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From
Divo: Great Tenors, Baritones and Basses Discuss Their Roles
by Helena Matheopoulos (1986):
Nicolai Ghiaurov on proper musical preparation:
“Those of my generation who still sing big roles at our age are only able to do so because we allowed ourselves time, a lot of time, before embarking on them in the first place. When I first went to study with Brambarov, for instance, we spent an entire year working on just one octave of the voice – just vocal exercises. Today, most teachers think their pupils can start working on interpretation straight away, before their voices are ready or adequately trained…But it never works in the long run, which is why nowadays so many careers tend to be short-lived.”
Ghiaurov on Herbert von Karajan conducting Boris Godunov, Salzburg 1965:
“I was surprised and impressed by Karajan’s emotional state at the end of those performances. After the death of Boris he was almost in a trance, especially at the premiere….Never, in my long career, have I seen a conductor as deeply moved and affected by the drama as he was. He had already amazed me at the end of the dress rehearsal, when he came up to me with tears in his eyes and kissed my hand.”
Ghiaurov on style and language in opera singing:
“[V]ocal emission and technique are one and the same regardless of what one is singing. What changes is the language, and what is normally described as ‘stylistic’ detail – like vocal colours, the lightening or darkening of sound – is a natural by-product of the language, the words and their correct pronunciation. What I think of as ‘style’ is the distillation of a people’s musical and cultural heritage. The land of his birth bestows certain national sensibilities on each composer and these are, in turn, reflected in his score and the language of his libretto…This is why my portrayals are based entirely on the musical score. I cannot go beyond, or outside, what the composer has written because I feel a character right from the opening orchestral bars. Boris, for example, is summed up in his entirety, in all his depth, in those somber themes and harmonies that precede his first entry. Similarly, those rapid, galloping orchestral bars that herald Mephistopheles’s first entry in Gounod’s Faust outline all the elegance and cavalier fashion with which this character is viewed, through French eyes. Both in the case of Boris and of Mephisto, those bars immediately suggest what lines your interpretation should take, as do the melancholy bars before Philip II’s aria ‘Ella giammai m’amo’ in Don Carlos.”
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