Thomas Hampson

Today is November 4th, 2024. It’s almost 4 pm. How do you feel?
It’s my day off! I feel quite good. I’m healthy and I’m enjoying this work. I feel very organised in my mind, so I think I’m in a good place.

What was your reaction when you first saw yourself in the bishop’s costume?
I think it’s beautiful and quite to the point. Actually, it looks like something I would wear. All the costumes in the production are going to be modern. And the strictness we put in the bishop has a kind of elegance to it. And it’s comfortable, which is very important, including the shoes. Shoes are a big deal.

Why exactly?
For one thing, you’re on them for two to three hours on the stage… But also, it helps a lot. I only wear the shoes my character is going to wear when I rehearse on stage. I need that feeling. I don’t sing opera characters in tennis shoes.

What do you think about when you look at your reflection in the mirror before a performance?
The mirror is a tool. It helps me recreate a physical believability. For a recital, it simply helps me check that I am publicly presentable (laugh). But if I must get into a costume to play a character, I come very early. A mirror in a theatre should be a looking glass into which you can envision yourself as somebody else. As to my thought process, I am concentrating on what I am about to do. I have a specific new language for three hours. I don’t have room for extraneous thoughts. That can be tough if something is wrong in the family. I have to literally shut that door and go to work. My theatre discipline is a cocoon.

‘Sometimes, you have to tap into a particular part of your imagination that is perhaps even frightening to you, precisely because you can access it.’

There are some interesting points of connection between the bishop and your life. I understand you first started singing in Church.
I was around music all my life. My mother played the piano by ear and the organ. Some of my earliest musical memories involve me playing with my toys to the sound of my mom practising for the church service. We also had a wonderful stereo and we would listen to music by Peter Nero and Gershwin. My two elder sisters sang. We were surrounded with music. And I studied piano, played the tuba, the cornet, the drums. It’s always startling to me to have friends say “my dad never wanted us to have music in the house” ... And I think “you poor guy”. So, the idea of making music as a congregation was natural to me.

So, you had a religious upbringing?
I was raised 7th Day Adventist, which is a fundamental evangelical religion. It can have very strict wings to it, and very liberal wings to it. I was raised in a more liberal way, but I attended a very strict school. Quite frankly this is partly why I really wanted to play the bishop. I know these people. I know this kind of sanctimonious self-righteousness.

How soon did you know you wanted to pursue a singing career?
Very late. When I was 18, I met this incredible voice teacher who had studied with Lotte Lehmann and William Vennard. She asked me what I wanted to do. I was contemplating going to college to study political science. She said “that’s terrific, you’re a bright young man, but I perceive in you a certain artistic spirit and I don’t think you should ignore that. Maybe you’d like to talk about it. Come over for tea if you want”. This conversation was amazing on top of the fact that she was a nun in the catholic church, and I was raised protestant. I started to get voice lessons with her. And she changed my life. She introduced me to the Humanities. To the study of poetry and literature, and philosophy and their relationship with music. With records of Schubert, Schumann, Fauré. My mind was blown away. I began to understand poetry as a narrative, of a life, a condition, a perspective, inspiring composers who would give it an emotional context through music. So, it was very organic. My voice discovered me. I never wanted to make a career out of it until it had already started.

I sang my first role at 19, the father in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel in Seattle. I saw Verdi’s Falstaff with Sir Garrett Evans, which was revelatory. Once the ball started rolling, it never stopped. I got a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, in comparative pedagogy. At 23, I went to the Music Academy of the West then on to Los Angeles, where I won a couple of competitions. I came to Germany with still a lot of question marks. I entered the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 1981. And from then on, it was real ambition and passion for the stage.

Since then, you have sung more than 80 roles. How does this one differ from the rest?
I am quite choosy when it comes to what I sing. If the vocal line is too abstract for example, I lose the emotional impulse. Having said that, I have done a lot of “modern music”, especially in the last 15 years. But this is a new challenge here. There’s a new wave of avant-garde composers using a lot more of interwoven electronic as well as western classical musical means. And already in the early stages of these rehearsals, they are, quite rightly, giving us this electronic atmosphere. This is very exciting to me. Mikael’s musical language is beautiful and fascinating but difficult to memorise. The rhythmic structure is there but in expanded dimensions that are quite complex.

Bergman’s bishop in Fanny and Alexander is easily one of the darker father figures in cinema. How do you relate to that side of your character? Do you have to protect yourself?

That’s a very good question. First, what happens on stage stays on stage. You really need to know who you are, so you know who to come home to. And that’s the beauty and privilege of a strong family. People who create human emotions in whatever context need to protect that private sphere. I do. I always have. I am a father of four. A grandfather of five. And the scene we have been rehearsing the last couple of days is very difficult, violent and unpleasant. But it’s one of the reasons I wanted to play the bishop. I grew up with this dogmatic religiosity that was by no means towards me physically violent but is often a mask for terribly uncentered people who do perverted things. It can be simple like this moment in the score where the Bishop says “let’s just take each other’s hands” but you know he is squeezing Alexander’s hand too hard. It is this duplicitous sanctimonious religiosity and fundamentalism that, as an adult human being, I have zero patience for. Fundamentalists of any religion are, in my opinion and experience, offering entirely the wrong answer to life’s path. The bishop represents exactly this façade covering a very dark aspect of the human condition. And I know how to play him. He has a smile or at least a smirk on his face most of the time. So, is it possible to create characters on stage that have nothing to do with you? Yes. Do you have to tap into a particular part of your imagination that is perhaps even frightening to you, precisely because you can access it? Yes. But am I afraid of myself? No.

On December 11, you will also offer our MM Academy members an open masterclass. How do you manage to guide young singers that you have just met, in such a short space of time?

That’s one of the measurements of whether you are a good teacher or not. How quickly can you meet them where they are at, not the other way around? I don’t feel that I come with the tables of truth. But I have a certain path. And I know things that are important physically, organically. If the singer trusts you, and you have the same “language”, it’s amazing how quickly you can help somebody get more in themselves so that their thoughts are really about what they are singing rather than just how they are singing. And to be part of that, to see that moment of understanding in the face of a colleague is priceless. What you can guess from my verbosity, is that I must be careful to not unload a flood of information on them (laugh). They would become too paralysed to even make a sound. So, I try to work quickly, in layers. I love that process, and not to sound conceited, I think I am rather good at it. It’s a wonderful responsibility to pass on what you have learned with the same patience and stubbornness of your teachers.

‘We all have our personal mask of God, the point being that you can define for yourself your mythology. And without question, my musical life is part of that mythology. As is my belief in an ecumenical, rational, tolerant society.’

Are you a spiritual man yourself? And does your faith, or lack thereof, influence your singing?
I don’t want to sound sort of new age “I don’t like religion, but I am very spiritual”, but that is my answer. I favour no particular denomination. Getting older, I become, maybe unjustly so, more suspicious of social organisations wrapped around religious dogma. Very early on, I read the Dreams, memories and reflections of Carl Gustav Jung. That had a great impact on me. Then I became aware of the American anthropologist Joseph Campbell who wrote a book called The masks of God. And the premise is that all cultures have a path to define divinity. And it enlightened me to the fact that we all have our personal mask of God, the point being that you can define for yourself your mythology. And this is very much the world I live in. And without question, my musical life is part of that mythology. As is my belief in an ecumenical, rational, tolerant society. I think this version of spirituality is more necessary than ever today. It’s a very private search. But I think the world of the humanities has a very big part to play in it. Poets and composers are essential to guide the younger generations.