FanFaire:

HEPPNER: It's a well-laid out opera house, no question. From my perspective, the stage is terrific, though it's not particularly large. I guess it was a renovation of something that existed before. There's not that much room in the wings, but there's enough.

You know, I don't spend a whole lot of time in my dressing room. I'm the type that gets out and talks if there are other people. I'll find coffee, a bottle of water or something. I tend not to spend a lot of time in there. But the dressing rooms are lovely. They're very convenient to the actual stage. It was nice to have a piano in there, that's a very important thing in an opera house, you need to be able to warm up there. About acoustics [in the dressing rooms], one never thinks about acoustics in terms of dressing rooms, it's just a place to warm up.

From the singing side, singing into the house - actually it feels a little dry acoustically. You don't get much of your voice coming back to you, maybe a little bit. However, that does not mean that that's a bad thing. I didn't feel that it was a problem. For example, Covent Garden is something similar to that, yet it's a wonderful place to sing.

I never actually went into the house to hear anybody. So, I don't know what it sounds like from the house side. However, everybody tells me - the other people who went and listened - that it was really very clear. And there was enough resonance to make it feel that it had that sense of positive acoustic that warmed up the sound.

FanFaire: Do you as a singer always pay particular attention to what you what comes back to you on stage when you're singing?

HEPPNER: I think most singers do. You want to know that you're being heard. And the way we normally sense it is through our hearing. We can hear our voice coming back to us a little bit, and so we know that we're being heard. If you don't hear it, the tendency is to sing a little bit too much, to oversing.

FanFaire: How does The Ellie compare with the other houses that you've performed in?

HEPPNER: Well, I didn't get a full sense of it because it we didn't have a full production. And I didn't get a sense of the technical facility, we didn't see any of it.  I could hear the orchestra nicely.  There was a good combination there. I didn't feel overwhelmed by the orchestra, which is also one of the things that's important for not oversinging. And I think it's also because the orchestra played with the proper accompanying dynamic that it worked.

How does it compare...? The Met is huge, but it doesn't have as dry acoustics as one might think for a place that's so large. It has a bit of warmth so that you can hear your own voice coming back.  Covent Garden is relatively dry, but still, it's a very good place to listen to opera because it's very clear.   I don't like the Bastille particularly. Munich is wonderful. La Scala is not as good as everyone says it is. I find it very very uneven actually. On the stage at La Scala,  there's one sweet spot that if you want to get it, you would fight people off to get it. On the other hand, if you go out front like the footlights, left or right, it's very very echo-ey. But no, I haven't been to the newly-renovated La Scala. So that's not fair of me to say that because I have not been to the newly-renovated one.

The Ellie is a wonderful venue, and it's a big, big jewel in Denver's crown. I'm assuming that they can't fill it up with operas fully over the next 2 or 3 years. It'll take more time. Obviously ballet is there. But I think fairly soon, you'll hear a fourth opera coming in and then they'll start to build the audience. I mean, Denver is a really happening place right now!

CONTINUE ON TO:

What really happened to Ben Heppner's tuxedo?

Ben Heppner's links to Opera Colorado

The "Meistersinger" on Opening Night

Ben Heppner on Meistersinger, Tristan, Siegfried, all things operatic and more!

Photos: ©Marco Borggreve; ©Hermann Bredehorst, courtesy and with permission of Mr. Heppner