By Helena Matheopoulos
Benjamin Bernheim is taking the opera world by storm – a sensitive, charming tenor who brings new psychological insights to some of opera’s most well-known romantic leads
Benjamin Bernheim is one of the most exciting tenors to emerge on to the operatic stage in recent years. He possesses an exquisitely beautiful, richly coloured lyric voice, with a warm, pleasing timbre, a gleaming sheen throughout its range, and a top that never sounds forced or dry. Fortunately, both for audiences and the composers whose roles he sings, this exceptional vocal instrument is backed and sustained by a solid and rare (as we shall see) technique. He is also an extremely sensitive, probing interpreter – a thinking tenor who examines his characters in painstaking depth and in many cases, such as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, casts a totally fresh eye on them. There is also that elusive quality, charm, which Bernheim possesses in abundance, and which predisposes the public to be even more sympathetic towards the characters he portrays. Covent Garden audiences gave
him a rapturous welcome when he made his debut as Rodolfo in 2018, and the Viennese, Milanese and Parisian public have also applauded him
in this role. He is sensational as a young and vulnerable Alfredo in La traviata, and his vocally stupendous Faust brought him huge success when he debuted the role at Chicago Lyric Opera. His scheduled debut at the Met – the male lead in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette – was cancelled in the pandemic, but is now scheduled for this coming season; as is the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, which he first sang at the Bavarian State Opera and recently at the Liceu in Barcelona.
This past season he also made his debut in Hamburg in the title role in Les Contes d’Hoffmann and added Werther to his French repertoire, which also includes a superb portrayal of Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon. Bernheim gives state-of-the-art examples of his Italian and French roles in his debut recording for Deutsche Grammophon, with whom he has an exclusive contract. Asked to put the difference between French and Italian singing in a nutshell, he says, ‘French singing is more silvery in terms of style, while Italian singing is more golden. In Italian singing you can feel the red wine and the tomatoes that are full of sun! In French singing and the French language, you envisage something more refined and noble, but in a very “Versailles” way. That’s my way of putting it.’ Whatever the style or language, I am convinced that his interpretations both on disc and onstage will become yardsticks for future singers.
Yet until five years ago very few people had heard of this Paris-born, 36-year-old. His path to the top was slow and arduous, partly because of a difficult childhood in Geneva in a house full of opera singers. His grandmother was the mezzo Nicole Buloze and his parents, baritone Antoine Bernheim, and a mother who became a singing teacher, worked hard but never made it to the top. ‘My parents tried to break through for a long time, but without ever succeeding. So, I saw the other side of the singing profession: the pain, the frustration, the fear of not being chosen ... For a long time, I loathed this milieu which, as a child, stopped me sleeping at night.’ Although Bernheim learnt to play the violin and the piano and at an early age, this domestic atmosphere of frustration and insecurity had a profound effect on him and, for a time, succeeded in creating an ambivalent attitude towards his own gifts as a singer. ‘So, when I was 18, I Ieft my home and my parents because I wanted to find myself.’
He enrolled at the Lausanne Conservatoire and considers that ‘the teaching of music in Switzerland is a dream: wise, stress-free and thorough.’ His professor, Gary Magby, gave him good advice which he still thinks about and often quotes, as well as much-needed confidence. Bernheim professes that he ‘didn’t like singing, but singing seemed to like me, it came to
me without effort. I kept on studying and working at it out of some sort of gratitude, and in order to be independent as soon as possible. What I did enjoy was the discovery that singing involved another aspect, a wonderful aspect – that of telling stories! Becoming an unknown character who knows you better than you know yourself, and growing along with him –this is what happens every time I take on Alfredo, Rodolfo, Faust, Des Grieux, the Duke of Mantua or Hoffmann!
I adore telling their stories and living their destinies...’ After graduating from the Lausanne Conservatoire, Bernheim joined the prestigious Zurich Opera Studio in 2010. Nonetheless, by his mid-20s, he had abandoned his studies and the whole idea of becoming an opera singer and joined the real estate and banking business of a family member. ‘I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want to be a singer anymore. I didn’t like the conflicting things people were telling me all the time – “You should change your professors... change your coaches... change your management... go to another opera house... sing only the German repertoire... accept being a character tenor in this repertoire... maybe you’re a baritone... have you ever thought of being a countertenor?”
‘You know, in this business there are always so many opinions about your voice and what you should be doing with it. And among this plethora of opinions, there are always one or two that are right. But discovering which ones they are is very difficult. Like being faced with an expanse of sand in which you have to find the two little stones that contain the right advice. ‘So quitting singing, abandoning the idea that I was an opera singer for several months, was a sort of therapy for me, because I stopped being worried about my flaws and problems. And doing something else was fascinating! The worlds of real estate and finance are totally different. You meet people who have nothing to do with the world of music and your studies and for whom music, if they bother with it at all, is viewed as an entertainment, like sport. For me this was refreshing, because I was not treated as a singer, but just as another person joining the group. And I attended many conferences about finance and investment planning. It was a totally new kind of life and very interesting.’
Though the world of finance gave Bernheim a welcome respite, there was always a nagging question in the back of his mind: ‘Had I really devoted eight years of my life to something which I now wanted to abandon? Or did I just needed a different set-up,a different perspective that would make it work? At the time, I was still a member of the ensemble in Zurich and Alexander Pereira was waiting for me to answer whether I would participate in a production of Mozart’s Il re pastore, which was not an opera in which I could shine and show my skills. But it was work, and I decided to accept and go back to my art, because otherwise I would have regretted it. At the time, there was no other opening, and staying in an ensemble was the only way I could develop my voice and artistry.’ There is a French expression that Bernheim’s professor at the Lausanne Conservatoire used to tell him: ‘We singers are “artisans du spectacle” – performing craftsmen. Which means that we have a responsibility to give our best – the best of our voice and our artistry. As far as I am concerned, anything I do in life I want to serve it, I want to be good at it. I don’t want to do anything just to make a profit from it. You must want more, you must have an ego, and you must have pride! This doesn’t mean that you have to be Number One, but you should at least aim to be among the top ten, whether you are a soloist, or a lyric or a dramatic or a character tenor. Whatever it is you are serving, the aim is to serve it to the best of your ability, not just to be OK. That’s not good enough in a world where people are paying very expensive tickets to come to see an opera.’
Indeed, because Bernheim has made the absolutely right choice of repertoire: roles that show off thesheen, the wonderfully gleaming patina of his sound right up to the very top of the register, where the notes never sound dry or strained and are pure joy to hear. ‘That was exactly what I was fighting to get! And now I am fighting to keep it, to keep the voice fresh and beautiful for as long as possible.’
I asked him if he could explain an essential part of his technique, which is to sing high notes with a ‘mixed voice’, poised somewhere between the head and the chest voice. ‘This technique was used a great deal before Rossini’s time, when the breed of tenors was quite different from today’s and when high notes weren’t sung with full voice but falsetto, which sounded as if the singer had two different voices. In the middle of the 19th century, the Grande Ecole de l’Opéra Francais brought back this method in a modified way – not singing falsetto but mixing the head and the chest voice in a way that renders the sound even and sweeter. Massenet, Meyerbeer and even Verdi used it quite a lot. It was only towards the end of the 19th century that this technique began to be used less, because opera was moving towards verismo. But singing with a mixed voice simply has to do with the use of colours. I use it a lot, not just for high notes but also for the passaggio, where I try to bring thehead voice as low as possible and the chest voice as high as possible.
‘This mixture works especially well when singing “Le Rêve” in Massenet’s Manon. Des Grieux is not a high role, and I use this mixed voice because this kind of sound helps tell this story with a sweetness, candour and naivety that suit the part. Of course, it is easier to make this kind of sound carry in a smaller house such as Bordeaux than the Opéra Bastille or the Met in New York, where, a lot depends on the conductor finding the corresponding right colours in the orchestra.
‘But I must stress that this use of a mixed voice is not a sort of religion, something singers must do at all cost. It works for me, because I can switch tracks from full voice to mixed voice with its essential colour staying the same, in other words without the voice losing its identity. But this may not work for other singers, where this switch might make it sound as if they were singing falsetto. So using this mixed voice should never become a rule. Because all of us have a different vocal fingerprint and there are tenors who sing “Le Reve” solely from the chest, albeit very sweetly, and this is a different way of telling the story. If I had a darker, more “testosterone-charged” chest voice, this technique wouldn’t work. But with my voice, it does and gives me the chance to tell a story in a variety of ways. I also find ways of making it work in the third act of La bohème, in La traviata.’
As well as Alfredo, (and in his early career Macduff in Macbeth and Ismaele in Nabucco), Berhneim’s other major Verdi role is the Duke of Mantua inRigoletto, which he first sang in Munich and will sing again at the Met in New York this coming season. His view of the role is exceptionally interesting and he doesn't consider him to be a bastard. ‘I do not agree with this generally perceived view. I always try to find a reason why characters behave in a certain way and why the composers wrote their music in a certain way. For me the Duke of Mantua is a very young man.’ (He is absolutely right. He manages to pass himself off credibly as a student to Gilda, and is referred to by Maddalena as ‘Signorino’).
‘Ever since he was a boy, he has been raised exclusively among men, which is very hard, psychologically. Being in a male-dominated court is not an easy life. It’s about hard jokes, about hitting below the belt, about humiliation and a lot of psychological brutality. And to be a man of power, you have to master this brutality, especially if you are sensitive. And I think that the Duke of Mantua has enormous sensitivity. He has what we French call ‘un coeur d’ artichaud’ (an artichoke heart) – which means that he falls in love every two weeks!
‘And then he meets someone who really changes his mind, as he sings in Act II, before Gilda is brought in. And here’s the interesting thing: if you read the libretto, the aria “La donna è mobile” is described as the Duke’s favourite little song. If we try to probe this psychologically, we have to ask, why does a powerful man need to sing “La donna è mobile” every single day? And, for me, the answer has to be that he needs to convince himself about something. This favourite little song means do not get too close to women because they will hurt you.
‘I wonder who taught the young Duke this? What was the need for it? When you are a powerful man, you don’t need to be afraid that you will be made to suffer. But the Duke is afraid! Hence his need to disguise himself and go about town masquerading as a different person and inventing new names – in thiscase, the poor student Gualtier Malde. He needs to get out of his character, out of his role, because he is perhaps bored with it. He wants to get a life, find love, find people who will love him for himself, not as the Duke of Mantua. And my own supposition is that, because of his sensitivity, he is suffering a lot from his position, from who he is.
‘There are moments, especially in the last act that, for me, prove this point. Just listen to the music and read the words he sings in “Bella figlia del’amore, schiavo son dei vezzi tuoi, con un detto sol tu puoi
le mie pene consolar” [Lovely daughter of love, I am a slave of your charms, with a single gift you can assuage my pains]. Of course, he sings this to seduce Maddalena. But he doesn’t have to seduce her, since he knows she is a prostitute! All he has
to do is pay and get on with it! But he just wants to hear the words I love you from her lips, to make him feel better, to make his pain go away. Because he is in pain. If you bother to read the text of this opera, you can see a different story. Yes, you could see him as an arsehole, but you can also see someone who is lost in a world he tries to escape from, and who wants to hear words that will make him happy.
‘Vocally, the most challenging part is the last act, which demands a lot of stamina, a lot of strength. Before that, the role is not that difficult, “Questa o quella”, the duetino with the Countess Ceprano and the duet with Gilda are not particularly difficult. The aria “Parmi veder le lagrime”, while certainly not easy, is not seriously problematic. But the last act is. You have to sustain the stamina to the very end. First you have the famous aria, “La donna è mobile”, which everybody knows, loves and has been waiting for. Then you have one of Verdi’s most beautiful quartets, “Bella figlia del amore”, and then you have to repeat “La donna è mobile” again. This, keeping strength up your sleeve for the end, is the main vocal challenge in this role.’ Shortly after our chat, Bernheim was off to Salzburg to sing Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, ‘a very beautiful role, another suffering character who is a prisoner of his destiny. The character is very loving but also driven by revenge. There is so much hatred and violence. He just got out of a bloodbath in which he lost most of his family. He is an honourable and noble man, a man of his word. But, apart from his love for Lucia, all his life is about revenge. It’s a very dramatic, tragic role. Vocally it is very interesting and good to sing. It is pure bel canto. I always say that bel canto is like Pilates for the voice – and as such it demands a
lot of elasticity. The voice has to remain very steady, very stable and strictly in its position, to keep the line flowing. All of which is very good for a singer.’
Recently Bernheim sang a role usually considered heavy, lirico-spinto verging towards dramatic: the title role in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann in Hamburg. Was this a departure from his otherwise lighter, lyric repertoire? ‘It depends on how you sing it, how much strength, how much baggage you bring onstage. If you want to show off your voice and be very loud all the time... well, that of course wouldn’t work for me, or indeed, for many other tenors. In
my view, the prologue is lyrical, the Olympia Act is lyrical, and the Antonia Act is almost, I wouldn’t say spinto but certainly lyrical with strength. And the Giulietta act is as difficult as the third act of La bohème for Rodolfo! You have to have a lot of stamina, because it needs sustained strength, holding the notes – and this at the end of a very long evening. Because the difficulty in this opera doesn’t lie in the notes but in its length. It is very, very long and demands a lot of strength right up to the end. Singing it the way I want to sing it and keeping it fresh until the end, means that I have to manage and pace the voice throughout the evening. As with the Duke of Mantua, if you burn all your energy from the beginning, you will be left with nothing at the end. ‘From the dramatic point of view, Hoffmann is a fascinating character, and I love him! It’s like asking an old man to tell you about his life, and it allows you toshow a lot of your own, emotional and sexual personal life. This is what Hoffmann does, with the three acts with three different singers. It takes you through the steps a man goes through at different stages in his life. There is a moment in life when we fall in love, and
we cannot understand what is happening to us, we are just insane, entranced by what we see and think that everything is beautiful and perfect. This is the Olympia act which vocally is very cute, almost for a light lyrical voice, as if Offenbach wanted the tenor to warm up for the rest! Then comes the next stage when we are perhaps ready to share our life with someone else and maybe start a family. This is the Antonia act, vocally the most beautiful, even though Hoffmann has less to sing. And then there is the very seductive act with Giulietta, which is the most fun: pure testosterone... and a matter of who will dominate whom. But you shouldn’t have too much fun, because it is very long and you have to conserve your voice.’ [Bernheim is due to sing the role again in France in the 2023/24 season.]
With his repertoire growing season by season, and with all the thought and research that goes into his preparation for the roles he sings, how does Bernheim relax? ‘I don’t! I just keep singing! I go to the gym and I try to see the people I love as much as possible – which is not easy...’
