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A strained voice caused Ben Heppner to cancel his January Vancouver appearance, but the in-demand, Grammy-award winning Heldentenor has rescheduled and performs April 27 at UBC's Chan Centre.
Heppner a rare opera commodity
By Robert Jordan
As FAR AS THE OPERA WORLD IS con cerned, there's just not enough Ben Heppn er to go around. That's because he sharply limits his en gagements-partly for his vocal health and partly to be with his family at their Toronto home. And Heppner's still finding out just how much his clarion tenor voice can sus tain as his cancelled tour last January demonstrated. The official word was laryngitis but lin gering suspicions that Heppner's voice was showing signs of strain seemed to be con firmed when his voice gave out mid-concert in Toronto, early in the tour. He never made it to Vancouver, but after a few months of rest for his voice, he's on his way. Always re membering his B.C. roots, he has squeezed a Vancouver appearance into a new and truncated tour so the home crowd will hear him after all-on Saturday, April 27 at UBC's Chan Centre. UBC is familiar turf to Heppner. After obtaining a bachelor's degree in music in the '70s, he had his sights set higher than a teaching career. He enrolled in the Opera Division at the University of Toronto and sputtered through the '80s in pursuit of work. In 1988 , he gave the solo career one last go and, against all his expectations, won the Birgit Nilsson prize in New York's Met ropolitan Opera Auditions. That catapulted him to opera stardom. vVhy is Heppner in such huge demand? Because he's a Heldentenor, a voice the mu-
sic dictionary tells us is "a tenor voice of great brilliance and volume, well suited for operatic parts of the hero." Real Heiden tenors are scarce and a category in which Heppner still professes some reluctance to be pigeonholed, probably because he knows he's a lot more versatile than that. The world's opera houses and concert halls agree and are clamouring for him. So are recording studios and, even when recording contracts for classical musicians are as scarce as camel feathers, Heppner signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon, perhaps the world's top clas sical label. "I consider it a real honour to be chosen by the 'yellow label' which has an exceed ingly good reputation that is still intact," says the unassuming Heppner from his Toronto home. "Many record companies are going to the crossover format, but Deutsche Grammophon is still making its niche in serious classical music. And I like that-they' re sticking with what they do well." Heppner's exclusivity clause refers only to solo recordings. He can record opera for anyone. In fact, his most recent opera recording-Hector Berlioz's colossal Les Troyens for LSO Live, the London Sympho ny Orchestra's house label-won a double Grammy Award, for best opera recording and album of the year. And Heppner fol lowed it with a Juno Award for his first solo outing for DG. Airs Franfais is a disc of arias from Romantic Ftench operas with the London Symphony conducted by Myung-
Whun Chung. Few would begrudge Hepp ner· this win: both his singing and the recorded sound are absolutely spectacular. Heppner's original Chan Centre pro gram, a rather weighty affair with several in tense but gloomy Nordic art songs, isn't go ing to happen. "I wasn't feeling it was ready to put before the public yet," Heppner con fesses. "I' m not the 'serious artist' so I de cided I would do some more opera and then things that I knew already. You see, I want to have a good time out there, too, and ifthe music I'm singing doesn't have a kind o(a gracious, communicative value, it wears me down." Neither will Heppner sing any of those melodious but muscular arias from Airs Franfais at the Chan Centre. Instead, pianist John Hess will accompany him in Robert Schumann's romantic ode to love, the "Liederkreis," Op. 39 . "It's a beautiful song cycle. That's what 'Liederkreis' means-simply 'song cycle/" says Heppner. "We're not going to hear big, stentorian high notes, because it's Schu mann and because they are beautiful, gentle love songs." The program will also include some of Henri Duparc's exquisite quasi-im pressionistic songs and a trio of melodious favourites by Paulo Tosti. Schumann's lyrical songs, with their nightingales and moonbeams, are a long way from the Heldentenor repertoire for which Heppner is so renowned. But then, for a guy who loves to sing the schmaltzy "You are my heart's delight" as an encore, perhaps it's not so far after all.
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