Christian Van Horn confesses he’s ‘always rooted for the bad guys’

Bad guys have more fun. That’s why bass-baritone Christian Van Horn loves playing villains. 

Luckily for him, opera composers tend to write villainous roles for low voices. And he’s singing another villain, this time, the wife killer at the center of Bela Bartók’s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle, which the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, under Esa-Pekka Salonen, will perform Feb. 6-8. 

“I’ve always rooted for the bad guys. It made sense to me [that composers would gravitate toward bass-baritones because] the power of the low voice is going to sound more evil than others,” said Van Horn, an alumnus of Lyric’s Ryan Opera Center, in an interview with San Francisco Classical Voice. "And of course, it’s more fun, absolutely. Think about the amount of fun I’m having onstage. Is a priest having fun? A king, maybe, but it’s short-lived. [As a villain], you’re constantly enjoying what you’re doing. The boos? If there are boos, I did my job.

And he’s doing that job extremely well. His website home page prominently displays a quote from the New York Times that references his rogue’s gallery of roles: “Long may he reign in hell.”

Among his repertoire of reprobates are Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, the title roles of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Boito’s Mefistofele, Mephistopheles in Gonoud’s Faust and the four villains of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, which he sang this fall at the Metropolitan Opera.

When he’s not breaking bad, Van Horn works on building his digital presence. During the pandemic, he started a podcast. On Instagram, he recently announced his new website, christianvanhorn.com, "where you can dive deeper into my stage life. From upcoming engagements to the latest episodes of the CVH Podcast, it’s all here waiting for you."

He launched his podcast because “I felt like I needed to use my voice [during the COVID-19 hiatus] to connect with an audience,” he told San Francisco Classical Voice. “I missed performing, so I turned on the mikes and started speaking. It’s been well-received. We captured a bit of [the opera] audience and [created] a little area for community. Over the past four years, I’ve done nearly 265 episodes. It’s been wonderful. The listenership grows and grows and grows. I’ve been watching it get popular. Each episode takes me an hour and 15 minutes from beginning to end.”

He’s also involved in every stage of production. “I’ll do all of the business for now [until] it becomes bigger than I can manage. I learned on the road. I figured out what needed to be done and did it. It was easier than I expected. I have a hard time stopping anything — that’s a characteristic of mine. To make it to the highest levels of the classical world, there are some fairly specific [traits we share as singers]. We’re all crazy, and we’re all hard workers. I only hope I know when to stop before somebody has to tell me to stop.”