Landing the lead role in "South Pacific" and then winning a Tony award. Singing at a jazz club or cabaret. Singing in the great concert halls around the world. Singing at the Met Opera and other major opera houses around the world.
A number of aspiring artists would give everything to just get a chance at doing one of the aforementioned performance opportunities. And many established artists never get the chances to do more than one of those.
44-year-old Brazilian-Polish baritone Paulo Szot has done them all in his continually blossoming career. Szot of course rose to prominence for his Tony-award winning run in South Pacific back in 2008 and has since sung at the major opera houses in the world including the Met Opera. On Dec. 31, he will highlight the Metropolitan Opera's annual News Years Eve gala as Falke in Johann Strauss Jr.'s "Die Fledermaus."
The Baritone recently spoke with Latinos Post about his current project as well as his ability to maintain such a wide-ranging career.
"A singer needs to take care of his instrument very well," said Szot when asked what it took to move seamlessly from one musical performance world to another. "Having a strong classical technique that uses all the necessary parts of my body to sing has helped me jump from one job to another without overusing my voice."
In past interviews, Szot has stated that one of the great challenges of doing "South Pacific" was to learn how to speak and singing interchangeably throughout the night.
"I was really scared," said Szot during an interview with Opera News, "because as an opera singer you never really get lessons in speaking into a theater. It can be very dangerous vocally for a singer. In a Broadway schedule, when you have eight shows a week, it really makes a difference, because if you technically don't resolve all these problems in the speaking moments, once you start doing something wrong over and over, it can affect your singing voice too."
Szot eventually figured out how to grapple with those difficulties and he is applying those learned lessons to his current run of "Fledermaus," an operetta that involves just as much speaking as singing throughout the course of the evening.
Throughout the conversation, Szot reveals that he is enjoying the experience of taking on the classic operetta in the new production by Jeremy Sams; Sams has also created new dialogues for this new rendition of the work. Among the most endearing qualities of the new production, according to Szot, is the fact the story is told with greater clarity.
"The main goal is to tell the story clearly because sometimes it is so complicated to understand for the audience. I think they got it right this time," he stated before noting that the new dialogue has also given the cast a greater sense of freedom.
"I think that in this version, especially, there is a lot of dialogue so we can play around and its funny. It's something that I really enjoy. In opera we usually don't have much dialogue but in this case we have the freedom to create and contribute with our experiences to the staging as well. So it's not something that is written in stone. It is a work in progress. That makes it very enjoyable."
The original "Fledermaus" is set to German text but the work is known for being translated into numerous languages due to its immense popularity. The Met version is fully in English and is the third time that Szot has performed the work. Interestingly, he has yet to sing the work in its original language.
"I sang it once in Polish and once in Portuguese," he stated. "I'm really enjoying the English too. It has a very specific kind of humor in the dialogues and I think the people are going to enjoy it a lot."
Falke is Szot's third role at the Met Opera. He debuted back in 2010 in Dmitri Shostakovich's "The Nose" and returned during the 2011-12 to play Lescaut in Jules Massenet's "Manon." After being absent from the Met's stage during the 2012-13 season, Szot returned earlier this season for a revival of "The Nose."
Szot noted that his return to the fiendishly difficult role was far more refreshing this time around for a number of reasons.
The first time I did it, it was my debut at the Met," he explained. "You can imagine how much psychological weight it carries. I wasn't able to enjoy it because I was worried about doing a great job and fulfilling what I was expected to do.
"This time, knowing that I was a big success that time and I overcame the obstacle, I was much more comfortable in the role, I felt better," he added. "The show was still the same but for me it was totally different because I was able to relax and enjoy it more."
After "Fledermaus," Szot heads to "The Colony" in Palm Beach for some concert performance in March. He then heads to Melbourne, Australia to perform Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin." The trip will not only feature the first time that Szot heads to Australia, but it will also be the first time he sings Onegin in 10 years.
"I did it 10 years ago in Marseille for my European debut. And I am looking forward to that," Szot said before explaining that he recently watched the opera in a performance that featured Peter Mattei, Rolando Villazon and Marina Poplavskaya.
"I just listened to the music to check if I remember it. I went to see a performance at the Metropolitan and I saw the second cast," he said. "I was very pleased, not only because the cast was excellent, but because I remembered the music. I think right after we open Fledermaus I will start to look at it."
Szot also noted that he hopes to sing more Mozart in the future, though he declined to comment on whether he would take on the composer in 2014.
"I love singing Mozart all the time. I think he was very generous with baritone and he composed the most wonderful operas musically and dramatically," he said. "The librettos with Da Ponte are wonderful and I would be very happy if I could play Mozart roles for many many years."
Regarding the prospect of returning to Broadway, Szot noted that he would take a chance at it if he got the right offer.
"Sometimes I get a call to do something on Broadway but because the opera wall organizes itself in advance," he said. "The concerts are usually signed two years in advance and it's hard to find a window. I would love to do it again, but it has to be something really special, like South Pacific."
Aside from his musical career, Szot noted that he was looking forward to another major event in 2014 - the FIFA World Cup in his native Brazil.
"I am very excited. I am Brazilian and we are very excited for it. We hope that all the stadiums will be ready and we hope the best for Brazil," he enthused.
The Brazilian national team hosted the 2013 Confederations Cup this past summer and managed a 3-0 win in the final against the defending World Cup champion Spain; Szot affirmed that he believed that the Selecao was the favorite to win the trophy.
However, when asked whom he would like to see in the final game against his native country, he was a bit more hesitant.
"The first thought was Germany," he said, "but I want it to be a very easy country."
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