Elīna Garanča sings the praises of Riccardo Muti

Mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča is riding high.

The Latvian-born singer regularly appears at the world’s top opera houses, such as New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the Berlin State Opera, and considers the famed Vienna State Opera, where she has sung more than 160 performances since 2003, to be her home company.

“For 2½ years, I was in the [opera] ensemble [as a regular soloist], and then we stayed on and lived in Vienna for nearly eight years,” she said from California, where she was presenting a recital. “So as they say in German, that is my Stammhaus, because I started there with the very small part of Lola [in Cavalleria rusticana] and have gone up to Wagner’s Parsifal. So that theater has seen the majority of my roles that I have done. I love Vienna, and I have always felt at home there.”

To her list of top venues, she will add Orchestra Hall when she joins the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for subscription concerts March 31 and April 1 and 5, and the annual Symphony Ball on April 2.

The performances will mark a reunion with Riccardo Muti, with whom she has done several concerts elsewhere and collaborated on a Vienna State Opera production of The Marriage of Figaro, which she regards as a career high point. “In the moment that the music takes over, he does everything so that the singer has every possible freedom for that performance,” she said. “I always felt he literally carried me in his arms.” 

Garanča went on to further praise Muti: “He has always been my guru, in the way that he accompanies. I love his way of looking at music.” She calls him one of the last conducting giants from a time when “maestro” meant experience, knowledge and an affinity for the voice. “Nowadays, it’s quite rare to have a conductor who actually understands the voice,” she said. “There are plenty who can conduct, but not all of them know how to breathe with a singer.”

For her CSO performances, Garanča will serve as soloist in Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, a set of five art songs based on poems by Friedrich Rückert. The work is included on “Live from Salzburg,” the latest of her more than dozen recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

“It’s quite rare to have a conductor who actually understands the voice. There are plenty who can conduct, but not all of them know how to breathe with a singer.”  — Elīna Garanča on Riccardo Muti

Although Garanča, was born into a musical family — her father was a choral conductor and her mother, a lieder singer — she turned to singing only as a “last resort” when she was 17 and other ideas for professional pursuits had fallen by the wayside. She wanted to be an actress but was not accepted to drama school. Other possibilities she ultimately rejected  were becoming a cultural attaché or even selling furniture.

“Since I was musically educated, from when I was 7 years old, and I was singing in my father’s choir, as a last final grasp at some kind of a future, I said, ‘Why I don’t try singing?’ And somehow it worked.”

After attending the Latvian Academy of Music and pursuing further studies in Austria and the United States, Garanča began her professional career at the Meiningen Court Theatre in Germany. She enjoyed several early successes, including making the finals of the Cardiff BBC Singer of the World Competition in 2001, which led to some important auditions. Her international breakthrough came in 2003, when she appeared in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito at the Salzburg Festival.

Little in her career, though, has gained her more attention than her 2010 appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in the title role of Carmen, which was seen worldwide via the Met’s “Live in HD” cinema simulcasts. She had done the role elsewhere, including Italy and Latvia, but none of those performances had the visibility of the Met production, which updated the Bizet opera to the 1930s and featured the company debut of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, now the Met’s music director.

“Garanča does not have the sort of big, smoldering voice that many opera buffs want in a Carmen,” wrote music critic Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times. “But she sings with rich sound, an unerring feel for the nuance and subtext of a phrase, and alluring sensuality. The clarity in her singing makes this Carmen seem intelligent and wily.”

Garanča believes that nearly every mezzo-soprano wants to take on the role of Carmen because of its dramatic challenges. As part of her research, she traveled through parts of Spain, visiting gypsy caves in Granada and attending a flamenco festival. “Carmen should be unpredictable,” she said. “You should not know from the first appearance how it is going to end. We know the story, but she all the time has to show new colors. She has to be funny, jealous, romantic, naïve and offended.”    

For about 10 years after her Met appearance in the role, Carmen was an important part of Garanča’s life. In all, she sang the role some 60 times in many of the world’s leading opera houses, but she has since moved on to other challenges. Recent role debuts at the Vienna State Opera include Kundry in a new production of Wagner’s Parsifal and La Principessa di Bouillon in Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur.

It was time to move on from Carmen because her voice has changed, and she sees the role differently as she has matured. “It’s hard for me to justify a character I don’t 100 percent believe in anymore,” she said. “This has always been why I have said goodbye to several parts. I believe also that the voice needs a certain development, and the characterization and physical appearance in certain roles just don’t go hand in hand anymore with what I am or what I want to present.”

Garanča’s performance schedule has largely returned to what it was before the COVID-19 shutdown, though there is lingering uncertainty about engagements because of the vagaries of the disease and quarantines. With two children who are 8 and 10 years old, she tries to be home as much as possible, but she also wants to pursue as many professional opportunities as well. It’s a question of striking the right balance, because she knows that voices wear with time and singing careers inevitably have expiration dates.   

“My time is now,” she said. “I’m 45 and I have, what, the next 10 years, and then that is about it. So I better push myself and do what I can do at the highest level as long as people want to hear me.”

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