Don T Doubt This Thomas

Part of what’s right about opera today is Hampson, one of the best of a bumper crop of smart young singing actors, including Sweden’s Anne Sofie von Otter and Americans Renee Fleming and Dolora Zajick. He has a beautiful, lyric baritone voice, smooth and supple. It’s not a huge, dark instrument suitable for the meaty Verdi and Wagner roles, but he manipulates it, reduces or expands its size, with remarkable expressiveness. It’s particularly strong at the top of the register, where he can caress and float a phrase. At 6 feet 4, Hampson moves with the confidence, and sometimes the swagger, of an athlete. As Figaro in “The Barber of Seville” last month at the Metropolitan Opera, he sang a cadenza with a high C, a note many tenors fear. “It’s like doing a triple axel on the ice, " he says. “If you can, why not? I talked to people before I tried it, asking if it was in good taste. I don’t know if it had any validity, but it wasn’t tasteless. I have no problem with going to the tomb of Rossini and asking him permission.”

The 36-year-old grew up in Washington state and studied voice first with a nun, later with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Hampson now lives in Vienna with his Austrian fiancee, and though he is probably still better known in Europe, that is quickly changing. This season alone, he has appeared on three PBS specials. At the Met, he just completed a run of “Barber,” is currently playing the Count in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” and next month takes on, for the first time, the title role in Benjamin Britten’s “Billy Budd. " (The company is broadcasting all three operas.) His slew of new recordings includes an all-star “Figaro” (Deutsche Grammophon) and a stunning recital–Hampson is devoted to lieder-of German art songs by American composers (Teldec).

Hampson is an emotional man, passionate but cerebral, who talks about so much at such length that he’s not always easy to follow. If he’s sometimes arrogant, he’s also funny. “Part of the reason I take a vitamin supplement called Brain Food, " he says, “is that I thought Id come out smarter. “More than anything, he is curious-about music, Jugendstil, philosophy, alternative medicine. “He approaches everything with a wonderful spirit of discovery,” says mezzo Frederica von Stade, who often sings with him. And he loves to range outside the standard repertoire: he is coediting the critical edition of Mahler’s “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” and unearthing long-ignored American music.

The business of music-and it is increasingly a business-drives Hampson nuts. He has taken flak for his strong opinions on sets, historical perspective and updated classics, which he particularly dislikes. He recently did “apiece of shit ‘Don Giovanni’ in a Cadillac” just for the experience, grist for his mill. “I’m not condemning those directors,” he says. “I sympathize with them. They’re dealing with the body of a repertoire that’s about 150 or 200 years old. People are bored, but they don’t want to go into a new musical language.” But Hampson the critic is also a veteran sweet-talker. Part of his appeal is his obvious delight in singing. “I love all of it. If someone called me from Omaha and said,‘Could you sing a 45-minute recital and then talk to a class?‘I’d take my calendar out and try to find a date,” he says. “I’m having a ball. I’m like a kid in a candy store. But the trick is not to get hyperglycemic.”

title: “Don T Doubt This Thomas” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-16” author: “Ricardo Donald”

Part of what’s right about opera today is Hampson, one of the best of a bumper crop of smart young singing actors, including Sweden’s Anne Sofie von Otter and Americans Renee Fleming and Dolora Zajick. He has a beautiful, lyric baritone voice, smooth and supple. It’s not a huge, dark instrument suitable for the meaty Verdi and Wagner roles, but he manipulates it, reduces or expands its size, with remarkable expressiveness. It’s particularly strong at the top of the register, where he can caress and float a phrase. At 6 feet 4, Hampson moves with the confidence, and sometimes the swagger, of an athlete. As Figaro in “The Barber of Seville” last month at the Metropolitan Opera, he sang a cadenza with a high C, a note many tenors fear. “It’s like doing a triple axel on the ice, " he says. “If you can, why not? I talked to people before I tried it, asking if it was in good taste. I don’t know if it had any validity, but it wasn’t tasteless. I have no problem with going to the tomb of Rossini and asking him permission.”

The 36-year-old grew up in Washington state and studied voice first with a nun, later with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Hampson now lives in Vienna with his Austrian fiancee, and though he is probably still better known in Europe, that is quickly changing. This season alone, he has appeared on three PBS specials. At the Met, he just completed a run of “Barber,” is currently playing the Count in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” and next month takes on, for the first time, the title role in Benjamin Britten’s “Billy Budd. " (The company is broadcasting all three operas.) His slew of new recordings includes an all-star “Figaro” (Deutsche Grammophon) and a stunning recital–Hampson is devoted to lieder-of German art songs by American composers (Teldec).

Hampson is an emotional man, passionate but cerebral, who talks about so much at such length that he’s not always easy to follow. If he’s sometimes arrogant, he’s also funny. “Part of the reason I take a vitamin supplement called Brain Food, " he says, “is that I thought Id come out smarter. “More than anything, he is curious-about music, Jugendstil, philosophy, alternative medicine. “He approaches everything with a wonderful spirit of discovery,” says mezzo Frederica von Stade, who often sings with him. And he loves to range outside the standard repertoire: he is coediting the critical edition of Mahler’s “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” and unearthing long-ignored American music.

The business of music-and it is increasingly a business-drives Hampson nuts. He has taken flak for his strong opinions on sets, historical perspective and updated classics, which he particularly dislikes. He recently did “apiece of shit ‘Don Giovanni’ in a Cadillac” just for the experience, grist for his mill. “I’m not condemning those directors,” he says. “I sympathize with them. They’re dealing with the body of a repertoire that’s about 150 or 200 years old. People are bored, but they don’t want to go into a new musical language.” But Hampson the critic is also a veteran sweet-talker. Part of his appeal is his obvious delight in singing. “I love all of it. If someone called me from Omaha and said,‘Could you sing a 45-minute recital and then talk to a class?‘I’d take my calendar out and try to find a date,” he says. “I’m having a ball. I’m like a kid in a candy store. But the trick is not to get hyperglycemic.”