The first Korean tenor at Bayreuth Festival

The first Korean tenor at Bayreuth Festival. November. 01, 2016 07:11. by 김동욱 기자creating@donga.com.
“Why did it cast an Asian who is not fluent in German and give him a hard time?

Back in 2001, local newspapers criticized him when tenor Kim Seok-cheol played a role in Tchaikovsky’s opera “Eugene Onegin” in German at Dortmund Theater.

Fifteen years later, Kim stood on the stage of the Bayreuth Festival, home to Wagner’s operas. He was the first Korean tenor at the festival in 140 years since the creation of the festival by Wagner in 1876. Kang Byeong-woon, a bass, was the first Asian and Korean singer to be on the stage in 1988, and Yeon Gwang-cheol, a bass, and Samuel Yoon, a baritone, followed suit.

The annual festival held at Bayreuth in July and August does not invite those who cannot speak German well and have no understanding of operas to the stage. German newspapers complimented Kim Seok-cheol, saying, “He performed the role well and did a good job. He sang in perfect German.”

This reporter met Kim at Seoul Arts Center recently. He visited Korea for Lohengrin with the National Opera at Seoul Arts Center on Nov. 16, 18 and 20. About his performance at Bayreuth, he said, “I did not play the leading role but a supporting one. I could learn a lot from world-famous singers for more than two months.”

He became a singer belatedly. He applied for a college of dentistry at Yonsei University but he failed. While he was trying to give it another try, he got advice from people around him and eventually got into the college of music at the prestigious Seoul National University.

“My mother opposed the idea to become a singer, an insecure job," the 42-year-old opera singer said. "Now, I think I am on the right track as a singer, but she passed away during the festival period this year, which was very hard for me.”

Kim likes analyzing the lyric of a song rather than a song itself when he started learning singing. “I don’t like singing a song without knowing the language. You can’t say that you can sing a song just because you make the same pronunciation," Kim said. "I think you should know the meaning of the lyric as well as the background.”

His wife is an American, who is serving the principal of an international school in Indonesia. “I can be with her for a few months a year," he said. "I sometimes envy an ordinary life where a family has a dinner together after work.”

His goal is to take a leading role at Bayreuth and play in the Vienna State Opera in Austria.

During the interview, he talked about how to approach an opera and interpret the text and the background of operas. I felt like I was in a lecture. “Like singing on the stage, I like studying and teaching," he added. "Once I achieve the goal, I want to become a researcher who studies operas.”

Dong-Wook Kim  creating@donga.com