His spoken voice is already a delight: warm, smiling, caressing too. So imagine her singing voice! A balm that would console the saddest, soothe the most anxious, seduce the most austere…
→ READ. Michael Spyres, the rise of a career
Lyrical theatres, concert halls and record companies are well convinced of this, and they solicit Michael Spyres, on all continents, in all repertoires. Too much perhaps, at the risk of tiring an artist who, however robust, but who, by his own admission, “Is totally unable to say no”. He nuances: “In any case, if I feel that the new role that I am being offered is likely to develop my voice. I gladly model myself on the singers of the past who might, in a week, go from Wagner’s Tristan to Gounod’s Romeo and then to Rossini’s Count Almaviva. » In other words, from a Germanic work, broad and valiant, to the clear French line before flying away on the aerial vocalizations of a young Italian first.
“I was at war with my voice for 15 years”
While he is expected at the next Aix-en-Provence festival in Idoménéeby Mozart (1), and that he is preparing a recording dedicated to the Baroque, Michael Spyres returns to the musical “phenomenon” that he has been illustrating for some time, this strange concept of “baritenor” (contraction of baritone and tenor) . “I was at war with my voice for regarding fifteen years, but for regarding five years, at the cost of diligent work, we have become friends, brother and sister even. I can cover a very long range, make this medium shine whose harmonics I like. While taking care of the essentials, namely preserving the nice singing, as necessary in Berlioz, Beethoven or Wagner as in Rossini and Bellini. »
Enthusiastic, greedy for new stories to tell in music, the one who already has 82 roles to his credit (at 42 years old!) is not necessarily an unrestrained bulimic. “I am approaching a moment in my life that encourages me to find a balance between my family and my dream career. In the beginning, you have to convince yourself that you are worth something; now I must harmoniously unfold all this work. »
Michael Spyres, the child from Missouri, does not hide a particular crush on France, his “second home”. If he willingly expresses himself in our language, he sings it with a purity of diction and an astonishing intelligence of the sentence. “I take as much pleasure in quivering with Faust as in laughing with The Postilion of Longjumeau (2), he assures. Deep down inside, I swing between drama and lightness, a subject I often talk regarding with my brother and sister. Both play and sing on Broadway and share this ambivalence. » Isn’t that the very definition of an artist’s soul?