Joseph Calleja

Scofield: The music scene, the music world, has become greatly fragmented. We have so many new media, which has spawned audiences for all kinds, of different genres, different types of music. So, now opera is just one of many, including jazz, and pop, and hip-hop, and dozens of others. It’s got to compete a lot harder than it did in the past, when it was the only game in town, right?

Calleja: Yes, and it’s a part of that for youngsters nowadays to appreciate opera properly, you need them to have a minimal preparation. It is like, I love great wines. I’ve been collecting wines at the age of 19. Pair de la Jurade, which means the highest-ranking civilian title from the Jurade of Saint-Emilion in Bordeaux, I’m soon to be initiated into a fraternity in Burgundy as well, wine is a very big part of my life. Of course I cannot drink it when I’m singing, but when I’m not singing, I’m wine tasting, and I have a cellar.

But it is like a great wine, if you don’t have some preparation of what this cépage is, you might taste the great 1982, for example, Chateau Figeac from Bordeaux of Saint-Emilion, and you like it, but you will not know what you’re tasting, right? It would be good, but if you compared it to other wines, and you have some pedigree, some preparation in this, you’ll appreciate it much more. And opera is exactly the same thing. You can walk in a performance and enjoy and love it, but when you know more about it, you’ll enjoy it even more.

Scofield: There’s, of course, a great deal of opera to be enjoyed. You have also recorded one or two beautiful art songs in this tribute to Mario Lanza, Be My Love, there is a marvelous Tosti song that you have recorded. It’s called “‘A vucchella”, and the BBC Music Magazine said that your singing of “‘A vucchella” would seduce a slab of marble.

Calleja: I forgot about that review, but that review is the nail on the head. Because “‘A vucchella” is, in Neapolitan, “mouth”. And of course, it’s literally when people say opera is boring. No, opera is mostly about love, sex, and revenge, four things. And betrayal. Opera is about life, opera is about four things invariably.