Bad Schwalbach, 22/03/2020

Michael Vaccaro is a tenor and the director of Opera Classica Europa, a private opera company that has been performing the big opera repertory in Europe since 17 years.  Opera Classica Europa is a great example of what an opera singer can do, other than great singing:  Michael Vaccaro has been putting big operas on stage mostly in open-air performances around Europe, making sure to bring all beautiful things together: beautiful music, beautiful monuments, and beautiful people.  Over the years and through his work, he has been helping hundreds of opera singers to find their way onto the operatic stage by offering them a helping hand and big, important roles.  Many of these singers have found their way and made remarkable careers.  This year he is creating a new and very interesting project: "Opera Pathway to Performance" and two new international competitions: "The Richard Wagner Prize" and "The Maria Callas Grand Debut Prize".

By @kassandra_dimopoulou_official

How did you start singing?
I was 6 years old.  My father was a tenor and he loved opera singing and played Mario Lanza records all the time.  It was at a Xmas party, he was dressed as Santa Claus- I didn’t know that it was my father in the costume- and he asked me if I could sing a song and I san a song named “Jolly old Saint Nicolaus”.  From then on, I just loved singing.  I was always singing, even while washing dishes- when I was 16, I got a job in a restaurant and I was singing all the time!


So your father was a professional singer?
No, he was not a professional singer, though he had made one recording.  Like all Italians in America that time, they would either become singers or cooks!  He became a cook, but he loved to sing.  The family of my father comes right outside of Naples, near Pompey and they came, like millions of people, to America in the 1920's.


How and where did your opera path started?
I grew up in a small town called Mount Holly,  outside of Philadelphia, and opera in America is only in the big cities, I sang in our high school choir- I was the tenor soloist- but at that time, singing was not something that I thought about as a career.  First I was an interpreter, that’s what I studied at first, because I loved different languages.  Then I got drafted into the Army - when I was a young man there was “the draft” in the American Army and so I went into the American Army for two years and then, when I came out, my old high school choir master (teacher of music) said “why don’t you study voice”?  And so I went to Philadelphia and met my first voice teacher.  Her name was Carolyn Dengler and we became the best of friends.  I really owe her so much because she helped me very much and later introduced me to Licia Albanese.  She also bought me the tickets to go and hear Maria Callas live in 1974.  That same year I got my first professional job in the Opera Company of Philadelphia.  The intendant (General Manager) of the opera company in Philadelphia, Carl Suppa, he liked me very much and he let me sing the role of Pinkerton in Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly”, in the young artist program.  He also made it possible for me to go the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.  There I sang Ferrando in “Cosi fan tutte”.  In 1977 I had to decide what to do and so I moved to NY- but now looking back, that was a mistake.  In NY you know, you are either at the top, or at the bottom.  There is no middle where you can learn how to be a singer.  I stayed there for 4-5 years and then I went to San Diego to an apprentice program. Licia Albenese was helping me and supported me a lot at that time. In 1982, after ten years, I was a totally broken person and stopped singing, because I didn’t see any possibility for me.  Between 1972 and 1982 there were no opportunities.  In 1986 I started to sing again in the Virginia Opera Company and then, in 1988, I came to Germany. In order to be a “serious singer”, you have to go either to NY or to Europe.  I made the decision to go Europe, which was the best decision I ever made.  I got a job at the Wiesbaden Staatstheater.  For the firs time in my career as a singer, I was able to make a living, which a singer has to do, too:  a singer has to pay their bills! I got a job in this theatre as a “Chorus mit Solo Vertrag”- that means, as a member of the choir, but also getting some solo jobs in the same company.  I was so happy because I had a monthly income and at the same time, I continued singing as a soloist.  There are many recordings of me singing from that time, but I am mostly proud of my interpretation of Puccini’s “Messa di Gloria.  In 1990, I was working in Bayreuth from 1993 till 2000, during the Wagner Festspielen, also as a member of the choir.  I sang eight leading roles as a soloist at the Frankfurt Kammeroper, too:  Ernesto in “Don Pasquale”, Tonio in “La fille del Regiment”, Lindoro in “Italiana in Algeri” and more.

Why did you start your own opera company?
In 1999, I got engaged in the choir of Teatro La Scala so I went to Miland (with Ricardo Muti conducting). Romana, my wife (she is also an opera singer) she got a job in a summer festival, singing Fenena (in Verdi’s “Nabucco”) in a castle near Stuttgart in a city called Heidenheim.  When I went to visit her, I looked at the castle and the ambient and I thought “wow, maybe we can do this, too”.  Two years later, in 2001, I went to a castle near Bad Schwalbach, where I live, and I asked the person in charge “can we do an opera here” and he said “yes”.  So we started with some concerts and we called the project “Oper auf dem Burg” and in 2003 we took that big risk and tried to stage our first opera.  It was “Tosca”.  It was such a big success that I quit my job in Frankfurt -I was working in the theatre there- because I wanted to devote myself full time to this new way, of opera production.  A year later, we began to go to different cities, outside Bad Schwalbach.  Through our connections with many singers from the Metropolitan Opera NY and many other opera houses, we started moving even more.


How did you decide to name your company “Opera Classica Europa”?
In 2005 a colleague tenor asked me “can you bring your opera to La Palma”?  That is when we began to change our name.  We were called “L’ Opera Piccola” (“The Little Opera”) till that moment but when we went to La Palma, they said to us “you cannot come here with singers from the MET and call yourselves “The Little Opera”!  So we changed our name into “Opera Classica” because we only do productions in a classical staging.  “Europa” came because after La Palma, came Versailles, where we produced 10 different operas (“Aida”, “Carmen”, “Otello”, “Manon”, “Madama Butterfly” a.o.) and then we also went to Valencia and Gijon in Spain, to Holland, to Bulgaria, we went into many European countries- because opera is a European legacy.  It kept going until we reached 14 European countries, so we thought that the word “Europa” fits very well!


How many opera performances have you put on stage the last 17 years that you run your company?
It’s over 500 performances (mostly open-air) and at least 15 different operas.


You play the classic, main repertoire.  Can you tell me the Top 5 of the most favourite operas of the public?
It would be “Aida”, “La Traviata”, “Carmen”, “Nabucco” and “Die Zauberfloete”.  We also had very good successes with “Otello”, “Tosca”, “Cavaleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci”, too.


It’s a lot of Verdi in the Top 5!  Who is your favourite composer and your favourite opera and why?
Mine are Verdi and Puccini but if I had to pick one, I would have to go with Puccini.  I really like “Manon Lescaut”.  I also like “Manon” of Massenet. I love this story.  I understand how a young man falls in love with a woman.  It’s just that magic that happens between two young people and I mean, this is the theme of almost all operas, the love that happens between a man and a woman.


What is the most important thing- when you run a private opera company- to have, in order to succeed? What is the thing that makes a private opera company strong, what is your “capital”?
The passion for opera.  I love singing.  When I hear a beautiful voice, I am moved.  I want to listen. As Rossini answered “voce, voce, voce” (voice, voice, voice) when asked, “what is opera”, I would have to say that the capital of the opera are the singers.  The singers are the most important element of the opera company, any opera company.  The sets, the costumes, the lighting, are all a frame for the composer’s music that the singers bring to life each evening.  This passion for singing and for opera is giving me the force to work for 18 hours a day, in order to produce something beautiful.  Romana, my wife, was and still is, a big capital for my company.  She, together with other colleagues, were the “capital” that an opera company needs, more than anything:  Amazing singers.  Most of the singers who sang with us in the beginning, were singers of the Staatstheater Wiesbaden.  These singers, they were “the sponsors” of our opera company.  We could never pay these salaries that theaters pays to these stars.  But they supported us and were happy to sing with us.  The life of an opera singer, you know, is full of uncertainty and I have seen many people starting a big career, in MET, in Wiener Staatsoper, only to lose it after some years.  It is important for singers to sing and to know, there are places to do that.


You saw Maria Callas live in 1974.  What was your impression of her?
Between 1973 and 1974, I got to hear many great performers when I was a young singer in America, like, Franco Corelli, Renata Tebaldi, Leontyne Price, Luciano Pavarotti and many many more.  On the 11th of February 1974. I heard Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano  in a concert in Philadelphia.  I was 23 years old.  I was so excited to be there! When Callas came out on stage, somebody in the public screamed:  “You ARE opera”!  And you could see how she was so happy to hear that, because as we know from her, the stage was her life.  As a young singer, it was very impressive to see that.  She sang: 
Suicidio!, La gioconda
La fleur que tu m'avais jetée, from Carmen
C’est toi? C’est moi, from Carmen
Io vengo a domandar, from Don Carlo
Vainement, ma bien-aimée, from Le roi d’Ys
Voi lo sapete, from Cavalleria rusticana
Tu qui, Santuzza? ... Ah ! Lo vedi ... No, no Turiddu, from Cavalleria rusticana
O mio babbino caro, from Gianni Schicchi 
Naturally, because I was so young and I had not heard her in her prime, I was not overly impressed by the singing  as I was with her stage presence.  It was just three years before her death.  She was not the Callas of 1950's.  She was struggling with the voice. I was too young to say what exactly was the problem, so I don’t remember what was wrong technically, but I know for sure that I was more impressed by her person, rather than her voice.


This year, you are making a very important tribute to Maria Callas, by making not only a big Opera Gala in her memory in the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, but also starting a new competition, the “Maria Callas Grand Debut Prize”.  Tell us more about this new project.
I was able to go to Athens last summer and be part of a wonderful “Aida”, a production together with your Hellenic Opera Co., Philharmonia Orchestra Athens and the National Opera and Ballet Oleg Danovski from Constanța, Rumania.  I got to see your passion for opera and this opened up an idea:  why not do a tribute to Maria Callas?  She moved an entire generation of opera singers! So we have the chance to pay a tribute to this great artist and at the same help a young artist.  The young singer who will win this prize, will get the chance to sing in a very important place, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, in front of a huge public, and share the stage with professional singers, for example, the winner of 2019 Queen Sonia Singing Competition, the internationally acclaimed Greek soprano Jenny Drivala and many more.


You are also starting a new program for younger singers, the “Opera Pathway to Performance” which should start this summer (2020) and its purpose is to put as many young singers as possible on stage, in a professional operatic production.
It is very important for young opera singers to go on stage.  It is very important to give them the chance to expose themselves to big public, to let them sing big roles in front of a big public, to give them a chance to be heard.  A singer needs to get experience on stage.  One can sing in their studio or at home, as much as they want, but it is not the same as going on stage.  Caruso said “I learned to sing on stage” and it is true.  When you sing together with people who sing well, you sing better!  In Opera Classica Europa we love singers, we know how difficult the life of opera singers is, so we want to stick together.  Singers should help one another.


So, one would say, “Opera Pathway to Performance” is a kind of “practicum” for opera singers?
Yes, this is exactly what it is.  For example, Romana, my wife, she also runs an Opera Academy in Bad Schwalbach, were she teaches the art of opera singing together with other tutors.  This Academy communicates directly with our company and so the students also get the chance to go on stage, through our company.  It is like a part of their studies, to go on stage, when the time comes.  “Opera Pathway to Performance” is a summer program for young people from around the world and it makes it possible for them to sing big roles in a very safe yet professional environment, next to professional singers.  When for example, a young tenor sings a role next to a great professional tenor, he can from him, he can learn on stage.  I think that this is something that is missing from today.  For example, the great soprano Renata Tebaldi sang many times in La Scala, but they said, she sang about 300 performances before she sang in La Scala.  So, that is what is missing from today. Nowadays, we often seen new singers going on stage and making international careers, without having the years of experience on their back.  The word “Pathway” has been chosen because we want to give people a direction.  I think we will be able to do a very nice program and help many new singers.


How do you see Opera Classica Europa in 10 years from now?
I would like to see us doing more production in theatres, because 90% of our productions are open-air.  We have beautiful sets, backdrops, costumes.  We can make some wonderful productions in theatres.  That is the direction I would like to do.


Art is…
… the pursuit of the beautiful.  I see the beauty in nature, in God’s creation and I think art is trying to come as close to perfection and perfection in beauty, as possible.  That is a driving force.  That is why one of my favourite artists is Michelangelo.  When I am in Rome and I look at the beauty of his works, I am overwhelmed.  Because in beauty, there is truth.