Nine questions for … David Butt Philip

Tenor David Butt Philip sings the mysterious hero in Wagner’s LOHENGRIN. A conversation about trust and why the stranger fails in his rescue bid.

Lohengrin wants to save the world, yet he refuses to reveal his identity to them. Isn’t it a bit naïve to place your trust in someone like that?
In real life: yes, it is. But I see Lohengrin more as a philosophical entity. As a singer, my task is to breathe life into him, and I get that life from the music more than anything else, because the music resonates with our emotions and our humanity.

Wagner considered LOHENGRIN to be his saddest opera, because it presents us with a world that cannot be saved. What are your thoughts?
I’m with you there. None of the characters get what they want in the end. But the intense way in which they fail is what makes opera such a precious thing. Wagner is holding a mirror up to us.

Lohengrin is force for good in the world. Why does he fail?
If you fancy yourself as a saviour and want to win people round for a worthy cause, you’ve got to be as open and transparent as you can. Otherwise people get suspicious – and you can’t blame them for that.

So does Lohengrin fail because society doesn’t trust him?
Trust is always a two-way street. When we give someone our confidence, we expect their confidence in return. And attached to that is also a social obligation. For me, that’s one of the mainstays of human interaction: we have to believe that most of our fellow human beings think the same way we do. If that is not a given, our society breaks down.

Lohengrin makes his marriage to Elsa conditional upon her never asking what is name is and where he’s come from. Why does she break the pact?
She’s human, and human beings want to get to the bottom of things. It’s not in our nature to acquiesce to things we don’t understand without asking questions.

When do you give people your trust?
I’m very quick to trust people. It’s my belief that if you treat people nicely and with humanity, then they’ll treat you in the same way.

So would you describe yourself as a trustworthy person?
Yes. And more than anything else I try to be sincere and principled in my dealings with people. I don’t want to conceal things or be under pressure to pretend to be something I’m not. As we Brits would say: what you see is what you get.

How important is it to distrust people?
In our line of work you’ve got to learn to trust people. There’s a lot of clashing of opinions and egos. You’re always being judged and criticised; it comes with the territory and it helps us to evolve as artists. But at the end of the day opera is a team sport and productive criticism doesn’t change that. We can’t be doing with mistrust when we’re so utterly dependent on each other. Even the greatest of artists cannot carry an opera alone – which is one of the things I love about it.

What will you be taking from LOHENGRIN with you?
I see opera as a philosophical lesson in human desires and an exploration of what happens inside us when we don’t get what we want. And even if the characters don’t always get through to us on an emotional/human level, the music is always timeless, sensitive and sublime.

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