When lyric tenor Frank Lopardo makes his Seattle Opera debut in Giuseppe Verdi's "Rigoletto" this week, he'll be playing the licentious, womanizing Duke of Mantua - the antithesis of Lopardo's own, real-life existence as a devoted family man.
Normally, the tenor gets to be the good guy - the hero - but in this work Verdi pulls a switch. So the tenor becomes the villain. Plus he gets the best tune, "La donna é mobile" (Women Are Fickle), among opera's most familiar and famous arias.
Verdi's 1851 tragedy, one the world's most popular operas, is a very dark work. The cursed hunchback Rigo-letto, court jester to the womanizing Duke of Mantua, keeps his daughter Gilda away from his patron. But when she falls victim to the arrogant aristocrat, she ends up sacrificing her life to save her father. You should know that Seattle Opera moves its version of "Rigoletto" from the 16th century to the 20th - Benito Mussolini's Italy.
Lopardo's local debut won't mark his first encounter with the Duke; he played him at the Metropolitan Opera, with Kim Josephson in the title role (Josephson, too, repeats his role in Seattle), and also for San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Los Angeles Opera, where Plácido Do-mingo conducted and Bruce Beresford directed. In April 2005, Lopardo will sing Tito in Mozart's "La Clamenza di Tito" at the Met.
We chatted with Lopardo this past summer, when he was singing the role of Rudolfo in Puccini's "La Bohème" at San Francisco Opera. He grew up in Queens, New York's easternmost borough, never knowing or meeting his father, and his mother wasn't around. He was raised by his grandparents in a tough, working-class neighborhood. The street was his playground, and rumor has it he still sports a few tattoos.
So opera was the last thing he was thinking about for a career. But he loved to sing, and people noticed. Even on the bus.
"One day I was on a crosstown bus," Lopardo remembers, "coming home from school and kidding around with my friends. And I just started singing pop tunes. And the driver turned and said, 'You know, kid, I don't know if you realize it, but you really got something.'"
Lopardo heeded the driver's advice and "got serious" in high school. At his music teacher's urging, the first time Lopardo performed in public, instead of a Broadway standard he sang Grieg's "Ich liebe Dich" (I Love Thee, Dear) - in English. It was an epiphany: "Gee, I could probably do this with my life."
A few years later, after a full music scholarship to Queens College and weekly lessons with tenor Robert White, Lopardo was looking to launch his opera career. But in 1981 no one was hiring young American unknowns. At one point, he considered buying a truck and becoming a house painter. Instead he sent letters to every opera company in the country. They all rejected him, except for San Diego Opera; Lopardo was invited to join their young-artist development program. Then, in 1984, he made his professional operatic debut at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, singing Prince Tamino in Mo-zart's "The Magic Flute." And in 1989, his Metropolitan Opera debut followed, with Lopardo singing Count Alma-viva in Rossini's "The Barber of Seville."
Since he's performed in most of the great opera houses of the world, we asked if there was one role that forever touches his heart, that he loves more than any other. "For a long time, it was Rudolfo," Lopardo admits, "but I have to share that sentiment, that deep feeling of 'Oh, wow, I really can step into these shoes and I feel like I've been wearing them all my life.' And for me, that was 'Bohème' for a while.
"But the role of Edgardo in [Doni-zetti's] 'Lucia [di Lammermoor]' replaced that for me. In terms of fitting like a glove, Edgardo is heaven-sent. Who knows why? It fits my voice absolutely perfectly. I seem to have some kind of dramatic feeling for the role, and somehow I've had great successes with it."
But Rudolfo still evokes deep feelings in Lopardo. When he sings the role, he draws on past emotions, especially during the opera's dying scene with Mimi. "When first learning the role, I would go to that scene as late as I could. Although Rudolfo is there at the moment of Mimi's death, he's actually not holding her hand. That last scene of 'Bohème' is a killer for me for dramatic reasons and for personal reasons.
"My grandmother passed away when I was 17, and I didn't have the strength to stay with her in the hospital and hold her hand to the end. Plain and simple, I was too young. I had already seen too many ambulances and too many hospitals. So when I saw her looking so frail and diminished, I just couldn't deal with it. I left the hospital and made my way home to my grandfather. The next day she passed away. And I wasn't there.
"There are moments when you are confronted dramatically with situations that you may have experienced in real life. A lot of singers have the ability to detach themselves. But since this is all I do in life - what I think about all day along - why shouldn't I invest some of my true self in it? I mean, how many other opportunities am I going to get in the course of a day to let this out? It is a tremendous gift I've been given. I'm afforded the ability to feel in my chosen profession....
"Truthfully, I don't know how accountants do it."
Lopardo remains something of a maverick in the opera world. He refuses to hire a publicist and does most of his own vocal coaching and scheduling. While other artists seem preoccupied about where they sing and how much they're paid, for Lopardo success has a much broader meaning. He's totally devoted to his wife and two sons, one of them a tenor who hopes to follow in his father's footsteps. "I'd have to say, regardless of whatever I may or may not have achieved in my life, I think that I am a great personal success because I was able to sustain this now for nearly 22 years. I have a wonderful wife and two wonderful sons - they are my greatest joy. So for me, regardless of what the world perceives, on a personal level, I've achieved everything I've wanted.
"And when I know I can't sing anymore or don't feel I can do it credibly, then I'll say bye-bye and bow out gracefully."
Over the years, critics have compared Lopardo to Alfredo Kraus and Nicolai Gedda, among others, and praised his "virile, dark-toned voice," as well as his lyricism, elegant style, natural musical intelligence and "vocal pow." One of his greatest admirers was the late conductor George Solti, who adored Lopardo's Alfredo in Verdi's "La Traviata."
But despite these accolades, Lopardo still gets nervous before he sings - and readily admits it. Before he goes onstage, he says his prayers, chants his meditation and reminds himself of certain things. "I used to try to avoid this question, but the truth of the matter is I'm as mad as a hatter before the show. And it's easy to forget the most basic things in life. How to breathe, not to shake too much and sometimes ... how to sing," Lopardo teases.
"What I'm most proud of now in my life is that I know how to use this for a better performance. One of the things I love to do before a show is talk to everybody in creation. I talk to the janitor, the guy who paints, the dresser, the makeup guy. I just talk and get the energy out, rather than bottle it up. So after all that, when the curtain goes up, I'm there. But to say that I'm not nervous, that would just be a fib."
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