Joseph Calleja recently spent almost three months in New York to play the biggest role of his career to date. Steve Mallia joined him for one of his performances.
It's snowing outside. Actually, it's more of a blizzard. At 1 p.m. in New York on December 19, 2009, there was not a single white flake on the ground. Ten hours later and almost one-foot of the stuff has settled. As the door of Morton's restaurant on Fifth Avenue is flung open and I exit with an upwards glance, it is evident that a great deal more is racing down from a menacing black sky.
When I trudge outside, taking every known precaution to ensure my posterior does not make sudden and violent acquaintance with what was, earlier in the day, a recognisable pavement, a snowball whizzes past my shoulder and splatters on a brick wall. Then I duck to avoid another one. And another.
The offender was not some eight-year-old child, but the man everyone these days calls the Maltese tenor. He was letting off steam, I suppose, but, fortunately for yours truly, missing with virtually every attempt. This failure would have mattered to him on many an occasion, but not tonight - or at least not as much. For what he lacked in snowball-throwing skills he thankfully made up for in vocal talent in front of an audience at the Metropolitan Opera with whom he was very definitely a hit.
Although Joseph Calleja has, for the past two years in particular, become accustomed to the applause and growing adulation for what leading Associated Press critic Mike Silverman has described as a voice "of honey-sweetness", he could take nothing for granted when he agreed to take a big step out of his comfort zone and grapple with the difficult title role in Jacques Offenbach's relatively unknown Tales of Hoffmann. Not even the affinity he built with the Met audience since making his debut there in 2006.
"Vocally the role is very demanding. Much of it lies high in the tenor range and requires considerable power to cut through the orchestration. And it's long - Hoffmann is on stage virtually the entire opera."
Those are not my words - my knowledge of opera can be scribbled with room to spare on the back of a postage stamp - nor, Calleja's. It is Silverman again, writing a preview that was syndicated throughout the world shortly before the December 3, 2009, opening night.
When the Maltese tenor was offered the role back in March, he knew he was taking a "calculated risk" though, he says, it was not one that put his "voice at peril" and quite simply was too good to turn down: "I was thrilled as it suits my lyric voice and I could prepare for this new production with director Bartlett Sher and legendary conductor James Levine."
However, he first had to go through the arduous process of requesting release from six pre-booked engagements which included performances of La Bohème in Paris and Munich, a Verdi Requiem in Los Angeles, and La Traviata in Frankfurt.
Conscious of the pitfalls, he prepared for the three-and-a-half hour opera in French like no other - spending the entire summer studying Hoffmann, which is about a man who has three doomed love affairs and then loses his fourth love at the end. But Calleja went through a "very rough" patch in early autumn. His father, Charles, passed away after a long illness while the tenor was performing in Vienna and he formally separated from his wife after a six-year marriage.
These events were hardly an ideal pre-cursor to the biggest engagement of his career to date, but he dealt with them professionally and landed in the Big Apple in mid-October for rehearsals.
"The Metropolitan has the greatest team of coaches and collaborators so I got to work with them and they helped me handle the stamina factor of this very long opera during a relatively short rehearsal period."
Yet even the best-laid plans risked being undone. Every tenor's biggest nightmare came true: he developed a persistent sinus infection just days before the opera was due to begin. Things were so bad that he had to pull out of the general rehearsal after the first Act and he risked not making the opening night.
But even though his voice was not in peak condition, he stood up to be counted on December 3, despite being even more nervous than usual since he could not know for sure, until he sang, how his vocal chords would cope with the strain. The critics were, by and large, very positive. The Washington Post reviewer said, "the high point, for me, wholly unexpectedly, was Joseph Calleja as Hoffmann... I was simply struck by the consistent beauty and ardour of the sound in a long, long night of singing."
As his physical condition improved after the premiere, so did his singing. He was in particularly fine form on December 19 - the matinée performance that I attended - which is just as well since it was screened live all over the world, including Malta, to an audience of 13 million people either in cinemas, on radio or over the internet.
A reviewer on classicalsource.com said: "Joseph Calleja was the evening's unmistakeable star. (He) has proved to be ideally suited for this role, which he is singing for the first time. His voice rang out with clarity without ever sounding forced, and his phrasing, richness of tone and elocution were impeccable." Calleja was most definitely in a mood to celebrate after that; hence the visit to a restaurant, a rare sortie for him while he is working since he is forced to spend a great deal of time indoors.
The Met is an unassuming, some may even say unattractive, building on the outside; but it is warm, well-equipped and decorated in a luscious red on the inside, equipped with tiny screens on the back of each seat which offer a translation of the opera to each member of the audience who requires one. However, more than anything it is the people that make it and the audience was warm, cultured and receptive.
Calleja - who has appeared at the Met in three engagements over the past year and has three different operas there next season - is most at home in that atmosphere: "I love the New York audience. They are used to having the best in world night after night, so when they cheer you it is incredibly satisfying."
As can be attested by autograph hunters waiting for him after each sold-out performance (though he had to withdraw from the last two because illness struck again), Calleja's growing posse of fans stretches far beyond the shores of New York. Frenchman Gerard Monchablon has become so fond of the tenor that he gave him an original copy of the French newspaper Le Monde Illustré dated October 17, 1880, which carries a feature on Offenbach who died in Paris just 12 days earlier as well as an article in the same issue about Vincenzo Bugeja, the Maltese philanthropist.
A touch of nostalgia? Perhaps. But this yearning for the past is what draws many people to the Maltese tenor's voice, even though - he turns 32 on Friday - it is still several years away from achieving full maturity. "Nobody sings like that anymore," the director of music administration for the Met told Silverman. "His voice is just so intrinsically beautiful, with a very old-fashioned vibrato, it's sort of like sunshine to me." Calleja radiates so much sunshine, in fact, that he can render even snowballs useless.
Go to timesofmalta.com to see highlights from Joseph Calleja's appearance and performances on national German TV station ZDF during a programme entitled 'The Greatest Operas of All Time', which was broadcast on January 9.