This page was last updated on: October 28, 2007
Profile: Erwin Schrott
Erwin Schrott & Isabel Bayrakdarian
Le Nozze di Figaro, Los Angeles Opera, 2004
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'Figaro' a first ... for NBA-loving baritone
By John Farrell, San Bernardino Sun, 21 May 2004
For baritone Erwin Schrott, who will sing the role of Figaro for the first time in the Los Angeles Opera production of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro' beginning tonight at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, there couldn't have been a better time to be in Southern California.
Schrott, who lives outside Milan, Italy, with his wife and daughter, is not only one of the world's most in-demand baritones, but also an NBA fan. "In Italy, everybody loves the NBA,' he said in his dressing room the Friday after Derek Fisher's last-second heroics turned the tide for the Lakers in their series with San
Antonio. And Schrott announced with a smile that he had managed to get tickets to the next game, which the Lakers won.
That smile seems to be pretty much a permanent part of Schrott's personality. There are artists who suffer for their art, but the young Italian isn't one of them. He loves life, and especially the life he has as an opera singer who travels the world to perform. His only regret is that he can't spend as much time with his wife and daughter as he would like. He had just flown into Los Angeles from Montevideo, Uruguay, where he was born in 1972. He had been visiting his parents.
"I love traveling, and I love performing,' Schrott said. "I am a very happy man. If you get to do work that you love, you are very lucky, and I love my work and I love to travel.
"When I am at home, I wake up in the morning and I say, 'I want to get to work right away,' and my wife will say, `You have only been home a week. Relax.' '
Schrott is as much an actor a singer, part of the new generation of opera stars who want to do more in a
performance than just sing. He has movie idol good looks: tall, handsome, ruggedly built, with a powerful handshake and sparkling eyes, his loose curly black hair falling to his collar. He also has the kind of personality that can be transmitted with just a glance.
He turns on his acting skills for a demonstration of his method, derived from Stanislavksy, of concentrating on one member of the audience to get the message across, and you see how powerfully he can express emotion. He demonstrates how he uses that technique in singing, with a few bars of Leporello's opening aria from Mozart's "Don Giovanni,' and, in the hardly spacious confines of the dressing room, his voice is so loud and strong you get a brief idea of how opera singers do their magic on stage.
Mozart has become Schrott's specialty, from Leporello in "Don Giovanni' to the Don himself, and now Figaro for the first time. His Mozart roles include Don Giovanni, which he sang with great success in Los Angeles in 2003, and Leporello and Masetto in other productions of that opera. He has sung in "La Boheme' at the Metropolitan Opera and in Hamburg, Germany, and has also sung with the Vienna Opera, the Royal Opera, Covent Garden and in Florence and Naples. He will return to Los Angeles next year to sing Escamillo in Bizet's "Carmen,' a role he will first sing in Rome this summer.
"I love doing Mozart. It suits my voice, and I think his operas are perfect for me right now,' Schrott said. "Of
course, your voice needs some exercise, so every so often I do a role where I have to growl.'
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External Links
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Don Giovanni...
Los Angeles
2003
Washington
2003
Florence
2005
Turin
2005
London
2007
Washington
2007
(Click images to enlarge)
Tim Page, The Washington Post, March 31 2003...
"The Uruguayan bass Erwin Schrott proved a seductive, appropriately oily Don Giovanni, at once captivating and repellent. Schrott has a fine, slightly florid voice, nicely blended from top to bottom. The champagne aria was lithe and exciting, with just a hint of menace. And while I prefer a simpler approach to the Serenade -- these gorgeous 90 seconds of music flow so smoothly that they need little additional emphasis -- Schrott brought home the Don's erotic urgency."
Daniel Cariaga, Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2003...
"Erwin Schrott, a not-yet-30 baritone from Uruguay, is a most persuasive Giovanni, sensual, sleek and commanding and possessed of a voice of honeyed authority."
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph, June 13, 2007...
"Erwin Schrott is the most sardonic, seductive, witty and mercurial Don Giovanni I have ever seen. This hugely gifted Uruguayan bass oozes sex appeal, but he doesn't
just preen his good looks and firm pecs - this is a subtle and thoughtful characterisation of an insouciantly self-centred aristocrat, sung with clarity and sensitivity."
Hilary Finch, The Times, June 13, 2007...
"And Don Giovanni himself? Well, you will find it difficult to forget the sinuous virility of Erwin Schrott, the Uruguayan bass. There is deliciously liquid melody within his sensuous singing. Not too much brain at work: he's raw animal energy, and quite the most louche dissolute."
George Hall, The Stage, June 13, 2007...
"Film star looks and a body to match don't do him any harm at all in this role. But his hedonistic relish as opera's leading sexual obsessive, combined with the imagination and colour of his singing, make him its outstanding exponent today."
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, June 15, 2007...
"Prowling the stage like some feral, sensual animal, and singing with phenomenal grace, Schrott's Don is a self-assured, guiltless immoralist who sweeps through the opera like some uncontrollable force of nature, instigating conflicts between desire, morality and reason in everyone he encounters. [...] Go and see him in it - you won't ever forget him if you do."
