. The tenors secretly envy us.
Do you have a favorite language in which you like to sing?
The neighborhood in the Bronx where I grew up was Italian, Neapolitan actually. We were the Jewish family; there was the Irish family around the corner and the Persians down the block. Otherwise, it was Naples. So through osmosis—that’s my explanation—I’m 22 percent Italian, so there is a slight lean towards Italian repertoire. I love singing in German, and find myself doing a lot of that. I’ve done some Wagner recently, which is great music for a bass. I’m also very partial to Russian; I like how that language feels in my voice, and some of the greatest repertoire for bass is in Russian.
What other languages do you speak?
I learned Hebrew as a kid, I took French in school, then Spanish in college, and I speak Italian and German too—and a little Russian. I have a good ear for languages. That’s one of the great pleasures of this career. Performing in, and living in, different countries and speaking the languages. I’ve always been happy to bluff my way, with little knowledge of the language, and to mimic the accent, which allows me to practice and then actually become proficient, or even fluent. I’m not shy—I just start gabbing. Otherwise, you can’t really learn the language.
How do you prepare for a role?
First, I bring it to my teacher. He knows the repertoire and my voice, so he can anticipate the hurdles. I’ll work with a language coach too. There’s also a correlation between acting it right and singing it right. In a staging rehearsal for “Rheingold,” Gustav Kuhn was yelling at me about a certain phrase, while I was singing it. As I was getting more worked up, something clicked vocally and dramatically at the same time. I could feel it and he could hear it, so he clapped and blurted out “Ja! That’s it!” Sounds very ”method,” but there’s something to it. I’ve experienced that in sports too—a real talking to from a coach can bring out your best play. It frees you up, so you’re not thinking about technique, but focusing on the dramatic moment, and that can really pay off.
Who are your greatest operatic influences?
[Cesare] Siepi is my favorite voice, for the pure beauty of the sound: dark and bright at the same time, with an easy top and great low notes. I have a recording of La Juive where he sings a tremendous low C in the cadenza, and then you hear his Mefistofele or Giovanni, with those ringing high notes. [Nicolai] Ghiaurov is another favorite—a great actor with a big, beautiful sound. [Catherine] Malfitano’s Tosca on video is an amazing piece of singing and acting. I respond to that total commitment to each moment combined with great singing.
You just recorded the role of King Marke on a CD of Tristan und Isolde. Describe that experience.
We recorded it live in Sofia in front of an audience. There was just the microphone and the audience and we had to do it in one take, so it was a lot of pressure. You know there’s that freedom in live, non-recorded performances. It’s transitory and that’s part of the thrill. This was sort of a hybrid. It’s a wonderful role, which I’d love to do again.
What would you say was the turning point for you in your career?
Well, there was one moment of good luck when I was sent by an agent in Munich to audition at a theater. A baritone auditioning that day heard my Osmin and said I should call this conductor, Gustav Kuhn, who was looking for a Fafner for his “Ring” in Austria. So I called him, went down to Lucca, where he spends the winter—he has his academy in a monastery there—sang for him, and he invited me to the festival. I was there all summer, so I also studied Marke and Hunding.
And then—a month later in San Francisco, where I was singing The Mother of Us All—I heard that our director, Christopher Alden, was casting for the Eos Orchestra Valkyrie, so I asked him if I could sing through the role for him. He gave me the job. At that show, City Opera was in the audience and they invited me to come in and audition with Osmin. They wanted to hear the low D for a role in the new opera they were casting. So I did, and I got that role. You know, I don’t believe in fate, but it was that audition in Germany, and then a series of steps, that led to a great project at City Opera.
The premiere of Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Did you feel any added pressure at being given the task of originating a role on your debut night?
Actually, I think it alleviated the pressure, because every note out of my mouth was the first time it was ever heard. When a young singer debuts in a big role, you naturally compare him or her to the other singers you’ve heard in the role. I think our ears do that naturally. Also, “Haroun” was so challenging musically that there was enough work there just getting the notes in your head and in your body. Rehearsals were so intense that opening night felt like graduation. We could celebrate doing it for an audience, after all the work.
Do you have a strong support system from your friends and family?
Couldn’t ask for better. My parents are always extremely supportive and excited to see me perform. You know, they’d cheer for me at a parole hearing. They always loved watching me play basketball and they come to lots of my shows, as do my brother, sister and friends. When I sang at Carnegie Hall the first time, I had about 45 friends and family there. That’s support. And my teacher is crucial. When I get an offer to sing something or to audition, I call him for his opinion. Other singers and conductors that I work with have become friends. We talk business, technique, life.
What is your philosophy when it comes to technique?
I think the goal is to sing beautifully and with ease. To have the voice ringing and focused from top to bottom and loud to soft, with an even vibrato, so that you’re free to make music, to express, to give a great performance. Technique should give you that freedom. Obviously singing is effortful; it takes a lot of energy, but there has to be an ease behind that.
You’ve enjoyed success at a young age. How does that affect your perspective?
I’ve actually been at this a pretty long time, going back to that G&S show. There are a lot more things I plan on doing, roles I’d like to sing and places I’d like to sing them. But—perspective—I think if you take your time with a good teacher, and stay focused, the voice matures and the lessons and programs pay off.
What is the best advice you can give to someone at the beginning of an operatic career?
Face the audience—that’s a better angle—and shave, and stop slouching. No, here’s some excellent free advice. Fly to the audition. Go there, if they’re having auditions at the house, and they want to hear you. I’ve had a lot of success doing that. I think it adds focus to your audition. You flew there, you invested time and energy and money. It’s somehow different than just taking the subway.
Some more free advice: if you are a wunderkind, perfect in technique from the moment you sang a note, that’s great. But for the other 98 percent of us, you need perseverance. It’s not an easy art form and not an easy business, obviously. Something, hopefully it’s joy, has to drive you, whether it’s being on stage, or the physical sensation of singing. For one of my friends, it’s the experience of working on a new part at his piano—that feeling of incremental progress and learning is his joy.
What roles would you most like to sing in the future?
I sang Mephistopheles last year in Hong Kong and I hope to sing that role a lot. Next year, I’m singing the [Arrigo] Boito Mefistofele, which is a dream role. It’s at Bob Jones University, where Ramey sang the role for the first time. The other bass who sang it there was Jerome Hines, so it’s a real honor for me to sing in that production. I’d like to sing Basilio—I love the aria, which I’ve sung many times in concert and in auditions. And, of course, Osmin. Harem guard was my dream job when I was…well, into my mid to late twenties. So that’s a fun role. There’s also Boris and King Philip, which are the pinnacle. I’m looking forward to those.
