"I knew I wanted to sing it once, when I grew old and I would have enough life experience to take on the role of the captain of a British warship called Vere , " says the native of Košice and Prague over thirty years of living tenor. "When I learned at the end of 2016 that the National Theater in Prague and the direction of Daniel Špinar, with whom I had the best experience of working on the production of Janacek's opera From the dead house, I knew that I was waiting not only for the dream role , which Benjamin Britten has done to me, but also a great deal of work to do it properly. I learned it started last February with the right effort. An hour or two daily. Whether I was at home in Prague, in Turin, Paris or on a vacation in Malaga, Spain.
Aside from the songs of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, I have never had to learn such an extensive role in English, because Billy Budd's opera, which is one of the top musical and dramatic works of the 20th century, will sing in Prague in English, and Czech subtitles will help with the Czech audience. Captain Vere just gave me the choir and the actor.
The opera, Billy Budd, tells an intriguing story that took place on a British warship invincible during the Napoleonic wars. At a time when injustice to the individual for the benefit of the whole was daily bread. And Captain Vere is forced to make a decision that frightens him for the rest of his life and complicates his peaceful departure from this world. Young and naive boy Billy Budd, a sailor from the front naval basket, becomes Ver's life-long ghost. It has become the object of a hatred of a sadistic manipulator, Armstrong Claggart, who falsely accuses Billy of incitement to rebellion. The boy is inadvertently killing his trick and is sentenced to death. And Captain Vere, whom I play and sing at Billy Budd, suddenly stands before deciding whether to grant the innocent grace or to observe the law of war.
So this time I did not only deal with the pitfalls that this role brings with the seven extremely heavy arias that I am waiting for in this opera but also with the knowledge that I do not get the whole of the third act out of the stage which will be nice for me in the autumn physical load. And, of course, I was thinking about how I would handle the situation that Captain Vere had to solve. Whether I would win the good over evil or vice versa, which is a question that every one of us has to lay several times in his life. Billy Budd has just brought me a wonderful job and 6 weeks of testing in a great team, but perhaps even the hardest part of my previous singing career. "
As Stephan Margita, with the role of Captain Vera in Billy Budd's opera, you can convince yourself at the National Theater of Prague on 18, 20, 25 and 28 January 2018 and then on 25 and 27 April this year. It is clear today that her first husband will support Hana Zagorova, who, during her more than a quarter of a century of relationship, was missing at Štefan's premiere. At home or abroad. Only once. She was missing in 1999 in Paris, when just before the premiere of Janáček's opera, Liška Bystrouska got a terrible flu. And because she could not get rid of her, she did not fly to Stephen to stop him from being ridden.
Source: tz, edited editorially
