'I sing for one reason, I love the feeling it gives me'

Wicklow tenor Robin Tritschler took the long road to opera, but he savours every moment

WICKLOW tenor Robin Tritschler was a latecomer to opera. “When I was going through college I never did anything. The opera school was a separate part to what I was doing. I just never felt ready, really. I always wanted to do it. But I wanted to learn how to sing first.”

Part of the problem was his experience when he went to the opera. "I thought, my god, they're singing so loud, and it's so big . . . no matter what opera I went to, whether it was Wagner or Mozart or Handel. But now, when I sit in rehearsal, I'm amazed how little noise people make. It's not about noise. It's not about the size of your voice. It's about howyou make it. I don't have a big voice. I don't have a loud voice. But you'll hear me. It's getting over that confidence, getting over that thought of inadequacy, that you're not going to be able to do it. You can. I just took a longer time to get there."

He first dipped his toe in the water at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2004, when he auditioned for the role of Gomatz in Mozart's unfinished Zaidebut ended up in the altogether more demanding role of Sultan Soliman. It was a positive experience, a great confidence builder, and he got good reviews.

Progress, however, was anything but straight. “Years went past. I was lucky that I was doing some work in Ireland. I was barely doing anything in the UK. But I was doing a lot of concerts and recitals in Europe. I was coming up to 30, the cut-off age for competitions, so I decided I’d enter some. I entered four or five, over a period of two years, purely with the intention of getting out there so that people would hear me. I was fortunate enough to get to finals and to win some prizes, things that make sure that people do hear you.”

Those people include agents, and when he secured one, “it was then operas became a possibility. Auditions happened. There are very few opera companies that talk to individuals. They talk to agents.”

He's been quite taken aback at some of the operas he's ended up in. Strauss's Salome, for instance, with Welsh National Opera (WNO). "I absolutely loved it. One of the few people on stage in that opera who actually gets a lyrical line is the guy I was singing [Narraboth]." He's just finished a tour as Ferrando in Mozart's Così fan tuttein a WNO production by Benjamin Davis that updates the story to 1960s seaside Britain.

And before he appears at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, and Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, he will have appeared in a number of concerts at Peter Maxwell Davies' St Magnus Festival in Orkney.

In terms of the non-singing aspects of opera, “I sort of learned on the job,” and he got excellent advice from an actor friend. So “directors have always been happy with what I do”.

And is the preparation for a single song as demanding as the preparation of a complete opera role? He laughs. “I have spent longer on songs than I have on opera roles. An opera role gives you a lot of information about who you are from beginning to end. It gives you a story. There’s a course of drama to follow. In a song that might be two minutes long, say six lines of text, it could be about absolutely anything. That’s the wonderful thing about it. You can go out and sing a song in an infinite number of ways.

"If you listen to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in an early recor- ding of Schubert's Winterreiseand a late one, it could be a different person singing. He's changed how he thought about it. I love that – as you grow up, how you see something, and how you appreciate something changes. And I'm sure that'll happen in opera, too. But in a song everything is possible. It can take you so long to find how you can manifest these things, how you can make it apparent. I spent a year learning Winterreise the first time. I've spent five years since trying to work out what the hell it means." Die schöne Müllerin, is "another piece that evolves with you".

The uninterrupted delivery of a song-cycle requires great stamina, but “when you’re doing it, it flies by”, although it’s also “physically exhausting, mentally draining, and emotionally challenging”. Tritschler is clear about why he does it. “I sing for one reason. I love it. I’m very selfish. I love the feeling it gives me.”

Don't miss

At St Brendan’s Church on Sunday at 11am, you can hear Bach and Telemann from Norway’s Barokksolistene, with Kate Hearne (recorder), Ivan Podyomov (oboe), Hervé Joulain (horn), Malcolm Proud (harpsichord) in Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto.

Meanwhile, at Bantry House on Monday, at 10.30pm, French pianist Cédric Tiberghien makes an exploration of the darker side of life in Ravel's Gaspard de la nuitand Liszt's Dante Sonata.

The West Cork festival always turns up new names.The music of Boris Tchaikovsky (1925-1996) first appeared last year, and this intriguing pupil of Shostakovich features again.

West Cork Chamber Music Festival runs from tomorrow to July 3rd; Robin Tritschler performs next Tuesday and Friday. See westcorkmusic.ie or 1850-788789