JH: Yes. Then, as I grew
up a bit, I thought I’d better wait because we’re only seeing one side
of him. People use the phrase “ugly as sin,” and I say, “Sin
isn’t ugly. If it was, nobody would want it.” The ugliness
comes as the consequence of sin. So I got to thinking how, in the
opera, he starts out in a very charming and intellectual way, then he’s
the good sport and it’s all seduction. You start getting into the
ugliness when Marguerite murders the child, and as the opera progresses
you see that the servant – which is the Devil
– becomes the master. I realized then that in every
scene the Devil challenges Faust and Faust slaps him back; but little
by little, the Devil’s challenges get stronger and by the scene when
Valentin gets killed, the Devil is ordering Faust around. But
when Faust says, “Shut up you fiend!” the Devil has to back down and
people often misunderstood this whole switch because in the final
scene, the Devil is trying to get Faust to get Marguerite out of the
prison quickly, and Faust tells him to get out. Mefisto’s reply
was changed to, “I obey.” Originally it was, “Hurry up!” He
was the master and didn’t have to obey any more, but they changed it to
soften the opera’s ending. Anyway, I was at the most fundamental
place of Christianity – Bob Jones University,
where they do both Shakespeare and opera on a big scale. I was
doing Boito’s Mefistofele
down there when Bob Jones II came into my dressing room at the dress
rehearsal. He was a fine actor himself, and he looked at me and
quoted, “And Lucifer was the most beautiful of all the angels.”
There was nothing beautiful on my face at all, and I said he was
right. So in the opening performance I did a very classical,
handsome face, but played it cold as ice. Afterwards, I thought
there was still something incomplete about it. It happens in the
opera, so I made it happen on the face, and from that time on, I start
with the cold classic beauty and every scene I change the makeup a
little bit more toward the fiend, so by the end, he’s a monster.
Now when the reviews say, “Mr. Hines’ portrayal of the fiend…,” I’ve
succeeded.
JH: It has to be a perfectly
equal balance, and I’ve tried to achieve that during my whole
career. Each opera and every character should be researched not
by some pattern, but by what is the most important factor
involved. For example, I don’t believe in psychoanalyzing Don
Giovanni. It’s not written in that vein. When I did my
first Boris Godounov, I asked various stage directors about the
character and got a huge diversity of opinion. All they had in
common was to say he was crazy. Well, I was going on a tour of
various universities for about eight weeks before doing the opera at
the Met, so I interviewed ten psychologists and psychiatrists. I
would read them the basic libretto and ask what was wrong with the man
and how he would act. Unfortunately, I got just as much diversity
from them as I did from the stage directors! That shattered my
faith in the field of psychiatry and psychology.
JH: I’ve got a lot of advice
because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently. An article
appeared in Opera News on
Blance Thebom, and she felt that young singers were being held back and
retarded by the system of teaching today. Blanche was singing
major roles in her late teens. I was 19 when I got my first
contract with the San Francisco Opera, and at 20 I had my first concert
with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the Hollywood Bowl. At 21 I
was doing Mephistopheles in Faust
and everyone was predicting I wouldn’t be singing in five years.
I don’t know what I did wrong because I’m still singing! I got my
Met contract when I was 24. My wife, Lucia Evangelista did her
first Mimi in the big theater in Genoa at 19. When I came up, if
you weren’t singing at a major house like La Scala or the Met by the
age of 26, people asked what was wrong. Nowadays, kids are 25 or
so before they even finish their Master’s degree, and all they’ve been
taught have been art songs and Mozart.
Jerome HinesLong-serving bass at the Metropolitan Opera, New York Thursday, 6 February 2003
THE AMERICAN bass Jerome Hines, whose career as a singer lasted well over half a century, spent 41 of those years at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. Jerome Albert Link Heinz (Jerome Hines), singer, composer and writer: born Hollywood, California 8 November 1921; married 1952 Lucia Evangelista (died 2000; four sons); died New York 4 February 2003. The American bass Jerome Hines, whose career as a singer lasted well over half a century, spent 41 of those years at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. His enormous repertory, spanning from Handel to Britten and Stravinsky, included Italian, German, Russian and French works. His unusual height, of 6 ft 6 in, and unusual thinness were great assets in the many roles of authority that he sang, but were also put to wonderful use in one of his few comic roles, Don Basilio in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia. In his mid-thirties Hines became a born-again Christian, and later composed an opera on the life of Christ, I am the Way. Jerome Heinz (his real name) was born in Hollywood in 1921. He studied chemistry, mathematics and physics at the University of California in Los Angeles, at the same time taking singing lessons with Gennaro Curci. He made his stage début as Bill Bobstay in HMS Pinafore at the LA Civic Light Opera in 1940. The following year he made his operatic début at San Francisco at a popular matinée performance on 19 October 1941 as Monterone in Rigoletto. The title role was sung by the great American baritone Lawrence Tibbett. Heinz also sang two performances of Biterolf in Tannhäuser, whose protagonist was sung by the even more famous Danish tenor, Lauritz Melchior. The publicity generated by this short season brought several offers of work from concert and operatic agencies, so Hines, as he had now become, decided to be a singer, not a chemist. From 1944 to 1946 he sang with the New Orleans Opera, and also appeared in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Mexico City. He also sang in concerts conducted by Toscanini and with the maestro recorded the bass solos in Beethoven's Missa solemnis. In 1946 he won the Caruso award, and made his Metropolitan début on 21 November as the Officer in Boris Godunov. Graduating shortly to Pimen in the same opera, he finally moved on to Boris, which became his favourite role. During the next four decades Hines sang 45 roles at the Metropolitan alone. These included Sparafucile in Rigoletto, Colline in La bohème, the High Priest Ramfis in Aida – one of his most imposing characterisations – Swallow in Peter Grimes, Banquo in Macbeth, Mephistopheles in Faust, Sarastro in The Magic Flute and two roles in Verdi's Don Carlos, King Philip II and the Grand Inquisitor. These were among his very finest roles. In 1953 Hines came to the Edinburgh Festival to sing Nick Shadow in The Rake's Progress, the British stage premiere of Stravinsky's opera, presented by Glyndebourne. The bass's long thin frame was exactly right for Shadow, while his very large, deep voice and superb diction also suited the music to perfection. The following year Hines sang Mozart's Don Giovanni, a role he also took on at the Met, in Munich. In 1958 he appeared at La Scala, Milan, in the title role of Handel's Hercules, and the same year began a five-year stint at Bayreuth, singing Gurnemanz in Parsifal. Later he sang King Marke in Tristan und Isolde and Wotan in Die Walküre. His Wagner repertory in New York also included Hunding in Die Walküre and Wotan in Das Rheingold. After his visit in 1962 to Moscow, in 1968 Hines published an
autobiography, This is My Story, This is My Song. His opera, I
Am the Way,
was performed in Philadelphia in 1969. Hines himself sang the
protagonist, while his wife, the soprano Lucia Evangelista, sang Mary
the Mother.
Hines gained a congenial new role at Rome in 1984, when he sang Arkel, the old, blind king in Pelléas et Mélisande. Though he retired from the Metropolitan in 1987, he continued to sing elsewhere in America, and in 1988 at Newark he sang Il Cieco, the blind father of the heroine in Mascagni's Iris. The following year he appeared as Ramfis, a role he had sung well over a hundred times, in New Orleans, 45 years after his début in the city, returning there in 1987, at the age of 76, to sing Sarastro. Elizabeth Forbes |
This interview was recorded in New York City on December 12,
1991. Portions (along with recordings) were
broadcast on WNIB in 1994 and 1996. The
transcription was made in 1994 and published in The Opera Journal in September of
that year. It was slightly re-edited and posted on this
website in 2009.
Award-winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.
You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.