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Jigsaw career:
Gerald Finley on the fine art of putting the pieces together.
Paul Baker for Opera Canada,22 June 2001
In 1982, Gerald Finley was leading something of a charmed life as a chorister at Kings College Chapel, surrounded by the green and pleasant world of Cambridge, England. But all that was about to change. "King's was a dream," he says, "but the group thing wasn't really me. I knew I wouldn't be happy without challenges."
He had come to Kings College in 1981 with years of choral experience at Ottawa's St. Matthew's behind him, as well as the background of a musical family - Finley's father had been a keen musician in his youth. However, by 1983, Finley had decided to risk becoming an opera singer.
Eager to attain his goals, he enrolled in the Royal College of Music's post-graduate program. A few years later, a panel, headed by Janet Baker, awarded him money to study at the National Opera Studio. Eventually, though, Finley recognized that relying too much on choral technique was causing him serious problems. "Hearing great singers like Edita Gruberova and Samuel Ramey, I had an epiphany," he says. "I realized I didn't know how to sing at all." To build the operatic technique he lacked, he undertook studies with Ramey's teacher, Armen Boyajian. "I must have sung a thousand middle-As for him," Finley says, recalling how Boyajian has helped him through numerous vocal challenges.
It's been years since the moment Finley first made the decision to sing opera, but he continues to thrive on the unexpected. "My career hasn't had as clear a path as some would like," he admits. "I have to find my creative buzz and not get stale."
There seems little chance that such an intelligent and self-examining singer could become what he calls "merely a jobbing singer." Finley is booked through 2004 with projects in London, Paris, New York and Santa Fe. Composers write operas and songs especially for him. He spends hours in the studio, recording everything from Handel to Webern. There seems no end to his energy and his capacity for tackling new things.
Yet careful thought goes into making the pieces of what he calls his "jigsaw career" fit together. "I have an instinct for positioning myself," he says. "I haven't pushed myself to achieve more than is reasonable to expect." Sensibly, he has made Mozart the foundation of his work, particularly Figaro. "My first Figaro, with Downland Opera in 1984, gave me a taste of what it's like to put the voice and performance together," he says. Glyndebourne chose Finley to open its new festival house with a Le Nozze di Figaro that included Renee Fleming as the Countess. And he still recalls the joy of working with Robin Phillips in the Canadian Opera Company's 1993 production of Le Nozze at the Elgin Theatre. "Robin was the first director to give me a sense of what it means to be on stage. He gave us lessons in stagecraft--how to shift the dramatic tone from dark to light."
Finley admits his Mozart roles give him a chance to explore and combine the lighter and darker sides of his own complex personality. He's excited about adding the Count to his repertoire this summer in Amsterdam. "At 41, I think I'm ready," he says. Not surprisingly, his impression of the character is multilayered. "He's not a buffoon," he says. "The challenge is to differentiate between the angry Count of Act II and the humiliated Count of the finale, begging forgiveness with his servants watching."
At this point, Finley has sung most of Mozart's baritone roles, many of them for Glyndebourne, with which he's had a long, affectionate relationship. As an apprentice at Glyndebourne in 1989, he got one of his first big breaks when Roger Norrington cast him as Papageno in Die Zauberflote. He has played the role many times since, most memorably in John Eliot Gardiner's 1995 semi-staged touring production, performances that resulted in a fine recording and video. Last fall, at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Finley reprised the role of his impressive 1998 Met debut. His mercurial bird-catcher demonstrates the baritone's uncanny ability to take a character swiftly from comic bravado to endearing pathos. Unfazed by the Met's huge stage, he larked about athletically, carrying the audience with him as he played off Michael Schade's peerless Tamino.
Nowadays Finley seems preoccupied with playing Don Giovanni. "It's the ultimate Mozart role," he says, "totally demanding. You have to completely control the stage and yourself." Finley's Don, in Israel (April 2000) and last January at l'Opera Bastille in Paris, earned him widespread acclaim. He'll perform the role there again in 2003, back to back with Figaro. Covent Garden will sample Finley's libertine the same year, and he anticipates one day bringing his powerful interpretation to Met audiences. He makes no secret that his Masetto days are behind him, and he's burning to record his Don with an exciting conductor such as Antonio Pappano.
Like most singers of distinction, Finley has definite views about conductors and critics. Handling the rigors of both is part of a singer's survival. "Singers are all out there doing their best," he says. "Often the blame for inadequacies should be levelled at agents, management, even producers. Why blame singers for things they can't control?" Finley speaks earnestly of accommodating the sometimes overbearing demands of conductors. Although he concedes he's been extraordinarily lucky in his conductors--he's worked with the best--he speaks bitterly of being "disappointed" when their oversized egos jeopardized singers' performances. "They're only conducting a piece of music, which just happens to be the score of the opera."
Finley's clean, round sound, and his ability to articulate difficult runs and ornaments with apparent ease and superb diction, have always made him a favorite of early-music conductors. "Handel takes me back to my choral roots," he says, "especially Messiah." December will find him back in Ottawa for a Messiah with Daniel Taylor and Donna Brown. Finley feels he was fortunate to arrive on the scene in the early '80s, just as the Handel and Purcell revival was gathering momentum. Singing Chorus in Jeptha with Neville Mariner ('80) was an early thrill, as was Rodelinda ('85) with Steuart Bedford. He speaks enthusiastically of more recently performing and recording (with Christopher Hogwood) the role of Argante in Handel's Rinaldo, opposite Cecila Bartoli's Almirena.
Finley's generous attitude to fellow artists includes praise for Bartoli's unswerving commitment to the "truth of her art." At Covent Garden in 2003, he'll play Creonte opposite her Euridice in Haydn's rarely mounted Orfeo. He's justly proud of his Purcell recordings and the part his work has played in establishing how early music should sound: performed with smaller orchestras, period instruments and impeccable style.
Finley also discovers what he calls a creative "fizz" in exploring and performing 20th-century music, both in concert and opera. His longstanding affinity for Benjamin Britten--as a boy soprano, he performed in St. Nicholas with Peter Pears--has led to exciting assignments at the Aldeburgh Festival and elsewhere. He was Bottom for the opening of the Royal College's new Britten Theatre ('86), and later, Demetrius in a highly charged Robert Carsen production at Aix-en-Provence ('91). Toronto audiences still fondly recall his endearing Sid in Albert Herring ('91), a role he later recorded with Steuart Bedford. He recently performed the lead in Owen Wingrave at Glyndebourne, and, with Kent Nagano conducting, starred in Margaret Williams' recently completed film of the opera for BBCs Channel 4. Finley contemplates one day assuming the multi-roled, baritone lead in Britten's Death in Venice. He'd also like to play (and record) Tarquinius (Rape of Lucretia) and Billy Budd "before I get too old."
Finley's attraction to Britten lies in the composer's legendary capacity to "paint words" with music: "You can really sense his debt to Schubert in the way he can shape a phrase to bring out the text." Finley still recalls the emotion he felt in '99 when he first sang the baritone lead in the War Requiem, a part written for his idol, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
Other significant outings in milestone 20th-century operas have included the questing hero of Vaughan Williams' Pilgrim's Progress for Covent Garden (1996; subsequently recorded), and, last summer for Glyndebourne, an accomplished, sinister Nick Shadow in Hockney's celebrated production of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. He sang Olivier in Capriccio opposite Kiri Te Kanawa at Glyndebourne in '98, and he'll play Strauss's suave poet again in 2004 in Paris, with Renee Fleming as the Countess.
Finley has made contributions to contemporary opera in world premieres of roles written especially for his talents. At the English National Opera in February 2000, he took on the challenge of portraying a maimed football hero, Harry Heegan, in Mark Anthony Turnage's The Silver Tassie. His haunting performance won him the Royal Philharmonic Society award for singers. For Los Angeles Opera last year, he created the title role in Tobias Picker's Fantastic Mr. Fox, garnering kudos for his "lithe physicality." This summer, he debuts both at Paris's Chatelet and Santa Fe Opera in a new opera by Kaija Sariaaho, L'Amour du loin.
Finley constantly balances his career as an opera singer with activity as a concert soloist and recitalist. Recitals, he explains, test his vocal state, as well as allowing him to communicate on a more personal level with an audience. "Schubert is the most difficult," he says, "because the songs can seem so simple on the page, but contain complex emotions." He considers himself honored to have participated in Schubertiade, the penultimate recording in Graham Johnson's massive Schubert Edition project.
Much of his progress as a recitalist Finley attributes to Toronto's Aldeburgh Connection, and the faith that artistic directors Bruce Ubukata and Stephen Ralls have placed in him. For his part, Ralls praises Finley's talent for expressing a text: "He always has a clear idea of how a song should go, but is willing to collaborate. He has the rare ability to judge precisely how to make it all spontaneous." Finley's Songs of Travel won him a 1998 Juno Award, and his eagerly awaited recital of Duparc songs with Catherine Robbin will soon be released by CBC Records. He declares, "I still have a maple leaf emblazoned on my heart," but says regretfully that offers from Canadian companies "often come just too late" and prevent his performing more frequently here. "I know I've disappointed some, but I can't just cancel commitments."
Escaping the relentless highs and lows that make a singer's career emotionally exhausting has become increasingly important to the hard-working baritone. "I recognize I need to stand back once in a while and give myself back to my kids and my partner," he says. "I make it a rule never to be away from my family at Christmas or over New Year." Last April, after a dazzling string of Marcellos in the Met's La Boheme, he returned home to the "architecturally peculiar but interesting," solar-heated Edwardian home (near Battle, in England's southern county of Sussex) he shares with his wife, mezzo-soprano Louise Winter. An unabashed Anglophile, Finley speaks of his passion for Turner and the lush green countryside that surrounds him. He is planning "a quiet end" to the 2002 season to gather strength for the following year.
Finley may be extraordinarily busy, but he is nonetheless looking forward to new roles: Agamemnon in Gluck's Iphigenie en Aulide at Glyndebourne, and, for Covent Garden, the Forester in Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen. He's considering weightier roles like Verdi's Ford or Posa, but has no plans to sing heavy verismo roles like Scarpia. Currently, he is also visiting professor at the Royal College of Music in London, where he enjoys giving master classes. In everything, he attempts to balance the sensible with the spontaneous. "I'm open to all kinds of ventures," he says. "Whenever people ask me about my future, I tell them, `Watch this space.'"
Paul Baker teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and is a frequent contributor to Opera Canada