A Baritone Who Speaks His Mind

Baritone Thomas Hampson has become the darling of the public and the critics. The 34-year-old Spokane native, who sings a recital tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa and on Thursday at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, has made a meteoric rise to success ever since local audiences and press spotted him in the early ‘80s.

Surprisingly, Hampson is the first to downplay his stardom status and the cult of personality arising around him.

“Somehow I feel we’ve gotten off the track and have started to become voice fanatics,” Hampson said in a recent phone interview from New York, where he was singing Dr. Falke in Johann Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus” at the Metropolitan Opera.

“In and of itself, that is fun and exciting, but the notion of singing is much more than a human voice in a costume. It should be a very personal experience. That’s my definition.”

Hampson has succeeded in making it a personal experience whether singing opera or lieder, and he rebels against the idea that a singer must chose between one form or the other.

“The business of singing lieder should not preclude the business of singing opera, and vice versa,” he said.

“What I think has happened and is happening in the business of music--which is a business--is the specialization or the compartmentalization of singers. I just don’t want to be classified, and singers should not be. They should not become a commodity or a product.”

Los Angeles audiences have heard Hampson in a number of recitals, but haven’t seen him on the stage of the Music Center Opera since he sang Marcello in Puccini’s “La Boheme” there in 1987. An account of professional disagreements between Hampson and LAMCO general director Peter Hemmings recently surfaced in the press.

“That’s almost getting blown out of proportion,” Hampson countered.

“The bottom line is, folks, Los Angeles (Music) Opera Company has a repertory and Mr. Hemmings has got the right to run an opera company as he wants to run it.

“Also, it’s not unusual, it’s not possible to come every year to Los Angeles, even if I had the desire to. I don’t want to throw a bowl of water in Mr. Hemming’s face. . . .

“No, I haven’t been invited back. Were there differences? Apparently so. Are there hard feelings? Apparently so. Not on my side. I would very much like to sing opera in Los Angeles, as much as anywhere else. But I don’t want to make it an issue.”

Hemmings did not return repeated phone calls.

“One of the downsides of this fast-track and great rise--I hate that--to some stature is that there is a great deal of shuffling and rescheduling. San Francisco Opera, thank goodness, saw that and were very good at that.”

One can see how Hampson might run into conflicts with certain opera directors and producers, especially those producers whom he describes as having “mainly theater backgrounds (who) are amused by opera and want to show us how drama works. . . .

“I believe that theater is illusion,” Hampson said.

“The notion of realism in theater sometimes gets confused with the basic art form, which is the creating of illusion. The creeping into realism--which is a direct influence from TV and films, less so from the theater--will probably always be the big problem of opera. You must be able to express vocally the essence of the piece, which sometimes is incongruous with what a person looks like.”

Certainly, no one has ever complained about what the strappingly handsome Hampson looks like. But Hampson deflects attention from such superficialities.

“I feel that I’m in the best position to speak honestly,” he said.

“If I do not get any farther in the music business, if the flavor of the month turns to be something--someone--else, not me, as it inevitably will, I will be very happy.

“American singers have nothing to be ashamed of,” he added. “This crisis we keep hearing about in the musical world--where are the great singers?--simply reflects the world in general.

“Where are the great personalities? Where are the great thinkers? Is mediocrity becoming the great king? Is getting along more important than striving for something? Those are the great questions. . . .”

Still, were there no personal sacrifices on the road to fame?

“I was married,” he said. “I am divorced. One, I don’t want to talk about it. Two, I don’t want to blame that on my career. Not at all.

“(My career) has not taken a (personal) toll. Quite the contrary, it has opened my life and soul.

“I feel I’m a better person. I feel that everything that has happened--and is happening--to me personally--the deeper I go into repertory, into more singing, research, programming--is really an inner path of opening and awareness to myself.