Tara Erraught: ‘I was terrified. I was, like, Callas probably touched this doorknob’

Tara Erraught has been busy. “Since Christmas I’ve had four role debuts back to back. I didn’t take summer off. I’m going to take my summer holidays for 2024 next April.”
Ireland’s leading mezzo-soprano sang the Composer in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at Vienna State Opera, Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma at the Bavarian State Opera (alongside Joseph Calleja and Sonya Yoncheva), the title role in Kevin Puts’s Elizabeth Cree at Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York, and Vitellia in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito at Hamburg State Opera. And she did her 49th Rosina in Rossini’s Barber of Seville at Berlin State Opera.
Since the pandemic, Erraught says, “the opera industry has changed immensely. In the past I used to be booking four and five years ahead for new productions and maybe three years ahead for revivals. But now there are things that change within six months or nine months. The theatres are saying, ‘You know what? Such and such didn’t sell so well this year. Let’s do another run of The Barber of Seville.’” Or they will pivot to give more attention to outreach programmes.
“Opportunities are coming up much later than they used to, which has also changed how I have to study. Everything’s at the last minute, but it still has to be at the highest level. So I’m back to the point where I’m getting up at six o’clock and starting before seven in the morning to note-bash and try to get things done so I can rehearse something else at 10 o’clock.”
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The opera public has changed, too. “We lost a lot of patrons, especially of the older generation. We have a lot of people that aren’t comfortable yet to come back into the theatre. And we have a huge new public.” New faces, paradoxically, mean spending more time with the classics, “because these new young people don’t know them. So there are a lot more performances of Bohème, Magic Flute, Barber of Seville, L’Elisir d’Amore, Nabucco, Aida, before they get to Pfitzner’s Palestrina or whatever the newest composition is. It’s an interesting time.”
The war in Ukraine, she says, “has had a huge effect on budgets, especially in Germany. The theatres are having to tighten their belts. They’re taking on a lot more full-time singers, and so there are great full-time jobs for anyone that’s interested.” In other words, full-time employees now take on roles that used to be given to visiting guest artists.
Singers of an older generation are shocked at the amount of work someone like Erraught has to take on. She says that, in comparison with her late teacher Veronica Dunne, “I sing probably five times as much for less money.”
Today’s singers often leave college without much of an idea how the world of opera actually works. And even performers coming out of the Juilliard School in New York will have little idea of how the industry in Europe works. That’s why a core focus of Erraught’s work as artist-in-residence at the National Concert Hall in Dublin will be a week-long professional-development programme for young artists, Celebrating the Voice, next February.
Her goal is not only to develop them vocally and artistically but also to help them understand the complexity of their profession. Her list of experts includes Alexander Neef, director of Paris Opera, her own manager, Andreas Massow, and the American vocal-health expert Paul Kwak, whose clients include singers on Broadway and from the Metropolitan Opera.
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In spite of her busy career, Erraught has yet to sing in the two venues that were top of her wishlist when she was a student, La Scala, in Milan, and the great Roman amphitheatre of the Arena di Verona. She mentions this in the context of how the glamour presented on social media distorts young people’s expectations.
But she has achieved another of her youthful goals. “I always wanted to sing where Callas had sung. After Covid I had an opportunity to jump in in Paris and learn the title role of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in 10 days. So sing a role that she had sung in a theatre where she sang it, the Palais Garnier. Cool!”
The rehearsals were at the Bastille, the 2,723-seat theatre that, when it opened in 1989, cost more than Irish governments had spent on the arts since the foundation of the State. “When we eventually moved to the Garnier for the stage rehearsals, they put me in the prima donna’s dressing room, which is the only dressing room with a toilet in it.
“When I walked into the room I thought, ‘Oh holy God. Like, nothing has changed. They haven’t changed the furniture, they haven’t reinsulated.’ I was terrified to touch anything. I was, like, ‘Oh my God: [Callas] probably touched this doorknob. She probably sat on that chair.’ The piano might be new, because it was in good nick. But I just couldn’t get over it. She was in the room. I could feel her in the room. I could feel her in the theatre. I was no longer comfortable. All of my confidence left the building. I thought, what am I doing? I don’t speak French. But here I am in Paris singing this role!
“It blew my mind. Because then I had to think, well, what’s next? That threw me, because I didn’t really know how to answer the question for myself. That was a shock to the system. And it was also in a soprano role. I had to stand back then and question what do I want now?”
Her conclusion? “I am a storyteller, and the industry sees me as an actress who can sing rather than a singer who can act. So I started to invest differently, push myself vocally through song recitals, stretch the instrument a little, push myself emotionally.”
During another opera, after her father’s death, a woman come to the stage door and said, “‘You know, I don’t like this production, but I just came to hear if grief changed your voice.’ I was like, ‘Pardon?’ She said, ‘Yeah, some people, you know, it’s like after they have a baby, the voice changes. And I thought, oh, maybe grief will change it.’ And I said, ‘What do you think?’ She said, ‘No, still the same.’ I just thought, ‘Holy shit. I’m very lucky that I have fans that are that invested.’”
Tara Erraught sings works by Marianna Martines, Haydn and Mozart with the National Symphony Orchestra under Laurence Cummings at the National Concert Hall in Dublin on Friday, November 1st