Voice of darkness: Matti Salminen's life with the Ring.(Interview)

There is no more forceful image of unbridled evil in opera terms--an evil that need do nothing but exist and hope for the expiring wrigglings of its victim--than what Matti Salminen projects as Hagen at the conclusion of Act I, Scene 2 of Gotterdammerung. Salminen, at least in Otto Schenk's Metropolitan Opera Ring production, revived this month, sits hulking and motionless on his self-styled throne. A spotlight picks out his hooded, balefully stating eyes, as he announces in a cavernous, throttling monotone that he is prepared to wait for the inevitable ("Hier sitz' ich zur Wacht"), like a fearful bird of prey that knows it will get to pick over the bones after the slaughter.

Such powerful stage moments, uniting the maximum impact of vocal resources and physical presence, have been the hallmark of the fifty-eight-year-old Finnish bass for much of his thirty-five-year career. His identification with Hagen is worldwide--several conductors and directors have insisted that one does not contemplate mounting the Ring unless Salminen is available--but it is particularly acute in New York, where he is less and less heard in his wider-ranging repertory. His versatility in other venues extends from Bach oratorio through Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, many other Wagner roles, sizable chunks of Verdi, and the Russian wing, including both Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, contemporary opera and even pop.

Speaking in German this past November, by telephone from Zurich, where he had just appeared as Pogner in Die Meistersinger, Salminen, boomingly ebullient, reminded me that in this Met Ring cycle he also sings Hunding and the Siegfried Fafner. (He has also often included either Fasolt or Fafner in Das Rheingold as well.) But sometimes, it would seem, the brand of Wagner on his forehead can be a matter of regret. He acknowledges some disappointment that the Met does not engage him for his Don Carlo Filippo, a role he continues to sing widely. "I'm not really a Wagner singer at all. I don't understand the label. My voice is nuanced, formed by the Bach and Verdi repertoire. But I suppose I have to accept it when I'm asked only to sing the Ring, especially when they don't ask me to sing anything else."

Salminen quickly passes over any possible bitterness concerning Met casting preferences to exude satisfaction that having Wagner and Hagen so frequently thrown his way permits him the opportunity to reexamine both the composer and this particular role. "Yes, I have repeatedly said that I have been struggling with Wagner for many, now thirty, years, and there is still a lot to dig out. Each time I do the Ring, it's new. And it doesn't matter if the production is traditional or avant-garde--so-called Regietheater ... but all theater is Regietheater, isn't it?--as long as the director knows what he's doing and the character relationships are correct. Even if you don't like the production, you have to go ahead. You can't ever really say it's wrong, because with the Ring there are so many ways to do it. But the old way, the conventional way, the way Wagner wanted it, it's the authentic way. Still, new or old can both be good. I really only have problems when the director who is trying new things doesn't understand or even know the work."

These days, Salminen's career is contentedly concentrated in Zurich. Having sung there for more than thirty years, he has a special relationship with both the opera company and the city he now calls home. Even his links to Berlin, previously key as a career focus, have weakened, due in part to the current murkiness of that city's operatic direction. But clearly, he is still happy to make guest appearances elsewhere: at the Met, which he lauds for its sophisticated, lengthy preparation patterns, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Barcelona and other major European houses. In fact, last season he completed the Kammersanger triple crown--Berlin, Vienna and now Munich.

The trajectory of that career has been a steady rise ever since his chorus debut with the Finnish National Opera in 1966. Within three years, he was a soloist. At age twenty-four, after ...