His presence at the Torroella Festival today guarantees a bombastic night (Espai Ter, 8:30 p.m.). Because Jeanine De Bique is more than a thunderous artist, more than a beautiful light-lyrical voice with a special knack for the baroque repertoire. The presence of the emerging soprano from Trinidad and Tobago (b. 1981) in the great opera houses (she will be Michaela in the next Carmen del Liceu) contributes not only to shelving racial issues in a particularly class-based world but also to normalizing the classic –with success!– among the youth.
For now, she has been open to fusion experiments with rhythms from her Caribbean culture (along with Joachim Horsley). And the English press presents her as the coolest singer of the moment. She arrives at Torroella accompanied by Concerto Köln and with her recording debut under her arm, Mirrors, an album in which she delves into the Cleopatras, the Alcinas or the Rodelindas that Händel and his contemporaries set to music. A project that has just placed it on the map. (Subscribers of La Vanguardia have a 15% discount on the purchase of tickets here).
He landed with great success in Salzburg with Purcell’s The Indian Queen, together with two monsters such as Peter Sellars, in stage direction, and Teodor Currentzis, in musical direction. How was the experience?
It has been one of those moments that you keep in your memory for the rest of your career. Very impressive on a human level, because of how the team was connected. The production is already years old but the collective effort led us to something special. And the public perceived it.
In Torroella you will not have as much media pressure as in Salzburg, but what can the public expect from your Mirrors, from your game of mirrors?
I invite you to be open, especially those who know Händel well, because it is about listening to the voice of each composer in his way of showing the feelings of the same character, a character that we have always heard through Händel, since there are pieces in this program that had not yet been recorded (one of them is still unpublished on the record). I find it very interesting to see a more aggressive or less aggressive Rodelinda, those nuances of personality that the composer shows through his virtuoso phrases, his coloratura, his dynamics…
Mirrors has been highly awarded and praised. The Guardian names her the coolest singer. Does she feel she is at the top of the operatic scene?
I don’t feel on top of anything. What matters is the message that I send with my voice, in my own way. We are ambassadors of music and we can reach a group of people who understand the message. And of course it’s nice to receive awards, and it’s necessary to keep going, but it hasn’t gone to my head, I’m still grounded in who I am and where I come from. In any case…it’s super cool to hear that I’m the coolest! And I’m proud of the video I created with a friend who knows how to approach the modern side. After all, you compete with pop, hip-hop, jazz…
Is your vocal impeccability innate or is there a lot of technique?
There is a lot of technique, I see my teacher online if I have to sing. Giving the color that each theme requires involves resorting to different types of breathing, for example.
He sings on Caribian Nocturns, Horsley’s crossover album in which Mozart’s Requiem sounds like a tumbao. Do you think that classical and popular music live too backwards?
Joachim does an excellent job on that merger. And he’s great for someone with a Caribbean background who, like me, also loves opera. But I think we’re talking about separate genres. And it’s good that they are, so that people can appreciate them in their natural form. However, a better balance is necessary, that the classic give you a chance if you are young, that we do not have to compete with pop, that the youth can choose and that the classic is not left out of the game, without room to expand. Having the classic in our lives has been valued, especially among young people.
How was your musical childhood in Trinidad and Tobago?
I grew up in the Anglican Catholic Church, because of the English colonization. So I lived classical music, with my grandmother singing in the choir and my mother playing the classical guitar. I grew up with sheet music in the hymn book, with lots of Bach and Mozart melodies, but I didn’t even know they were theirs, so the baroque was there since I was a child and it was a shock when I heard Bach’s passions in full for the first time, in Rotterdam. In the end there is an element of classical is in everything we do. But I also grew up with the rhythms of my country, the calypso, the dominant genre, and the steel drum, the national instrument. There was a major movement to put that music on paper.
He went to study in Manhattan. Did she feel pressure not to let down her supporters?
No. We don’t have an opera house in Trinidad, the first time I saw a full opera was at the Met when I was 21: La traviata with Renée Fleming. On the island there were not many people who knew that opera could be a profession, but my piano and voice teachers encouraged me, my family and even my friends supported me.
She made her Liceu debut in concert with William Christie and returns next season in the role of Michaela de Carmen, a title that had to be canceled due to the pandemic.
Yes, and in Paris I will do Cendrillon, a big step in my career in the right direction. Michaela I did it a lot in a small place, in Santa Barbara, in 2014, and it will be a good challenge, since I haven’t sung it anymore and I want to try it with my new enlarged voice. I don’t know the acoustics of the Liceu but it doesn’t worry me, I’m more concerned with technical wisdom.
