The man with the golden voice

He will be 88 next month, on January 28 to be precise, and his eyes still sparkle when he reminisces about his career as one of Malta’s top tenors, way back in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. But then, Paul Asciak is a man who takes things that matter very seriously, with passion and enthusiasm. Something drives him on and amazingly for a man of his age there’s also barely a wrinkle on his skin. He is in love with life, with his art: music and singing, and while he has been through his more than fair share of adversity his resilience and strength of character keep his head up. They don’t make them like that any more, Albert-G. Storace writes.

I have known Paul all my life, my earliest memories of him and his first wife Rina go back to the early 1950s, when the Asciaks and my parents were the best of friends. We usually met during Paul’s breaks from his singing abroad, when he came to visit his family, which he missed so much. The families visited each other during those breaks and when they were over, my mother and Rina used to meet quite regularly. These memories resurfaced when we went down memory lane a short while ago, in the St Paul’s Bay penthouse flat where Paul lives with his utterly charming second wife Beatrix, “Bice”. A formidable lady in her own right, Bice is also an excellent cook and at times it was difficult to concentrate on my chat with Paul because of the seductively alluring aroma of her cooking wafting across from the kitchen… which was to be our eventual lunch.

With such a long life as his, Paul can draw and be drawn upon the myriad aspects of his life and career. There were things I inevitably already knew but for the sake of this interview I brought them up again and this also served as a refresher exercise for my own even quite formidable memory. Paul said that going back to the very beginning, he was really the first in his family who was to take up a musical career. He had no antecedents and coming full circle now that his career as a singer is half a century behind him, I asked him whether he would have liked one or more of his children to take up a similar career should they have had the talent. He said that it was out of the question: his children who as his career grew especially after moving to the UK he saw less than he would have liked could only see the negative side of the coin. This was that of long periods of separation, with their mother who was never reconciled to this situation and who in the end prevailed in her age-long wish that he would return home to Malta. “I realised that my children were growing into adolescence and I could not be here for them all the time. This was the determining factor because other alternatives would not work out.”

Asking him how it felt to make such a hard choice when he was at the peak of his career, he said that he had ruminated upon it for a long time before taking the final step in 1961. “Once I made the decision that was it. One has to make decisions and stick to them without looking back.” I felt sure that he must have had some regrets because some kind of regret there must be, especially when retiring just months after a triumphant Otello, every dramatic tenor’s wish. He actually took a gamble for according to him a tenor should not even attempt the role before even later in life. “…but the die was already cast, I had made up my mind to retire in the early summer of 1961, so when the offer came from the Impresa Cantoni for me to sing two performances of Otello at the Argotti Gardens in July 1960, I knew that I had to grab the opportunity and I did.” In a way, once family reasons had won out in the end it was better to retire at his peak. He wound up his final engagements in the UK and returned to Malta.

Inevitably we discussed the recently published biography Small Island, Great Riches which Sue Brown, a mutual friend of ours wrote, and which was officially launched early last November. “We missed you at the launching he almost said disapprovingly, but you were in Spain.” So I was, on a trip planned long before I was informed of the date of the launch. I read Sue’s book from cover to cover, so well written that it was difficult to put it down and not read it at one go.

Sue’s book tells his story warts and all and I do think it is very fairly balanced, written with the insight of a historian combined with a passion for music, especially opera. Paul says that she did a very good job. “This was the first detailed in-depth study of my life. You see, it is never too late for a ‘first’. The only previous attempt to write on my career was a brief yet informative study which my friend the late Vincenzo Maria Pellegrini published in 1989.” Of course I do have an autographed copy of this work but Sue’s book is perforce written on a larger scale. It is not a mere adulatory exercise, but also puts Paul’s life against the historical perspective of pre- and post-World War II Malta. There is a deep insight in the country’s social conditions, the situation prevailing in the local world of opera so flourishing before the war and so limited in the years that followed it. As Paul was to move first to Italy and later to the UK, the book also deals with conditions, especially opera, in both countries. It is a very full, all-round picture and worth reading every page.

When “talking shop” with Paul, his modesty, honesty and generosity are elements which always emerge sooner or later. “I never aspired to be anything special. I was made aware of a gift I possessed and wanted to use it to my best ability. I was lucky in having had the right teachers who put me on the right path, which is why one of the joys I discovered after I retired was to provide sound advice to aspiring singers. I have a wealth of experience and try to pass it on to others. I am honest and do not waste their time or nurture any false hopes if they do not really have any talent. I advised freely and honestly.” This generosity reminds one of the many newspaper reports and reviews of his recitals abroad when after strenuous enough performances all reviewers remarked on the generous quantity of encores he regaled his enthusiastic audiences.

That Joseph Calleja should come up during our chat was inevitable, as it always is whenever we meet. I remember very well that soon after Joseph was taken to him for an audition Paul phoned me saying: “I have met a wonderful lad, with a gorgeous natural voice and I guarantee you he will go far, much farther than any one of us has ever gone. You must hear him. I shall arrange it!” By “us” he meant the handful of other Maltese singers who carved a successful career abroad. Little did I realise that this was the same young tenor I had heard even before singing one stanza from a Christmas carol during a concert in my own parish church and which made me prick up my ears like an elf’s. Somehow I did not make the connection when Paul called, and not even later when I did meet Joseph. It was only some three years later, in Brussels, that the young singer made me aware of that very first comment I wrote and which was the first ever published about him.

As Sue says in her book, Joseph’s entering Paul’s life was like a gift from heaven. His activities in various fields in Malta, musical and non-musical kept him busy and active. He was deeply involved with teaching, training choirs, education officer (Music), Malta Representative of London’s Trinity College of Music for many years, involvement with the Malta Society of Arts, Din l-Art Ħelwa and general manager of the Manoel Theatre and taking on the occasional hopeful intent on singing. Losing his only daughter in 1986 and his first wife in 1996 were hard blows to bear. “Joseph turned up at the right time. I have done my best for him and cannot but look with pride at the great career he has carved for himself.”

I would say Bice too appeared on the scene at the propitious moment and both have followed the young star’s career abroad whenever possible. “It has now become difficult for me to travel very far and gone are the days when we used to traipse across the Atlantic to Canada and the US at the drop of a hat in order to follow his performances there. I handle shorter flights much better and only last summer we went to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden where we attended a performance of Simon Boccanegra in which Joseph sang Adorno and Domingo the title role.”

When he was still singing or now that he follows as best as he could his protegé’s progress at home and abroad, Paul remains the same, resolute, professional trouper. There is so much to learn from him and his ever-refreshing positive outlook on things. Blessed with years but looking younger and far from “venerable,” one could only wish him ad multos annos.