2 days to the Peter Grimes premiere!

Read the third and final part of an interview with Anthony Dean Griffey who talks about singing the title role in Britten’s opera.

On singing in English
It’s important to me for people to be able to understand me when I sing in my native tongue, as I do in Peter Grimes. We work so hard as American singers to sing in German, French, Italian, and other languages like Russian or Czech, to the best of our ability. And then we just take it for granted that we’re English-speaking, so therefore we’re going to sing well in English, which is not the case a big part of the time. It has been a real mission of mine to make sure that people understand the text, the lines that I’m delivering. It’s not about just making all beautiful sounds. The beauty of the sound is important, but essentially what it’s all about is communication.

On portraying tormented figures
I feel that as an artist part of my mission in being here on this earth is to give back to the people. My motto is to sing to express, not to impress. I think I’m drawn to characters like Grimes or Lenny in Of Mice and Men because I feel a strong call in society to help the ones that are in need, that don’t have a voice. I was extremely shy growing up, and so the way to communicate for me was through my singing, which is very much still a part of me as an adult. Sometimes I wish I could sing answers instead of speaking them. I am drawn to those kinds of characters that require a strong singing actor and have a strong message behind them to society. But I’m also drawn to comic roles. And then hopefully one day a director will see me as the romantic leading prince. It would be nice to sing a prince before the career is over.

This entry was posted by Philipp Brieler on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 7:47 am and is filed under Peter Grimes, New Production Countdown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.