The Tenerife Auditorium program on Saturday (7.30 pm) an opera gala bearing the descriptive title of Nancy Fabiola and her guests. The proposal with which Opera of Tenerife say goodbye to 2022 will feature mezzo soprano Canary born in Venezuela Nancy Fabiola Herrera, which will offer a broad overview of what was and is his artistic career. For this, under the musical direction of José Miguel Pérez-Sierra, she will be accompanied by the Tenerife Symphony, sopranos Yolanda Auyanet and Eglise Gutiérrez, bass Rubén Amoretti, tenor Ramón Vargas, baritone José Carbó, bandoneonist and singer Leonel Gasso and the dancer María del Mar Moreno.
-This Saturday you go on stage at the Auditorio de Tenerife. How do you conceive this tribute?
“It’s a party. About friendship, about life, about music. It’s about summoning colleagues and friends I’ve made in my career to organize a party with beautiful music. There will be opera, zarzuela, tango, Broadway melodies and songs, genres that have had relevance in my life. It is an autobiographical journey, but also through emotions, accompanied by artists who come from different parts of the world”.
“The best way to approach classical music, like any other, is to hear it with the heart, not with the intellect”
-If it were possible, which other great voices, current or no longer with us, would you like to be by your side on Saturday too?
“In a world of dreams, I wish there was Teresa Berganza (1933-2022), who was an undisputed reference for me; or one mezzo soprano whom I greatly admire, like Regina Resnik (1922-2013), or Victoria de los Ángeles (soprano, 1923-2005), or Ettore Bastianini (baritone 1922-1967)… Of those of us who are lucky enough to still be with us, one of my mentors was Plácido Domingo”.
-The role of Carmen in Bizet’s opera is undoubtedly emblematic of his career. What do you find in it every time you bring it to life?
“Carmen is a timeless character. She symbolizes the struggle of women to be sure of themselves, to be independent, to have a voice, to feel good under their skin, to try not to give in to anything… Freedom: freedom of spirit and before life. Every time I play her, I love feeling and personalizing those values that she represents, being in touch with her sensuality and her practical way of seeing life, even if not everything about Carmen is wonderful. On the other hand, I don’t think she conceives love in a romantic way, it’s more earthly, passionate. There is more passion in her than romance. And this makes it very practical on many occasions. Carmen does not experience romantic love, but rather the alkaseltzer effect: as long as you feel the passion, you feel that you are in love; from the moment he sees that passion fade away, he loses interest. She nor she is a woman who is with several people at the same time. When she’s with someone, she’s with that person, and when she stops feeling passion, she’s done. It doesn’t make sense for her to be together.”
“I study each role a lot, to make it believable and to be able to convey to the audience what is happening to that character in the most honest way”
-How would you describe to a non-specialist audience the characteristics, possibilities and challenges of the ‘mezzo-soprano’ voice?
“All voices face challenges. The same thing with the tenor string, the bass string or the baritone string or the soprano string… And I think the challenge in that sense is neither greater nor less. But the challenges vary according to the style we sing. The requirements are more or less complex depending on the type of repertoire we make. However, something that all male and female singers have in common is the need to face a great deal of discipline. Constant work and recycling. The voice, being an instrument of our body, obeys many physiological changes. It’s like the mechanism of a car. As much as we have a Ferrari or a BMW, they too have to go to the workshop from time to time to stay in tune. The same happens in the case of singers: we have to technically work with someone to keep our machinery in good condition. That would be the greatest requirement, not so much taking into account the type of voice, but the characteristics we share in our work: discipline, together with the need for self and the will not to stop recycling”.
-Carmen, Maddalena in ‘Rigoletto’, Luisa Fernanda, Giuletta in ‘The Tales of Hoffmann’, Rosina in ‘El Barbero de Sevilla’… How do you approach the character you have to embody each time?
“Each character is a world. Many of those roles you mentioned I filled early in my career and as it evolved, I tackled others. In any case, when I have to play a role, I always look at his vocal characteristics, if they match what I have, if I can defend him well. Then, when I decide to play him, I have to do a psychological study of the character. I have to find out everything I can about him and the story he’s in. Also about the composer, when he created that work… All of that will influence how I will interpret that role, so I need to collect a lot of data to understand it and make it my own in a believable way. This process is very nice, a slow work where I need a lot of information, but at the same time it helps me build the psychological profile of the character I play. This also allows you to step into the skin of very different roles, which I’ve always loved. It’s not just about singing, but there also needs to be an acting work in line with what you sing, so that the character is very believable and you can convey to the audience, as honestly as possible, what is happening to that person in the story told on stage. It is, in short, an investigation, which includes body language and, above all, the deepening of feelings that are sometimes not the ones you usually manage, such as cruelty. It’s not easy: you have to connect with parts of your being that you don’t normally develop, but they are there. In the gamut of human emotions, we all have within us a potential killer and a potential saint. It depends on many things that some aspects or others are developed more. As an interpreter you have to appeal to that internal range and try to understand, for example, how you would feel if you had to kill someone, if a set of circumstances led you to do it”.
“Something common for every singer must be discipline, selfishness and never stop recycling”
-Among so many roles, which is your favorite and which one has asked you the most as a singer?
“Now I can think of three or four. Carmen, of course, was very important to me, she is one of my favorite characters … There is also a role that I really enjoyed playing, that of Romeo in The Capulets and the Montaguesby Bellini. It was very revealing, because there, when you play a male character, you have to do a lot of research and get in touch with your masculinity. Vocally it was a difficult task, but he is also a very beautiful character to sing. Likewise, in terms of acting, it was a challenge to play that guy, to change the way you walk, to move around the stage, to masculinize yourself. Another much loved role, since I was studying, because I love it vocally, and with which I made my debut two years ago, is Azucena de The Troubadourby Verdi. And one that I haven’t played yet, but I’m excited about, is Amneris, the Egyptian princess of helpalways by Verdi”.
-Suppose you are dealing with someone who has never listened to opera or zarzuela. How would you convince him to go to a theater or an auditorium to have this experience for the first time?
“I would tell him, right from the start, not to stop listening to any kind of music because he thinks he doesn’t understand it. To understand something, you must first feel it. I think the way to approach music is to hear it from the heart, not through the intellect. In the same way that I go to a concert by Alejandro Sanz or salsa or reggaeton and I don’t intellectualize it: I go because the music provokes me. And classical music should be approached like this. An opera voice, a zarzuela, is not a miked voice, it has enormous power because it has been trained to go beyond the sound of an orchestra. That in itself is a different experience. I always tell people to go to a classical music concert, an opera, before deciding whether they like it or not. Also, it’s very different to hear it on a tape, on television, than to do it live and hear that avalanche of sound live. It’s like going to a musical, but crazy and without microphones. I also believe that it is important for fathers and mothers to take their children to musical events from an early age, because this is how they develop a taste, a sensitivity”.
