Montréal-born baritone Étienne Dupuis is consistently hailed as one of the world's foremost baritones. Trained at McGill University and l’Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal, he is known for his mastery of roles such as Marcello in La bohème, Germont in La traviata, and the title role of Rigoletto. This month, he takes on a thrilling challenge with his role debut as Macbeth at the Washington National Opera.
Interview By Alkis Karmpaliotis
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AppreciateOpera.org
Alkis Karmpaliotis: What are your earliest memories of music? When did you fall in love with opera and decide you wanted to pursue it professionally?
Etienne Dupuis: They didn't happen at the same time. I'm going to tell you the same story I always tell about my mom wanting a musician as her first child. So, she put headphones on her belly when she was pregnant with me, and she grabbed the nearest vinyl just played anything from pop music to Beethoven. My earliest memory, personally, would be playing songs I'd hear on the radio or the theme songs of shows that I watched on the piano, an old upright in the house, with one finger. As far as opera, it was an inversion of what normally happens. Normally, you listen to opera a little bit, then you start studying it to to become an opera singer. But for me, it was the opposite. Originally, I was a jazz pianist. I wanted to become a better singer to try to do, you know, the Elton John, Billy Joel thing. So, I was studying jazz singing, but it was all about improv, which I already had in jazz piano. So, instead, I tried classical singing, doing my best imitation of what I thought Pavarotti sounded like. And that’s how I got hooked. The first little recital that we did after four months of studying, I remember getting the feeling of passion that just clicked on. To me, it was always about the combination of playing a character in the music. That's what triggered me. That's where I went, “Oh, I need to work on this!” And then, the following year, when I walked into university at McGill, I would go to the library every day and listen to opera. That's when I became aware of what opera could be. First I fell in love with acting, then I started to understand what opera meant.
You have performed at the world’s top venues, from the Wiener Staatsoper to the Royal Opera House, in roles ranging from Onegin to Rigoletto to Figaro. Your recording of Barbiere with Florez and the Wiener Staatsoper is an absolute gem of the Rossini discography. What roles would you define as “staples” of your career, and how have you developed your repertoire over time?
I was always a good musician. I can sight read very easily. When I learned how to sing, I basically learned how to sing in different steps. And my first step, of course, was just, you know, trial and error. And then at some point, there were more errors than trials! And then, one very important coach said to me: “Think about metal. Does that help?" And my first reaction was to go, “What metal? What? No!” But as soon as I started singing after that, there were moments when I could feel like a buzz, which could be akin to metallic sounding, but it was a buzz — a type of vibration, a specific vibration. From then on, every time, I felt that the sound was easy. It was a placement that I then perfected for six months. I tried to find that buzz on every note, which allowed me to sing louder, more focused. I was able to go the full range of my voice because I wasn't tiring myself out. And I could sing for longer. Of course, afterwards, I had a lot of work to do on vowel placement. But at least I was singing in a safe way, a way that didn't injure me or harm me. For some reason that way of singing seemed to make me sound Italian. I can’t quite explain it — perhaps I have some Italian background centuries ago — but the sound that I produce is very complimentary to the Italian repertoire, especially the way I reach the top. Now, that leads me to your question. I sing repertoire that I like in five to six different languages. But, every time, people always, always, always come back to me with Italian. And it was kind of imposed on me. I would have loved to sing more German, which I understand better and better every year, the way the language functions. I would have loved to sing more French, because every time I do, it's always fun. It's also always a challenge to sing in your native tongue; people think it's easier, but in fact, quite often, it is harder, because you have to remind yourself constantly that you don't sing the way you speak. A lot of singers don't do that, but you should. You cannot sing the language the same way you speak it. It goes for any language, but when it's your mother tongue, people usually give you a pass, you know. Anyways, I can't explain the variety in repertoire other than by the fact that I was always a stage beast. Once I'm on stage, I try to become the character I am playing. I also love my colleagues, and love to create a show in a group. I've always loved that. I have friends that I want to sing with all the time — it doesn't happen, but I wish it did. If I got good at something, it kept coming back. I was good at Figaro, and it came back so many times. I was good at Marcello, and it's still coming back. So these are roles that are staples of my career — like, I almost did 10 years just on these two roles. Now, I seek roles, new challenges. I seek them. And Macbeth — I didn't know if I was going to be able to sing it when it was offered to me, but I knew I wanted to try, because it's my first time. You never know. You never know. You just think, “I'll do my best.” And it turns out, I started singing it, and I was like, “I could sing this role for the rest of my career, and I would be happy this could be my queen of the night.” You know, I could sing like Macbeth and probably Boccanegra, because I think they're very similar; they have arias, but they’re mostly about carrying the drama. You have a lot of text, a lot of monologues, a lot of direction.
That’s a great segue! Let’s talk about Macbeth. You are making your role debut as Macbeth at the Washington National Opera. Tell me about that experience. What’s your take on Macbeth as a character, vocally and dramatically?
It's tough because you're limited by who you are. As a sidenote, I want to do more acting projects. (This is my midlife crisis is bringing me into that.) I want to write stuff and film it, because I'm really curious about that aspect of things. You are who you are, you can't change yourself. Let's say we film me singing a scene. The whole time, in my head, while I'm doing it, in my body, I feel like this powerful king. And then I look at the video, and I just look like a little puppy with my big eyes going, “I hope everyone's okay with this.” The discrepancy between what I feel like and what I look like is huge. It's humongous. And people have told me this many times — it's just the face I have. But the truth is, it is the face I have, and I have to work with that. Even as a despotic ruler, people would still cower in front of that puppy-eyed face, because they would go, “even though he looks like he doesn't mean it, he means it,” and, in a way, you can be scarier that way. So, that's my perception of things. I'm trying to use myself in my character so when I do the Macbeth, I know what I look like, I know what I sound like. As for my voice, there's still beauty and youth in it and that's good for Macbeth. Having that youthful element is helpful in displaying his relationship with his wife. He’s someone who would do anything for his wife. He'll chop the head of the first person that walks in. Someone once said, “you can be scared of someone who can kill with a knife; I'm more scared of someone I can kill with a spoon.” Macbeth is like that. He may not be a big, massive, muscular, angry-looking guy. But if the guy looks super nice and young and he just kills left and right, I think that’s even scarier, because you can't read him. You can't be like, “now it's time to get out.” For example, in the banquet scene, when everyone’s having a good time but then, all of a sudden, Macbeth starts going crazy because he’s seen the ghost of Banquo, and nobody knows what’s going on.
In terms of what Verdi wrote for me, I don't have to do much in terms of interpretation. I just have to follow the line that he wrote for me. I have to stay aware of who I am, what I look like. I try to put the emphasis on my strengths and I try to use my weaknesses in a way that will make the character feel believable. So if my weakness is that I look young or that I look too kind, let's play on that. I'm gonna say something that I've never said out loud, but my gut feeling is that every person, at the core, we're all exactly the same. We all have that little child inside of us. In the history of time that ever existed, that behaved, that behaved either truly evil or truly good. No one has ever been only black or only white. They always are moments where some of those people will turn around and surprise you. And, to come back to what we were saying, I tried to root every single one of my characters in some basis of “there are reasons for which I'm doing this, and those reasons to me to my character.” They're good reasons. They justify what I'm doing. Some characters might be a bit harder. I remember Joe De Rocher in Dead Man Walking was tough because you start with the rape and the murder, and then for the rest of the opera, you behave humanly as any human would. But that mistake was fueled by a whole childhood of trauma, alcohol, drugs, excuses. Of course, these are only explanations, because then, afterwards, what you see is a human being who eventually repents, and you see his journey towards that. To believe that any person may have some kind of redeeming qualities, you have to root everything that they do in something human. Yeah, we all make mistakes. Some people's mistakes are much, much worse than others.
"I try to put the emphasis on my strengths and I try to use my weaknesses in a way that will make the character feel believable."
Interesting, so it sounds like there’s a lot of psychology there, and a lot of yourself that you bring into your character.
It's elemental psychology. I think you're absolutely right, you know, I've been to. I’ve been told my Germont is fantastic, not only vocally but in the way I characterize him, because he's literally fighting for one of his children. And, if you have kids, or ask anyone with kids who loves their kids, “what would you do for your kids?” Anything, anything, anything they believe will make them happier, and that they believe is right. And so, there are a lot of people who are like, “Germont is being a real bastard.” But no, he's not. He's trying to protect his daughter. And I can fully identify to that. Everything he says is to protect his daughter and also, later on, his son. He says to Violetta, “My daughter's life is going to be ruined because of this. Do you want to ruin another child's life?” And if Germont is just an asshole, she would never say yes! She is way too proud to say yes to a guy who's being a d*ck. Of course we can all say it's horrible. But ultimately, his reasons make sense. Macbeth's reasons, they're a bit harder to find, but there is one really important thing that happens: he adores his wife, but they cannot have kids. Imagine, in those days where the whole point was longevity of blood and lineage, even if does become king, that will be the end of his lineage, right there, he's the own end of his lineage. And I think that's his rage. I think that's why he's such a great general and such a great killer — it’s because he has nothing to live for. But then, the promise of power really intoxicates him. He gets really into the witch's deal, you know, predicting the future. But it's torture for him, because even though he is king and the most powerful man on the planet, Banco will father no less than nine kings after him, so no one will ever know. And his whole aria — which is funny, because it’s super sweet and loving and beautiful — is about how when it's his funeral day, no one will be weeping for him. So, he says, no one will miss me, no one will honor me, no one will respect me. That's all he wanted. It's a little boy just wanting to be loved. But he, you know, did it very wrongly. So there's nuances in every role, in every character. No one is one dimensional. Probably Iago might be an exception, but only in that he is kind of like an embodiment of evil, like Mephisto in Faust.
One thing that I admire greatly about you is your ability to make opera and classical music fun and accessible. That means a lot to me because that's a lot of what I try to do with my website, AppreciateOpera.org. One of my core missions is taking my love for opera, which I've had since I was a very little boy, and sharing it in such a way that conveys that energy and passion that we have for music. You did this during the COVID pandemic, when you showcased a lot of your musical skills online through short form performances. But, more generally, I'm curious about how you would go about sharing opera the world in such a way that can keep it alive and vibrant. What I’ve learned in my few years of experience is that you can’t just go into communities and be like, “Here, listen to this,” or “You have to appreciate this.”
Yeah, that makes people lazy. It's the same thing with putting microphones and speakers in the audience, you make people lazy. You send the sound to them. They don't have to go and get it. Yeah, when they sit there and the opera starts, and for the first 5-10 minutes, they're like, whoa! But eventually, they go to the sound, and that engagement is part of the appeal. Today in the world, where we want to sell stuff, we want to make money, we just keep bombarding people with information, you open your phone and it's like short, short videos and clips and snippets of things. But the point of going to see live performances is that, and especially in a performance like opera, like classical music, you have to go to it. You've already walked there, you've bought your ticket, you sat down in the house, and once you're sitting down, your attention needs to go this way. Your ears need to focus in front of them. That part of the work is, in itself, connected to the emotion you're going to live. The second part of my answer has to do with the emotion as well, and with understanding what's going on on stage. So, I'm constantly racking my brains into how we can make what we do more accessible. And of course, the answer always has to do with the time you're in. Opera was created a certain epoch, and we need to be aware of the context under which it was created. The context of how Verdi wrote Macbeth and when he rewrote and when he performed it. If you don't understand it, how do you reciprocate? How do you convince an audience today to go see it the same way they used to? So in Macbeth’s case, what I like about it is that it is based on a play that's still known. The name is known. There's still the fear of saying it out loud. If you're from the theater, you call it the “Scottish Play”, there's still there's an aura around it. Most of the time, the problem we have is that we don't know the works operas are based on anymore. If you talked to people about Manon Lescaut when it was created, everyone knew the book. Everyone had read it, and you went to see the opera, and you were missing half of the book, you didn't care, because you knew it. Today, no one knows it, no one has read it. So there are a lot of operas that will seem confusing, because you'll be like, “where's the rest of that story?” So to me, the new operas and the new stagings need to be done with subjects that the general public has the keys to. If you want to rewrite Zauberflöte and you want to make it Lord of the Rings, it's gonna work. It's gonna work for a certain generation. If you want to do Falstaff and set it in a video game, it's gonna work. Or, even better, for Wagner, I think that the whole Ring Cycle in the video game would be amazing. Anyway, just ideas like that, where you go and reach your public a little bit. Unless they’re like you, who’s been passionate about opera for so long, they don’t know the codes behind the opera. They don't get it. They don't understand it. And they’re not idiots for not understanding. They just don't know. So, how do you teach them? How do you convince them? Well, give them some of the codes, some of the keys will come from the stuff that they know from everyday life. If you start an opera with the Netflix intro sound, for example, everyone's going to laugh, because everyone knows that. Bring in some of these ideas that everyone has a connection to, more or less. Then the next step is to get creators involved. It's a mix of comedians, especially the younger comedians, who have mostly become influencers now. What I'm trying to say is you need to hire those creatives, those types of creatives, to appeal to new audiences. If I'm going to sit down and adapt the story of Macbeth, I might do it humoristically, as the story of a “Cougar” woman who found herself a cool husband who turns out to be fantastic fighter. It's accurate, but at the same time, it's so ridiculous. Sometimes, we have to be aware of how ridiculous the stories we play are.
We need to have fun! In the leadup to seeing Forza at the Met last year, I remember explaining the plot to my parents in such a way that had them dying of laughter. The various identities of Carlo, the way the protagonists end up at the same monastery, the gun randomly killing Leonora’s father — this stuff can be appreciated while also being played around with. As you say, we also must allow ourselves to live in the present and incorporate those lived experiences we have, as composers did and audiences did back in the day, and take these classic masterpieces into our generation, into the 21st century, and make them ours. The beauty of these works is the way they transcend time, and how we can relate to them even today.
Oh yeah, that’s right. I was sitting in the Sitzprobe the other day, and it's the first time we kind of hear each other, and we're not doing any of the stagings. We're not any of the sets or costumes. It's just about getting everything together musically. And I was there looking at the orchestra like I do with every orchestra, and looking at all of these people and thinking: these are all careers, all of these people, everyone, all of us, the people backstage who are preparing costumes and sets and makeups and stuff. It's not something they do on a Friday night. It's something they do every day. You cannot play in an opera if you don't have some form of skill that you have developed over years. All of this takes time, it takes years, entire careers, entire lifetimes. And that is so beautiful. I'm not only talking about the musical result; I'm talking about the marvel of seeing all these people going in the same direction, devoting a majority of what we do to honing our skills so that we can sit on our chair and do our thing. In my case, it is to sing my languages and think about my character and make sure I have line and respect the nuances on the page. It’s the same for every musician in the pit, thinking, “I have to respect what's written on the page, I have to follow the conductor.” The amount of concentration it requires, the amount of skill it requires, the devotion that it requires, is beautiful. Years and years and years of sacrifices by every single person in every theater in the world — that is beautiful. The art that you are creating comes from sacrifice. It doesn't come from someone making a funny video on their phone. It comes from years and years of dedication. Opera houses are small cities.
"Opera houses are small cities"
Now that you mention it, a hobby of mine is going back to the source material of various operas. One of my favorite novels is La Dame aux Camélias, which is what Traviata is based on!
There's a famous quote from Alexandre Dumas, the father, who wrote Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, and all these famous stories. When his son wrote La Dame aux Camélias, people asked the father, “How much involvement did you have in the making of the book?” And he answered, “Well, I made the author!”
Brilliant! I love the way you talk about the creative process and the beauty of art coming together. Speaking of which, I want to briefly touch upon your work to help produce the next generation of artists, for instance, through the Canadian Vocal Arts Institute, and the work you do there, and what it means to you to help steer the future generation of audience members and also singers.
It's a bit harder, because of how busy we are at the moment. You know, let's be honest, I have a family life, so it's been a bit harder to commit to doing a lot of outreach. So, the one thing that's the easiest to me, because I am a very extroverted person, is after-shows. After shows, people will wait around at the door, around the artist entrance, they’ll sometimes want autographs, but mostly they just want to chat about what they felt when they saw, what they heard, and I love that. I love talking to them. The amount of times that I met people that brought someone that had never been to the opera before, and it changed their life! Let’s be honest, like I said, once I'm on stage, I'm not necessarily who I am in real life, right? You meet me at the door after, and often people don't even recognize me. But then it hits you that these are human beings that we can talk to, and they're nice and they smile. What I can do is to try to tell them, like, “Listen, this is a phenomenal art form, which takes a lot of different skills, a lot of sacrifices, but I'm still so grateful for all of you guys to come to take your wallet out, to come sit in the theater and just share that moment with us. I am so grateful.” Without that, you know, we don't have a job, and all of this beautiful material just just gets wasted. Just gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. Some of the most beautiful stuff ever written. Some of the most plagiarized music in the world comes from opera! And there's a reason for that, because they know how touching and powerful it is. As far as young singers go, from the beginning, I've always told myself I'm going to pay it back when I can. Sometimes, people just come to me and go, “Hey, do you teach?” And I offer to listen to young singers, give them advice, work with them. And this is all stuff I do for free. This is all pro bono. Because to me, when you're a young singer, when you're not making money with your art, or even if you are but barely making a living, I'm not going to take abuse of that. But I think there's two parts to our job. One part is to tell singers what they need to master in order to have a career. The other half is to tell them that, even if you do master all of those things, you might not have a career. And so it's that reality check. Listen, there are people out there making careers, people out there who are very well known, very famous, but don't have any of those skills. They're actually terrible singers. But it doesn't matter. You never know why. Some careers happen and some don't. What I can tell you is that, if you want to maximize your career, focus on those skills. There's so many people out there trying to make a career in singing in opera — a lot more than the general public knows. And the devotion and the passion that you find on social media for one note that someone's singing is incredible. If you look at the comment section on one aria sung by one person that's not even famous, it's like hundreds of comments. It’s like a football match where everyone thinks they know better than you, better than the people on stage, the professionals. But it's that kind of passion that we have, that kind of passion in the theater as well. At the end of the day, it all comes down the new generations, the young people like you. You're a young guy. There's always someone like you who's passionate. What I say to you is, my God, I appreciate what you’re doing! I love that you’ve taken the time to talk to me today. I love that you're taking the time, I'm sure, to educate people around you. But at the same time, even when you feel like a failure, if you've only helped one person understand half of what you were trying to say, you've succeeded.
"Even when you feel like a failure, if you've only helped one person understand half of what you were trying to say, you've succeeded"
I always like finishing with this question: where should a young person start? If they’ve read our conversation and want to give opera a shot, where should they look?
I'm going to say the same thing that I say about therapy. It's not going to work if you don't want to try. You gotta have some form of choice. We're talking something that's going to last a few hours, like the same commitment you put in while watching a TV series or, you know, or a movie or two. This is the kind of commitment we're talking about. So nothing life-changing, nothing heavy. The first thing that I think what some people need to do, especially when they're younger, is to try find the operas that speak to something that you understand better when you're younger. When we’re young, we understand things like love and dreams. As you're getting older, that changes a bit; we still understand those things, but they they've evolved in us. But when we're younger, we feel invincible, we feel hopeful and dreamful. Obviously, Boheme is always a good one. And I would say a Mozart. You can go Magic Flute, you can go Figaro. I think that Figaro is the is the real deal. It’s got the comedy, it's got the touching moments, and half the time you recognize the music anyway. So, let's say we start with those two. Then I'm gonna say the first thing you need to do is find a resume of the story. And while you're reading it, put the music in the background. Then you need to figure out key moments, key plot point moments. So in the resume of that piece, you need to figure out that ending of that first act. Those arias and that duet at the end. Then, you can go to the finale, which is pretty cool, too. Altogether that has taken 30 to 45 minutes of your time. Then, you let it rest. You go. Let it rest, forget about it. And then in a day or two, put the music on again without a story, you just put the music on again and see how it makes you feel. You recognize this. You’ve heard this before. The problem with opera is that it gets better and better as you hear it. Most people will give it five minutes of their life. If they give it five minutes, it can be five seconds, and then immediately go, like, “Ah, I don't like it.” And these are the same people that if you put the same excerpt in a movie in the back, they'll go, “Oh, my God, that music is genius!” Yeah, it's from an opera — you just didn't last past the five-second mark. But that comes from wanting to commit to it. You want to try. But I know people who wanted to try so they immediately bought a ticket to the opera, and they go sit down in the dark room for three hours or more, and they see something on stage. They don't understand what's going on physically. So they're seeing a lot of stuff. They don't know what's happening. They have subtitles because it's in a language they don't understand. They might have read, they might not have read the notes in the program — which are usually boring! — so they’re bombarded with all this information, and then musically, your ears are like, “What is this?” What is this? What is this? So, of course, you come out of there and you're like, “this is not for me!” A few parents at my kids’ school came to see Simon Boccanegra — not the easiest opera. So, I said to them, the first thing you need to do is go on YouTube, listen to excerpts, read a summary of the story together. Make jokes about it. Make it funny. Have fun, because if you're just reading it seriously, it's not serious. Don't take it seriously, not at first. Then, when you’re in the audience, it starts, and then you're like, “Okay, that music is vaguely familiar, because I put the excerpts on the other day,” then “Oh, I remember that the first scene is set in the past, and then we're going to go in the future later.” I always compare music to food. The first time you try a certain food, there's a good chance you'll never want to put it in your mouth again. Like oysters, for example, I don't think oysters you just put in your mouth and think they’re delicious right away.. But I think if someone says to you, “It's going to be a bit salty, it tastes a bit like the ocean, and you can add a little bit of lemon juice or a little bit of Tabasco,” then you try different variations and eventually you're like an oyster fiend. It’s the same with opera. Small steps and having fun will get you there.
"The problem with opera is that it gets better and better as you hear it."
I'm Alkis Karmpaliotis, and I'm a senior at the Fieldston School in New York. I hope you enjoyed this interview! I founded AppreciateOpera.org in 2019, and you can support my work by becoming a member and reading some of my other articles!
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