Following his concert as part of the InClassica International Music Festival in September, acclaimed Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja speaks to Lara Zammit about his journey into opera and its universal significance as a window into the human condition.

Joseph Calleja’s journey into opera spans over 20 years of development, having made his operatic debut as Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth at the Astra Theatre in Gozo at the age of 19.

Speaking to Times of Malta about the element he has devoted most time to honing as part of his operatic craft, Calleja noted that it does not all boil down to voice at the end of the day.

“I’m afraid voice is only one of the mechanisms which is required. Next year is the 25th anniversary of the start of my career. At the moment, there aren’t many singers who are 43 who can say that. The requirements are patience, first of all, to have the humility to absorb constructive criticism.

“My teacher Paul Asciak used to practically live with me as a teenager. I was studying under a teacher 55 years my senior. I loved him like a grandfather and I miss him every day.

“People think that when you have a voice and study opera, it’s just a matter of going onstage and singing, but it isn’t. There are four or five years of study before you even approach an audition and then you have 10 to 12 years to hone this instrument.

“Your instrument is in you, so it has to cope with thousands of different scenarios – acid reflux, speaking too much, the air is not humid enough – and it’s very technically difficult to produce day after day word-class performances which people expect throughout the years,” he said.

“Stage fright for me is not being scared of the public – it is the fear of not being able to give what the public expects of me, not to fulfil the expectations of the audience due to the humanity and the fragility of the human voice,” he added.

Calleja went on to express that every performance has its story, and every part of the journey is akin to a rock in a very wide river which one must hop onto to hopefully arrive at the end.

One of the marks of opera is seeming extravagance and excess, whether vocal or emotional. It involves an outpouring of all the tribulations of the human condition, laid bare on the stage in glaring totality – there’s no hiding anything in opera. Reacting to this supposition, Calleja went on to qualify what is meant by the excessive nature of opera. 

“Opera is the most complete artform because you have everything – you have ballet in many operas, you have scenography, theatre direction, acting, singing – it encompasses all the artforms and thus is the ultimate artform as it is the most difficult. In that way it is excessive, but opera is also primeval. 

“The vocal folds were designed to keep in air and protect our respiratory system. Many animals have vocal folds, but so far, none of them sing opera.

“Humans have developed these to not only make sounds but also to talk and, by extension, to sing opera. But the vocal folds were not designed to sing opera.

“Opera is visceral. If I sing opera and someone is not prepared to hear it, especially when it’s live without a microphone, people get goosebumps. This happened lately in Malta before a German film crew. I could see the cameramen all getting goosebumps witnessing me sing a cappella. And these are people who would usually not go to the opera. There’s something that really hits you in opera and it conveys an emotion that everyone can relate to.

“We’ve all had our heart broken, or lost someone special, and opera is about emotions which are so complex, so intrinsic to human nature that you can’t help but succumb to it.”   

Calleja went on to describe that an opera that embodies the power of this artform is the opera Tosca by Puccini.

“I call Puccini the first film composer because his operas are practically movies. In Verdi or Bellini, or even Mozart, you can cut out a piece and it would still make sense, but you can’t do that with Puccini – if you take out one page it’s like removing 10 minutes from a movie: you’ve lost everything.

Opera is visceral

“The genius is that you have an opera about two-and-a-half hours long in which you’re immediately immersed from the start. It’s a story of love and jealousy, a love triangle, political scenarios, sacrifice, regret… everything is there. You have the whole gamut of human emotions all displayed there.”         

A myth that has come to hijack people’s impression of opera is that it can come across as rather inaccessible to uninitiated audiences. Asked how he would suggest we dispel these myths disheartening people from approaching opera, Calleja claimed it all boils down to choosing whether or not we want to experience something special.

“Opera nowadays is deemed by some to be inaccessible only because it is not a two-minute thing. We’re living in the age of instant gratification, Instagram stories, swiping in and out… the limit of the stories is I think 15 seconds – the average attention span.

“I like to liken opera to wine drinking since there are so many parallels – it’s an art, a vocation and there’s technique involved, third party intervention and natural intervention, and whenever you have a great wine, like when you have a great opera, it’s a little miracle. So no, opera isn’t inaccessible.

“People say, for example, that the prices are too high, but try have a meal at a nice restaurant anywhere in Malta today – you won’t spend anything less than €80 per person.

“It depends on what your priorities are – do you want to see something special or do you just want to be a fast entertainment consumer?

“Even I spend 10 minutes scrolling through Instagram from time to time, but there’s no denying it – that’s 10 minutes wasted.

“Can opera compete with instant gratification? No, it can’t, because it requires a minimum of preparation and usually that entails clearing your head out so you can appreciate the beauty.

“Should you like every opera? Hell, no. Not even I like every opera, just as I don’t like every wine bottle. But is there an opera for everyone? Absolutely.

“Opera is ultimately about emotion. Take Verdi’s Requiem, play the Dies irae of the chorus… If you tell me you can listen to the Dies irae and not feel your whole body rising like this is something otherworldly, then I think you’re dead!”

Calleja went on to reference the theory purported by some in scientific and philosophical circles that the world in which we live is actually a simulation, similar to the Matrix. Rather, Calleja finds that music is the answer to this hypothesis.

“I think that classical music is evidence that we’re not living a simulation, because what simulation could allow for the genius of Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Puccini… Can you imagine a world without music? Opera is the point of departure for much of that music,” he concluded.