"These stories are about real people"

Behind Jonathan Tetelman, the mountains rise. He is sitting on the sun terrace of a hotel in Lucerne, where he has stopped to rest between rehearsals and performances.

Even before the interview begins, he briefly steps out of the frame: His young daughter has fallen. A few reassuring words, a quick glance away from the camera, then he sits back down at the table. “Sorry about that,” he says with a smile. Only now does the conversation begin.

In a few weeks, Tetelman will return to the Vienna State Opera as Mario Cavaradossi. As soon as the Vienna production of Tosca comes up, he doesn’t talk about his role, but rather about the staging. He is clearly pleased that the Vienna State Opera still keeps Margarethe Wallmann’s Tosca in its repertoire to this day. Not out of reverence for a great tradition, but because this production offers the singers something which, for him, constitutes the very essence of musical theater: space for the characters. Puccini’s operas, says Tetelman, are not about operatic heroes, but about human beings.

"These stories are about real people."

This sentence comes right at the beginning. At first, it seems to refer only to Puccini’s operas, but the longer Tetelman speaks, the clearer it becomes that his remarks extend far beyond Puccini. When asked what particularly fascinates him about working with directors, Tetelman speaks neither of directing styles nor of aesthetic concepts. For him, characters do not emerge solely from the score, but rather through the rehearsal process, in the collective search for subtext, relationships, and motivations. For him, singing and acting cannot be separated: “If those things aren’t working together, then for me it doesn’t function.”

Without hesitation, Jonathan Tetelman answers questions about Tosca, about directing, and about his understanding of musical theater. It’s clear that this is an artist speaking—one who has given countless interviews and knows how to articulate his thoughts clearly. It’s only when asked how he himself knows that a performance was a success that something changes. Tetelman takes his time. Then he says: “I feel like I’m kind of going through a crisis right now.”

A minor crisis. Tetelman speaks neither of his voice nor of the pressure of an international career. He speaks of his own standard. For a long time, he says, he believed a performance was successful if it felt right to him. Now, however, he has come to realize something else: “I don’t want what I think is my best. I just want to be myself.”

Tetelman does not describe this development as a sudden realization, but rather as an observation that emerged over the course of many performances. The evenings on which he considered his own performance to be particularly good were not always the ones that moved the audience the most. Conversely, he had found that it was precisely the performances he himself had doubts about triggered a special response from the audience.

“I’m giving a gift.”

Anyone who questions their own standards must eventually decide what to use as a guide instead.

Jonathan Tetelman doesn’t have a simple answer to that either. If you ask him about the different categories within the tenor repertoire, he doesn’t initially even get into a discussion about lyric, spinto, or dramatic voices. Another idea seems much more important to him. No matter which vocal category a voice falls into, he says, it must retain its lyrical quality. Only once this idea has been fully articulated do the categories lose their significance for him: “It’s more important to be doing the thing than talking about what you’re doing.”

For anyone who thinks this way, the next question almost inevitably arises: Who actually decides when a singer is ready for the next role? Teachers, agents, artistic directors? Tetelman doesn’t hesitate. In the end, no one but the singer himself can make that decision. It’s less about courage than about responsibility. Or, as Daniel Barenboim once put it: “Don’t let your ambitions cloud your judgment.”

It becomes clear shortly thereafter that this attitude has long since extended beyond mere casting decisions. When asked about the greatest risks of his career, Tetelman speaks neither of difficult parts nor of vocal limitations. He speaks of time. “The biggest risk is wasting time.” In the past, he used to seek out nearly every experience. Today, he asks himself more carefully which projects he wants to devote weeks or months of his life to. “I have a family. I have a wife.”

Over the years, as Jonathan Tetelman noted elsewhere in the conversation, many of his standards have changed. This makes the counter-question all the more intriguing: What has remained? What has remained the same despite an international career, growing fame, and ever-larger stages? Tetelman laughs.

“Let me get my wife.”

A little later, his wife is sitting next to him on the terrace. She pauses to think for a moment. Then she speaks—not about Tetelman’s voice or his success—but about kindness. About modesty. About the fact that her husband himself treats even those people with openness, people he knows aren’t always well-disposed toward him.

Tetelman listens in silence. He adds nothing, simply letting the description stand. For the first time in this interview, the portrait does not emerge from his own words, but from the perspective of someone who has been by his side for years.

Almost in passing, the conversation turns once more to his roles. Jonathan Tetelman talks about Mario Cavaradossi, whom he will sing again this fall at the Vienna State Opera. He admires him, he says, because he is a good person. Because he is loving, shows integrity, and is willing to stand up for his beliefs.

This makes it all the more surprising that, immediately afterward, Tetelman will be portraying the Duke of Mantua, the seducer from Verdi’s Rigoletto, —a character who could hardly be more different from Cavaradossi. He loves to play this man, precisely because he rejects him so deeply on a moral level. It gives him pleasure to immerse himself for one evening in a character whose worldview is completely foreign to him. “You have to embrace their good qualities and their bad qualities in equal measure. That’s what makes a full, complete artist.”

At the end of the conversation, a sentence spoken right at the beginning takes on a different meaning once again. Right at the start, Tetelman had said of Puccini: “These stories are about real people.” Now he speaks of heroes and villains in the same way: as human beings.