This interview was originally recorded on March 16th, 2017.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Thomas Hampson, baritone

American baritone Thomas Hampson has performed on the world’s leading stages, including The Metropolitan Opera, Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opéra National de Paris, and Teatro alla Scala. Renowned for his versatility and artistry, his repertoire spans more than 80 roles, from Mozart and Verdi to contemporary works such as Adams’s Nixon in China and Karlsson’s Fanny and Alexander. A celebrated concert and recital artist, he has appeared with the world’s foremost orchestras and festivals, and his discography of more than 170 albums has garnered a GRAMMY Award, Edison Award, and the Grand Prix du Disque. Widely recognized as one of today’s most innovative interpreters of song, he is especially admired for his performances of Mahler and Schubert, including his acclaimed Winterreise collaborations with pianist Wolfram Rieger and accordionist Ksenija Sidorova.

Hampson is Kammersänger of the Wiener Staatsoper, an honorary member of London’s Royal Academy of Music, and the recipient of the Hugo Wolf Medal, among many other international honors. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Lied Academy Heidelberg and founder of the Hampsong Foundation, which promotes intercultural dialogue through song. A dedicated mentor, he maintains an active masterclass presence worldwide and serves as an Advisor for Opera for Peace.

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Marc Scorca, President of OPERA America, and welcome to another edition of our Conversations. Please join me in welcoming Thomas Hampson. Welcome back to the National Opera Center; you were here on our opening day.

Thomas Hampson: That's right, and I haven't been here since. I've supported actions you've done here, but I haven't come down.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, we now are welcoming over 75,000 people a year here, for auditions, recitals, lessons, everything. I always start these conversations with a standard question: who brought you to your first opera?

Thomas Hampson: I'm a latecomer, actually. The first opera I ever saw, I was in it. I was in the chorus for Così fan tutte, and then for Barber of Seville, when the Seattle Opera company was visiting Spokane, Washington. And I was already, what, 16 or 17 years old? The first opera I saw was in Spokane; it was also Seattle visiting with Rigoletto, and that was very exciting. I'm not a child who, you know, (was taken by) grandma or my aunt or something like that. I came in the side and back doors to all of this.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, you're not the first great singer I've spoken to, who attended their first opera on stage. I think Pat (Patricia) Racette also, her first opera, she was on stage in the ensemble in some way. There are a number of you great singers who came to opera that way. When did you realize that you had a vocal gift? Was it a choral teacher saying, "You've got it, kid".

Thomas Hampson: Again, I think I was rather late to all this. I was in Spokane. I was very musical as a child, and our family was very musical, and my mother played the church organ and piano. And she also, when I was very young (and she'd just moved to the community where we were with my father) was involved in light opera and that sort of thing. I never saw her on stage; I was too young for that. But I have two older sisters, they studied music. My next older sister is a musician, composer and is still very active musically, and is a director of a church group outside of Seattle. I learned piano and trumpet and drums, and I actually settled on tuba for about three and a half years in junior high school and enjoyed that enormously. I was quite good at it. But I always sang, and I was a good boy soprano and a good boy alto, (imitates voice-breaking, cracking), and I played a lot of baseball. So, music was always part of something, but I was going to go on to school and study law or something, and this rather remarkable voice teacher in Spokane, Washington came up to me in the spring, after we had yearly competitions and festivals and so forth. What are my plans? Am I gonna go to school, yada, yada. She said, "Well, I think that's marvelous, young man, but I perceive in you, over the last couple of years, a very significant artistic side to your soul, and we wouldn't want you to neglect that, would we?" "No, we wouldn't, would we?" "If you'd like to talk about that some more, give me a call". It is a little hard to explain how exotic that conversation was, because I was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist environment. I had gone to private school through high school. And the Seventh-day Adventists and the Catholics are not what you would call close in philosophy. So, this was quite remarkable. She was a student of Lotte Lehmann in Santa Barbara and Bill (William) Vennard down at USC. Those are all the stomping grounds of Marilyn Horne, and so I started studying voice with her, and she's the one that said, "I know you've learned a little German in high school, do you realize that people have set German poetry to music". "Nah, get outta here, really?" So, she hands me these Schubert and Schumann books and records and says, "Have a listen. Maybe something will catch your eye or interest". Well, you know, the rest is history, as it were. And I finished my political science studies in the public school, and I went to (then) her Catholic liberal arts college, and took credits back and forth and all that sort of thing. And with her, I studied comparative vocal pedagogies and score-reading/conducting, and at the other school, I was studying government and political science and comparative literatures and just kind of threw 'em all in one big stew and ended up in California at the Santa Barbara Music Academy of the West with Martial Singher. And between the two of them, and in that time when I was probably 21 or 22, they were very demonstrative to me that I was talented. It's always tough, I think, to ask a singer, when did they realize, 'boom', you know. Let's see, I was 47... When Leonard Bernstein said, "Good". (Shocked) "Really?" But it was that kind of encouragement. The subtitle of my autobiography will certainly be 'My Voice Discovered Me'. I have no ambition to write that, and I'm not in the middle of it. I'm just saying, it would be that. It's been like this flower, (gestures opening up) this awakening kind of thing.

Marc A. Scorca: These Conversations, which are interesting to all of us are frequently viewed by young, rising singers. We see these Conversations in their archive-life as a tool for young singers. So, it's fascinating that your career then went really quickly.

Thomas Hampson: It did.

Marc A. Scorca: Because the launch of your career was fast. Because it was San Francisco Opera Competition, Merola Opera Program, The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. But that happened in a relatively short timeframe. And exceptional teaching? A natural voice? How did it go so fast?

Thomas Hampson: Well it did, and that's just the competition part of it. And I am very much conscious that I'm speaking to my younger colleagues who are putting it together. The good news is, if you're listening, that already shows a certain initiative on your part, which is very healthy and very smart. The bad news is, that the business I started in is not the business you're starting in. It's a whole different set of contexts that they're entering in, that are different than mine. What I think is important in any career, in any time, any generation... You know, the old joke with Robert Merrill, 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' 'Practice'. Well yes, and very early on there was the saying, 'Fortune favors the prepared mind'. That's not just about winning the lottery ticket. The point of that is: be ready for your next step, and the next step, if you are talented and dedicated, will probably come. The steps will come if you are ready for the steps to be there, but if you are just banging around on it, and hoping that somebody's gonna go, "Okay you, I think you're wonderful", go home, do something else. It's not gonna work like that. And yes, I was very gifted and very fortunate; there's no question about that.

Marc A. Scorca: There weren't in the late 70's and early 80's the network of competitions that we have today.

Thomas Hampson: No, I was in Los Angeles. I didn't come from Los Angeles, I came from Washington State. I was raised in Washington state. I was born in the state of Indiana, but three months later, my father went out as a chemical nuclear engineer to Hanford, and worked with GE and the nuclear industry all my life in the desert outside of Richland, Washington. And then I moved as a young boy, at 13, 14 I guess I was, to a boarding academy, and went to school near Spokane, and that's where I became part of Spokane. I went to my first concert in Spokane; I had season tickets, I did the festival. I stayed in Spokane. I went to public school there. I became and realized who I am and was under tremendous tutelage of this wonderful woman, Sister Marietta Coyle and Don (Donald) Thulean, who also passed away last year. He was the executive director of the American Symphony League in his last years. And I hit a very fortuitous time in Spokane. Spokane's having hard times; they don't have the infrastructure they had then. Then I went to California, and I was sent down there because Marietta thought I should go there, and another pianist in town (who had been down there) knew these people. I mean, you know, you just go. And so, I did this class and met Gwendolyn Koldofsky, who was Marilyn Horne's closest teacher and coach, who was the guru for song, and that was always my passion. And, as they say, it went very quickly, but it went rock on rock. The foundation was built, I think in a good way, but once we started putting the walls up, it did go very, very quickly.

Marc A. Scorca: You did do Merola Opera in San Francisco, but not the string of young artist programs that some singers do today, but the time in Düsseldorf must have been very important.

Thomas Hampson: Well Marc, I think it's important, and in the interest of candidness, and that's why I'm here, and I'm 60 years old. I'm happy to be here. I love my younger colleagues. I love teaching. I think it's important to tell this part of the story, and I tell it absent no critique, or anything else, but I went to Düsseldorf, because I could not get into a program; nobody invited me to anything. I was in California for two years. I knew nobody in California, but I'd just started singing, and there was this marvelous woman, Mila Wermer, who kind of ran everything vocal in Los Angeles at that time. She was head of the Western Region Auditions, and she took a liking to me; fair enough. And so I got some, "Sing for this party", and "Can you do that?" And got brought in the back door, and given a bowl of spaghetti and went out, you know, with a dancing dog and went home. But that's what you do. I raised money for the Los Angeles Opera Company before it was the Los Angeles Opera Company in fundraisers, and they would pay me 50, 60 bucks to come sing three or four songs, and I was happy as could be. I was singing funerals at Forest Lawn Cemeteries for 25 bucks a pop. You do what you do to stay alive. I waited tables. I personally loved doing landscape gardening in Spokane, during the early years. I worked in construction, which was very lucrative. You do what you do to stay alive, and you make sure that you're healthy and you study, and you learn, and you take the time that you have to do what you do. Those of you who have to work very hard just to stay alive, and study on the side in a lot of ways, are more focused and more able than perhaps somebody who's just been handed a scholarship or something else. And I don't mean that indictingly, I just mean that organization of your time: when you are practicing, it is about that. You know, I play golf. You're gonna go out and hit a bucket of balls. You're not gonna go out and hit 30 balls, you're gonna go out and hit 30 shots, as if they were 30 shots on the golf course. Then you're practicing. This is how you focus on your life. But I went to the competition. I won some money. The break I had, was in the one competition I was expected to win, and the prize was to go to Germany, and be paid to go to Germany for an audition tour. That night, this wonderful soprano showed up who we knew in the area, who had a marvelous instrument, but it was a little bit, you know, a pig on skates. And that night, she just pulled it all together, and sang a 'Dich, theure Halle', and everyone went (wow, scream, brava). So, she won, and then went off and she got her job in Augsburg, and there was that. But the judge was a very famous - this was the Zachary (Loren L. Zachary Society) auditions - and I'm deeply grateful to Loren and Nedra Zachary for their support back in those days. We're talking ancient history here, kids. But the judge was Wolfgang Stoll, big, big important German agent. He said, "I understand you want to come to Germany". And I said, "Well, I think I'd like to go do an audition job, and maybe do you think (makes gibberish sounds)". He said, "Look, if you can afford it, you can come over. I'll represent you. I'll put it together for you. But you have to get there. I have no money for you, and I have no guarantees. But I think a young lad like you, you're obviously bright. You've got a very strong lyric baritone voice. Have you sung Guglielmo?" "Yes". "Well, that's what you're gonna sing a lot of. So, come on over, let's see what we can find". I went over to the competition. By that time, of course, my teacher at USC was Horst Günter, who was a German. So, he knew the German system in and out, 'cause he'd sung for 40 years as a baritone with colleagues like Fritz Wunderlich, of that generation. So, it seemed natural. At that time, I was 24/25 years old, and I was saying to myself, "Opera singer? Really? What does that mean? Can you have kids? What's your life like?" So, I went to Germany, and I went through Merola; they did not invite me to stay. I asked whether positions were available in a couple of programs. I didn't particularly want to go to school. I'd had these two degrees. I didn't want to go to Indiana, or I didn't even think about Juilliard or Manhattan. "Are you kidding?" I didn't think about matriculating. I thought, "I need to know whether this is what I want to do; I didn't know anything about it. So it made sense, and when we got the idea to go to Germany, get a job, there was nothing standing in my way, which is a nice way to put it, and so that was what I was gonna do, and that's what I did. And the first place I sang was Düsseldorf, and they offered me a job, which I was extremely suspicious, and so was Stoll. And he went in and negotiated it that afternoon. He came back out and he sat me down, and he said, "Look, you have no perspective on this. I don't know how to tell you this, but you're being offered one of the best jobs for a young singer that I can negotiate or anybody can negotiate. It's a fixed amount of evenings. It is a specific repertoire. He cannot ask you to sing something if he thinks he hears it; maybe you'd be an exciting 27-year-old Scarpia? That's not gonna happen", which is what was always people's big fear. So I started to work. At that moment, when I was pulling down, you know, $27/28,000 a year, but it was a monthly salary with health benefits and regular regimen in an opera house. And you go, "What?" (gestures speaking on the phone) "Dad, it looks like I can make my living". These are great moments, but I think they're important, and I'm sure a lot of my colleagues that have had spectacular careers would have similar times to say, "I didn't know what to do, and then somebody called". I was on my way to Germany and Richard Gaddes called, and two days before I got on the plane and said, "You know", (and he'd been the judge of The Metropolitan Opera Auditions), "I'm putting together a Così fan tutte cast in St. Louis, and I've got Calvin Simmons and Jonathan Miller, and I think you'd be a marvelous Guglielmo. Do you have time?" "Well, Mr. Gaddes, thank you very much, but I'm actually moving to Germany". "Well, when you get there, would you ask them to send you back?" "Yes, well I can try (stumbles speech)... I was certain... yeah... I'll be in... that's a good idea".

Marc A. Scorca: It's so funny, 'cause my next point on my list here was the Così fan tutte in St. Louis.

Thomas Hampson: Huge.

Marc A. Scorca: It was huge. And there are few singers who can point to a kind of pivotal role, a pivotal production, where the spotlight was on you.

Thomas Hampson: Jerry Hadley, Ashley Putnam, Trish (Patricia) McCaffrey, Ruth Golden, John Stephens, Calvin Simmons, Jonathan Miller, little Tommy Hampson, you know, it was a summer. It was just whoosh.

Marc A. Scorca: I was very friendly with Jerry at the time, and he was so excited. He came running into the lower concourse of the New York State Theater, where I worked at New York City Opera. "You're not gonna believe this: there's this Così fan tutte", and he told me all about it from his point of view, and how exciting it was.

Thomas Hampson: We'd never met until the first rehearsal, at all, and it was very exciting. And Ashley had won the National Auditions, and I mean, one of the most beautiful young singers you've ever seen in your life, and sang beautifully. It was a very, very exciting time. And I'll never forget the conversation, 'cause again, you think, "Ah well, the career was launched". "Well, no". I was coming home from Düsseldorf, and I was singing the Sergeant in the third act of Manon Lescaut, and he's the guy that calls out the names of the whores as they get put on the wagon to the ship. It's a pivotal role, and most people just fast forward to that scene, when they watch him. Yamadori in a 35-year-old production in Düsseldorf, and it was a fun and humiliating evening. The first rehearsal I was written up for Yamadori - I had actually already sung Sharpless in Spokane, Washington. And so I got written up for Butterfly for rehearsal in Düsseldorf, and I thought, "Well, finally they caught on, none of this silly repertoire, I'm gonna go". So, I showed up and the guy, comes in, slams the score, and starts playing and points at me. And I looked at him like, "Well, get to my bit and I'll sing". He said, "Why aren't you singing? And I said, "What am I supposed to? What are you playing? Where are you?" "Sharpless? You're singing Yamadori". Okay, fine. So, we looked at Yamadori. Well, fast forward - it was a 35-year-old production, and in Germany, productions go like that. This is the costume, this is the makeup, this is what we do. Well, the costume had been worn by several people, but certainly nobody six foot four, and so I had these sandals, and then I had these bobby socks, and Yamadori's coat sort of started here (indicates knee). And then we had this sort of wild terrain of haired skin, that in keeping with the rest of my makeup, they decided to paint yellow. And all the rest of it, the whole thing. So I come out, and they're carrying me on a sedan chair, and all the way down to my entrance, you hear these guys going, "(grunts) He's heavy". So, we get all the way down there, the door's open, and I, of course, being the Stanislavski man that I am, the perfect Yamadori, walking like this, and I can hear in the audience people snickering, because I looked ridiculous, until I could finally drop to my knees on the pillow, and stay there to be this Japanese (person). That's what you do. And it was wonderful; I loved it.

Marc A. Scorca: And learn your stage craft.

Thomas Hampson: Exactly; every night. But I was listening to Gwyneth Jones sing Butterfly, and the wonderful Bulgarian tenor Naje who was there at the house, 'the house tenor', unbelievable. Eugene (B.) Holmes, unbelievable American singer. At that time, Düsseldorf was the largest ensemble opera house in the world. I was one of four lyric baritones. There were nine baritones, just baritones on staff. A plethora of mezzos, 16 Sopranos. And you got into the repertoire, if you were lucky, and even the smaller roles. I was the Zweiter Gralsritter in Parsifal, and I went into the casting director, and I said, "Are there any other small roles like this in other Wagner operas that I could learn, because this is fascinating to me?" This woman stood up with these dark eyes, she was a huge woman. And she looked at me, and she said, "Young man, that is the first time in my 33 years in German theater that someone has come in and asked for small roles", and I said, "Yeah, but I don't know this stuff". Now, do you know who the first Gralsritter was in that production in Düsseldorf? Peter Seiffert. Gurnemanz? Karl Ridderbusch. Kundry? Mignon Dunn. I mean, this was Düsseldorf. My ears were like cauliflower. And I went down there often, just to stand on the side or go to the show, listen to somebody. This is something I must say I do criticize my younger colleagues, is that they're not passionate enough about simply accepting the possibility of hearing whoever it is at that time, where they are, and listen. Don't be so damn judgmental. Absorb and build your world of reference for sound. It has nothing to do with imitation. It has to do with, "Who am I? Where am I? What is that like? Well, gee, that wasn't very good". Or, "Gee, that was spectacular". Or, "Chapeau, they got through that", or, whatever that is, that's an extremely important part of our education.

Marc A. Scorca: Absolutely. To listen and to watch. And you met Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in San Francisco, but then studied with her some in Vienna.

Thomas Hampson: I did, and she lived in Zürich. That was in the summer that I was in San Francisco, after the Merola, and I was moving on to find something to do and went to Europe. By the time I sang for her there, I knew I was going to Europe, and I told her that, and she was very taken. When you asked me the first question, there are moments that all of us have where somebody says, "You got it, kid; stay on it", or, "I hear in you a future. If you're smart, if you're, if you're..." And I find myself saying that sometimes to young singers in a class and say, "Look, you know, you are gifted. Prove to me you're talented". I make a big distinction in that. And she was like that. And so she said, "Look, I know you're good; you're coming to Europe. Check in, keep track, let me know", which I did. And I did call her. I said, "This looks like a good thing to do in Düsseldorf. Horst was all for it. Stoll was all for it. Schwarzkopf was all for it. I'm gone; I'm good to go. I came back to America for a year in 80/81, and it was that spring that I won The Met Auditions, and I already had the contract in Düsseldorf, and there was a sense of relief, actually for most people because they'd say, "What are you gonna do?" And The Met did not offer me the young artist program, but they were "Ah good. Oh good. Go to Germany. I think that's a good thing for you to do". Meaning, "Go study some more, go think some more", whatever. So I did do that. When I came back and then signed for Così fan tutte, and Joan Ingpen, the fantastic woman that she was, artistic advisor (for) The Met at the time, was there for one of the performances. And we were all dutifully marched by her desk for her bequeathment of praise or damnation, and I remember she looked at me after the performance and we were all feeling quite self-satisfied. I don't think we were braggadocious, but we knew we had a good show. We were on; it was great, and we were hoping to have at least, sort of, an arm thrown around us of, "Welcome to the business" kind of thing. That wasn't Joan's style. So, I sat there, and she looked at me and says, "I understand you are working in (dismissive tone) Germany". And I said, "Yes, I have a job in Düsseldorf". "For how long?" I said, "Well, I've finished my first year. I have another year, and there's an option on that contract". And she said, "Well, I must say, if you didn't have that contract, I would have said 'Bingo', right straight into our young artist program". And that hit me kind of sideways. So I looked at her and I said, "Well, I'm not gonna break a contract. Why don't I just come sing for you when I've sung a little longer in Düsseldorf, and we'll see how that goes". And she said, (remains silent and offers handshake). Never met her again, never saw her again. By the time I came and did sing, those days were over.

Marc A. Scorca: So, the song literature. You have achieved such acclaim singing Lieder, and not many opera singers have acclaim in both worlds, as much as you do. What draws you to Lieder, and how does it balance/counterbalance your work in opera? How did the two speak to you, as art?

Thomas Hampson: Is this a four hour segment here? Don't get me started on song. Look, song is to me not another genre. Of course it's another genre, but it's not this other thing we do. Obviously being brought into the whole notion of singing in classical music, from someone who studied with Lotte Lehmann, that tradition (and by the way, she'd also studied with Charles Panzéra and Pierre Bernac in France). So actually, my first lessons were as much Fauré as they were Schubert and Schumann. But since I had studied German, and I took more to the language quicker and there was a center of gravity there. Then I think there was something about the German Lieder ethos that just made sense to me. But song, in and of itself, is a kind of miracle, and we're talking about what is often called art song. There's a bunch of us that are trying to change 'art song' reference to 'classic song', (and not to be clever), but just to call it what it is, because it is a particular phenomenon of two art forms forming a third art form, poetry and music. And poetry doesn't need music; music doesn't need poetry. But when they're together, and if you look at what poetry is: poetry are words that stand as symbols of thought, (well, that's language anyway), but certainly in poetry. The power of any poem is its ability to implode in you. It is not a process of disseminating information. I say that hesitantly, because obviously if you look at Whitman, there's recitative kind of moments that are setting it up, and there is some kind of contextual information. But in general, the point of poetry is to experience something as a human being. Well, music is a language. It has its own syntax, has its own nouns and verbs and all those wonderful things. And it also, in a metaphorical sense, is there to articulate some context of being alive. And when that is inspired by a particular poem, it's a conversation between the two. For a long time, I've been a bit of an enemy, if that's too harsh perhaps, this idea of 'Prima la musica, poi le parole' or 'prima le parole, poi la musica' - to me, that is an answer to a question that does not need to be asked, and I certainly think in song repertoire, and there's enough literature out there, and old-fashioned literature that still talks like that -who's dominating who? And "Oh, well, music: it's like acid on the top of a frame, and the words no longer are poems, and Goethe's poetry doesn't have a structure". That's all just a bunch of nonsense. That's not what it's about at all, in my opinion. What happens with music, is that music is, certainly when they meld to this third form called song, it is neither the structure of the poem, nor the pureness of the music, but they're entering into a dialogue heavily centered in the world of metaphor, that is fleshing out as much in your imagination as your heartbeat or your head, an experience that human beings have had that re-articulate what it is to be alive, to paraphrase Copland. It's not just entertainment. They're like signposts of where we are and who we've been. And to do those things well, and to dedicate yourself to that process, I do not see as somehow different, extra, or separate from wanting to sing on stage. I see the stage as a perfect development from that. I think young singers should sing songs, not because maybe they'll do song recitals and earn your income on them. I think that song singing is the kernel of what we do as artists. What we do, is make audible other very profound thoughts. It's not about what Tom Hampson is communicating, I'm there at the service of Schumann and Heine, or Mahler and Knaben Wunderhorn or Rückert, or Fauré and Baudelaire...who else you wanna talk about? Or Walt Whitman and Henry (Harry) Burleigh. Whatever it is that I'm singing at that moment, or Germont: I'm the doorway through which you are experiencing that moment where we stop the clock and say, "Okay, what if it were like this? What does that mean to life?" And we'll take that home as passionate theater-goers and music-goers that we are, and digest that and have that moment of reflection of who we are. Being an artist is certainly a responsibility; it's a phenomenal privilege to earn your life like this. But it's not about me.

Marc A. Scorca: And you are so well known as a great interpreter of Mahler, and you have this parallel connection to the American song literature. You mentioned Walt Whitman and others. Is the American song literature different in any substantive way from the European song literature?

Thomas Hampson: That's a wonderful question, and I'm so glad you didn't say 'American Songbook', because that is something else. That is essential lyrics. That is a completely different kind (of form), and it's wonderful. And song as a metaphor of the evidence of existence, as Walt Whitman so beautifully put it, is as myriad as the fingerprints on the planet. And that's fine. What I'm talking about is literally this artistic phenomenon of poetry and music having this metaphorical conversation. Mostly the poetry, inspiring music. And actually, the smallest part of that equation, even in the 21st century, is where the poet and the composer are contemporaneous. So, there's always some kind of generational push and shove here that says, "Forget about the generation; this is about humans". And I think that's very valuable, and that's in every language. And by the way, this phenomenon is in every language, every culture. If you want to know someone's culture, if you want to know who they are, who they've been, why they are, what was going on, what do we do? We go look at their pictures, we go look at the music, we look at their poetry, we look at what they're writing in their literature, the arts and humanities. It's the blueprint of who we are as human beings. Why on earth would we take that away from our kids in the schools? I don't understand that. Supporting the arts and humanities in schools, or the performing arts is not a matter of maybe you're the lucky parent that has the talented child that's gonna actually win the talent contest. That's just so vulgar. That's so unnecessary for the actual reason that it's important. Children have as much right to form their Weltanschauung, if you will, their picture of the world and their place in it, in their growing, sloughing off of children-things into awareness of other things. How else are they going to learn this, if we don't hand them a book that says, "Well, guess what? People have been doing that for a long time". Caesar got up one morning and put his sandals on and his toga and bombed the crap out of Alexandria Harbor, because he was horny as hell and wanted Cleopatra. It's this continuum. Song, I think, belongs to that. You asked me a question that I managed to avoid, and I didn't mean to.

Marc A. Scorca: American song literature.

Thomas Hampson: Yes. Several years ago, I decided to do this wonderful Stephen Foster project, and by that time I had been doing Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Mahler, a lot of Schumann and that sort of thing. And there was always, as an American, this kind of 'our songs' and 'those songs'. And I did Columbia Community Concerts, and I was coached by Dorothy Warenskjold, and I had my formula of my programs, and you had your German bit, and you had your French bit, and then you got your English bit, and get through the Americans real quick, and most of it went into encores. And that was sort of the formula. Everyone went home happy. And it never made sense, and we endlessly asked the question, who's our Schubert? Who's our Brahms? Who's our Tchaikovsky? Who's our Fauré? And when I was doing this Foster project, I picked up a book by William Austin, kind of a definitive new critical edition study, as it were, on Foster the man, where his songs came from, and cracked it open, started reading it, 'cause I didn't know that much about Stephen Foster. And by the way, a lot of us don't know that much about Stephen Foster because Stephen Foster is a human being, who wrote songs and has nothing to do with folk songs, has nothing to do with the mythology of what people think his life was, or why he was doing what he was doing. It's quite an extraordinary story, and that was just kind of in vogue in the early 90's, to have a look at Stephen Foster. And this book, the first three chapters were on translated German poetry, Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the influence on folk to modern poetry, in all languages and Thomas Moore, before practically anything was said about Stephen Foster. And Thomas Moore, of course, the Irish melodies in Ireland: that's what Stephen Foster wanted to do with his songs. He wanted to create the American Irish-melodies or the American melodies. Now what does that mean? Well, Thomas Moore is considered the 'Bard of Ireland'. Well, Stephen would've liked to have been the 'Bard of America'. What does that mean? That means that there's a human being sitting on it and saying, "I want to create songs that tell people now, and in the future, who we are". That's kind of powerful stuff. You look at someone's songs differently than that. I've read through the entire 200 and some songs. Curiously with Foster, not one of them starts in the minor key, but there's some fun stuff, and an awful lot of songs to Willie who died, left, didn't come back, and was never seen again. There're a lot of Willies in that book, contemporaneous with the Civil War. But it became so clear to me, that looking for our Schubert or our Brahms wasn't the point of American culture. Our culture has grown so deeply, so fast from so many different regions and areas and influences, that to say 'American culture', you really have to immediately lock into America as a political entity. That was another thing, living for some time in Germany where people wanted to talk, "Oh, the French this, and the German this, and then there's the Americans". And I said, "Wait a minute, which Americans?" The Bayou doesn't have a lot to do with the Gulf of Mexico or with the coast of California, and Alaska couldn't care less what happens - well, probably anywhere - but certainly not in North Carolina, just to have extreme juxtapositions. Then, if you look at the history of American culture and you actually see the various growth rates, meaning growth in expression, the arts and humanities, certainly the northeast dominated, but it came out quite strongly in other regions, and all of them have quite specific vernacular hooks to them. It becomes this kind of amazing roadmap of who we've been as Americans. And I've always found, from that moment forward, far more interesting to look at American culture through 10 and 15 year slices, and let the poets and composers of those times, or other times, talking to one another, as it were, tell me the story of American culture. And that's been the thrust of the Song of America project for now 15 years. That's the basis of the two radio shows I did with WFMT, the recordings I've done, and what I'm now gearing up, getting the saddles and roping the wagons together. We're gonna do a 50 state tour in 2018-19: Song of America, telling the story of American culture seen through the eyes of our poets and the ears of our composers, I think is one of the most important endeavors to really understand the power of our story. And it's not about singling out this or that fantastic composer. We've had plenty of 'em. I'll tell you the other thing is that the level of creativity in this country is staggering. Why would I not be a partner to the Library of Congress? These vaults and vaults and vaults of music. Is it all fantastic? No. Is there something fantastic practically somewhere? Yes. I have a couple of song examples that are just amazing songs. You would sit there and go, "Wow, I never heard of (William Harold) Neidlinger". So, then you go and you get Neidlinger, and you get the microfiches, and you print them out, and you spend your 200 bucks, and you create this volume, and you sit down with your pianist and you go through it - "Let's find the other jewel". There isn't one, but that's the fascination.

Marc A. Scorca: But the virtuosity of exploring it...

Thomas Hampson: But the fun part of this project, and also the work and the real mandate that I'm so devoted to, is we are now teaching, meaning the foundation and the people I work with, we teach high school and pre-college and beginning college, right in that sort of 'get 'em before they're gone' group, and somewhat generation X, we teach those teachers how to teach social studies, history, economics through music. We just had a symposium last November for 400 New York high school teachers who said, "You mean I can talk about Langston Hughes, with music? I can talk about the Harlem Renaissance in New York. I can talk about New York over the last hundred years, seen through the ears of composers and eyes of poets?" And we showed them how to do that. We've been building teaching templates. That's the new frontier, and of course, distance learning is my best friend.

Marc A. Scorca: And those are the last two points that I wanted to raise with you was, one, Thomas Hampson as teacher, and what it's like being the Schwarzkopf or Marilyn Horne or Lotte Lehmann to young singers, and how does that feel, and what do you impart to them? And I also wanted to ask you about technology in your teaching, because you've done some using i2, but we'll come to the technology in a second. How does it feel to take on the role of teacher? I know you did a master class yesterday at MSM.

Thomas Hampson: Yes, I did a masterclass and Christianne Orto, who runs the Distance Learning Program up at Manhattan - I've been up there for 10 years, and I'm on the board of trustees, and I'm very devoted to Manhattan. And we've been building and trying different pilot projects - some of 'em worked, some of 'em didn't, you know, pushing the envelope. And Christianne Orto is respected across the country as one of the leaders of distance learning education. And we pulled some pretty startling numbers yesterday. We had 46,000 viewers on Facebook and MSM. Then it'll be archived and so forth. But the energy is, to me, in this whole world, very similar to how I describe the energy in a concert hall or an opera house. If you go out on stage and think you're gonna go out and convince somebody of something you can do, you're gonna be a nervous wreck, you'll never sing like you want to, and you'll never actually get the feedback you think you're looking for. I call it the golden retriever complex. You know, you come out on stage and go (makes dog panting sounds), "Do you like me?" (more panting) "Wanna play? Got something to eat". When anybody goes on the stage, we, the audience, have committed yourself to this time, to enter into the fantasy of what is being recreated for you - string quartet, piano sonatas, singing, opera, whatever it is, the energy has to be from the audience to the - I hate the word performers - but it is. We are the doorway. It's not about this old "Come and adore me" that we get so much on stage today. It isn't about, "Oh, didn't I do that wonderful". My job is to make that which is important, living and breathing, physically on an opera stage, perhaps as much as singing, but it starts with singing. There's nothing I can do on an opera stage that means more than what I am as a singer. Now, I didn't invent that. Go read anything from Joan Sutherland to Marilyn Horne to Luciano Pavarotti to da-da-da-da. Very early on, John Berry, one of your colleagues who used to run ENO (English National Opera); I think he's now in Moscow. He came to me 20 years ago and said, "I've got a summer symposium. I'd like you to come teach". I said, "Oh well John, that's very nice, but I don't actually teach". He said, "I know, that's why I want you to come teach". He said, "I want a symposium in the summer of young professionals, they're doing what they do, and come share that with them. Now look, if you're a disaster, I won't bother you again, but it's fine. The kids know what they're up against. They're there, they're working on repertoire. Come listen to 'em, come work with them". I realized two things there. One, that's an incredibly valid process. Two, it is of course dependent upon the singer. Not all artists are naturally big communicators or interested, or can actually put their stuff to their side, and be there for the other people. And I don't mean that critically, I just mean that's the way it is. I found out that I enjoy that. I found out that I learned as much about what I needed to remember and restudy and go learn again, or find out, or develop, not as a teacher, but as a singer, by communicating that and getting stuck in it. I also realized that I have a gift, and I have a gift of hearing as a singer, when other people sing, identifying exactly what they're doing. And now that is a gift; I didn't train to do that. I'm not sure you can train to do that. But when I am in that place where I'm working with somebody, listening to them sing, I am totally identifying with what they're doing and therefore working with them. And you have to be very tough sometimes, but I don't think it's about just put down and criticism. Criticism is such a misused word today. A critique must be based on a common sense of knowledge. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Think about the book called The Critique of Reason. Well, that would be an oxymoron, wouldn't it, if it wasn't about a fleshing out of fundamentals? And so I've never thought of education as me coming from someplace, handing it, and "Here's how it goes". Also, I'm deeply dedicated to the fact, from the get-go, that I am farther down a path that these young people have chosen, or been thrust onto, or have all the myriad craziness in their 20's that I had. The biggest miracle of my life, I'll tell you, is that through all of the haze and scatteredness and perhaps excitement and ability that I may have shown in my late 20's and early 30's, that there were prescient, gifted, deeply talented, intelligent people that said, "We can make something out of that". It dumbfounds me to this day that Lenny Bernstein laid so much confidence at my feet, that I could do what he imagined should be done with a lyric baritone in the world of Mahler and in the songs and so forth - to this day. And I pray every day as I'm working more and more in that environment, that I am as open and generous and understanding and patient, because sometimes, your 20's, some are on a motorcycle, some are on a tricycle, but it's the spit and vinegar time of life. And so shall it be.

Marc A. Scorca: It's obvious to see you as teacher, and I'm curious to know - last question - about the foundation, because you now have a foundation, carrying your name. What does the foundation do?

Thomas Hampson: Well, it's actually called Hampsong Foundation. I founded it in 2003. I've always been fascinated with gadgets and that sort of thing. And in 1997, I built my first website, in the hope that I wouldn't have to send out all these dreaded press packets. And I thought, "We'll put up a website and they just come get it. And I don't have to go through this torture every time". It didn't work out, because in 1997, no opera house and no presenter had internet access. But I got five yahoos for my website, 'cause it was really quite something, quite fun. And I've always played with that medium. I've always also wanted a place for me on the web that if somebody went there, and it's called ThomasHampson.com, what you get and what you read there, from statistics to opinions, to whatever is true. If it's there, I know that it's there. There were a lot of little silly things about when I was actually born or where I actually was raised. You wanna just have a place you can do that. In 2003, I made this foundation hoping there were enough like-minded people that would want to protect and support everything that goes into the recital world. The notion of informed performance is as much for those on stage building their craft, as it is for those participating, in a sense of what the Germans call 'Bildung', or that essential understanding or curiosity to find out who you are and why we are, and let that be evidence through poetry and history and psychology and music. So I thought, 'Why don't we make a foundation and then people who want to help me do my special projects, they get a tax deduction". And that started out fairly nicely. There weren't nearly as many people passionate financially, as they were wanted to join on. And that's fine. But the Hampsong Foundation, which I think has a mission statement that says something about to proliferate or support the art of song as a cross-cultural platform of dialogue. I need to rework that into a language that sounds more like ours, and I'm on that, I promise. The point is exactly what we've already talked about, and it's not just about American Song. The Song of America. What you have is: thomashampson.com, hampsongfoundation.org and songofamerica.net. And Song of America is its own huge island that is supported by the Hampsong foundation, and is taking on all of this very heavy lifting in the world of American arts and humanities, America performing arts and the story of who we are as America through song and classical music. And that's going crazy in our new partnerships with, not just the Library of Congress, but the National Urban League and various centers for American music around the country. That is really exciting. That's what's going to consume my time more and more. We support student projects. We certainly support a great deal of recording projects, if they let everything live on the net. At the moment, most of the Hampsong projects are deeply Hampson-centric, and for the very simple reason that, of course, I want them to live and the projects are like children and families to me. But more importantly, I wanted to see that all this stuff worked, and now I'm starting to get some of my colleagues to come in, and use our platform and support some of the things we're doing, which is very, very exciting. Especially the teachers, and that's a big deal. And of course, it's all open source; it's all free of charge. I partnered with a journalist at the BBC, Jon Tolansky, who's interviewed the most major singers for the last 35 years. And so you've got 90 minute interviews with Mirella Freni and Luciano Pavarotti and Nicolai Ghiaurov and (Dietrich) Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. It's just an amazing resource. When somebody goes to it, they actually enjoy it. This is what I do, and this is where my focus on education is. I've been teaching for some time, and I also run an Lied academy in Heidelberg, that is a German Lieder Zentrum. We have a Lied Zentrum in Heidelberg, and I have an honorary professorship from the Humanity Fakultät to the University of Heidelberg, which is quite fun.

Marc A. Scorca: How do you catch your breath? (audience laughter) We're talking about your concert work, your teaching work, your operatic work...

Thomas Hampson: Well, let's talk about golf.

Marc A. Scorca: ...the Library of Congress. How does Thomas Hampson recharge his battery?

Thomas Hampson: All of this charges my battery. I get very frustrated when I get too tired to do what it is I need to do. I get extremely tired when something gets on me. I've not had a good winter. A lot of us, we've been up and down to this cold, bronchial thing, and the irritating thing is that you're not sick, but you've got all this phlegm. There's something that just won't let go, and it's mostly in the bronchial, and it's very, very irritating. Things like that, that slow me down, irritate me. It's a full schedule. I'm obviously passionate about it. I'm trying to talk passionately and quickly about these things, and I want to share. It's not about giving back, it's about passing on.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, I think what is so remarkable is that you are, at the height of your career, still finding time and energy to give back, to pass along, to create continuity from those who taught.

Thomas Hampson: That's a wonderful phrase. This is something that quite frankly, if we don't do in the singing world - I also say this to my younger colleagues, very seriously. If we don't take care of the mess we're in, who else is going to, and admittedly, and to give some of my colleagues in the first floor of opera houses a break, it is a hugely unthankful, more complicated job than you can imagine, to run an opera house, much less in a democracy. And the skill set that is needed to keep those huge institutions, (not just The Met, I'm talking about all of them), viable, to keep them functioning, and all the various pressures of, especially contemporary life, which is besotted with distraction devices. Entertainment is essentially the stuff you do when you don't have to work. You know, I've done all that so I can have my free time, and your free time is anything from a Knick's game, to The Met, to the museum, to the, "Hell, I'm gonna sit on my couch and eat the wrong food and watch television". Whatever all that is. And I think our mandate in the arts is as much in the educational world. I think we need to reform our narrative, reestablish and certainly rearticulate the value system, the values we have as human beings. The humanism, if you will, of who we are, that is inherent in liberal arts education. The bastion of liberal arts education as a manifestation of self-determination has been historically, certainly in contemporary history, America. That is under a great deal of pressure today, and I think we need to be very careful about that. I think all of the presenters and opera houses today have as much a mandate of including people into a new world of awareness to the arts and humanities from where all of this stuff comes. There is no opera that is not historically a context of some part of people's lives. It doesn't live over here, as some sort of detached fantasy that you have to get into, because you like loud sounds in orchestra rooms. That's just nonsense. Bohème is as much a story of the piss and vinegar of any generation, and the tragedy, of course, therein. And you could go on: if Don Carlos had the conversation between those two gigantic horrifying personalities of Filippo II, who represented a particular frame of mind that is not mine, but at that point was the bastion of humanism, compared to the Pope, who came in, and they decided the fate of those people trying to fight and die for self-determination, for self-realization, for Liberté. This is not an observational process. If you go to Don Carlos and you are deeply, passionately, vibrantly moved by what you hear, see, observe, whether you know why or not, this is participating in the result of that conversation, which has given us what we have today. Why would we not want to share that with generation after generation? I don't understand that, and I think we're committing a kind of cultural suicide sometimes. I'm just a little stone in a large river, and fine, that's what it is. Somebody said, "Oh, you're like a drop of water on a hot stone". Well, if there were a lot of drops of water, there wouldn't be any hot stones, if that's the metaphor for the problem.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, it is just an incredible pleasure to hear you articulate, not only the knowledge that you've acquired, but the philosophy that animates it.

Thomas Hampson: Marc, this is why you exist here. This is a phenomenon, this building. But the fact that OPERA America, and if anybody who doesn't realize what it is, and goes on the website and starts looking around, (and I'm talking from personal experience) you go, "I had no idea". Look at all those people. Look at all those functions. Look at all those possibilities. Look at all that support information as well as for the students coming up. This is also what I'm talking about. This is the new world we live in. It's a new kind of education. It's a new kind of way that people are invited to awaken to their own abilities. We have got to get away from this industrialized 19th century form of education. If somebody came back, having died a hundred years ago, and was blindfolded and brought into a classroom with a whiteboard and the electronics and all that kind of stuff, they would know exactly where they were. And you have to ask yourself, "Is that the way we're supposed to go forward?" All I can say is, and maybe this is a political statement, I'm gonna say it anyway. If this conversation and the few people online or here in the house shaking your head saying, "Yes", let's not forget that this is a public equation. America is a public institution. We are open for business for the public. We are in the liberal arts business for the public, which means all Mensch, people are created equal and have equal opportunity to the endeavors of their own self-determination. That has to remain the American dream. It is "E pluribus unum" and the 'unum' is not homogenization. The point is 'pluribus', it's community. And if we don't reinvigorate public education through institutions like this, and everything else, invigoratingly with classical music, there's nothing elitist in the world about classical music. Classical music is, in my opinion, one of the greatest, if not the greatest evidence of the fact that we have democracy. We wouldn't have had the composers of the early 19th century, middle 19th century writing what they were trying to write and getting censored, not getting censored, had it not been for this wave of new thought after the American and French Revolution and said, "No, it is my right to play that music, in that hall, or with those people and believe in those things". This is what we need to cherish again, in my opinion. And classical music is at the front of it, not at the back of it.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, ladies and gentlemen, you've heard our anthem, and we are so grateful to Thomas Hampson artist, Thomas Hampson, humanist, and teacher, and colleague, and ally.