Mark Padmore: 'I don't want the life of a travelling opera singer'

Acclaimed tenor Mark Padmore is about to appear in his first major role in Britain. Rupert Christiansen finds out why it has taken so long.

Mark Padmore
A sensitive soul: Mark Padmore is about to appear in Billy Budd. Credit: Photo: Alamy

Mark Padmore springs a surprise when he casually reveals that singing Captain Vere in Britten’s Billy Budd at Glyndebourne this month will constitute “the first major operatic role that I’ve ever performed on stage in Britain.” Why has it taken him so long? Although he’s appeared in some smaller parts, largely in baroque works, and in dramatised oratorios (such as Jephtha for WNO and the Bach Passions at Glyndebourne and the Coliseum), it’s remarkable that he has managed to reach the age of 52 and the peak of a front-ranking international career as one of the world’s most cultivated and intelligent classical tenors without meeting this fundamental professional challenge.

It’s largely a matter of choice, he insists. He’s clearly a sensitive soul who takes life seriously, but he loves the theatre and has no inhibitions about acting; the problem is that he can’t find much repertory suited to his smallish high-lying voice. “I get some odd offers. Someone suggested I could try Loge in Das Rheingold, but I’m not persuaded. The senior Mozart roles like Tito and Idomeneo often come up too, but they have show-off coloratura in their arias that doesn’t come naturally to me.”“There’s more Britten that appeals to me - Aschenbach, perhaps the Male Chorus in the Rape of Lucretia, Peter Grimes - but I just don’t want the life of a travelling opera singer. My friends in the business tell me how difficult it is at a personal level, and I hate being away from home for long periods. I did Tom Rakewell in The Rake’s Progress in Brussels about three years ago, and it wasn’t an experience I’d like to repeat. ”

But Glyndebourne is near home (in Forest Row), and even before rehearsals have started, he has become deeply absorbed in the words and music of Edward Fairfax Vere, the Captain of a British man o’ war during the Napoleonic campaigns, obliged by naval law to condemn to death a beautiful young man technically guilty of murder whom he believes to be spiritually innocent.

One of Britten’s most repressed, conflicted and elusive characters, Vere is implicitly in love with Billy - or so Padmore believes, having read the overtly homosexual fiction by the opera’s librettist EM Forster. “Short stories such as Arthur Snatchfold or The Other Boat contain the same theme as Billy Budd - the idea of being saved by a knowledge of love, which is what I think Vere means in his final monologue when he says that he’s sighted a sail in the storm and seen where’s she bound for.

“Apart from its sheer length - in the second act you hardly stop, and the counting can be tricky - Vere isn’t a very difficult role to sing: it sits well in my voice. But it’s the intricacy of the musical thematicism and the moral complexity of the man and his dilemma that I find fascinating. I’m always looking for that sort of depth. I’m not moved at the thought of a beautiful voice: communicating words and meaning is what interests me.”

Padmore performing Britten's War Requiem at Coventry Cathedral.

One sadness attached to Padmore’s two-month sojourn at Glyndebourne is that the schedule will prevent him performing at the music festival based in north Cornwall at the Perpendicular collegiate church of St Endellion, whose beauty was famously hymned by John Betjeman. He’s been singing here most summers since he was a humble anonymous chorister in 1983, and, in the wake of the premature death of its founding father Richard Hickox, he recently became its Artistic Director. St Endellion isn’t like other music festivals - or rather it’s a throwback to an older kind of gathering which flourished before the Arts Council and the marketing men entered the picture. Nobody involved is paid anything and everyone is truly an amateur: music is made entirely for love here, and its uniquely collaborative atmosphere attracts a high calibre of performer, most of them personally invited by Padmore.

Alongside the fortnight of concerts and recitals, there is always a concert version of a major opera: this year it will be Carmen, conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth, with a stellar cast led by Hickox’s widow Pamela Helen Stephen, Peter Hoare, Rachel Nicholls and Roderick Williams. Previous years have seen Philip Langridge in Death in Venice and Susan Bullock and John Tomlinson in Die Walküre, as well as big “choral” operas such as The Midsummer Marriage, Tannhäuser and Fidelio.

Although the public is made very welcome and most concerts sell out, the festival is really more a treat for the musicians than for audiences - a chance for them to explore new repertory in a relaxed atmosphere where you rehearse in the morning, surf or swim in the afternoon, perform in the evening and make merry until the small hours.

Padmore doesn’t want critics at St Endellion (I got a filthy look from him when I unwittingly turned up a few years ago at his one and only bash through Peter Grimes). “It’s not about the finished, polished article,” he explains. “Everything is done a bit on the wing, it’s a chance for us to learn and try things out without pressure. If the press started reporting, it would all become more than it sets out to be.”

After the summer is over, Padmore has an autumn largely devoted to two cornerstones of his repertory, Bach and Britten. He is particularly enthusiastic about Peter Sellars’ staging of the St Matthew Passion, with Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic - a production which started in Salzburg, migrates to Berlin in October and should arrive in London next year.

St Matthew Passion

An emotional focus: Mark Padmore performing in St Matthew Passion at Glyndebourne in 2007.

Padmore has sung the Evangelist many times under many great Bach conductors, but he rates this version as one of the most important things he has ever done.

“Jesus stands apart, the chorus is dressed in black, everyone sings from memory and there is no set. The Evangelist becomes not just the narrator but the emotional focus, someone who is suffering the whole Passion himself. Not everything of Peter Sellars’ comes off, but here it all fell into place. It’s simple and wonderful, and I am in awe of the way Peter knew every single note and word of the score inside out.”

Padmore never tires of this music. “The physicist Niels Bohr once wrote that if you aren’t shocked by quantum theory, then you don’t understand it. I feel the same about Bach: it’s an endless journey of discovery.” That’s a phrase which could serve as Padmore’s motto, a man who takes his musical calling seriously, and currently he is relishing the challenge of setting out from the beginning of the road.

“I’m very fortunate in that some composers have started writing music specially for me: I gave the first performance of a song cycle by Birtwistle at Aldeburgh in June, and there’s another one by Ryan Wigglesworth on the stocks as well.

“New music isn’t likely to be very lucrative. You spend a lot of time learning a piece and you probably won’t perform it that often. But I’m exhilarated by the feeling of not knowing what I’m letting myself in for and the opportunity to come so close to the process of creation.”

The St Endellion Festival (01208 880298) runs until 9 August; Billy Budd opens at Glyndebourne (01273 815000) on 10 August