Rocky road to Wagner

He spent years training as a baritone, and then almost gave up singing when he was advised to start again as a tenor. But the advice proved sound, and Paul McNamara is now being hailed as an 'Irish hero' by German critics. He talks to DEREK SCALLY

WHEN Paul McNamara stepped on to the stage of the Würzburg opera house a couple of weeks ago, it was the end of a personal odyssey for the Irish tenor – and a beginning. The journey to his premiere as Tannhäuser took 14 years, a long and laborious road even by Richard Wagner’s marathon standards.

Five gripping hours later, the audience cheered its approval for the beaming tenor and company. The next day, the critics agreed with their verdict. “Paul McNamara is dramatically convincing, never seems to lose his energy and sings so urgently,” wrote one critic, “that one could almost imagine oneself in Wagner tenor heaven.”

McNamara’s road to Wagner heaven began in Limerick’s Crescent College and a photographic wall of fame of former students, such as Richard Harris, Terry Wogan and Des O’Malley. One of the lesser-known faces on the wall was that of Joseph O’Mara, a Victorian tenor famed for his interpretations of Lohengrin and Tannhäuser.

“I remember a teacher asking me if I was going to end up on the stage like O’Mara in one of those funny costumes,” says McNamara, laughing.

Although he is the first professional musician in the family, many of McNamara's relations were involved in theatre, his maternal grandfather being a set designer and director in Limerick. The singing bug bit when he saw, aged seven, a local production of Die Fledermaus, which was followed by a teenage love of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.

His music studies started in earnest at University College Cork and the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Westland Row, during which time he also sang with the RTÉ Chamber Choir and was a "vicar choral" at St Patrick's Cathedral. In 1989 he had his debut in Opera Theatre Company's successful production of Handel's Country Matters, which was staged at the Gate, toured the country and returned to the Abbey.

He was coming to the end of his postgraduate studies in London’s Royal College of Music in 1995, with regular performing work, when the bolt came out of the blue. Might it not be the right path for him, he was asked, to forget his baritone ambitions and retrain as a tenor?

“I was a competent baritone, someone who was reliable and didn’t bump into the furniture, but no one said, ‘now there’s an amazing voice’,” says McNamara.

The suggestion that he retrain cast doubt on his choices – and career – to date. To clear his head, he took a complete break from singing and went to manage a bespoke shoe shop in London. What seemed like a setback at the time, McNamara says now, turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Like many young singers, he adds, he found himself pursuing necessary but essentially short-term goals, earning money to pay for tuition through concerts and guest appearances, without taking a step back to look at his long-term career.

“I was so preoccupied with singing after leaving school that I didn’t give much thought to whether I was on the right road for me,” he says. “I was more concerned with where I was at, not thinking about where I was going.”

After overcoming initial resistance, he began taking lessons again, this time as a tenor. Like many Irish people, he had to overcome the preconception that tenor automatically meant Count John McCormack and light lyric singing. Realising his new voice gave him far greater potential, and he found himself drawn to the German repertoire. In 2000, he left London for Berlin.

TODAY, EVEN IN an age of economic uncertainty and budget cuts, Germany remains the greatest opera melting pot in the world. The scene remains vibrant and diverse thanks to two sustaining forces: generous state subsidies that make tickets affordable to all, and a federal system which means every state is anxious for its cities to have top-rank opera houses. This means that, even beyond the big opera capitals of Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, smaller cities have respectable state houses combining opera, ballet and a full orchestra – which means lots of work, even for newcomers.

McNamara got his first engagement in the northern city of Kiel in Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae, but his home for the next few years was a small opera house in Neustrelitz, north of Berlin. Singing in the house where legendary Danish tenor Helge Rosvaenge began his career was a lucky break, according to McNamara. Here he had a chance to test his tenor skills in the French, German and Italian repertoire in front of live audiences but away from the limelight of the bigger houses.

In the years since, he has performed with companies including Opera Ireland and Cape Town Opera, and last year he had his debut with the Deutsche Oper.

The transition to tenor coincided with a deeper exploration of the Wagner repertoire – with considerable success. McNamara won the British Wagner Society singing competition in 2000 and was a finalist in Seattle Opera’s inaugural International Wagner Competition in 2006. But it was this year’s chance to sing Tannhäuser in Würzburg has proven the biggest challenge so far in his career. Although a smaller German house, Würzburg is a mere stone’s throw from Bayreuth and the city boasts the largest and perhaps most powerful Wagner Society in the world.

Würzburg was a stopping-point in the early career of the composer and was where famed Wagnerian soprano Waltraud Meier began her career. It was here, too, in 2002, that the composer’s great-granddaughter, Katharina Wagner, staged her directorial debut.

For McNamara, the role of the knight and minstrel, Tannhäuser, in Würzburg was the ideal role in the ideal location, a house with a serious Wagner pedigree, yet small enough that the pressure was manageable.

Tannhäuseris one of the more problematic operas in the Wagner repertoire, exploring the nature of the sacred and the profane through a battle between carnal and spiritual desire.

With the drama split between the “Mountain of Venus” and Wartburg Castle, Tannhäuser is often staged as a static “Künstlerdrama” involving a self-obsessed artist grappling with his creative problems and society.

The Würzburg production of Tannhäuser is a livelier affair with a fluid, sensuous staging of the drama as an Everyman drama, an odyssey through life.

“In this production, Tannhäuser is on a pilgrimage,” says McNamara. “That’s why I’m so happy with it. For a long time I was searching for my voice. I made some mistakes along the way, but now I am on the quest.”

With the premiere behind him, is he any closer to becoming a dyed-in-the-wool Wagnerian? “Wagner inspires passion and obsession in many people,” he says. “I’m lucky in that I’m singing what I want to sing, because musically and theatrically it’s so rewarding. I wouldn’t like to limit myself to Wagner, but I can understand people who spend a complete lifetime singing Wagner, because there is just so much to explore.”

McNamara's next Wagner stop will be Parsifalnext year.

AMONG THE first-night audience of Tannhäuserwere many members of the Würzburg Wagner Society. Their verdict?

“A marvellous voice in such a difficult role,” says society member Rainer Dusel. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of him, no doubt in Bayreuth.”

After a long road, Paul McNamara has found his voice and, as one journalist headlined a review of Tannhäuser: "An Irish Hero Shines on the Wartburg."