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I heard the Russian soprano Galina Gorchakova in September, in a concert at the Prague Autumn Festival. She sang a thrilling program of Italian opera arias. The audience loved her, giving her the only standing ovation of the eight operas and concerts I heard there. A week later I was back in Toronto, and so was she, here to give a concert.
 
Gorchakova made her debut outside of Russia in 1991, in Prokofiev’s treacherous Fiery Angel. She dominated the nineties with her unmatched performances of Russian and Italian opera. With her voice, presence and beauty, she was hailed as the next Tebaldi or Callas. Her recordings and DVDs, especially of Russian opera with Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Opera, remain benchmarks.
 
In the eight years since Gorchakova last sang in Toronto, in a recital at Roy Thomson Hall, much has changed for her. Gorchakova still lives in St. Petersburg. But she left the Kirov, the domain of conductor Valery Gergiev, six years ago. The process of striking out on her own, beyond Gergiev’s control, has been challenging.
 
But what has not changed is her voice, which remains tender, penetrating, powerful, colourful, expressive – and above all, passionate.
 
I spoke with Gorchakova the day after her concert at the George Weston Hall. With us was the presenter, Svetlana Dvoretskaia of Show One Productions, who stepped in to translate when Gorchakova would abandon her eloquent English for what sounded like excitable Russian.
 
Interviewing this fascinating and complicated singer is like stepping back into a novel of Tolstoy or a play of Chekov, with her intensity, passion, vision, and fatalistic sense of suffering for an ideal beauty. She is a beautiful woman, whose graciousness matches her sensitivity. Remote from the world of business plans, marketing and aggressive management, she doesn’t even have a computer, cell phone or web site.
 
The day before her performance she gave a decidedly unconventional masterclass at Remenyi House of Music. When Gorchakova suggested to one participant that she open herself up and feel the music with her whole body, she refused. What Gorchakova was demanding, she felt,  was simply too vocally risky and emotionally demanding. ‘What can I give you?’ Gorchakova asked in puzzlement, not pique. Gorchakova rewarded the most involved and communicative participant with enthusiastic support for her work in building a strong, stage-worthy technique. She talked about using lots of individuality, colour and mood changes. ‘You must be not cold inside – you need fire. You must feel like a tiger.’ She reminded them to always believe in themselves. Then she sang two songs, which said more than words ever could.
 
At the concert next evening she sang six Russian songs plus two encores by Glinka, Rachmaninov, and Tchaikovsky with the virtuosic Moscow Chamber Orchestra, lovingly conducted by Constantine Orbelian.  ‘When I come on stage I feel like a queen, like the most important person at that moment. It’s very difficult to keep an audience for two hours, but I’m very happy in a concert when I feel they are mine.’   Indeed, she looked like a queen, and sang like a tiger. As in Prague, she was luminous. ‘I try to put into each song a whole life – a long, long, long, long life in just two minutes!’ I asked how she did that. ‘I don’t know  - this is magic, I think.’
 
She does have that rare ability – charisma, star-quality, call it what you will – to command complete attention, as though lit by an enchanted spotlight. ‘The public loves me’ she says simply.
 
‘But critics don’t like me.’ Gorchakova’s voice is rich and alluring, with no signs whatsoever of the problems I had read about. In fact, I have never read such contradictory reviews – that she is too loud, too soft, too emotional, not emotional enough, too strong an actress, a weak actress …
 
‘Six years ago I left Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre (the home of the Kirov), where I was the main soprano.  That was the beginning of my general problem. But it’s not only my problem. Gergiev is a very powerful man, throughout the whole world. Whoever has the guts to leave him,  Gergiev says they left because they lost their voice. He says that I’m stupid, I’m not a good musician, I can’t act. All this rubbish goes to my head. When he tells a singer that she will never sing again, it kills her psychologically.’
 
‘I’m full of ideas and fire, and I need to give something to the public. I really want to sing, just that. Everybody kept calling me a superstar, a primadonna. Honestly, I absolutely never wanted that. But, when somebody tries to stop me from singing…’
 
‘Anyways,’ she added unconvincingly, ‘if I don’t sing on stage, I can still perfectly find my place in life. I’m happy because I’m alive and the sun is shining. I’m a very simple person.’
 
She has been working closely with Orbelian, who records frequently with upcoming  Toronto visitors Ewa Podles and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.  ‘Orbelian is the best kind of conductor, and he is very kind person.’
 
She recently performed her first Norma in San Diego with another favourite conductor, Richard Bonynge. ‘When I did Norma, I listened to my favourite singer in this role, Joan Sutherland (Bonynge’s wife), but of course I must be myself. I was so happy to sing Norma one time in my life. Everybody was crying, especially in the second part when I sing about my children and about love. Sometimes this happens. This was not just a soprano singing bel canto – this was a live person. You need to be inside this music.’
 
‘I love expressive melody. I try to be dramatic in a role. I need to move around – I need to be a woman on stage. When I did Norma even the director said it was the first time he felt Norma was a live person. I think this is  the best compliment to get.’
 
‘I try to be very different from other singers. I crush all tradition - that’s interesting for me.  Not just to be different, but to be right.’ It’s not that she wants to impose her own ideas. ‘The ideas are there in the opera’.
 
Gorchakova brings that same dramatic intensity to the smaller scale of songs. ‘When a song is sorrowful and I sing the whole thing very softly, I try to concentrate the whole hall in this pianissimo. I think it’s very interesting, especially after a big forte, to go to pianissimo. I need to provoke people every minute.’ 
 
Among favourite partners she names Placido Domingo. ‘He is so nice,  and a nice actor. He is a little bit old now, so it’s more difficult for him, of course. But he is one of the very few tenors whose sound made me cry on stage.  When he sang the famous arioso in Pique Dame to me I cried. These moments are so rare, and so valuable, you remember them all your life.’
 
‘Opera singers should want that interaction with their partner on the stage. It’s very, very important that the partner can provoke tears – that he is very emotional and is passing the message directly through you as well.’
 
According to Gorchakova, singers need to suffer. Being unhappy helps their careers. I wondered if this was a particularly Russian outlook. ‘It’s not only the Russian soul – it’s life experience. Because most operas are tragedies, you need to feel tragic. If you have a light voice, you can sing Susanna (she sings a phrase  from Marriage of Figaro) – but one, two, three, and that’s it for happy people in opera. Most of the time you are singing about misery, loneliness and unhappiness, and for this you need to have these experiences in your life. If I have a problem in my life, I can go on stage and show it. If I am singing Tosca, I try to be like Tosca -  but illuminated.’
 
(She was in fact on her way to sing Tosca with Minnesota Opera.) Next, with Orbelian, she is recording Rusalka, not Dvorak’s well-known opera, but that of Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky, a friend of Glinka. ‘This is a very interesting Russian opera, and not very often performed.’
 
After we wrapped up, Gorkachova said,  ‘I would like to tell you that this will be the last interview for me. I think I need to stop giving interviews.’ I was clearly taken aback, so she explained. ‘I need to just sing, and do my job very well. I don’t feel so important in this life that I can give advice. I have come to the opinion no-one has the right to give directions that ‘you should do this’ and ‘you shouldn’t do that’, and ‘everybody should listen to this and not to that.’
 
‘I’m burning myself up. I have no right to invite others to go with me, to lead the life. It’s difficult.’ But she can’t do it any other way, fortunately for her audiences. By taking her performances so close to the edge, she imprints them in our memories, unlike so many professional, attractive,  undistinguished and thoroughly forgettable performances today.
 
‘Professional singer with all the notes – for me it’s not enough. They must move my heart and make me cry. I like so much when people from the audience come to my room after a performance with tears in their eyes and say, “I’m so happy because I heard your voice. It’s so wonderful, I’m crying when you sing”. This is a very great compliment to me, and to my voice. But it’s a very simple idea. That’s it.’
 
Svetlana Dvoretskaia’s Show One Productions  is presenting Russia’s venerable Borodin Quartet on Nov.17 at 8.00 in  the George Weston Recital Hall at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, performing Borodin, Shostakovich and Beethoven in a 60th Anniversary Gala Concert.
 

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