So, Graham, here you are, still singing at the age of 78, and booked to be singing for a few years yet. Tell me about your time at Bayreuth. 

I was asked to audition there for David in Meistersinger - I don’t know why - in 1980. I didn’t know anything about Bayreuth at all.  I was 38 at the time. I’d sung David in Scotland, in German, or rather as I discovered later “Scottish German”, but I don’t know why I got the call. 

I got to Bayreuth after a terrible journey, awful weather, bumpy flight, roads covered in water, checked into my hotel, and the next day was absolutely beautiful. So I asked the hotel receptionist, “I’ve been told I have to go to the Festspielhaus. Where is it? And she pointed and said “that’s it there”. There were six of us auditioning. I thought this is nuts, they all sounded really fantastic. So I just went for it, acted it on the stage - all very dark, I couldn’t see anybody out there - and afterwards we were all asked to go to an office and wait for Herr Wagner. And in came this absolutely charming man and he said “Thank you so much for coming; it’s wonderful to have heard you all but there’s someone who couldn’t come today so we can’t make a decision yet. We will be in touch.” And I went home to London and three weeks later I was asked if I would do it, the next year..

And the next year, 1981, you were there!

I went there in a bit of a daze but Wolfgang seemed to take a shine to me. He was charming, laughing and happy. It was great fun, and he wanted it to be a happy production. It was very realistic, magical. The costumes were mediaeval and there was beer on the stage. The chorus could walk around on the set and have a beer. We would sit and chat. The idea was to be as loose and free as possible. Mark Elder was conducting, so I had a British comrade, which was comforting and sometimes hilarious. 

Did you speak German at this time?

No. Well, I’d done a course at the Goethe Institute, which wasn’t entirely successful as my fellow students were in the oil industry and they hogged the classes. Wolfgang spoke in Saxon German which was very hard to understand, so I had to have people interpreting for me so I could keep up, or he would speak slowly and carefully so that I could understand. Bernd Weikl, who was doing Hans Sachs, spoke impeccable English as well as singing impeccable German, and he was translating all the time, as were lots of the cast. Hans Sotin too. They were happy to practise their English. It was wonderful. It was a sort of dream.

It was all wonderfully organised. We had a lot of time on coaching and that was one of the best things about my time at Bayreuth - the endless opportunities for coaching that was programmed into the schedule.
Hermann Prey was wonderful. He loved jokes. He spoke wonderful English too; he was lovely with me and we had lots of laughter. People were very supportive and helpful provided I did the work. This was a big leap up for me, though, compared to the level at which I’d been working before, and I was straight in, no nursery slope. 

At the opening, all the big names in Germany were there; it really felt that it was important. And of course the Bayreuth audience is HUGELY critical! But thankfully I got away with it and I did enjoy it. It was a long evening - Meistersinger started at four and ended at ten - and at the end the audience erupted, they went absolutely nuts. One of the stage managers has kept a record, and through the whole life of that Wolfgang Wagner production, from 1981 to 1988, we averaged forty-six curtain calls a performance! Sometimes we did sixty! Wolfgang said that while the audience remained we had an obligation to take calls. So we would swig beers behind the curtain and keep going out. This would take over an hour. And then we’d go to a local hostelry and there would be audience people in there and the cheering would start all over again. It was an entirely new world to me.

How was the Bayreuth atmosphere?

Wolfgang was always around, going to the workshops, supervising everything, listening in on rehearsals. He was very particular about the audience behaviour at dress rehearsals, for which the tickets were free - so there was an enormous demand for them. If he heard anyone booing he would be immediately on stage and saying “How dare you? You are here as guests!” I thought that was wonderful. He was so proud of everything that was going on.

In those days, you were expected to be there from the first day to the last. You didn’t come and go. Your loyalty and your duty was to the Festival. So we often had lots of spare time. We organised football matches with the national coach, Franz Beckenbauer, and all the soloists. One was even televised!

It was incredibly hard work. A lot of the singers will tell you they spent hours walking in the woods behind the Festspielhaus trying to get rid of the nerves.

I also did Seeman and Melot in Tristan and jumped in at the last minute to do the Steuermann in Fliegende Hollande - my only rehearsal on stage was half an hour before they let in the audience, which was a bit nerve-wracking - and then Mime came up.

Ah, the mammoth role! Tell me more about that.
In 1983 they were doing the Solti/Hall Ring and I went to lots of the rehearsals. One of the great things about Bayreuth is that at the side of the stage there's a long seating arrangement for singers waiting to go on stage, and you can sit there and listen. You can't necessarily see because of the scenery. But if it's an open set you can, and I used to go quite frequently and quietly listen to everything that was going on. That's how I learned the business. I didn't know the Ring at all and I thought “Hmm, Loge and Mime are interesting roles. I'm sure I could do something interesting with those.” And I said to Wolfgang “Can I have some coaching on them?”
"Loge I can give you coaching. Mime forget about it. I can get any actor to do that."
I said "No no, I think I could do something with it."
He said OK and I started having the odd coaching and started to learn the roles in Bayreuth, which was ideal, but not with any intention or plans to do them. 

But Wolfgang Wagner did eventually ask you to audition for them?

In about 1985 or 1986 I was asked if I'd audition them both on stage after a Meistersinger performance, after we'd done an hour and a half of curtain calls, at half past midnight! Wolfgang was there, and Barenboim and Kupfer, and they watched me, and that was it. By then I'd been doing concerts with Daniel - Damnation de Faust and things like that - so he knew what I could do, but he still insisted that I had to be auditioned on stage.
In 1987, the year before the Ring started, Siegfried Jerusalem and I were scheduled to rehearse the first two acts of Siegfried on the set that we'd use the following year, with all the props and everything all ready for us in one of the rehearsal rooms set aside solely to rehearse the Ring. We did it slowly and carefully. It was a very physical first act, a big big tube, a sewer pipe, and I was running around it and under it and over it. 

Once word was out you were doing these roles at Bayreuth, clearly other opera houses were eager to have you too.
Yes, the balloon had burst! I was scheduled to do the Ring in Nice in the autumn, and in Torino, so this was a wonderful preparation. I rehearsed in Nice for a month, then went to Torino, and within two weeks of more extremely physical rehearsals in Torino, BANG! I had a heart attack, on stage, at the end of the first scene of the first act. So, I'd rehearsed the Ring in three places but hadn't yet performed it!

I thought I'd never do it properly. I was rushed to hospital and had to stay in there for quite a long time because they couldn't understand why I'd had a heart attack. I was due at the MET in the new year to do Mime in Rheingold there. So I had a couple of months off, I took it easy, and did lots of walking then running, and I felt great and had no further episodes. I went to New York for Rheingold and went for it at full tilt and everyone was going "Clarky, SLOW DOWN!" But I did it and I knew I was OK.

When I got back to Bayreuth, there was stuff I found physically a bit reckless so we had to modify a couple of things, but it was up to me and Harry Kupfer was really great. And Barenboim and his team - which included Tony Pappano and John Fiore - were incredibly helpful, working seven days a week, coaching and rehearsing. It was utterly exhilarating and exciting.

And you kept doing the Kupfer Ring until 1994, then you left. 

Yes, I felt it was somebody else’s turn.  Apparently Wolfgang really wanted me to be there, but it was fine, I could go off and do other things in the summer. 

And then suddenly in 2001 a message came from Wolfgang asking me to do Loge and Mime. So I said “Yes, I think I can still do it.” 

You were sixty now!

It was Jürgen Flimm and he was great. He totally redesigned the first act of Siegfried to accommodate me and we re-did Rheingold in many ways too. It was very, very different from the previous cycle, and I really enjoyed it. Adam Fischer was wonderful, very flexible. By then I'd done many many Rings elsewhere so I came to it with a lot of experience but with a fresh look at it. I've always made it a golden rule never to bring my baggage with me, to turn up with an open mind. I did two more years as Loge, then they replaced me in that, but I did another two years as Mime, and in 2004 that was it. That was Bayreuth.

Tell me about your last performance.

I was doing Siegfried and I felt very emotional. I knew this was the end. I knew that Jürgen was in the audience and I'd said to him I knew it was going to be an emotional ride. And he said "have a bit of fun!"  And I got into the second act and suddenly the emotions welled up and I could feel it and it was affecting my singing a little bit. I got a bit chokey. And I went back to my dressing room thinking “DAMN I didn't finish on the high I'd hoped for!” and I kicked the door a bit. Then a message came that Adam Fischer wanted me to go down to the canteen as soon as possible. So I thought “uh oh” and I got changed - we had an hour's interval - and I went out onto the canteen terrace, and one part of the terrace had been cleared of its usual furniture and instead there were about six music stands and a few chairs. I had no idea what was going on. And I was told I had to sit in one chair on its own. So I did, and out came about eight  brass players from the orchestra and they played a little concerto of all the leitmotifs of all the operas I'd done at Bayreuth, arranged by one of the players. It was incredibly moving. I was overwhelmed.
I've got a lot to thank Bayreuth for, and Wolfgang was incredibly good to me, like a big uncle. In that Meistersinger he directed, he always came on stage during the last performance of the season, in the last act. He'd put on a smock, and he'd sit under the linden tree next to me, his arm over my shoulder, and swig my beer, laughing his head off. And because he came on stage the chorus loved him. He was one of them. It meant a huge amount. What a glorious way to finish the Festival.

Do you think your early experience as a stage manager has equipped you well for life as a singer? I mention this particularly because you always strike me as having a particularly pragmatic approach to our job. You're not impressed by flattery or bullshit! 

It was not so much the stage managing itself, but the place, where I did it: the Salzburg Festival! I had done some work as a super at the Vienna State Opera before, when I was offered the job as a substitute first. But the next year, at the age of twenty, I was already sitting at the stage manager's desk at "Don Giovanni" with giants like Karl Böhm and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle! Today I know that these five summers were the most wonderful "university" of classical music one could ever get. There was Karajan, Fischer-Dieskau, Svjatoslav Richter, Pavarotti, Levine; a land of milk and honey every day!  But at that time stage managing in Salzburg was more a fun vacation job for me. I already worked as an actor in a small theatre in Vienna and had no idea I would become a singer one day. On the other hand this experience was also a big impediment for many years. When I stumbled into professional singing later, I felt like an impostor, knowing I would never even get near the quality of those gods I had watched and even worked with so many times. Maybe this has prevented me from ever becoming pretentious in my job. I knew the Himalaya standard from the start.

Is this a value - a lack of pretentiousness - that you hope to pass on to the young artists at the state opera? Or do you expect your role to solely focused on Singing and Acting. I think it's important to pass on other skills to emerging singers (also "how to do your taxes" and "how to survive on your own in a foreign city for two months") but you might disagree!

No, I completely agree! One of the big challenges in a singer's life is to find the right balance between opposite forces: mind and body, tension and relaxation, trust and caution, ratio and emotio, professional and private life etc. Vocal education has to always be human education as well . Generally young singers are happy to have a certain guidance at the beginning of their professional path. I shall try to be of some help for them. Yet the own experience - which sometimes includes failure too - is invaluable and most decisive.

Many people (not least mature character singers) complain that many young artist programmes encourage opera companies to cast inexperienced young singers in small roles that actually need more expertise than is commonly realised. For young singers too, it can be disheartening if all you ever get to perform is, say, Fiorello in “Barbiere” or a Philistine in “Samson et Dalilah”.

You must have an opinion on this. What's the policy at WSO? What sort of roles will your young artists sing?

I started my professional singing career the classical way, slowly rising from small houses into bigger ones. At the beginning I was sometimes thrown into tasks I was definitely not fit for. This was often very disheartening. Opera studios were rare at that time. Nowadays practically all big opera houses have one, because it is fruitful for both sides. Of course you cannot plunge people directly into big parts at a formula 1-house like the WSO. But I see no bad thing for, say, a future Figaro to start with Fiorillo first and observe an experienced colleague. At the same time he would have the opportunity to learn Figaro within the program. With time we plan to give the young people choices to appear in bigger parts, according to their abilities. After the end of the program I would advise to let them go somewhere else in order to come back, if they develop the right way. 

Now you have a permanent job in Vienna, does this mean we won't see you so often at Glyndebourne, or can you fit that in the summer break?

Of course I will cut down my own singing to a great deal. That is not a big sacrifice after forty years. But I don't intend to stop completely. Singing on stage makes one humble, because you are constantly confronted with your deficiencies. I don't want to lose that while telling others how to improve. Of course I would love to return to places like Glyndebourne again. But I have been so privileged to appear in so many wonderful venues, that I can live now taking what feels right, if I am still wanted.

Would you like to exploit this opportunity to plug your book Die musikalische Moderne an den Staatsopern von Berlin und Wien 1945–1989?  Will you be writing a sequel to cover the years after 1989? 

Well, plugging is not for me! When I started to be interested in the theme, it was for a historical thesis and therefore only for scientific reasons. Later on people convinced me to make it a book. I am very happy that some seem to like it. But I would rather leave a sequel to others. My main interest was to investigate the interactions between politics and contemporary opera in  the Cold War era. After that time the issue of modern operas in my view became socially and politically much less controversial; for me one of the reasons that the so-called "Regietheater" has now somehow taken over the interest and the scandals, modern operas had provoked before. But that is another story...

I’ve seen you described as both “Texan baritone” and “Verdi baritone.” I’m not saying there’s any contradiction, but you don’t like those labels, do you?

Well, I like being called a Texan, but I’ve never called myself a “Texan baritone.” Somebody else wrote that. It's kind of silly. You don't see tenors from Munich calling themselves "the Bayern tenor so-and-so" or the guy from Tulsa calling himself "the Oklahoman bass so-and-so" do you?

Sometimes I think the view most people have is that we're all getting around on horseback. Well, it's complete bullshit. If you've been to Austin or San Antonio, Houston or Dallas, one of the major cities, you'd see that the arts are thriving.  San Antonio, my hometown, is probably the most diverse city in Texas, and it's a cultured city. There was a huge influx of Czechs and Germans in the 1840's/1850's that settled in the area, and yes, there's the cowboy culture to a smaller extent. Of course, there's the huge Hispanic influence, which I love ... The music scene, Texas blues, outlaw country music, the Willie Nelsons of the world ... It's very open, vibrant, free, quite the opposite of how we're perceived. Was your image of Texas formed in the 1980's?

Well I sometimes used to watch “Dallas” on TV...

It was only when George W. Bush came along and performed his whole routine, with his cowboy boots, his fake accent ... He brought this bravado to the White House that is all a façade... But of course it had an impact on how people perceive Texas. 

Back to the "Verdi baritone" label ... Yes, Verdi is my favorite opera composer, but I like variety. Singing nothing but the likes of Rigoletto and Posa wouldn't necessarily be boring, but it's not what I want. This year consists of Die Hamletmachine, Tosca, Sweeney Todd, Macbeth, Cunning Little Vixen, and Nixon in China. For me, that’s a dream season.

You seem to do roughly one opera a year in the States.

That's not by design. There's repertoire I get to sing over here that I wouldn't be considered for in the States. I get to do more performances per engagement, and there's the aesthetic of the productions ... I am a fan of what Americans love to call “Eurotrash”, Regietheater. It's more interesting, more fun, more challenging. As a performer, I cut my proverbial teeth in Koeln when I was fest there many years ago ... I was in heaven. The theatre - 1,350 seats - it changes the way you sing, the way you act.

I was about to take a permanent apartment here in Brussels - it's all about wanting some stability, knowing you have a place to call home or a place to keep your things - but I just decided that a storage unit would accomplish the same thing. I'd rather something dictate where I live, like a relationship. 

Do you have a master plan in the way many people do?  The best advice I ever got was to be ambitious but to have no ambitions. Do you think "by such an age I want to be singing such-and-such"?

I think that's ridiculous.  From day one I just wanted to make a living, and so my attitude was to build up a skill set that would allow me to be versatile. I wanted to put myself in a position to make a living without having to supplement my income by doing something else. There was no master plan.

Away from the stage, you’re really into pop music. You’ve been mourning Prince for several months now and you’re even doing an online degree in Music Production via Berklee Online.

It's music. It's just a different genre. I like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen, Radiohead, Jimi Hendrix... I don't over analyze it, I just enjoy it. My generation grew up listening to all of this. Most of my colleagues - those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s - we all know the words to every classic rock tune playing over the jukebox or the radio. It's near and dear to a lot of people, and they're not going to tell you it's any better or worse than Verdi or Puccini.

I remember hearing Paranoid Android arranged for string quartet. It sounded fantastic. I bet you five bucks that classical audiences would think it's great. The harmonic structure is interesting, it has mixed meter. OK, you've turned it into something else but it's still the same music. And of course you can do it the other way around. I made a rock & roll version of Schubert's Der Erlkoenig. It's on YouTube. That's the first thing I did when I started the Berklee courses. It's not great because I was just learning how to use the software, but I've played it for colleagues and they love it. It's still Schubert, but with electric guitars.

When I'm finished with this degree, I'll move on to something else - say, a degree in Music Business - I just want to keep my brain active.

So do you find it, as I often do, mind-numbingly dull just being a singer?

Funny you should say that. It always shocks me when friends and colleagues go back to the hotel, lie in bed and watch Netflix for the entire engagement. I don't think people realise how fortunate we are to be able to travel and see the world. I still get that buzz about going away. There's so much one can do creatively outside of the rehearsal room.

We played a word game over dinner recently and I got to choose the topic. I picked “Types of Cheese” and you were giving me a hard time because you thought it would spoil your chances of winning. You retaliated with “Bands of the 1980s” because you knew it would spoil mine. You’re really, I mean really, competitive in games and sports, but not at all when it comes to your career.

I can honestly say I've never wanted someone else's job. We all know how this works. I hear guys and I understand why that person was hired. They're good. The best advice my mentor gave me was: never give anyone an objective reason to write you off. Be prepared, know your stuff, get the languages down, get the role down, have some insight into all of this, and then throw it out there and see what happens. But if it's darts, it's a completely different thing. I like to win and I think most people do. Once the game's over, the game's over. I don't have any ill-will toward anyone for kicking my ass. It also relieves stress. Nor do I care where I sing. It's not the building, it's the people you put in it. What's that all about, only wanting to sing in the "grandest" houses?

Because it looks good on the CV? Bragging rights?

It's a complete waste of time. Does it exist in any other profession? Do actors worry about that stuff? Dancers? I think it's very specific to opera. 

If the intendants that currently hire me moved on to bigger houses and use me there, would that make me any better? No. It makes no sense to me.

Here’s another thing I don’t get. On these TV talent shows, someone comes out and sings an aria and the audience freaks out. So many of our colleagues get upset by that. Why? Change the channel. No-one's going to think that's opera. But people get so competitive and riled up. Get over it. They're not going to take your job. 

And what is your favourite cheese? 

You bastard. Not Brie, the other one.

Camembert?

Camembert. Absolutely. But you won't confuse me with a cheesemonger anytime soon, I can assure you.

Simon, it's so good to see you getting back into the opera saddle again after some health problems. 

Yes it's lovely to be back at work. I was, in reality wanting to take a sabbatical, for want of a better word, a year off. I have young children and we need to spend some time adventuring, unless I am to be the usual shadow Papa, as so many of our opera kind are. 

But I wouldn't advocate injuring oneself in order to have time off! I haven't enjoyed the months of anxiety. The vocal injury was soon past and I returned to work almost a year ago for a run of Macbeth in Tokyo with Covent Garden. That role is test enough for a voice and I enjoyed every minute of it. But this is life, and yes it is a joy to sing again and to earn a living too. I hope the time off might also have given me some more perspective on what it is that I really want in this life. To find a good balance, for all of us, irrespective of our professions, is a hard task.

We worked together when we were still practically babies, doing Ping and Pang in Turandot at the London Wembley Arena. Near the end of the run you had a terrible accident. I remember you crying with agony, slumped on a corridor floor. It looked like you had broken your ankle. 

In the show, we were wearing  soft leather-soled shoes. I stepped on those varnished and lethal steps, like treading on glass, and went up in the air and down into the pit, breaking my ankle and (unknowing for a year) also my back.  I lost lumbar number one. The medics wouldn't even give me the ice pack for my foot because they said they only had one and so couldn’t spare it! 

And yet you carried on with the show, hopping in character. I think it was the bravest thing I've ever seen on stage.

As a youngster, the intimidation was sufficient for me never to make a squeak. Nobody does. We are all too afraid of the consequences for our future work. As we speak now, my left arm is in a metal cast. The bicep came off. The fourth operation resulting from a trap door once carelessly left open. One step back, whoosh, shattered left arm. Tendons on hand off, tricep snapped. Interior ligaments holding radius and ulna, snapped. Bicep, years later, snapped, fatigued by years of compensatory work without the ligament attachments. Cartilage operation. Plantar fascia ligaments in foot torn. That's quite some list. Now look, you got me started. But that Wembley Arena one was so many years of heartache to get back to normal again.

Sorry! To change the subject: I'm from the School of Ambivalence when it comes to singing. It often feels like a hit-or-miss relationship to me. Like a really, really needy girlfriend. 

Singing is part of me. Something I do each day. But it's not all of me. I practice. And when the practice is done, it's done, and then we go fishing or whatever. But I don't recognize my colleagues’ standpoint when they say that it’s just a job. It's too hard for that. 

You actually love it.

I utterly adore the minutiae of singing. For this singer, at least, different music requires different preparations. Italian opera, for example, needs the 'iron' in the sound. Strength, stamina and elasticity. Then, for song  work, some of that iron, some of that frying bacon sound, is better taken out of it, that squillo taken away in favour of a softer palette of sound. I find the business of singing and the technical old-fashioned puzzle a joy. The puzzle of how to prepare, and which organ stops to try to encourage, for different music, is something I dearly love. 

How on earth do you find the time and place to practise when you’re so often on the road, being busy? 

I’ve sung inside a hotel cupboard in Geneva, the opera house closed for the Christmas holiday. I have warmed-up on the deck of a ship; I took an afternoon ferry at Barcelona in order to have at least somewhere to sing because the hotel was so very quiet.  I have warmed-up on noisy city bridges and Underground platforms. As a youngster in Salzburg, I have walked in the night right out into the forest to do my practice. I have taken the chair lift up and down in Madrid; a two-seater cable-car, which gave me half an hour’s private time to practise. Even today, and in the very greatest of opera houses one might still use a cleaner’s wet-room, full of mops and buckets, to prepare for a world-wide television broadcast. I like that. It reminds me that all this beauty, all this wonderful make-believe is just an illusion. 

You’re not keen on doing press, marketing, promotion ... It wasn’t easy, persuading you to do this.

I hate hate, hate, HATE attention. How ridiculous does that sound?! Then why go onto the stage at all? I'm not sure. When the joy of the music still outweighs the fear of standing up in front of people, then it's all perfectly bearable. Or perhaps too the fact that it really is NOT me on the stage, in some way gives me permission to play without fear. Both ideas are true. 

All the promotion stuff seems to be part of the business of DOING OPERA these days.

Money becomes ever tighter and opera houses need the singers to help. There's the Faustian pact. That's the way it begins. Before very long, a singer may find himself talking to every journalist and doing every piece of marketing asked of him. I cannot bear it. I now understand the need to thank the sponsors for supporting the opera, for paying my wages, but one can do that privately. It’s a difficult position to hold, because it's hard to say NO, to people who ask for help. Young singers have to do so much crap though. They must be au fait with social media and promote themselves far far more than any singer of my generation had to.

Where are you right now?

La Monnaie.

La Monnaie? I had lovely times there but I didn't like Brussels much except the beautiful and mad Austrian beech forest outside the city. And the beret shop on the corner by the opera house! My favourite tous temps beret comes from there. Everything about that beret, perfect. The colour, weight, waterproof, lining, and size.

Next time, we'll talk in more depth about hats, I promise.

She'd rather work in a nuclear power station than an opera house – and her biggest fear is computer malfunction. Designer and director Netia Jones talks to Christopher Gillett about the year she has spent creating costumes, projections and animations for Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland.

Is Alice in Wonderland something of a gift to direct?

It is, and the score is also a gift because it's so entertaining. The librettist, David Henry Hwang, and composer Unsuk Chin have a left-field approach to Lewis Carroll's work which feels very authentic, even though it's completely fresh and new. That's a joy to work with.

How did you start on this production?

Originally I looked at Tenniel's drawings and thought about trying to roughen them up, to bring them into the sound world of the score. Then I came across

Ralph Steadman's illustrations for Alice In Wonderland, which just look exactly like Unsuk Chin's score. They capture the wildness and the riot of the story, and they're very funny and full of energy.

Ralph is wild but he's also incredibly humane. He loves the text of Alice and I can see why, because not only is it incredibly imaginative, it's very astute. It has an observer's understanding of humans and how monstrous they are.

What’s your planning and design process?

When you're dealing with a fully-staged production that has a huge orchestra sitting in the middle of it, first you have to figure out a set design that can incorporate projection that won't blind anybody, will give you enough leeway for stage action and stage choreography, and is practical!

Swift on the heels of that comes the costume design. There are 100 costumes in this show, so that's quite a big deal. I had done the costume designs before I met Ralph, because that comes very early on in the process. It was uncanny that so many of the costumes chimed with Ralph's illustrations of this story, because as far as I know, I hadn't seen them before. I had already dressed the entire chorus as businessmen in bowler hats and pinstriped suits and that is a motif that reappears often in Ralph's illustrations.

Then comes the video design, when you consider what will be real and what will be projected – and how it can respond directly to the conductor or the live performers so it feels musical and therefore invisible.

How do you animate somebody else’s ‘fixed’ drawings?

I decide what any character or drawing needs to do by listening to the score and looking at the drawing and seeing what is possible. I'm adamant that when we do animation of artists' work – and I work with great artists' work – that it has to look like the artists themselves did it. So we can't add anything: we only use marks made by the artist.

I also go for the simplest of animations, though they're complex to achieve and they're always done with the aid of a computer. Ralph has been incredibly generous with me, because I haven't just taken things from Alice in Wonderland – I've taken things from the whole range of his other drawings.

It sounds like a massive undertaking.

It is ludicrously labour-intensive, but the labour itself is quite fun. We've been planning it for about four years and I've been working on it intensively for about a year. Given that it will have just three outings, it's verging on madness. But madness is part of the whole world of Alice in Wonderland so, hey, it fits perfectly.

And this is all before you’ve directed and rehearsed the cast. How do you describe what you do during the performance – sitting in the auditorium, controlling all the media in real time from your laptop?

I've described it to myself as ‘playing the show'. You have to know the piece off by heart and you have to know what happens off by heart. I programme it on a laptop because that's a very easy instrument for me to be able to play and watch at the same time. I have to be looking up all the time. I programme every single key, so every key is in use. Sometimes it's a very simple scene, but mostly I'm on every single key to the beat or to the moment, whatever that is.

Does this bring on performance anxiety?

Oh my God! You have no idea. Any fear that you may have experienced – double it and then triple it. It's not just about me and my abilities. I am at the mercy of electronic technology, and as anybody knows who's had an interaction with a computer, it can be ridiculously scary because it can just go wrong. The sick feeling definitely comes from the idea that at any moment a sign will flash up and it will say 'COMPUTER ERROR'.

Would you say you’re spearheading a new form of performance?

I think movie images, projected imagery, visuals – however you want to describe it – are increasingly a part of modern life. And theatre or opera does need to reflect life as we live it, and if it doesn't, all is lost. But what I actually do is so demanding it requires that slightly crazed level of involvement.

I've spent at least 10,000 hours on the computer – there's no question about it. At the same time, technologies are becoming more fluid, more available, and more accessible, so I suspect and hope that, yes, this is the start of something.

Will we see your work in opera houses?

I love doing things that are unexpected or the opposite of what you're supposed to do. So the idea of just going into an opera house and doing an opera isn't quite as appealing as going to a nuclear power station and projecting into that. That's more fun. It's more alive.

And what about 19th-century repertoire?

That'll never, never happen. There may be an exception with Wagner. I suspect there are some amazing things yet to happen, a proper Gesamtkuntswerk in every way. You'd probably need to dedicate a decade of your life to doing that, to pull it off properly. I can imagine visual technology is something that Wagner would be amazed and excited by. But I can't really imagine meshing this kind of work with other 19th-century pieces.

A downside to the way you work must be that you can’t open the show and leave it to run with somebody else directing the performances, as most directors do.

No, I can't just leave it and fly off. It's getting more serious now because things are getting booked quite far ahead. It's a big leap for someone else to do what I do, because you have to be completely au fait with technology and totally au fait with the score. But I will prevail. I will find somebody.

I met Jon Dryden Taylor on Twitter. Then I saw him in two productions at the National Theatre – Othello and King Lear – and in Journey’s End in Newbury. As well as “doing acting” he “does writing”, notably for “That Mitchell and Webb Look” and has his own excellent blog. He likes opera. A lot.

So, Jon, how would you describe yourself? Opera obsessive? Canary fancier? Train spotter? Admirer of the lyric art?

Probably none of the above- they all make me sound a bit as if I smelled of yeast. Canary-fancier in particular just sounds sinister- something that could get you put on a register. Plus the implication is that you’ll listen to any old rubbish if it’s got enough semiquavers in. But then there aren’t really any alternatives. ‘Opera buff’ is a bit too retired-colonel and ‘opera queen’ is a little, well, categorical. I usually fall back on ‘opera nerd’.

We’ll examine the full fundament of your nerdity later, but first, how did this happen? Did it creep up on you or were you a T-Rex fan who had an epiphany on the road to Damascus?

Well, like most opera lovers, the first opera I saw live was Catalani’s DEJANICE. I can’t say that I was blown away by it, but I remember thinking that all that loud singing was quite fun. Then I was left a load of opera records by my grandfather- who wasn’t any kind of expert but just loved music. More out of a sense of duty than anything else, I put one of them on one day- it was Renata Tebaldi singing Butterfly- and that was it. The Sade and Fun Boy Three albums were a bit neglected after that.

Ah, Catalani’s DEJANICE… Who can fail to fall under its spell? How old were you at the time?

Twelve. Which I think is the prime age for DEJANICE.

I think we’d all agree. So this was five years before The Covent Garden Incident you once described to me. Would you care to share that? In full?

Ah yes. When I was seventeen, my friends and I suddenly realised that we lived in London and that the world didn’t stop at Hammersmith. So we took to going into town of a Friday night. There used to be a pretty grim little bar on Wellington St called The Brahms and Liszt and we’d head there. My friends Nicola and Amanda would flutter their eyelashes at the red-braces wearing, 80s business types that were in there and persuade them to buy us pitchers of Kir Royale. No pints of lager for me as a teenager, oh no- sickly glass after sickly glass of ‘bubbly’ and kir. Anyway, one night I fell out of B&L significantly the worse for wear and my inner opera nerd kicked in. I was going to be passing the stage door of the Royal Opera House, so I might as well stop for some autographs. I used to do this every time I saw an opera there, and didn’t see why a little thing like not having seen the performance should stop me. The only problem was, I didn’t have anything for the singers to sign- no opera meant no programme. But I had a perfect solution to that. To this day, I wonder what James Morris and Gabriele Schnaut thought, coming downstairs after a performance of “Die Walküre” and being asked by a blind drunk teenager if they’d sign his bus ticket.

Do you still have the bus ticket? In an album? Would you ask Nina Stemme to sign your Oyster Card?

I do still have the bus ticket. It’s the closest I’ve ever got to seeing any Wagner.

So, is your fascination with voices rather than the operas? Are you the sort of opera nerd who “collects” offbeat operas? Would you rather hear something by Cherubini than Wagner?

I’d certainly rather go to Cherubini than Wagner, in the sense that I’d rather pull my fingernails out with tweezers than go to see Wagner. He’s a definite blind spot. As to voices versus operas, I think that the live experience and the home experience are two utterly different things. If I’m in an opera house I need theatre. I can’t think of anything more boring than three hours of perfect vocalism with no drama going on at all. There are usually early signs for that kind of production. For example, if you’re at a COSI and the two women start their first scene standing back to back, holding lockets at full arm’s length, you know that nothing interesting will happen that night and that Despina will wear comedy glasses as the notary. On the other hand, if you put on a CD sometimes beautiful singing is all you need. I don’t tend to put on JENUFA or ELEKTRA when I’m washing up.

Oh, I do. No, I tell a lie. The Archers.

The collector’s impulse is an interesting one, and for me that does tend to be more guided by singers than works. I’ll probably get more excited by a singer I’ve not heard before than by a work that’s new to me. Recently I saw that Decca had re-released a 60s recital disc by a soprano I’d never heard of- literally had never heard the name. I had to buy it, even though I knew it probably wouldn’t be very good. It turned out to not be very good. And not even in the fun way- just some grimly competent singing. This is a woman who was booed on her one and only Met appearance, for goodness’ sake! The least she could have done was be brilliant or useless.

I was going to bring her up. This is a particularly interesting area of the opera fan psyche. Some fans have a devotional attachment to a few particular singers, at the expense of rivals. Some think that singers will never be as good as the old days. Others are on the lookout for the rarity, the diva no-one remembers, only known to a select few, but highly-revered by, um, specialists. What I’m getting at is that you seem to have one foot in the last camp. Or am I missing the point? Do you secretly listen to the infamous Callas live Aida (from Mexico was it? I don’t know) with the added high something-or-other, that makes grown men cry? (I’m testing your nerdiness here. I’m waiting to see if you’re going to correct me!)

Well, I have to hand back the badge there because I really hate that E flat (ha!)

It just doesn’t suit the moment at all- to top the ensemble all triumphantly when the character is at her most despairing. I’m probably just jealous- we actors don’t really have the equivalent of a top E flat. Or, if we do, only Mark Rylance knows what it is.

Ah, but you know about it! Though I suppose that is probably Grade 1 Opera Nerd, isn’t it?

Yes, and as a certain kind of camp theatre it’s a bit wonderful. But a little camp goes a long way for me. I’d much rather have some truth, which Callas of course was capable of delivering by the bucketload.

I do hate the necrophiles who tell you that nobody will ever be as good as Tebaldi or Rysanek or Nilsson- always Nilsson. Even if it were true it’s pretty bloody unhelpful. ‘Oh well, I won’t bother then. Silly of me not to have caught this opera before I was born’.

Some of them go so far as to say that even the lesser-ranking singers of the past- solid but unspectacular singers like Amara or Tucci- are vastly superior to ANYONE singing today, which is just bananas. Someone once told me, in all seriousness, that if Renee Fleming had been around in the 60s she’d have been a comprimaria, which is always a Code Red of a word in the first place. Along with ‘innigkeit’. These are words used by the kind of people who pretend to enjoy “Gurrelieder.”

Which brings me to ask: as an actor, someone who “shouts in the evenings” for a living, do you pine to “belt in the evenings” instead. You’re singing in a musical right now (“But First This” at the Watermill Newbury). Do you stand in front of a mirror and, much as some people play air guitar, sing along to the occasional Iago’s Credo? Or are you a tenor? Sorry, I don’t know!

I’m a lazy tenor. I have a relatively secure A and a fingers-crossed top B. Not much call for either note in music theatre though so I tend to spend a lot of time singing right on my break, which is annoying. As a kid I thought I was going to be an opera singer- I had music minus one baritone and did indeed stand in front of the mirror belting out ‘Eri Tu’ and Pizarro’s aria and the aforementioned Credo. But the one time I’ve had to sing opera on stage- the “Don Carlo” duet in a production of “Lend Me a Tenor”- was so terrifying that I knew I’d made the right decision. And it’s only about 4 minutes long!

Oh yes. I forgot you had done “Lend Me A Tenor.” Sorry!

One thing I have to get off my chest about opera fans, by the way, is the cruelty. The things you read, especially online, about people like Fleming, Voigt, De Niese and Gheorghiu in particular (four very different singers about whom I have an interesting range of opinions) are just vicious. Netrebko used to get a lot of abuse too, but she’s so good these days she’s become pretty much untouchable.

You see it in comedy too – I steer clear of the comedy forums because nobody is nastier about any endeavour than its superfans. There’s an ownership there which stops people from noticing that they spend their whole time yelling abuse at something they’re supposed to love. It’s not unlike the terraces at Fulham FC in that regard.

Ah, the “bottom half of the internet…” Some quickfire questions. What’s the furthest you’ve travelled to see an opera?

Ah, this is cheating- can I say Barcelona? I was going there on holiday anyway, then I noticed that the remains of Edita Gruberova were singing Anna Bolena so I booked. She was amazing, bt the way. Other than that, only as far as Edinburgh I’m afraid. Although I always go to the Met if I’m in New York. I’d love to be the kind of person who said ‘Oooh, Mme X is singing Esclarmonde at the Grand Opera of Kazakhstan, I just HAVE to be there’ but I have this whole thing where I need to be able to afford goods and services.

OK, that’s pretty mild in the opera nerd stakes. What’s the most you’ve ever spent to see an opera?

I’m a cheapskate! Never three figures, but then it’s kind of madness that people pay three figures for anything. Top impoverished tip: at the Met, the acoustic in Family Circle standing is WAY better than downstairs.

The most I’ve spent is about 80 quid for the recent ROH “Elektra” – then I managed to leave home without my wallet so ended up missing the bloody show. But- and this is the world we live in now- I got very nice messages of consolation on twitter from Christine Goerke and Adrianne Pieczonka, the singers I would have been seeing.

Impoverished luvvy with poor wallet-management skills. That’s a first. How many opera-ish CDs do you own?

Oooh, several hundred. I have a trunk full of vinyl which I lug around every time I move house, despite no longer having a record player. NB: my most treasured CD is of course Catalani’s DEJANICE. And yes, it’s the production I saw. Because heaven forbid any opera should be performed anywhere ever without someone recording it.

Signed?

A few. More signed programmes than discs. DEJANICE isn’t signed, sadly. Although I could probably forge the signatures and nobody would know. Listening back, it wasn’t a Rolls Royce evening. Not even a Reliant Robin evening.

Go on then, spill, how many programmes?

I keep programmes for everything I’ve seen, so that’ll also be in the several hundreds. And anything I saw between the ages of about 13 and 20 will be signed. Domingo, Freni, Cotrubas, Ludwig, Janowitz, Bruson, Vaness, Mattila, Ricciarelli, Baltsa…

Vaness gave me a hug and called me ‘honey’. Cue one furiously blushing 15 year old.

Do you hang out with other actor opera nerds? Are there many? Simon Russell Beale sang in the chorus of “Stiffelio” when I sang it at university. Did you swap opera stories when you were doing “Lear” at the NT? Or is he more choral and orchestral in his taste?

Yes, SRB isn’t really that into opera as much as he is into all the clever cerebral instrumental stuff. In Pitlochry I shared digs with an actor called Darrell Brockis. I was listening to my iPod one day when he was out, and when he got back I rushed to turn it off and prepared all the usual ‘oh, don’t mind me, I like opera, I promise I’m not weird’ stuff. But he just said ‘Es gibt ein Reich, isn’t it? Is that Janowitz?’ and we spent the rest of the season clandestinely watching opera DVDs when nobody else was looking.

Your dirty little secret. I’ve one last question. You’re on the way to the gallows. Rather than a final meal you can choose between two live performances: Kleiber/Domingo “Otello” or Laurence Olivier “Othello”. Which is it?

The Adrian Lester “Othello”. I’ve heard the Gratiano was something special.

He was.

(I’d take the Kleiber. But only because I’m not wild about Olivier’s Othello.)

It was a trick question.

Plus I’ve heard the Roderigo was etc etc

You nerd.

Audience development is big these days. Nowhere more so than at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra where for nearly ten years Gerard McBurney has devised, written and directed Beyond The Score. This is no half-hearted affair, no boring pre-performance talk with two people mumbling their way through an indecipherable discussion on some inaccessible composer. Beyond The Score is a full evening’s entertainment involving the entire orchestra and conductors of the highest calibre. It uses actors, singers and a full bag of technical wizardry. I’ve seen McBurney’s production illuminating Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and it’s enthralling and brilliant. It’s no wonder that Beyond The Score is now being leased out to other orchestras around the world. If you haven’t heard of it already, there’s no doubt that you will, and very soon.

I met McBurney  for a Turkish lunch near London’s Old Vic, where he was working on a hush-hush project with his younger brother Simon, the actor, director and founder of Complicite. (They’re bright, those McBurney boys.) I wanted to know how Beyond The Score started. Gerard is a kind of monologue train, perched at the top of a steep hill. All I had to do was stick some hummus in him, ask him a question, and he was off.

“The private business people who mostly pay for these art-forms run businesses in which they try to get their message across, and they find it very frustrating that the arts organisations that they're helping to pay for sometimes make very little effort to get their message across.

In the days when Solti was music director subscriptions used to sell out. It became a real problem; "how do you get a ticket for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra?" Now it's very different, and the people in the classical music world tear their hair out. "What is it we've failed to do? Why doesn't anyone love us anymore?" A big part of it depends on cultural forces that are way, way beyond the control of cultural organisations. The range of choices for what people do with their time and their money has increased vastly.”

So, has Beyond The Score put bums on seats?

“Yes, definitely. We are building new audiences and at the same time we're drawing in subscribers who have been listening to this music all their lives and they would like to know more. We get youth audiences... We do three projects a year, two performances of each. We've moved the Friday afternoon slot to Friday evenings which is a good time for the young crowd. The weekend is just beginning and they're not necessarily going out to get absolutely hammered on a Friday night. It's really changed the demographic of our audience.”

And what about the more conservative subscribers and donors, of which there must be some?

“When I first at the CSO, Pierre Boulez did a concert that consisted of an orchestral piece by Ravel, a piano concerto by Ligeti, and The Miraculous Mandarin by Bartok. A letter came in complaining about modern music. The Ligeti can be described as the modern music, the Ravel and Bartok, hardly. It fell to me to answer, so I wrote and said I'm very sorry you feel that way, I thought it was a magnificent concert, and here's a couple of reasons why. To which I received a much angrier letter back from this subscriber saying "you don't seem to understand the meaning of music. The meaning of music is to be uplifting and to be familiar".

I think of the greatest artistic experiences of my life as being ones that completely shook the foundations of what I took for granted. Nothing should be familiar. Otherwise there's no point in being alive. 

The task of the artist is to make the familiar strange. As it says in the Bible: to make it anew. I'm not an expert on Brecht, but I'm sure that's what he said too, to make something strange. To me it's really, really crucial.”

Isn't that a paradox, given that the chalkboard version of what you're doing is to help people understand the unfamiliar?

“There is a paradox. But it's rooted in the fact that that's what I believe we should all be doing.

I absolutely refuse to look on Beyond The Score as in any way explaining these pieces. I have no desire to explain any work of art. I have a desire that we should read the world around us. That means being aware of the texture, the smell, the taste, the culture out of which the work of art came. What did these people believe in? What did they have for breakfast? What were the spiritual and intellectual structures that they inherited?”

And how has it developed over the last ten years?

“When I look at the shows that I made when I first went there, they're unrecognisable compared to the shows I make now. The technology is so much better, I've taken greater and greater risks with each show, they're more and more dramatic... From the very first show I had theatre elements in there. I realised it was the theatrical elements that work the audience up. The thing to do was to remove the elements of a lecture, to purify the form and to try and invent a new form in which the material, the imagery, the music, the space, the lighting, told its own story without having a guy there with a funny accent saying "this is the story". Some composers work better than others. With Berlioz, Wagner and Schoenberg you have composers who led double lives as writers and journalists so you have an astronomical amount of material which they themselves produced including a lot of attempts to explain what they were doing. It makes very dramatic material... For instance, Schoenberg lectured about the Tristan chord to his pupils and the language that he used to explain the power of Wagner is really fascinating. Because the pupils wrote down what he was saying, the result is extremely colourful. So I just had a scene with a group of people talking about the significance of the Tristan chord, and it's all taken from Schoenberg. And there's another scene where I spliced what Richard Strauss said about Wagner and what von Bülow said about Wagner to make a dialogue where these two men are arguing about this music... it's very vivid not because it's me but because it's real material.

If you know what you're doing theatrically, interweaving it into the music, it can be extraordinarily dramatic.  It's a question of how you tell the story and make the examples work with enough power that when you've these strange words, the music comes in and people cry. And that's the most important thing. My brother and I, we always agree -  what are we doing in these art-forms? We're trying to make people cry.”

Isn’t the US way behind the UK on this sort of thing?

“It's absolutely not true that the US is behind the UK with its outreach programmes. The CSO has an entire department headed up by Yo-Yo Ma. It's absolutely vast. It's just been given another huge donation. In a way we're more advanced in America because it's possible to raise much larger sums of money through donations. Though of course the American situation certainly has its flip side. But I would like to insist that I've had staggering support in Chicago. America has a giant talent at creating communities out of nothing. The hundred-odd, sometimes very odd, musicians of the CSO were very suspicious of me when I started. As one musician said to me "what is it about what we do that isn't good enough?" The journey for the last ten years has been a real journey with those hundred musicians, getting to know them, discovering what they want to say about the music, what they want to say about the way they play music, so that Beyond The Score has become much more than being about these pieces; it's become about the art of playing together, the art of playing instruments... It's an incredible bunch of people. Perhaps my greatest experience in Chicago has been getting to know the musicians and learning how to make a show that isn't about me; it's about them and the music they play.”

What’s coming up this season?

“Boulez at 90 is a kind of chamber drama following up on the one I made with and for him about Pierrot Lunaire. It's a homage to him and his life and the journey he's been on. I'm using all kinds of new projection techniques which my friend the projections artist Mike Tutaj has been showing me and I think it's going to be a very beautiful show.

Later in the year I'm doing Brahms 3 with Edo de Waart. That will be "how do we listen to music that works like that? How do we get right inside the structure of the piece?" The last one I'm doing is a sort of portrait of Ravel based on his house outside Paris. Each of the shows has a very different approach, although they're each about men who didn't marry or have lovers... there's a certain something that they have in common. All three are very, very refined; men who liked organising their music very precisely. That's the sort of theme for this year.”

If you had an unlimited budget, what would you do to change the way we experience classical music?

“I would completely rebuild the spaces in which classical music takes place. I would make them much more porous, adaptable, beautiful to be in, accessible, able to accommodate any collection of musicians under any circumstances, and above all I would insist that the design of these spaces be not only incredibly alluring so that everyone wants to go there but that they would bring everyone in the hall really close to the musicians. Because I think we have to get away from the bourgeois culture pattern of the 19th century. Everything to me is about bringing people close.”

And with that, our plates scraped clean of baba ganoush and tzatsiki, he had to rush back to rehearsal. “Oh God, Simon is going to tell me off. I’m late…”