With texts from Scripture and music by Handel at his most inspired, Messiah unfurls revelation after revelation—none more electric than the interplay of the bass and the ecstatic brass soloist in “The trumpet shall sound.” Few singers today dispatch the aria with the panache of Gerald Finley, who performs the oratorio next week with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, from December 16 to 21. Remarkably, he’s been honing his Handel for more than half a century.
Finley went pro at an early age, collecting his first paychecks as a boy chorister at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Ottawa. His manifest talent, plus a web of fortunate connections, soon carried him to London’s Royal College of Music, where seasonal Messiahs all over the British map were his bread and butter.
“Back then, ‘The trumpet shall sound’ was hard,” Finley recalled last September over lunch at Balthazar in Covent Garden, a stone’s throw from the Royal Opera House. Ten days hence he would be opening the new season as Scarpia, the predatory chief of Rome’s secret police, opposite Anna Netrebko as the eponymous diva of Puccini’s Tosca. “It was hard stamina-wise. It was hard to keep the pitches really high to match the sound of the trumpet. My progression as a singer could be validated by how those performances went over those years.”
Is the aria still hard? “Not anymore,” says Finley, his speech as distinctive for its buzz as for its bite—features likewise key in his compact, jet-black singing voice, with its stalwart yet never pompous ring and its gift for pointed yet never finicky inflections. “The emotional energy in Handel is absolutely fantastic. The dialogue with the trumpet is such a thrill! And the great, long phrases give you a chance to show your immortality!”
Immortality, indeed. Last January 30, Finley turned 65, an age by which stars in his line of work often quit trotting the globe to teach at a conservatory or take charge of an opera company. Finley acknowledges the value of such occupations, but so far they haven’t tempted him.
“I could probably still look at any of the parts I haven’t done in a while. I’m greedy, of course. That’s the thing. But most of all, I’m respectful. My voice is the servant of the music.” When the new Tosca premiered, The Guardian acknowledged Netrebko’s “compelling” presence in Tosca’s confrontation but singled out Finley’s Scarpia as “altogether subtler and more believable, his voice terrifyingly appealing, his bullying presence horribly believable.”
His operatic assignments this year—a characteristically unusual mix of signature roles, all in top-tier houses—have included high-profile novelties from John Adams (Antony and Cleopatra at the Met) and Mark-Anthony Turnage (Festen at the Royal Opera), the aforementioned Tosca, and Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte at La Scala. Coming up through the end of the season: Golaud in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (Monte Carlo) and Amfortas in Wagner’s Parsifal (Vienna State Opera), plus Mozart’s Count Almaviva (in Le Nozze di Figaro) and Verdi’s Macbeth in Munich.
Macbeth is a recent acquisition, following other Shakespearean characters such as Falstaff and Iago. But unlike Handel, Verdi has never been Finley’s bread and butter. “My Verdi,” the singer volunteers, “will be in a style which is my own. People are happy to hire me as a character, perhaps not as a Verdian aficionado, but I understand the style and try to incorporate what I feel is stylistic delivery.”
Time stands still for Finley, it seems, but also it does not. “One of the most interesting productions I ever did,” he notes, “was Keith Warner’s Don Giovanni in Vienna in the Mozart year of 2006. The gap between the graveyard scene and the final banquet—in the libretto, a matter of a day—was 50 years. So, by the end, Don Giovanni, the archetypal seducer, was an old man, with nothing to live for, wanting to die. I can see how living long but infirm in our current generation could become a relevant angle, given the pains and challenges we face as we get older. I’m conscious of those things. But also, I have a 100-year-old mother, in very good health, and very much with us in heart and mind. She’s someone I’m hoping to emulate.”
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra will perform Messiah from December 16 to December 21
Matthew Gurewitsch writes about opera and classical music for AIR MAIL. He lives in Hawaii
