catalogue: LUCIO DALLA – CARUSO
Mark Milhofer
My earliest recollection of singing was when I had just started at a new school, at the age of 7, where a wonderful teacher made everyone sing individually. They must have spotted something because immediately afterwards I was entered into the local Arts Festival Competition, singing “Tick Tock Grandfather Clock” and coming second. And so it began! From then on I was competing every year, regularly winning (forgive the lack of British modesty). Back at school I played Feste the Jester in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, singing the songs wearing a proper three-pointed hat with bells on the ends, and then my biggest triumph – Willy Wonka. My Mother has a cassette tape of me singing “Pure Imagination” and it’s the only recording of me as a boy treble….
When my voice broke I sang for a while as an alto, using chest voice up to a B flat and then very unsubtly changing to falsetto. I believe this helped my transition to tenor.
After finishing school I went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where I was taken on as a Choral Scholar whilst studying for a BA in English Literature. We sang services 5 days a week and twice on Sunday – quite a commitment, but it certainly helped to improve my non-existent sight-reading and after-service-drinking social life! I also became the lead singer of a pop group called the Funk Messengers and had a fantastic time, whilst managing not to ruin my voice. My teacher at this time was Neil Mackie, the principal pupil of Peter Pears, thus commencing my immersion in the music and style of Benjamin Britten. After finishing my degree (don’t ask me what I got!) I spent a year as a Lay Clerk (paid choir singer) at nearby New College before starting at the Guildhall School of Music in London. Here my teacher was another Britten specialist, Bernard Dickerson, who guided me to great personal success as The Madwoman in Britten’s Curlew River. But an opera singer’s education never ends and my next stop was Milan. The Italian Opera Studio As.Li.Co. was opening itself up to non-Italian students for the first time and held a competition, with a number of different rounds, the final held at La Scala. Here I was very lucky to work with Renata Scotto and Leyla Gencer, perform fully staged opera productions in major Northern Italian theatres and be put forward for auditions in other houses. One of these was for Giorgio Strehler, the late great Italian director, who wanted to inaugurate the brand-new theatre he had just built in Milan with Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. So I turned up for yet another audition, went on to the stage and sang my party piece “Il mio Tesoro” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. While I was singing a little man with white hair was gesticulating and talking and it was really annoying. So I sang louder and more aggressively. At the end, the little old man turned to the panel and said “Quest’è Don Ottavio – con le palle” (this is Don Ottavio – with balls). Fortunately, I had had no idea that this was Strehler himself and I got the job! And what a job it was! Strehler chose two international casts and we rehearsed with him in the new theatre. It was amazing! Strehler, aged 80 or so, had more energy than all of us put together, and would rehearse a scene, then move everything around and try it again and then try a third or fourth way until he was happy with it. But Christmas was approaching and he wanted to get to the end of the opera before we all went home for a break. We finished the staging and all went home, elated, for a well-earned break. However, Strehler never returned. He died on Christmas Eve, leaving us all in a state of shock. Eventually the decision was made to continue but not to change anything. We had a beautiful show ready and the run of performances instantly sold out. More were added and I think in the end we did 41 shows, a Guinness World Record for the same opera in the same theatre. Over the next 10 years the opera was often revived and I must have sung in over 100 performances, including trips to Cairo and Alexandria, Moscow, Beijing, Istanbul, Seoul and many cities in Europe. In the meantime I was signed to an Italian agency and worked almost exclusively in Italy – there was plenty of work there singing Mozart, Rossini, Britten and Contemporary operas. I sang in almost every major theatre, only missing out on La Scala (never say never!), and spent many happy hours in Turin, Venice, Bologna, Bari, Rome, Florence etc. Then one day my Italian agency decided to close and I went to England to find a new one. I ended up being managed by an old friend from Music College and also a contemporary I used to sing with, creating the friendly working environment I needed on which to build my career. This led to work outside Italy for a change and I was soon a regular in Geneva and Graz, Berlin and Bern, Dresden and Daegu, Basel and Beaune, Tel Aviv and…. I haven’t made it to the Americas yet and would love to visit Australia but we’re working on that.
There have been some amazing high points along the way, like working with Franco Zeffirelli on his production of Pagliacci which we performed in a Greek Amphitheatre in the shadow of the Parthenon in Athens (great view from the stage!). And in the hilarious Dario Fo production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia where at one point I am spinning around the stage using two side tables as roller skates. Or getting completely naked for a movingly staged Billy Budd in Turin, directed by Davide Livermore (going to the gym every day didn’t have much effect though). And then there were the impossible high-heeled shoes that were made for me in Stuttgart for Purcell’s The Fairy Queen….which had no heels! Learning magic tricks from a professional magician for Menotti’s The Consul (I won’t reveal the secrets even if you torture me!). Singing an aria whilst sitting on a chair that was fixed at a right-angle halfway up a wall in Marcello Panni’s The Banquet. Rising up into the gods in a pink carriage drawn by My Little Pony in Cenerentola. Being blindfolded for almost an entire opera (Curlew River in Perugia and Pisa) and singing The Emperor Jones in a (dreadful) cockney accent. Don’t even get me started on the wigs and costumes, but I think going on stage and singing in a haystack will be remembered for a long time.
So what’s next? I continue to study with my long-term teacher, Hamish Pitceathly – we met after I saw his advertisement in the back of Opera Magazine where he professed to be the inheritor of a tradition of singing technique that was established in the early 19th century and passed down to him from his teacher, E.Herbert Caesari, a contemporary of Beniamino Gigli when they studied together under Antonio Cotogni. I was hooked after one lesson.
Recently I recorded the Complete Folk Song Settings by Benjamin Britten with Marco Scolastra, now out on CD, and during Covid I enjoyed making live-streamed Soirees from home (with cocktail-mixing masterclasses in the intervals – I’m a brand ambassador for a UK based Gin maker). One of these was dedicated to my operatic hero, Enrico Caruso, and I devised a programme of songs that the great tenor himself had written, along with some of the songs that were dedicated to him. I was privileged to performed this in Caruso’s own home, just outside Florence. This in turn led me to publishing Caruso’s songs together for the first time, with an introduction about their history, and then I recorded them, along with a selection of the ninety songs written for him that I had discovered. And we did this in his house, where Caruso himself had written and rehearsed many of them! An extraordinary and emotional moment in my life. This recording will be released to coincide with the 150th birthday of Caruso early in 2023, by the Urania Records label.
Marco Scolastra
The Italian pianist Marco Scolastra studied at the Conservatory “F. Morlacchi” in Perugia with Franco Fabiani, graduating magna cum laude. He furthered his studies with Aldo Ciccolini and Ennio Pastorino, and also attended several masterclasses, with Lya De Barberiis, Paul Badura-Skoda, Dario De Rosa and – at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena – with Joaquin Achucarro and Katia Labèque.
Marco Scolastra has performed with numerous renowned chamber orchestras for the most distinguished Italian music institutions, such as: Ravello Festival, Teatro Lirico in Cagliari, Accademia Filarmonica Romana, Oratorio del Gonfalone, Teatro dell’Opera, Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, Teatro Regio in Parma, Auditorium Verdi in Milan, Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Teatro San Carlo in Napoli, “Cappella Sistina”. Furthermore, the appreciated soloist has performed in Austria (Musikverein/Vienna), Spain, Switzerland (Tonhalle and ZKO-Haus/Zurich, Konzerthaus/Bern), Canada (Montreal), Rumania (Cluj, where he played the national première of the Concert for two pianos and orchestra by Poulenc), Russia (Conservatory Cajkovskij/Moscow), Poland (Institute Chopin/Warsaw), Belgium (Festival van Vlaanderen), France (Orchestre National du Capitole/Toulouse), Japan, Germany, U.S.A.
Marco Scolastra has also collaborated with various Italian and foreign orchestras: Saratov Philharmonic Orchestra, New Art Ensemble, Transylvania State Symphonic Orchestra, I Solisti Veneti (Claudio Scimone), Orchestra Sinfonica Verdi di Milano (Richard Hickox), Zurich Chamber Orchestra (Howard Griffits), Berliner Symphoniker (Lior Shambadal), Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie (Andrew Constantine), Moscow Soloists (Yuri Bashmet), Wiener Concert-Verein.
Marco Scolastra has worked steadily with the pianist Sebastiano Brusco and the actor Elio Pandolfi. He plays with highly esteemed artists, in particular: Sonia Bergamasco, Vadim Brodski, Renato Bruson, Alessandro Carbonare, Max René Cosotti, Roberto Fabbriciani, Fejes Quartet, Corrado Giuffredi, Sumi Jo, Raina Kabaivanska, Daniela Mazzucato, Kodály Quartet, Mirco Palazzi, Marianna Pizzolato, Lucia Poli, Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Desirée Rancatore, Charlie Siem, Teatro San Carlo Quartet, Pamela Villoresi, Mark Milhofer.
Marco Scolastra has the following record productions to his credit:
Colours and Virtuosity of the 20th Century in Italy (Phoenix Classics), Wagner Lieder (Brilliant Classics), The Song of a Life: Tosti Romances (Brilliant Classics, 5 CD), Bach: Concertos for 2, 3, 4 pianos and strings (Decca), Poulenc: La voix humaine & Histoire de Babar (Brilliant Classics), Britten Complete Folk Songs (Brilliant Classics), Venite a intender (Urania Records), Inventare il tempo (Rai5).