Star tenor Piotr Beczala teaches coram publico in Salzburg. – Culture

24-year-old Simon Yang from South Korea is nervous. This is especially evident in the fact that he doesn’t seem excited at all. He is standing stock still in a dark suit in the middle of the stage in the Salzburg University auditorium in front of one of the world’s most sought-after opera tenors, the 55-year-old Piotr Beczala, today in jeans and a blue jacket. He gave a master class as part of the festival, the final event of which is now open to the public. This is part of the standard offerings at the festival, and fans usually come to get even closer to their stars. The students are often just accessories.

It’s all different with Beczala, he doesn’t waste time presenting himself, he just teaches. And it has it all. The more kindly the master turns to the student to ease the situation, the more the disciple’s spine seems to harden. The voice sounds a little softer, he sings the wonderfully lyrical tenor aria “Un aura amorosa” from Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s opera “Cosí fan tutte”. They have been working together in the master class for days, today is the big final presentation. Yang is insecure and swallows half of the top note. “You don’t have to sing to the high C,” says Beczala with an engaging smile, “don’t add any extra tension, try to stick to one color.”

Beczala’s best teacher? Was a pianist

Hardly any singer knows exactly what is important in professional lessons. Beczala himself studied in Katowice for six years, “and then I started all over again with a private singing teacher,” he says later in an interview. Curiously, he wasn’t a singer, but the pianist Dale Fundling from the Salzburg Mozarteum. “A singing teacher has one major disadvantage: that he sings himself,” says Beczala. “That means he compares what he wants to achieve with his student with himself.” And since it is rather rare for a singing professor to shine on stage, doubts, problems and insecurities are also passed on with the lessons.

With Beczala, on the other hand, it’s all about the pure vocal technique, “about the engine that has to run, that should deliver the necessary performance”. Beczala loves car comparisons. “The musical is up to the singer, the teacher has to take care of the technique. The training system in the eastern states, Poland, Russia, Lithuania offers that better, there are also better singing professors who don’t put themselves in the foreground, but really do trying to get something done with the student.”

The student Yang now starts again, following all the master’s instructions. A disciplined student, but Beczala wants more. While Yang is singing, he approaches at arm’s length, fixes on the student, occasionally jerking even closer to bring a bit of movement into the student and especially his singing. He advises the student to make the “o” a little narrower: “You tend to get too broad. It would be wonderful with Verdi, but not with Mozart.” The issue of vowel coloration becomes even more important, because in this aria Mozart hardly gives the singer a chance to catch his breath.

So he has to make room for it by shortening phrases and lengthening pauses. According to Beczala’s psychological trick, one should keep the same vowel sound for the end and the new beginning. That obscures the break. The whole lesson takes place at this level of detail. Bezcala wants to make the students aware that they know what they are doing every second. You should decide whether you want to start a new accent with a repeated tone or not, “but nothing in between”. Nothing undecided, no arbitrariness. “You better sell the high note, then you can listen to yourself sing and let the end swing out.”

Young singers are left to their own devices early on

This conveys an attitude that has a concrete effect on the sound. “You’re very musical,” says Beczala, “and that’s your problem.” In other words: the natural talent prevents an awareness of the problem from forming, which is necessary if you want to sing professionally. You have to keep an eye on the key moments of an aria that are important, on which the whole piece stands or falls. You have to know how to get the conductor and the accompanying orchestra to slow down or speed up the tempo by shaping a phrase.

Although Beczala’s students are usually ready for the stage, there is still a lot to learn beyond music. The young singers are on their own relatively early today and have to see how they proceed wisely in order to develop their voice and not ruin it. Because the vocal training in Central Europe is not in good shape. Many professors indulge in more or less well-founded aesthetic discourses, while the student hopes for technical help. “The wrong repertoire is often used for training,” says Beczala. When you start with Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, you cannot learn certain technical things, especially in relation to the sound of the voice. Opera is different, it’s like Formula 1 and rally – it’s not the same.”

Unfortunately, there are now training traditions that, in Beczala’s experience, tend to stand in the way of proper voice training. Above all, the division into the subjects opera, oratorio, song, and teacher training is counterproductive. But trying to imitate great voices is also a dead end. That’s why Beczala doesn’t sing anything. “You can have role models, I oriented myself to Fritz Wunderlich and still listen to many singers today, but if you actually try to be the new Corelli or whoever, then that’s the beginning of the end.” Beczala prefers to correct mistakes instead of showing them off. “If the student understands the problem, they can implement my suggestions for a solution. It is very important that they understand how their own voice works. And it takes time.

Even when the vocal instrument is finished, as is the case with a 23-year-old today, you still have to learn to play it. In the past, you worked through your etudes every day – just like in instrumental lessons today – that is now considered outdated. “But you can hardly imagine how carefully you used to be with your voice today. You studied for six years without stepping onto a stage. Today, even as a student, you are engaged in opera productions, too often and too often for roles that are too big, too dramatic a repertoire – there is no time left for a healthy development. It has become a tough business.” But of course it always was.