Transcript of recorded interview with Aris Christofellis

Jan Billington
Well hello, Aris. It's nice of you to agree to do this interview with me. Let's start right at the beginning. Did you come from a musical family?

Aris Christofellis
No, not at all.

Not at all?

No.

Well, what did your father do, for example?

My father was an architect and my mother is a teacher of literature.

Okay. Absolutely nobody in your family had anything to do with music then?

No.

That's really surprising. So how did you get involved in music?

Well, I always liked very much classical music and as far back as I can remember I would always look forward to listen to classical music as my mother liked to listen the radio - the classical programme. Then when I was four years old, I discovered opera by chance - hearing the love duet from Tosca - Mario, Mario with Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano. And the first thing I did, hearing that - I thought it was magical, something that... the most wonderful thing that I had ever heard - and I began immediately to imitate.

To imitate Callas?

To imitate voices.

Yeah?

And very soon I discovered that I adore opera and I began to hear very much opera and ask to my parents to take me the opera house and to buy for me records. Every gift was always a complete opera or a recital and I was learning immediately all these things by heart. So when I was ten years old I already knew by heart all the traditional Italian romantic repertoire - Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini - I knew it by heart.

At this stage, this was all nineteenth-century opera?

Yes, of course.

Not any eighteenth-century music at all?

No, no, no.

That's interesting.

Perhaps a couple of numbers, sung by Joan Sutherland like Let the Bright Seraphim or Che farò senza Euridice, some very known things.

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Did your parents then encourage you to study music?

Not at the beginning. I had to insist very much to have music lessons because especially my father thought it would be better if I became a mathematician or a physician - you know - something like that. So I took my first music lessons secretly from a lady living near our neighbourhood. And perhaps it's interesting to say that this lady was... had studied singing with Elvira de Hidalgo at the same time as Maria Callas. Of course I didn't take voice lessons with her. I took piano lessons and I began to learn to read music and... you know. But I was hearing... she had voice pupils and I was hearing already people vocalizing and preparing to sing.

And so you wanted at that stage to be a singer?

Yes. I liked very much. I wanted to be a singer. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a singer.

And what happened then? I mean, your parents obviously came around.

Yeah. And then I didn't have big problems to continue. They understood ...Everyone around would say that I had to do music lessons so they understood that and there was no more a problem. So I began to take piano lessons when I was fourteen years old, serious piano lessons with very good teachers, and I began to discover all this wonderful piano literature. And when I discovered Chopin and Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, especially romantic music but also Mozart, I wanted to become a pianist.

So, at that stage, singing took a kind of a back seat?

Yes. Even if opera was always something that I liked very much And I wanted always to have the contact with the voice and very soon I began to accompany singers.

As a pianist?

As a pianist.

Okay. And at what age did you start studying music full time?

Studying music full time?

Yes. Because you went to the Athens Conservatory.

Yes, of course I went. and... but full time, let's say that... only when I finished school, of course. I had the whole day to study music. And first years as a pianist. And then I went in... I went to Paris to study piano and I had a very, very wonderful teacher, France Clidat, who is a great specialist of Franz Liszt.

Yes.

And bel canto is always the same. Bel canto is... bel canto with the piano is how to sing with the sound. And then I was singing for fun and then I decided to do it more seriously. Perhaps the idea came from hearing some Baroque music sung by countertenors. And I thought, well perhaps I can do it also. And the first voice lessons, I took it from a wonderful singer in Athens - Fofi Sarandopoulou - coloratura soprano - she died young from a car accident. But I had the first lessons with her. I was her piano accompanist at that time. And one day I told her, please, tell me more things about singing. I shouldn't... As a pianist, I would like to know more about voice technique.

Did she recognize that you were going to be a sopranist at that stage or was she training you just as a - let's say - an 'ordinary' countertenor?

Well, I don't think that she knew very well what a normal countertenor's tessitura was or what a sopranist's should be. Don't forget that I am one of the very first to... male sopranos... to sing this tessitura and to... she really didn't know very well but she was very intelligent and so she taught me how to relax my throat and how to breathe - breathe, you say? - well and all these principles of voice technique that are the same for any voice.

Right. Yes.

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So did you have any other teachers for voice technique?

I cannot mention one or two names. I have studied for a little while with different teachers but I have also learned very much of my good colleagues when I began to work. And I have... Every time that I had the opportunity to meet and sing with a good singer, I would always discuss technical problems and understand the way the other singer thinks and finds solutions. Because the most important to resolve a technical problem is to interconnect information and to take out the right points.

Okay. And you find that this is something which is an ongoing process, even now?

Yeah. For all singers, for their whole life, we always learn. Now I am a teacher myself and I always learn. And I must say that I learn even of my pupils. And it's very interesting when I have to find solutions for them. I have to think and I resolve problems for myself at the same time.

Yes, yes. Yes, I can understand that.
Let's talk now about your career and how it got started.

Well, I don't know very well. I think that I began to sing here and there and people heard me and they asked me to do my first steps and I found myself doing immediately very difficult things. And I probably was not prepared to do all this very difficult Baroque virtuoso music stuff in the beginning. So I am very unhappy for my first years of singing and even the first recordings but it served because, little by little, I learned. So I should really prefer recordings that I did after I was thirty years old.

Up till then, it was very much a training process... you feel, for yourself?

Yeah. I was... then I was doing much more... the result was much nearer to the idea that I had. Before, I had the idea but I didn't know how to produce the sound and how to construct the phrase in the way I desired.

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So what was the public reaction when you first started to sing professionally?

The public reaction was always fantastic. Some of the specialists sometimes... I must say, I had very good reviews in the beginning, very many people helped me... but there were some of the specialists sometimes even shocked with the soprano... male soprano voice.

Because it was something unknown to them, completely new?

Something new, yeah. We're speaking about my first years, '85, around there.

Okay. But did you find that the... your audiences warmed to you, that they were happy with what you were doing?

Yeah. I think so, yeah.

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There's been an awful lot of rubbish written about you and other sopranists.

Oh, yes. I have read in books, in books, not in reviews, that I had hormonal problems. You know... And this is people that never even tried to meet me or speak with me.

Mmmh. Yes, I've read similar things. I read that you had a high speaking voice and it was written with such authority that I believed it when I read it.

Yeah. Well, there are people that know me for years and are... cannot suspect that I have a high singing voice. So it's very strange, all these people that write these things and er... It does not bother me but I find it really ridiculous.

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The next thing I wanted to ask you was about the development of your voice. From '85 to '90 there were some enormous changes in your voice. They're very evident from the recordings. Your voice became richer, it became much more controlled. Any tendency towards shrillness which had been there in the very early period disappeared entirely. Can you tell me about this time and what you did?

I began to understand what 'covering the sound' means. And I began to sing less 'open'. These are technical words for a singer but if I can give just a little example. I used to sing 'open', like {{{{sings}}}}, which is a very bad sound. And later I learned how to do {{{{sings again}}}}. I don't know if the microphone can take that but there is a difference.

Yes. Yes, I can hear it very plainly myself. Let's hope that this does communicate to the mike.

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I'd like to ask you about the period from '91 to '98, probably your most productive period. Can you just tell me generally what you were doing in that time in performance and recording?

I've done some operas, some concerts. Operas in the beginning. Then I understood that stage I didn't like at all and I preferred concert. Operatic stage, I mean, and costumes and too long periods for staging and much less time for music and I didn't like very much. So I always preferred to do operas in concert version so all the rehearsals were music, only music and not staging. Then I stopped to do operas and I did concerts. And then I stopped everything.

And when you stopped everything, you... what? You left France and came back to Athens?

Yes.

Okay. And since you've been back in Athens, what have you been doing?

Teaching. Which I like very, very much.

But not entirely exclusively. Every now and again, you do do a few other things, yeah?

Well, a few things perhaps. Well... I can still sing. The voice is there but I didn't enjoy very much doing a career and being here and there and... the... my desire, my aim was to be with music all the time, not so much to be in front of the public.

Right.

I didn't care very much doing a career and being, you know, famous and... It was not very important for me.

But teaching you love.

Yes, I love very, very much. And there are some wonderful singers which I have in my classes and I enjoy it very much. And now I'm working also with the Athens Opera and we do productions. Last year, I did all the coaching for Serse and... Handel's Serse... and it was a very successful production with wonderful new singers. This year we are doing Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso. But, little by little, I prepare singers even for a different kind of repertoires, like this year I will prepare some of the singers singing in Verdi's Macbeth.

Oh, Okay.

Which I enjoy very much

Right. So that's a departure... something new... for you.

I like very much to exchange opinions and work with talented people.

Right. But so far as singing is concerned, if you could sing entirely on your own terms, no touring, no staging, would you sing more?

Like Adelina Patti in her old days. She had a theatre in her home.
I don't know, I don't know. When I stopped singing, I thought that perhaps I'll miss something and it didn't happen.

So you're really happy with the way things are right now?

Well, to say that I'm 'happy', it's a very big word and I have never felt that I am 'happy'. But I don't feel unhappy if I don't sing.

... Only I do.

Thank you.

You're welcome.