RSS News Feed
Facebook
del.icio.us
Google
My Yahoo!

Mephistopheles Debuts in Cincinnati

Mary Ellyn Hutton
Posted: Jun 14, 2007 - 12:00:00 AM in news_2007

(left to right) Bass Denis Sedov and tenor Richard Leech in Gounod's "Faust" for Cincinnati Opera, Music Hall, Cincinnati, July, 2007

Watch out for bass Denis Sedov.
   As an opera singer, his job is to "fool people," he said, especially in Gounod's "Faust," which opens Cincinnati Opera's 2007 summer festival at 8 p.m. tonight at Music Hall.
   Russian-born Sedov, 33, sings Mephistopheles in "Faust," the Devil posing as benefactor who bargains for the aging philosopher's soul. It will be his debut in the role and he intends to make it vivid.
   "I do him as physical as I can," said Sedov, before a "piano tech" rehearsal at Music Hall last week (a rehearsal on the set with piano accompaniment, where
technical issues such as lighting are worked out). "I try to bring many poses into the character. He (Mephistopheles) is many, many things. He just has a
human coat on him."
   Six-feet-four-inches tall, slender, with piercing eyes and a wicked smile, Sedov promises to be an arresting Mephistopheles. Though he has been working
on the role since he caught opera artistic director Evans Mirageas' eye and ear at an audition in New York City two years ago, Sedov is particularly happy to
be making his debut in the Gounod opera with the artistic team in Cincinnati. They include conductor Julius Rudel, former general director of New York City
Opera and guest conductor at Cincinnati Opera since the days it performed at the Zoo, and stage director Bernard Uzan, former general and artistic director of Montreal Opera. Both are old "Faust" hands. Metropolitan Opera tenor Richard Leech, who is singing Faust, is well known for the role. Soprano Ruth Ann Swenson sang Marguerite at the Met this spring.
   "Rudel is a great maestro," said Sedov. "He had so many little things to say about every single phrase and how should it go and the coloring. It's little things that make all the difference. This detailed work should really be done the first time you do a role, for your debut."
   Born into a theater family in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Sedov began going to the Kirov (now re-named Mariinsky) Theater when he was 3 years old.     "My parents were amateur musicians, but they were both working in the Kirov." He attended Glinka Choir College in St. Petersburg, a famed music school for boys 7-18, where he sang eight hours a week and studied "all the other musical disciplines."
   "When I was 16, I had an octavo, which means a bass extension in the low register. When I was 17, I was offered a job in a radio/TV choir in St. Petersburg, one of the best choirs at the time." He turned it down, however, and in 1991, after earning his diploma in choral conducting, left St. Petersburg for Israel.
   "Everybody was leaving (the Soviet Union was breaking up at the time). My parents left before me. I just joined the big crowd. Some of my friends from
school I see Germany, Spain, places like that." Sedov planned to study conducting in Israel, but upon arrival in Jerusalem he found he had missed the
deadline to apply for a spot in the conducting program there. They asked, " 'What else can you do?' And I said, 'Well, I can sing.' " He trained four years in
Jerusalem and "people started giving me jobs as a singer," he said. He auditioned for the opera in Tel Aviv and was given some cover roles.
   "Actually, the first time I ever went singing onstage in a professional opera (Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv) I went on as a cover (a kind of music understudy). I
was covering Il Gran Sacerdote (High Priest of Babylon) in 'Nabucco' (Verdi). It was in '94 and Leo Nucci was singing his first Nabucco. I went on with Ghena
Dimitrova singing Abigaille. That was way fun."
   He hasn't looked back since.
   For four summers, he participated in the prestigious International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv, where he met and worked with some of world's greatest
singers, conductors and directors. "I sang for people there and they said 'You have to come and sing for Jimmy at the Met' (artistic director, now music
director James Levine)." He joined the Met's Young Artist Development Program, one of the few non-American singers ever invited to do so. "It was a great time for me, from '95 through '97. That's when I made my Met debut."
   Sedov has a way of starting at the top.
   "The first time I went on the Met stage, it came out on DVD. It was 'Fedora' (by Umberto Giordano) in '96 with Placido (Domingo). I had a tiny role right at
the beginning of the opera, one of 20 singers in the first act, which is only 13 minutes long. It was quite a kickoff.
   If you "start at the top," said Sedov, "you have to learn to stay at the top. And that you can only learn with being in a profession for years and years and
years."
(first published in The Cincinnati Post June 14, 2007)