Interview with Corinne Winters, double Iphigénie at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (News article)

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Corinne Winters © Fabrizio Sansoni

Soprano Corinne Winters' career sounds like a series of challenges, the latest of which is a Gluck double bill at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2024, where she will sing the title role in both Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride on the same night with maestra Emmanuelle Haïm and director Dmitri Tcherniakov. After a glorious debut as Katja Kabanova at the Salzburg Festival in 2022, she took over the Janáček character in Geneva, Brno, Stuttgart and Lyon, a list of opera houses that should not end soon, as the Czech repertoire, especially Janáček and now Dvořák, is part of her adventurous road through the lyrical world. Let's not forget Puccini, the composer who has been one of the pillars of her career - La rondine, Turandot, Il trittico, La bohème and, finally, Madama Butterfly - along with a few others to which she has remained faithful while moving on to new melodic worlds. We asked her what fuels her curiosity and what she feels when she performs.

You're making your Gluck debut with no previous experience of Baroque repertoire and no particular desire to continue singing Mozart. Why did both Iphigénie interest you?

« Maybe it’s different from what I’m known for, but at a certain point in an artist life’s turning point it’s good to explore new things and no better opportunity than this crazy double bill marathon! »

Corinne Winters: The music is unique. As Emmanuelle Haïm says, Aulide is very much in the baroque style, and Tauride is almost towards Beethoven and pre-romantic style, even though they were only written five years apart. I like these composers, such as Janáček, Berlioz, Puccini and Strauss, who bridge the gap between styles. I really love Gluck’s ingenious composing which is so different than anyone else’s, and also, the fact that it’s so based on text, compared to baroque operas that were much more about coloratura lines and melodies. There are beautiful musical lines, but it is more about the syllables of the text coming through so that they could be understood. The more I studied it the more I fell in love with it. If the music gets too high we lose the text so mostly everything he wrote for Iphigénie is on the staff.

So yes, it’s new for me, and I think as artists we have to be evolving. Maybe it’s different from what I’m known for, but at a certain point in an artist life’s turning point it’s good to explore new things and no better opportunity than this crazy double bill marathon!

Do you think that Gluck’s music can “unlock” some other repertoire that you haven't sung before?

Yes, I would love to sing Médée in the future. Cherubini, who must have been influenced by Gluck, is another one that bridged the gap between earlier music and romantic music. I don’t sing Fidelio or really much Beethoven but I’m very interested in his instrumental music. Understanding this for future roles but mostly musically in general is making me a better musician and helping me understand these transitions in music more deeply because in general the roles I do are from a short period – about 1880 until 1950 or even 1925 – and hopefully some other roles will open up too.

About Iphigénie, what is it like to understand the whole psychology of a heroin in a one night’s double bill, through two ages of a woman?

« Aulide shows Iphigénie with some joie and the way I move needs to be so youthful and alive. In Tauride, there is more heaviness and almost suicidal grief. We’re taking people on a real journey! »

We’re honouring the gap between Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride but we’re playing like it’s even more time than fifteen years to show how much she’s been through. She’s taken away from everyone she knows, her beloved Achille is dead and she has violent premonitions that end up being true. In our production, set in modern times, we’re playing up the post-traumatic stress of the people in Tauride who have been through the Trojan War.

In Aulide, Iphigénie wishes she were a son more than a daughter because she’s the oldest and she’s a daddy’s girl who wants to please him. Her decisions in the first opera are more about the duty of doing the right thing and finding who she is. Even though in Tauride she’s probably in her forties, we’re playing it like she’s lived much more than that. When we started staging I saw how everything built on itself leading up to Tauride. Aulide shows Iphigénie with some joie and the way I move needs to be so youthful and alive. In Tauride, there is more heaviness and almost suicidal grief. We’re taking people on a real journey!

This is your second collaboration with Dmitri Tcherniakov, after Pelléas et Mélisande. Does his vision require you to delve very deeply into the psychology of the character?

Absolutely. Before every scene we sit down with him and go through the text to discuss the subtext through his lens of the production. To him, it’s not so important exactly what we’re saying compared to the deeper layer. If we take these old libretti literally sometimes they can be too basic for today’s complicated world, although the piece is still relevant and amazing at its core. What I love so much about him is that he gets to the heart and meaning of the piece, and then puts in a context that makes sense now, so it doesn’t look cheesy or outdated, but it remains completely true to the piece. We work a lot on physicality, so that none of it looks artificial. Everything is actually calculated in a good way, even down to little glances and hand gestures, without taking the emotion out of it. He knows exactly what he wants. We have to intentionally make it specific and subtle until it looks spontaneous to the public. He’s one of my absolute favourite directors so I’m happy to be creating this with him.

If everything is "storyboarded", is there still room for freedom on your part?

« It takes time to build up a character so I’m really glad we have this long process of stage rehearsals. »

Of course there’s room for spontaneity, especially in the later rehearsals, when we have the framework set, because we fully absorb the psychology of the characters, the way they move and think, so when we’re acting spontaneously it’s acting as the character. Earlier in the process it’s easy to just do something spontaneous but it’s not really true to the characters, it’s more something we would do as persons. In our production of Aulide Achille is a narcissist and a psychopath, it makes a total sense with the libretto, but my co-star Alasdair Kent is such a sweetheart in real life so anything he does instinctively is not going to be in the character. It takes time to build up a character so I’m really glad we have this long process of stage rehearsals.

The sacrifice to the gods is the core element of Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride. What’s the main sacrifice you have to face as a singer?

The biggest sacrifice is probably a sense of normalcy, living any kind of normal life. I’m moving to Paris at the end of the year, but right now I’ve been living out of the suitcase since the lockdowns ended in 2021. Mainly because of coming out of the pandemic I wanted to work as much as possible so I sold my house and I’ve been just being a nomad from one gig to the next. It’s beautiful for a while but then you realize you spend most of your time alone by travelling ten or eleven months a year. I have literally no home except when I visit family. The freelance musician life gives up that sense of having a home and a bed you go back to every night, and easy family life, and this kind of comfort which comes along with a “normal job”. Still, I wouldn’t trade this way of sharing with so many diverse people while I’m still young enough to be able to handle it.

How did your love story with the Eastern Europe repertoire begin?

« It took me a while to understand Janáček because the music is very complex but the characters are like nothing else. »

About ten years ago, I did ancestry dot com test which told me I’m 50% Ukrainian. At that point I was already really interested in the Russian repertoire but it made more sense when I found out that I had Slavic blood! The Czech repertoire found me through the Polish repertoire – Moniuszko’s Halka, that I sang at Theater an der Wien with Piotr Beczała. It took me a while to understand Janáček because the music is very complex but the characters are like nothing else. The theatre is so deep and truthful, it speaks to my soul in a very unique way. The Katja Kabanova experience in Salzburg in 2022 was a bigger success than I’d have ever imagined and I decided to fully commit to being a master of this repertoire, so I’ve been learning Czech for the past two years, working on the style and delivery of the language. I’ve sung my first Rusalka twice this season (at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège and the Wiener Staatsoper), I’ve done concert works and I have many more exciting projects in all Slavic languages but specifically Czech – including Emilia Marty in The Makropulos Affair. I couldn’t be happier that this is my niche!

Butterfly has become one of your signature roles. What makes a dream role become a signature role?

« A dream role can just be any role I love and I’m dying to sing, but the core piece that makes a signature role is how the public responds to your interpretation of that role. »

A dream role can just be any role I love and I’m dying to sing, but the core piece that makes a signature role is how the public responds to your interpretation of that role. Butterfly was always my mount Everest. Act II of Butterfly is more singing than all of Katja Kabanova, it’s such an intense role, the emotions are gut-wrenching, you add that on top of the amount of difficult singing, thick orchestration and acting . She’s such a complex character, I hate when you just play her as a sweet young girl. I always wanted to sing her but I didn’t feel ready for many years. Finally, the opportunity came out from Teatro dell’Opera di Roma right after the pandemic. It was my first opera back after eighteen months off the stage. I had time to really get the role in my body and my voice, and I was nervous about doing it in Italy, but it was huge success.

Violetta, who you sang a lot in your early career, is so impregnated in you that you have a camellia tattooed on your right shoulder. How far can a role inspire a singer’s personal life?

« I want to keep honouring the depth of these characters, and that’s initially why I got the camellia tattoo: Violetta was my first character that was not one-dimensional »

Katja Kabanova and Jenůfa mirror so much real life that they just get into your bones in beautiful darkness. Katja kills herself because she is a free spirit caged by the society, which still happens in some very religious societies, in a dogmatic way. With Katja I learned about not taking for granted the freedom of being different. Katja sees the world in colour and the rest of the people see it in black and white, and I really relate to that as an artist.

With Jenůfa I learned about enduring difficult things with grace. The final scene shows the most extreme goodness and darkness in humanity, as Jenůfa forgives her adopted mother for killing her baby. It’s like God entered her in that moment to help her make that choice. Sometimes, after such intense emotions on stage, the only thing I want is just have a glass of wine and shut off, but I want to keep honouring the depth of these characters, and that’s initially why I got the camellia tattoo: Violetta was my first character that was not one-dimensional. Luckily, now, I only play amazing women because I have more choice.

What are your upcoming projects?

After Janáček‘s Glagolitic Mass this summer in London and Prague, I reprise Iphigénie at the Greek National Opera, which is a coproducer. It’s going to be surreal to sing it in Athens! Then I have my first Manon Lescaut, in concert, in Washington DC. I go back to the Royal Opera House for Jenůfa, for the Claus Guth production, then to Teatro dell’Opera di Roma for Puccini’s Suor Angelica, before a new production of Katja Kabanova in Munich with Krzysztof Warlikowski. I’ve never worked with him but I’ve seen his work, and I’m really excited. After the iconic Zeffirelli La bohème at the Metropolitan Opera, I finish the season with a gala concert of Slavic scenes in Czech Republic, and then back to Rome for a new production of La traviata in Caracalla.