In conversation with Gregory Kunde: "When you enjoy what you do on stage, life is perfect."

06. Mai 2025

Rubrik Interviews

©Sim Cannety Clarke

US-American tenor Gregory Kunde is one of the most fascinating tenors in the world. With his vocal shine, crystal clear top registers and an energy he run rings round the younger generation of singers easily, the 71 year old takes on roles, which are by standards rather performed at an earlier stage of an opera singer´s career.

Not so with Gregory Kunde, who proves the opera business wrong and showcases how vital, passionate, enthusiastic and in- depth his interpretations of Calaf and Dick Johnson can turn out to be, when approached with such experience and passionate drive. Living life and loving his profession to the fullest, enjoying each day on stage with his colleagues makes Gregory Kunde a very down- to-earth and charismatic artist.

With another passion project on its way in the future, the tenor will be committing himself to coaching young talents of the Opera Studio at the Hamburg State Opera. But on top of it all, Gregory Kunde is also a versatile artist, crossing borders between classical music and swing classics, which he swingfully demonstrates on his new album “Then and Now”.

Operaversum: Dear Gregory, your career turned on the right path with every step you took from the early Belcanto roles to the more dramatic repertoire. Did you plan to have it worked out so well?

And how did your voice manage the switch from Belcanto to the dramatic genre?

Gregory Kunde: I think, I would even go a little further back in my career, as I did not start out in the Belcanto repertory right away. When my career in the United States of America began in the late 70s, early 80s, the Belcanto did not yet exist there.

Of course, certain repertoire like “L´elisir d´amore” was known hereabouts because of Luciano Pavarotti. But as for my initial repertory, I started off with the standard operas such as La Traviata, Rigoletto, La Bohème and Madama Butterfly, which I sang with a rather small voice at that point in time. I really should have been singing Belcanto instead, but it just did not exist in the U.S.

So, when I finally came across the Belcanto repertory, it became the foundation of my initial career, first with lighter roles as my voice was brighter, followed by the heavier roles in the late 90s. And that was as far as I could imagine to be going. So, at that point I was not even giving it a serious thought to sing Verismo or Verdi operas.

The only reason I changed my repertoire in 2008 was due to the fact that Belcanto felt no longer comfortable for me, which led me to the decision to either stop singing, teach or as my Italian manager suggested, try out some of the early Verdi roles.

As much as I considered this a crazy idea, I eventually got convinced to at least give those roles a try and to my surprise when I did, it worked out successfully, as I did not have to learn a new technique and could simply continue with my voice that eventually developed a bigger sound.

Operaversum: So how does your voice develop a bigger sound then?

Gregory Kunde: Well, that does not happen all of a sudden. It took around 10 years. As your voice continues to grow, at the same time your muscles continue to expand and thus your voice gets bigger. It is a natural proess. For example if you look back into Joan Sutherlands career, the same thing happened to her.

In the first place she sang very light roles and later on developed into those roles which required a much bigger voice.

Operaversum: And does the voice also darken with age, as is the case with a good wine?

Gregory Kunde: That is exactly what it is, Nicole! And I was fortunate to have such a good teacher in Alfredo Kraus who told me that my voice would continually expand and settle by the the age of 50. Back then I was 25, racking my brain over what exactly I would do with my voice until reaching my 50s.

But the good advice I got, was to sing appropriate repertoire until then, not pushing my voice in one or the other direction. Knowing what one can do with one's voice is important and helped me through my artistic development. When in 2007 I turned 53 and had to sing “I Puritani” at the Met Opera in New York, I could already feel that my voice had become much heavier.

Operaversum: So does this imply you could not reach the high notes any longer?

©Gregory Kunde

Gregory Kunde: Of course I could reach the high notes, but it was uncomfortable controlling the top registers. My sound had become so big for a role that was supposed to be sung in a much lighter way. And that was the turning point, as I understood that I had to change my repertory.

Operaversum: But does it really mean the voice of an opera singer settles for good in its 50s and stays unaltered. Or can it still develop into becoming even darker as in timbre?

Gregory Kunde: It actually depends on what you do with it. As in my case I came across the lighter Verdi and the heavier Belcanto repertory such as Norma, Guillaume Tell and Les Huguenots and picked a few of the baritenor roles. So, I developed into singing some Rossini operas, such as Otello which was more dramatic, but still required the ability to sing coloraturas.

And from those roles I worked my way into some of the lighter Verdi roles, like " Les vêpres siciliennes”. So for the last 14 years I have been successfully shifting my repertory to the heavier Verdi, Puccini and Giordano operas, including Verismo, whilst always being asked to sing Wagner as well, which I declined to do.

Operaversum: Why is that?

Gregory Kunde: Wagner is not a fit for my voice type, as the top registers are still the most important part of my voice and not so much the lower middle range. It is not that I struggle with the latter, but the lower middle range is certainly not the best part of my voice.

Operaversum: Meaning that Wagner is not where your voice comfortable sits?

Gregory Kunde: You could say so, as Wagner is similar to Mozart. As much as concerns the voice, Mozart´s repertory is written for the middle range and thus stays very in the middle. That is also the reason why I always tell young tenors that they should not too much concentrate on Mozart at the very beginning of their studies, as you do not stretch the vocal chords to fully use the top registers.

And if as a tenor of today, you lack a top C or D, you are decisively limiting your repertory. And so many young tenors do not have a lot of high notes, when for example you have to be able to sing a top C in "La Fille du Regiment". So, I always recommend to wait on Mozart and do Belcanto first, because then it is getting much more comfortable to sing Mozart.

As for me singing Verdi as a mature tenor has become easier, as during the years I have gained much more experience and love acting the roles as well. Each role I can interpret with so much depth, expanding the character, taking the backstory into consideration as well.

Operaversum: You are certainly a phenomenon, having started to sing Otello in your late 50s and taking on new roles still today. What is your drive, what drives you on? Or is your career just developing in a natural way?

Gregory Kunde: Partially it is developing in a natural way, but on the other hand I love discovering new things as well and diving deeper into the main role characters of those operas, I have already touched on in my earlier years, as in the case of "La Fanciulla del West" or Otello, where I had already sung Cassio. There are many more operas, in which I had been involved in smaller roles.

So for all these operas where I started off with the smaller characters and having developed into the main characters at a later stage in my career has been an incredible feeling.

Operaversum: And in that respect you keep on broadening your knowledge. Astonishingly you still look so vital, and your voice sounds incredibly fresh and energetic. How do you do that?

Gregory Kunde: Well, this is God. I am a believer, and I have a lot of faith in my relationship with God. I always pray and hope that I can continue this path as an artist. Every time before I go out on stage my wife and I say a prayer, no matter if she is with me or just on the phone.

We say a prayer to help me through the performance, which is very important to me. The other thing is that I am a cancer survivor. I survived it when I was 40 years old. So that illness changed all our family´s lives. Thank God, I fully recovered. Now 30 years later I am still going and still singing. And I have no explanation for that miracle.

Operaversum: That might explain why to me you sound as if you would be giving your entire soul, giving everything to the audience, as if it was your last day on stage!

©Gregory Kunde

Gregory Kunde: Thank you! I think we all should live our lives that way, since it is not up to us how long we wil be linving. Enjoying life is utmost important to me. Therefore I never hold anything back. When you enjoy what you do, life is perfect.

Of course, travelling around the world all the time, being away from home and my family, living in different places, is not always easy. I live a nomad life. So when I am on stage, I really do enjoy being with my colleagues, building a team- spirit, which is so important. Only being there for yourself will definitely not work out.

Operaversum: I can imagine how important it must be to have this interaction with your colleagues, which probably also affects your overall performance on stage. The chemistry between people can influence a lot, I guess?

Gregory Kunde: Exactly! And also, the audience recognizes when you do have a chemistry up there on stage. It is really important to get to know the dynamics on stage and not just come along as for example Dick Johnson and just do your thing and go home.

As an opera singer you are part of a team, you are dependent on the chorus, the orchestra, basically everybody who is involved in making a stage production work. So, you as an artist have to be supportive of the "stage crew". Otherwise, they will certainly not support you back, which may have a negative impact on the

performing dynamics on stage.

Operaversum: I am very enthusiastic about your Otello performance back at the Royal Opera House in London, as I love this dark and torn character very much.

I am wondering how do you tackle this role without harming your voice?

Gregory Kunde: What you really need to think about when playing Otello is how to interpret his character and not concentrating too much on how to sing the role. This is also what I try to teach other singers that learning how to sing a role happens during rehearsals in the practice room, because if you know how to sing your role, the technique will carry you along.

So in that sense, since I love acting Otello, my interpretation of that character is always based on knowing what that guy is going through in life, without harming the voice. There are only two scenes in the entire opera where Otello really loses his temper, one is with Jago, the other one with Desdemona.

But then Verdi has written both scenes so perfectly from an opera singers' perspective that you can clearly hear Otello lose his temper in the music score.

So I always sing the role exactly how Verdi wrote it, which means that there are certain moments where you have to become emotional, whereas in other situations you need to stay calm. Coming from the Belcanto also helped me to produce these beautiful lines during the love duet with Desdemona.

It is the only scene which showcases that Otello has a soft side to his character and that he is truly in love with his wife. On the other hand he is extreme, terribly convinced that he is entitled to murder Desdemona as prescribed by his cultural background. So getting into this frenzy of a character requires a high command of self-control while acting the mad man and building the tension up to it´s final outburst and fatal end. Otello is an incredible role to play and it is also my favorite role.

Operaversum: But do you think you could possibly sing this role when you are a young tenor? Or do you need to have maturity and life experience to fully conquer this difficult character?

Gregory Kunde: In Otello´s case, I would say you need to have gained life experience, as there is a human story about jealousy behind, which gets so out of control, that Otello´s cruel reaction to murder Desdemona is somewhat hard to digest.

So, in order to tackle this role convincingly, you need to understand what chain reaction jealousy and negative feelings can bottle up inside of you. And therefore, being older, understanding life also in all its downturns is definitely helpful to get to the core of this man´s psychology.

The same accounts for roles as in Idomeneo and Titus, where you have to play a father and putting yourself in the place of a father. So having a child myself, those personal attributes to a life fully lived are of utmost importance to playing character roles convincingly.

Operaversum: Ageism in opera tends to be a topic nowadays as well, whereas I think having matured and having gained life experience is rather a value-add than anything else and makes a role more in-depth. Why can it sometimes seem difficult to identify with a matured tenor playing a young Andrea Chénier?

Gregory Kunde: I think the issue with older tenors is, that when they look their age, it may not be convincing on stage!

Operaversum: Why can you not look your age! Isn´t the big advantage to be more experienced and matured if it comes to matters of love, wisdom, knowledge and even acting the part in depth?

I mean, with young singers I sometimes feel that exactly that life experience is missing when it comes to acting the role!

Gregory Kunde: A lot of young singers focus too much on their vocal mastery. But you mature in your ability to not think about singing, which to my understanding does not necessarily have anything to do with age, as you have opera singers like Anna Netrebko who from on early stage in her career always acted fantastically, but at the same time sang like a Godess.

That is an exception to the rule, when it comes to young singers. But there are even a few sopranos today who are capable of the same quality in both acting and singing convincingly.

For example Ermonela Jaho; when I did my first Otello with her in Madrid she acted the part in such a fragile and beautiful way, embodying her characters, no matter which roles she was playing.

And that is why she is the actress of today. Moreover Ermonela is an impressive singer in anything she does. But most of the young generation of opera singers are very concerned about their sound and how they are singing. Of course they should be concerned, as the audience wants to witness the best singers on stage.

©Gregory Kunde

Operaversum: Well, I do partly agree on that, since for me a beautiful voice only impresses me, if it can also transport emotions!

Gregory Kunde: And that is the problem when taking on young singers who are too young for main roles. I for example was a Comprimàrio for 15 years, before I took on more important roles on stage. But having had the chance to share the stage with Alfredo Kraus, and other big names in opera, gradually helped me gain experience, by watching and listening to their performances.

And since they were also so confident, it eventually made me become more confident in acting and my roles as well, not just standing around and singing.

Operaversum: Most certainly because you had the chance to develop alongside these experienced opera singers!

Gregory Kunde: Exactly! And that sometimes is missing when you throw young people out there with no experience. You need to gain that experience. You need to develop into this career step by step.

And even after 47 years as an opera singer myself, I am still here, trying to gain yet more experience while taking on new roles. Even now there is another challenge on its way, as in the near future I will be spending some time in the Opera Studio of the Staatsoper Hamburg.

Operaversum: So I have read. You are supporting and coaching young opera singers. Will you also be giving master classes?

Gregory Kunde: It will be master classes and at some point it will turn into a permanent position. But right now I am still singing, as I have contracts hopefully for the next two years. But coaching young singers has been on my list for many, many years. I feel, we have to encourage the young generation of artists, give them guidance and suggestions on repertory, as we want the art to continue.

Operaversum: Another passion project, which you have already realized is your new album "Then and now" which includes a well-selected compilation of swing classics. How come you decided for this modern genre for a change?

Gregory Kunde: That is very easy to answer, since I grew up with this music and have been loving it ever since I was a young child, listening to records of Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra. And I even started off in a Rock´n Roll band before I became an opera singer.

So during pandemic I recorded a karaoke of Frank Sinatra´s "Fly me to the moon" which nearly got over 100.000 views on social media.

And as people encouraged me to keep singing that genre and do even more of that, the idea of recording a whole album with swing classics took hold of me and turned into reality in February 2024, when we finally recorded the album in a London studio.

Now I am hoping to do a concert series, similar to the one we already did in Tokio last year, when we performed a mixture of opera and swing classics, ending the concert with Nessun Dorma.

Operaversum: So are you planning a tour around Europe?

Gregory Kunde: I do hope so. My managment is currently looking for orchestras who can play and love to perform swing music.

Operaversum: Does that make such a decisive difference for a classical orchestra to play swing music?

Gregory Kunde: Well, as an orchestra you really need to play that music in a swing style, which is not so much a problem for the strings and the wood winds, but more so for the trombones and trumpets. But the Tokio Symphony Orchestra picked up on the rhythm very nicely.

©Sim Cannety Clarke

Operaversum: Gregory, can you tell me about your most touching stage experience?

Gregory Kunde: Well, I think it was 6 weeks after I had recovered from cancer, giving my first performance of “I Puritani” in a concert version at Carnegie Hall. I remember having been so thankful for getting my life back and being able to perform again as an opera singer.

I think my family was eventually more touched than I was. But when our friend who was a priest said to my wife´s parents "If they only knew what happened to him", it also moved me, as I suddenly recalled upon the beginning of my illness and my wish to get back on stage soon. But later on, during my cancer treatment singing was not the important matter any longer and I just wanted to fight cancer. But thank God, I was spared, I am still here and with a different attitude though.

Operaversum: So your attitude changes when you have gone through such personal tragedy?

Gregory Kunde: Yes, and you realize that your career is not everything in life. It is so much more about your family and the people who support you. That is the most important thing and the reason why you continue doing your art and doing it for the audience.

Operaversum: Which implies you are not doing it for yourself?

Gregory Kunde: No, as I want the audience to enjoy my artistry! Otherwise, it would be a very selfish act, if you only sang for yourself. And hopefully we as artists are alike in that respect, receiving our applause in a modest and appreciative way.

Operaversum: Dear Gregory, if you had to explain to somebody totally foreign to opera about its magic, what would you tell them?

Gregory Kunde: I think the magic of opera evolves as soon as you enter an auditorium and the world is shut out all of a sudden. The fascination of the many artforms that come together in an opera such as staging, costumes, opera singers, orchestra, acting plus the beautiful scenery, make it an incredible, one-of-a-kind experience.

I always tell young people, that opera is the real thing, as there is no amplification, thus the acoustic carries the music and the entire sound into the farthest corner of the auditorium. And this is what also struck me the first time I got to witness a performance at the Vienna State Opera in 1976.

So as soon as I understood how the singer's voices transported over a big orchestra, I was so fascinated that I instantly knew I wanted to become an opera singer as well. I was obsessed with the idea. In the end the magic of opera is when all artforms come together and human emotions are transported through the music.

Operaversum: Thank you so much for this inspiring conversation. For your upcoming performances, I am wishing you toi, toi, toi, dear Gregory.