Soprano Barbara Bonney Follows The Lieder To Success, Happiness

July 24, 1997|By Sarah Bryan Miller. Special to the Tribune.

`This is what makes me the happiest," says Barbara Bonney of her work as a recitalist. "Singing lieder is the most fun for me, and the best way to communicate to an audience. Opera is just a spectacle."

Though opera helped Bonney to establish herself as a performer, it is with the intimate art of the song recital that she has set herself apart from other singers in her light lyric soprano fach, or vocal category. It is an art that has taken her around the world (she was the first American to sing in postwar Vietnam, an experience she calls "scary, but fun"), and which, on Thursday night, will bring her to Ravinia's Martin Theatre for a recital of songs by the Schumanns, Schubert, Britten and Grieg, accompanied by Christoph Eschenbach.

Born in Montclair, N.J., she went to high school in Maine and spent two years at the University of New Hampshire. Originally a cellist, Bonney was drawn to chamber music from the beginning, finding it more of an intellectual challenge, and thus more interesting, than large-scale orchestral works. A taste for lieder (German art songs) was a natural extension of that preference.

Going for a junior year abroad to Salzburg, Austria, "I got more and more into music -- and I stayed there and never came back." In the introduction to her recently released Decca album of Schumann lieder with Vladimir Ashkenazy, she writes, "When I was 19, I auditioned at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and sang `Du Ring an meinem Finger' from (Robert Schumann's) Frauenliebe und -leben. This little song changed my life. I gave up hopes of becoming a cellist and embarked on a life as a singer."

Bonney, whose distinctive voice is sweet and clear, has spent the last two decades in Europe and is best known there; most of her 70 recordings were made and released there. While she has sung at major American companies like the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera and the Lyric, the bulk of her career has been as an expatriate. Now based in London with her second husband, orchestral touring manager Maurice Whitaker, she speaks with a clipped and British manner. She is matter-of-fact about her life and her work, and knows what she wants in both.

Although she still sings plenty of opera, roles such as Sophie in Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier" and Susanna in "The Marriage of Figaro," she says she plans to give that up within a few years. The parts assigned to her voice type are typically those of young girls, the soubrettes; some light lyric sopranos try to take on heavier assignments as they get older, and often sacrifice the beauty of their sound as a result. Not Bonney, who sensibly declares, "I'm not going to change my fach." Instead, "I want to sing recitals, teach, and focus on what I'm going to do for the last decades of my career."

Having met with great success as a recitalist, she has made an early debut as a teacher. She'll give two master classes at Ravinia's Steans Institute this week as well as her recital. (The class at 2 p.m. Friday is open to the public.) In the past, singers usually didn't give master classes, passing on their hard-won wisdom to fledglings, until after retirement, "going from the top to the dinosaur circuit. I don't want to wait until I'm 60 to start teaching; by that time, you're out of the loop, and unaware of what younger singers are doing."

What is her approach to teaching? "It's not so much me telling them how to sing; it's helping them to find their own way. I had to find out for myself how to do it. Singers must be able to ask conductors, `What do you want?' I find conductors are always grateful when I bring something of my own to the performance."

In Bonney's experience, the first thing young singers should do -- after acquiring the technical basics -- is to learn the languages they'll be singing in. "It's very difficult to be convincing in a language you don't speak. You should get your tail over to Europe and experience the culture." The next step in singing lieder is to "learn the poetry by memory, as poetry, before you even look at the music. Be able to recite it as if you were truly an actor. Then add the music, and, like instant soup, you're done. It's when people start to fool around with the music and make it suit them that I get irritated."

Not to be crass, but can a singer make a living doing lieder, which traditionally attracts smaller audiences than operatic spectacle?

"Yup," replies Bonney succinctly. "The simple answer is that you can make a great living," although she agrees that it's helpful to make your name in opera first. Aside from the fact that singers earn nothing during the rehearsal period (they are usually paid only for their performances), she points out that "opera is exhausting for the voice, especially in the U.S.," where auditoriums are typically far larger than those found in Europe, and the singer has to expend a great deal of energy to be heard. "Singing with an orchestra can be very tiring."

Besides, there's the special appeal of lieder. "Each song is a small jewel, and you can design everything the way you want it; with opera, you're stuck with a role. And my voice is well-suited to lieder."

Notes Bonney, who once considered becoming a music therapist, "Songs appeal to feelings. Recitals have a healing effect, if you succeed in communicating with your audience. Even if they don't understand the languages you're singing in, often the music and the poetry are enough to set something off inside."