RESTAVRACIA N: Interview with Elena Obraztsova

08 October 2014

Elena Vasilievna, you once said that the modern generation has been formatted with social media accounts. Do you notice changes in your audience as the years go by?

No, actually I don’t, despite the fact that everyone’s really very computerised, digitised, Internetised and what not, the people that come to my performances come for the music. They come to experience emotion, they want to escape the daily routine or remember what it was like to be young and contemplate about what awaits them in the future. They are normal people, good people, other kinds just don’t come to my concerts.

In ours is a time when a lot of information gets dumped onto people at a very fast pace and this has been affecting art too where more and more emphasis is being put on trying to shock the audience, the idea is more and more to try and set yourself apart at any costs and that’s prompting some people to go to all sorts of lengths, do you think that opera, even though it’s a kind of elitist art form, should offer its listeners new forms?

 Never! When we’re sitting in the audience it’s music we want to hear and listen to, not just the reading of notes that a monkey could be trained to do but real music that only emerges with the Lord’s blessing. Music has no use for new forms, all that’s needed is the skill and soul of the performer.  At the end of the day unnecessary innovations will only distract people. As for shocking the audience, the Bolshoi once put on some kind of a new production of Ruslan and Ludmila. People came with kids to see a Pushkin fairy tale but instead they saw some naked girls running around and some beds with couples rolling around in them. I was, naturally shocked by this and I refused to participate, even though I’d already spent some time learning my lines. I said if you were into naked girls you should go to a strip club and the Bolshoi Theatre was for looking at things that appeal to your soul and not your flesh.

You don’t like the words diva and star. At the same time for many generations of Russian opera lovers you are a living symbol of Russian opera. Do you feel responsible to your listeners?

Of course I do, especially as you get older, get out of shape when your body changes and you no longer really want anything. I’m grateful to Mirella Freni who spent two hours yelling at me in Vienna, saying, ‘sit at the piano and start over, note to note, with your voice you have got to sing!’ She gave me 25 more years of singing if it hadn’t been for her I would have retired from operate at 50, the way all female opera singers do. Leaving is always sad.  

But you also feel responsible when you’re young. First of all you have to maintain your level, secondly, you know that if you deliver a lousy performance you won’t get invited again. I’ve been giving it my 110% my whole life, even 200%, I would say but when the voice started ‘going to the bottom’ as this friend of mine put it, I had to use discretion and to only perform what I was capable of performing and refuse to do numbers you can’t do anymore and not just in opera but in chamber music as well so nobody will say, ‘Why is she doing this, she should have retired a long time ago, she’s like old!’

So there was also this sense of responsibility.

What’s the most important thing for an artiste: the opportunity to be someone else when playing your character or the opportunity to feel emotional feedback from the audience?

The two happen simultaneously. I’ve always been living my art, my every role. Then when you’re on stage there is always emotional exchange between the artiste and the listeners. When you’re on stage you’re giving it your everything and recharging from the audience. But despite this recharging once the performance is over you feel totally beat, that’s how much of yourself you have to give. My live is on stage and it’s not just words, for me it’s real.  

Thank you very much for the interview we wish you every success in the future.

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