Baritone’s Idea of Fun Has Its Ups and Downs

Most opera singers fret over their ups and downs, but baritone David Malis is infatuated with perilous descents . . . just as long as the downhill plunge is on the latest roller coaster.

Malis, who returns to the San Diego Opera stage Saturday as Papageno in Mozart’s “Die Zauberflote,” is an enthusiastic member of American Coaster Enthusiasts, known by its acronym ACE.

Last week before opera rehearsals began, Malis drove up to Valencia’s Magic Mountain to experience the park’s newest roller coaster.

“They have some great rides there, especially a new one called the Viper, which is just about to open. I managed to slide on for a single ride--maybe I should call it a test run. The first hill is 188 feet high. It’s the second tallest roller coaster in the world,” he noted with an earnest, authoritative tone.

Malis’ mania for roller coasters was sparked years before he learned a note of opera. When he was 16, he took his first ride on the “Great American Screaming Machine” in an Atlanta amusement park--in 1973 it was the tallest wooden coaster in North America--he knew he was hooked.

“The tallest ride is Magnum XL-200 in Cedar Point, Ohio, which I have also ridden. I don’t waste any time getting on the new ones.”

Malis admitted that his wife, violist Cynthia Phelps, thinks he’s crazy to pursue this exotic avocation. Local symphony audiences will recall that Phelps filled the first-chair viola position during former music director David Atherton’s last season with the San Diego Symphony. For the last three seasons, she has been the Minnesota Orchestra’s principal viola. She and Malis were married in December, 1989.

Malis did note, however, an appropriate parallel between his work and his unusual hobby.

“Going up the hill on a roller coaster is sort of like singing, like getting ready to go out for your first aria in an opera. You’re scared, but you can’t wait to do it. You know that once the first five seconds are over with that your nervousness will go away and it will be fantastic. The experiences are quite similar. I take a very large breath at the top of the coaster and scream, because if you don’t scream on the way down, you’re not going to breathe for the next minute.”

Though the 31-year-old singer from La Grange, Ga., made his operatic debut less than a decade ago, he is a veteran Papageno, Mozart’s good-humored child of nature whose vocation as a bird-catcher could only occur in a fairy tale scenario such as “Die Zauberflote.”

“This is my fifth production of ‘The Magic Flute.’ The role was my professional debut in 1982 when I participated in San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera program. I’ve sung it twice in English, and this San Diego production is my second time singing it in German. I just finished a Papageno with Pittsburgh Opera, where we sang the music in German and did the dialogue in English. It worked on some levels,” he commented.

“The role of Papageno comes close to my own personality; I’ve always felt a tremendous affinity to his character. He’s not just a clown, which is clear if you read the German text. Papageno may not be Shakespeare, but he’s not an idiot either. There’s a big difference between being simple and being stupid. You can lead a simple life, content with simple pleasures, but that does not make you an idiot.”

After reading some of Mozart’s letters to his wife and father on the subject of “Die Zauberflote,” Malis made a parallel observation about Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s librettist for the opera and the actor who first played Papageno.

“Just because Schikaneder ran a folk theater on the outskirts of Vienna, some interpreters take that to mean he was crass and low. But if you look at the kind of roles that he performed, you know that’s not the whole story. He was a comedian and he loved comedy, but he also played Hamlet. He was solid actor.

“From the music’s limited vocal range, it is obvious that Schikaneder was not a tremendously accomplished singer, but I don’t think directors should cast an actor as Papageno. Actually, from where the music lies in the voice, the guy was probably a bass-baritone.”

Malis does not specialize in comic roles. In his last appearance with San Diego Opera, Feb., 1988, he sang Valentin in Gounod’s “Faust,” and last season he made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Marcello in Puccini’s “La Boheme.” He allowed, however, that he has a certain bent for comedy.

“I was always the practical joker as a kid, putting the bunny ears behind someone’s head in a group picture. But while I don’t think I’m a great comedian, I would rather sing something that involves my personality physically.”

During Malis’ undergraduate years at Mars Hill (North Carolina) College, he never considered an operatic career, despite possessing a fine voice, like his father, a professional church musician.

“I was not one of those aspiring students who dreamed, ‘One day, I’ll be on the stage of the Met.’ ”

For the first ten months after college graduation Malis drove a lift truck in a Georgia textile plant. Then he ran across an advertisement for a vocal scholarship at Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music.

“I saw my first opera in the spring of 1979, the Met’s touring version of Puccini’s ‘Tosca’ with Italo Tajo as the Sacristan. He was incredible.”

When Malis realized that he could study under Tajo in Cincinnati, he auditioned and won the scholarship. From there, he was invited to San Francisco’s Merola training program.

And from there, his career took an upward turn that has been anything but a roller coaster ride.