From The Seattle Times

Sunday, January 14, 1996

By Melinda Bargreen

Tenor Gregory Kunde enjoys his life on the high C's

You'll notice the opera is called "Cinderella," not "The Handsome Prince." That's the way life goes for tenor Gregory Kunde, whose favorite bel canto repertoire almost invariably has the leading lady in the title role.

"I'm never going to be the star, -- well, almost never," the American-born tenor laughs.

"But that's fine with me. You can't bring the show off without the tenor, either. I'm lucky to have found music I really love to sing, and lots of opportunities to sing it."

Life can be a little lonely on the high C's, as many tenors have discovered, especially when a judgmental audience is waiting to see whether or not you'll hit that climactic high note. The most famous tenor of our era, Luciano Pavarotti, recently encountered a firestorm of bad press when it was discovered that he had transposed downward a challenging aria in "The Elixir of Love," singing only b's instead of the C's written in the score.

Kunde shudders at the story. Once he, too, worried about producing the high notes so necessary to the repertoire he now sings.

"It's amazing," he reflects. "You can sing the entire role of Rodolfo (in "La Boheme") like a god, but if you miss that one note, that high C in your first aria, you're done. Finished. One note."

Beginning with his years as a fledgling apprentice (1978-81 at the Chicago Lyric Opera), Kunde sang the usual lyric tenor leads in "Madame Butterfly," "La Boheme," and other much-performed operas, but it gradually dawned on him that he wasn't really a standard lyric tenor. That dawning was precipitated by working with the famed Alfredo Kraus, whom Kunde now calls "my master."

Kraus, known for his intelligent musicianship and for his lengthy career, got to know the younger tenor when Kunde was "covering" for him (the opera term for a stand-in) at the Chicago Lyric Opera.

"High C was my ceiling," Kunde remembers. "And I could only sing it about once a night."

While working with Kraus, Kunde discovered "a whole new voice, in which C, D, and beyond were easier and more natural to produce. Now I might have to sing 14 or 15 of these high notes in an evening. I don't even think about it; I just do it."

Kunde found himself in considerable demand after mastering the high-lying bel canto roles that now were accessible and congenial to him - especially in Europe, where operas by Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini are much more frequently performed. The term bel canto, which means "beautiful singing" in Italian, calls for extremely lyrical and fluid singing (plus a great deal of agility in terms of fast-moving runs and cadenzas).

Though Kunde spends most of his career in European opera houses - he is a regular at Milan's La Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opera de Nice, and companies from Madrid and Geneva to Vienna and Venice - he lives in Rochester, NY, where he barely escaped last week's record-braking snowstorm by flying to Seattle at 7:30am on the morning the snow hit.

"I try to live a healthy life," Kunde says. "My wife and I do a lot of walking, and I try to eat carefully, though I do eat a lot of pasta when I'm in Europe. I love golf and play it whenever I can."

At 41, Kunde is just at the start of what should be his best decade as a singer; those voices tend to blossom most fully in the 40s. Kunde plans to take a leaf from tenor Placido Domingo, however; Domingo has already begun to establish a career in conducting, a field he can pursue when the voice no longer does what it used to. Since Kunde started out at Illinois State University as a conductor, he'll really be returning to his first career choice.

In the meantime, he is "so happy to be working at Seattle Opera again." For "La Cenerentola" audiences, Kunde has one piece of advice: "Don't be afraid to enjoy yourself and have fun in this heart-warning opera - because we'll be having fun up there on the stage."