Ekaterina Gubanova about Kirill Serebrennikov’s Lohengrin at the Paris Opera

Kirill Serebrennikov is staging Wagner’s opera Lohengrin in Paris. The premiere will take place on September 23 at the Opera Bastille under the baton of conductor Alexander Soddy. The role of Ortrud will be performed by the Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova, one of the best Wagnerian singers of our time. On the eve of the premiere Ekaterina Gubanova told Vladimir Dudin about the choice of “our” director and composer and relations with radical theater.

— In “Lohengrin” you sing the main villain, the antipode of Elsa. Is it more interesting to play a negative character than a positive one?

“The first thing Kirill told me was that he doesn’t want Ortrud to be all negative. It’s interesting to me when they offer to play evil in a way that isn’t straightforward. In this production, she is a real normal woman with her own reasons, suffering, torment. And then, what is evil? What is good? Wagner loved to put such arguments into the mouths of his heroes. Wagner’s Ortrud is worried about her family, about her people, not even about herself, and this is no longer an absolute evil. In Serebrennikov’s production, she suffers a lot and is generally the only person trying to fix something. I can’t tell you more about this concept, which has a very important detail that changes everything, and it is connected with Lohengrin himself. I only admit that Kirill is my director, I already want to do something else with him. However, this became clear to me even at his “Parsifal” in Vienna, where I sang Kundry.

— But how do you understand that the director is “yours”? In the case of Kirill Serebrennikov, for example.

“I was captivated by the idea that he quickly outlined to me, and I immediately really wanted to get into the skin of this character. His vision imbues characters and situations with absolute authenticity. I like to look for plasticity, facial expressions of a character, making him not operatic, but very human, and this is not easy, because we are all tied to our diaphragms, breathing, technique, but it is still possible. This kind of challenge is terribly interesting to me. Kirill is an absolutely theatrical person, and for me this is fantastically good.

— Which singers did you meet at rehearsals?

– The composition is wonderful! Lohengrin – Piotr Beczala, Wolfgang Koch (Telramund), with whom we once sang “The Ring” – he is the spitting image of Friedrich, simply luxurious. Peter is excellent, I heard his Lohengrin in New York at the Met and it was flawless. Kwanchul Yun in the role of Heinrich is amazing, you can feel the Barenboim school. He and I also sang in “The Ring” and “Tristan” with the maestro many times. Everyone sings and sings, and when suddenly you understand every word from this Korean bass, an incomparable feeling arises, everything immediately takes off to another level. Working with me is the Swedish soprano Nina Stemme, who sings Ortrud in the first five performances, and I sing the last four. She and I also met many times in the compositions of “Tristan” and “Ring”. Nina is a wonderful person, a great colleague and a normal woman, without cockroaches – you know, as is the case with many sopranos. How I love Scandinavians, I have so many friends and colleagues among them.

— Do you like the stage of Opera Bastille?

— I love it, this is the theater where I started. My first theater, where I sang Emilia in Othello, one of the three ladies in The Magic Flute, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly… You can’t count everything. When Kirill asked me what I sang in Bastille, it was easier for me to answer that I didn’t sing there. A very special place for me, evoking so many strange associations. I feel very young and very old here at the same time. The acoustics here are difficult, we need a conductor who will not be an enemy, but a friend. Here in Lohengrin there is a very remarkable young conductor – Alex Soddy. I think he replaced Gustavo Dudamel, who was supposed to conduct the premiere, but, as you know, broke off his relationship with the Paris Opera. Soddy is wonderful, the orchestra follows him, he hears him, breathes with him, you can’t imagine anything better.

— How did your relationship with the Wagnerian repertoire begin?

— I remember this moment very well. I came to Bastille in 2003 to audition, while still in a youth program in London, to be one of the maids in Strauss’ Elektra. I needed to sing something German-language, I chose a small number where the range was clear – one of the songs from Wagner’s Wesendonck-lieder cycle – on the advice of one of the coaches of the London program. Gerard Mortier listened to me and said that I would be Brangena and signed a contract with me. At that time I was too old to sign a contract for Wagner. But Gerard felt something, believed, saw the prospect. And my first “Tristan” thundered. At one revival, Isolde was sung by Waltraud Mayer, who called Barenboim, and he then called me and said: “Katya, do you know that you have a new fan?” – “Who?!” – “Waltraud Mayer.” It was all so wonderful. And then Daniel did The Ring with me, a lot of Tristans. Those were wonderful times.

— Has anything changed in your relationship with the composer since those times?

— Wagner is mine. The German language requires enormous concentration and attention, and for me it turns out quite authentically, let’s say. But it’s an endless job. Wagner wrote the entire libretto himself, selected every word himself, the combination of syllables is certainly in a given sequence, but the singer can “highlight” them from different angles. Ortrud has a lot of recitative phrases, which I adore because of how much you can find there. I’m literally shaking with joy – I love it all so much, the endless search, the bottomlessness. When you work a lot in one repertoire – my repertoire hasn’t changed radically throughout my career (usually singers start with Rossini, Mozart, then Bellini and Donizetti, verismo and Wagner), Verdi and Wagner immediately went – then you desperately need depth, infinity like musical, as well as ethical, aesthetic, historical. Wagner gives it to me.

— You have already become a resident at the festival in Bayreuth, where in recent years Katharina Wagner has been gathering the most radical directors – do you get along with everyone?

“I’ve practically registered there already; everything is planned for several years in advance. So many changes have happened and are happening around, Bayreuth is a reflection of all this. Perhaps partly because I am open to unconventional productions, I always find it good to work with such directors. It’s not that it’s very easy – as a rule, very few people are so easy with anyone, they are all very special people, like any talented people. But I didn’t have any problems with directors, I would even say, never and nowhere, not only in Bayreuth. It’s even interesting to me when some new material is given; I feel very free in non-traditional directing. I can’t help but mention, for example, “Tannhäuser,” which is showing success there. This is not only an unconventional production – it actually turns everything upside down, and the audience has been wildly delighted for many years now, and next season, contrary to tradition, the performance will be staged again. This is an example of a brilliant production concept, when everything makes sense, everything comes together, and the director Tobias Kratzer, all his detail, inspires me with great respect. In general, it is difficult to name a favorite director. Krzysztof Warlikowski and Dmitry Czerniakov are, of course, those who “broke” me in the good sense of the word and revealed to me the realness inside theatricality. Also Calixto Bieito is completely different, different from them, from a different universe, but he’s also great to work with.

— But you don’t forget about the Italian repertoire either?

— I hold on to Italian by my teeth. I always tell my agent that if there is something Italian, you should definitely take it. This season I will have “Rural Honor” and “Norma”. And now, after three months, I have Wagner again – and “Don Carlos” was in the Berlin Staatsoper! This is a big contrast, but it is very good for the voice when you can no longer worry so much about the word, but think more about breathing and technique.

– Well, catching sensual pleasure is probably also important.

– Definitely. And intervals for the voice are very important. In Wagner it is very complex: everything is reduced all the time, tritones, everything is so small, unresolvedness is constant. Verdi doesn’t have this even close, his voice is at rest.

— Yes, Italians know how to balance between complexity and ease.

— I am familiar with this firsthand. My husband is Italian, no matter how much he tried to get into Wagner, listened to recordings at home, went to my performances, but it’s not his thing. Only as an obedience should he be at big premieres. But Verdi – please, I’ll sing it by heart. And my mother, on the contrary, says that “Tristan and Isolde” is her favorite opera.

— The wife sings so much Wagner, but the husband doesn’t get into it?

– He tried, but, you know, you either like it or not. What to do? My husband is not a musician, but he is my everything, he helps me so much.

— Are there any new parties in your immediate plans – Wagnerian or not?

— There are many challenges ahead. I want to start planning Sieglinde in the near future, and then Isolde, and this will not be easy. Do you know how many times I was offered to sing Lady Macbeth and how many times I refused? Many people say this will be for me. But I’m still waiting. They said the same about Kundry. Barenboim offered it to me back in 2012, but I said no then. Now Kundry came just in time, I barely found all the necessary registers to sing it adequately. It is important to do everything on time. There are still many surprises, there is gunpowder in the flasks.