Ruby Hughes

Scofield: What does Berg mean to you as a singer? Is he inspirational, is he important to your musical personality?

Hughes: Hugely. He’s just one of the most wonderful composers I’ve ever come across, and I’ve loved his music ever since I was a teenager. I think it was the recording of Pierre Boulez and Jessye Norman that was my first introduction to Alban Berg’s music.

Scofield: That is very interesting, because you’re mostly singing opera and earning a livelihood as an opera singer, so most of the time you are singing repertoire from the 19th century or even earlier, and Berg is usually not on the menu. So that being the case, why is he important to you?

Hughes: Like Mahler, it’s his harmonic language, and the way he sets text. There is something I relate to in the way he writes melody, and the way he identifies with text, and emotion, and music, and his rhythmic and harmonic language, like Mahler, does something to me. When I listen to it, it gives me goosebumps, and it just makes me feel very happy listening to it. That recording with Jessye Norman of The Seven Early Songs and The Altenberg Lieder, and then she also sings with Geoffrey Parsons the early Berg songs which I’ve also learned, it’s just so interesting seeing how he also developed as a composer throughout his life. And Wozzeck, along with Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Shostakovich, if I had to choose two operas it would be those. They are just phenomenal, and I absolutely love Wozzeck. It’s just an incredible work. It’s high drama again.

Scofield: A lot of people would find the other composers that you regularly have been singing, such as Rossini, and Mozart, and Purcell, are much easier to absorb, sitting down there in their seat in the opera house.

Hughes: Yes, absolutely. But everybody needs something different, don’t they? Some people want to have light relief, some people want to be challenged, some people are surprisingly challenged and then can’t get enough of it. People introduced to Berg perhaps wouldn’t know Berg, and then they’re introduced to his music, it might be kind of like an epiphany for them, who knows? It’s just fascinating. I’ve sung Rossini’s Petite Messe Solonelle and Tancredi as well. Tancredi is a wonderful opera. But he is a composer that I don’t actually identify with nearly as much as Berg and Mahler. And that’s why I don’t perform his music very often, but I can totally see why people love going to Rossini operas, to see La Cenerentola and these fiery operas that are completely different. It’s fascinating that within the realms of classical music we have Rossini and Berg, who could not be more different, and driven by different subject matters and themes.

Scofield: They certainly are, and I don’t think we can deny that Berg’s musical language puts an enormous powerful stamp on who we are musically today.

Hughes: Mm-hmm. [Affirmative]

Scofield: Even though it may turn up, most of the time, in the cinema theaters and on TV soundtracks, rather than in the opera house.

Hughes: He’s been hugely influential on film composers as well.

Scofield: Yes, that’s where the audience loves him. But when they get into the opera house, it seems like their taste is magically transformed.

Hughes: Yes, it’s really strange. In London, we had a phenomenal production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. They did very well. I think more and more people, hopefully, are wanting to go to the 20th century operas. Because in a way, it’s more relevant.

Scofield: Mm-hmm. [Affirmative]

Hughes: But then Rossini, and Mozart as well, they have themes that transcend time, don’t they? And themes in Rossini’s opera and Mozart are still the same themes we have today, aren’t they? Just transcends all that, doesn’t it?

Scofield: All the greats are still great.

Hughes: Yes, exactly. It’s like comedy and tragedy, isn’t it? It’s the Yin and Yang. Some people are more attracted to the Yin, and the Yang, I think I’m more attracted to the dark side of music. But then, when I do sing funny music, not an entertaining music, but sort of cabaret, I absolutely love it. It is out of my comfort zone away, but I always surprise myself actually.