Murray Dahm speaks with Carmen’s bullfighter
I last spoke with Daniel Sumegi before the Melbourne performances of Wagner’s Lohengrin earlier this year. Now he returns to Australia in Carmen on Cockatoo Island as Escamillo, the bull-fighter and lover of the gypsy Carmen after she has tired of ex-corporal Don Jose.
Carmen Topciu in the role of Carmen and Daniel Sumegi Photo: Prudence Upton
“It is definitely a change” to be singing outdoors on Cockatoo Island rather than in an opera house he said and his last Escamillo was around eight years ago in Japan. I jokingly asked how it was getting back on the horse (since many productions of Carmen today have Escamillo on one) but in this production, it would be a bike. “I’m not on a bike or a horse but there are bikes!” Bikes are indeed part of his scene but he is “not actively involved” in the riding of them.
Sumegi has sung the role four times during his long his career; it can be sung by basses (as he is) although usually reserved for baritones). When a bass does assay the role (such as Samuel Ramey or Ruggero Raimondi), it shows their versatility – it has a high tessitura for a bass, but their vocal colour brings a weightier and darker sound to the character. Daniel sang the Toreador’s Song (‘Votre Toast!’) at the Rockdale Opera event on November 20th to wild applause. Daniel is a co-patron of the company and performed with them when he started out in the 1980s – “its experience and that is the best training”. This performance provided a taster of what we are going to see and hear on Cockatoo Island. My wife – who attended the Rockdale event with my eldest daughter – proclaimed that he could “sing the pants off” the role.
Returning to a role eight years later represented no issues and he seized it with both hands. “At my age, I never thought I’d do it again; I thought I’d be way to old and fat!” Daniel is not fat by any stretch of the imagination but he jokes that he has the added advantage of distance in an outdoor setting.
He has sung a great deal of French repertoire in his career, many performances of Faust, Tales of Hoffmann, Samson et Dalilah filled his career although in recent years it has been filled more with Italian and German repertoire (as we have seen in Luisa Miller, Don Carlos, Lohengrin and will see in next year’s Brisbane Ring). And after Carmen he travels to Seattle to sing in another production of Samson et Dalilah as well As understudying the king in Lohengrin at the Met in New York and Fafner in the Ring with Atlanta Opera.
Outdoor opera, too, has not loomed large in Sumegi’s career but this outdoor production in Sydney does have a lovely parallel. “ “At the beginning, my career had outdoor opera very heavily in it because back in 1989, I made what I consider my international opera debut at home”.” So, a thirty-three-year return to where it all started (sort of). He continues “I was the understudy for Aida in the Sydney Stadium [now Accor Stadium in Sydney Olympic Park]” and he had to perform the role of the Ramfis in the final rain date to a packed audience. It was an international cast but the company engaged local understudies. The artist Sumegi understudied was Roberto Scandiuzzi (who has been seen in Australia recently in Rigoletto, Aida and the Verdi Requiem) and will return in 2023 for Aida and Rigoletto). International artist’s schedules being what they are, Scandiuzzi had to leave after the third performance date and the rain date meant Daniel went on. On the back of that, Sumegi was engaged by the same company to perform the role in Japan. Thus began a career in company with some of the greatest singers of the generation – his Amonasro in the Sydney Aida was Piero Cappuccilli and in Japan, the two Aidas were Grace Bumbry and Katia Ricciarelli, and the Ramfis was Paul Plishka, Amonasro Louis Quilico “this was little old me being thrown into the middle of all that. And it was amazing.”
I asked how Daniel approached the role of Escamillo on such a stage. Again, the factor of distance means that communicating the role requires different gestures and skills that you need in the intimacy of an opera house (even a very big one). In addition to his famous aria, Escamillo actually has two very beautiful duets – one with Carmen and the other with Don Jose (the fight duet), perhaps, my favourite piece in the whole opera. Both are (disappointingly short) but as Sumegi points out “its not about quantity its about quality” – the opera version of ‘there are no small roles.’ In a way the role of Escamillo is built for outdoor stadium operas because so much of the role is about showmanship. Daniel’s response to this was “well, in fact, without giving too much away, Escamillo, is a full-on rock star! He dresses like one, behaves like one, the crowd is there, we have a mosh-pit, the works.”
It is very different to go from a traditional production with tights and pantaloons to a rock star with a mosh pit. “It is different, but that’s okay – we don’t want everything to be the same or it would be boring.”
The cast has been rehearsing on the island itself this week and I asked if the industrial ruins might effect the way the performers sang. “I think it will. Given that the subject matter of the opera is all about prisoners, and soldiers, smugglers, etc, outcasts … and then there’s the performers as well!”
