THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504220033
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
ACCORDING TO Don Giovanni's valet, the legendary lover conquered a huge number of hearts - 1,003 in Spain alone.
Thomas Hampson, who has played Don Giovanni, has wooed and won even more critics, conductors, audiences and record buyers. The American baritone, who appears in recital at Hampton University's Ogden Hall on Tuesday, has reached the uppermost level of classical-music stardom well before turning 40.
Taking over the New York Philharmonic, and looking for a soloist for your first nationally televised concert? Call Thomas Hampson's agent. Looking for someone to grace the cover of Opera News? Call Hampson's publicist. In the mood to buy a sweetly sung disc of Mozart, Mahler, Samuel Barber or ``Beautiful Dreamer''? You know what to get.
Two weeks ago, talking to Hampson meant calling Rome, where he was singing Britten's ``War Requiem'' with Philadelphia Orchestra music director Wolfgang Sawallisch. Just a few weeks before, he was at Carnegie Hall with James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, singing Mahler's ``Das Lied von der Erde'' (Song of the Earth), one of the most emotionally draining works in the repertoire.
``It's a big piece,'' Hampson, 39, said of the Mahler. ``It was a big deal, period. Any time you're singing under special auspices of Carnegie Hall, the Musikverein in Vienna - there are certain temples of the muses around the world - I always find myself very humbled. It was a very big afternoon, a very big experience.
``I don't think there's ever been a moment, and I don't think there ever will be, when I stand on stage or anywhere and think, `I'm Thomas Hampson the baritone and I've made it.' There have been emotional highs in my life. As closely as I have been coached and managed and advised, my humble singing adventure has still been about my own life, my own awakenings.''
Young Thomas Hampson awoke in ways no one could have imagined. ``I feel I have two or three periods of my life that belong to one another but to me remain adjunct to one another,'' he said.
His family in Spokane included a sister who would become a jazz pianist. His mother played the piano for a local light opera company. He sang in school choirs and played the tuba, but he played baseball as well.
He also was raised as a Seventh-day Adventist. At 20, he married another member of the church. Though he would eventually leave the faith to pursue a wider-ranging spirituality, he still credits his early training with helping to make him an information-hungry adult.
``I think it is a discipline. If I may digress, discipline is sometimes used today as almost a bad word. To me, it's a matter of focus. Traditional Protestant religion has a great deal of focus in it, confirming who you are as a man.
``Probably very early on I'd taken life seriously, the search for knowledge seriously. Certainly the Seventh-day Adventists have a very deep dedication to the education of young people.''
Hampson was serious about singing, having participated in a local music festival and won some local competitions. Yet when he enrolled at Eastern Washington University, it was to study political science before advancing to law school.
Then he began studies with Sister Marietta Coyle, a Catholic nun who had studied with the great German soprano Lotte Lehmann. He embarked on an intensive examination of the song and opera literature that continues to this day.
A few years ago, Peter G. Davis of New York Magazine wrote that Hampson ``takes to German song as eagerly and naturally as if it were his by birthright.''
Hampson said, ``When I started classical singing, as we call it, Schubert songs and Faure songs, the idea of singing in another language was self-understood. From flower to pot to field . . . I feel very fortunate to be able to walk through this incredible field of poetry in two or three different languages.
``Poetry is a terribly necessary, fulfilling way to contemplate one's existence. I think we as Americans have almost reduced the language to a utilitarian bartering tool. Two hundred years ago, it was considered one of the most beautiful languages in the world. Today it's a medium.
``I think that poetry, whether it's folk poetry or classical poetry, it all has its context. It may be a very simple, beautiful moment like `Long Time Ago' or it may be James Joyce and Samuel Barber.''
Tuesday, Hampson will sing songs from Mahler's ``Des Knaben Wunderhorn'' in a critical edition he prepared.
``I've always been tremendously interested in history and background information. It became apparent in going to find out some of these issues that the materials were in desperate need of being cleaned up and redone.
``Depending on whether you have a piano or an orchestra as your partner, do you use a breaking voice or a broken voice? Do you do it over five bars or three bars? (Mahler) fiddled and faddled all of his life with this music.''
Now Hampson is at work on 10 volumes of songs for a major Vienna publisher and a television special on American song. A raft of new recordings includes songs on Walt Whitman texts with pianist Craig Rutenberg, a former head of the Metropolitan Opera musical staff who is also his partner for Tuesday's recital. Hampson is preparing to sing Tchaikovsky's ``Eugene Onegin'' in Russian in Zurich, and a production of Verdi's ``Don Carlos'' in Paris.
``I think it's pretty much all mixed up together in the grand scheme of things - 50 percent on recitals and concerts, which is for me very important. I'm a big disciple of the recital repertoire.
``If you're doing recital work, you have to keep your voice light and flexible at the same time. I wish I had enough time to sing everything that interests me.''
It is more than Hampson's voice that excites some concertgoers. His looks attract the kind of comment usually reserved for pop stars. It's entertaining to examine any story about him for the first appearance of the word ``handsome,'' which usually appears in the first couple of paragraphs.
At the provocative opening of a New York Times Magazine profile, ``Sweat trickles down Thomas Hampson's face as he wriggles out of his striped leather doublet . . . ''
Hampson compares such talk to ``marketing that is required to sell hot dogs, potato chips.
``I'm amused by it. I don't think about it. God, if I ever started. . . . In the long run of things it is really quite irrelevant.''
And it could be a very long run. Opera singers Hampson's age are still young. Hampson has much left to experience, both professionally and personally. He said that one of his most significant recent duties would be taking his companion of seven years, Andrea Herberstein, the former wife of an Austrian count, home to Washington for the first time.
``It's exhilarating to know how far you can go. It's always important to know that you can never go so far that you don't know the way home.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY SINGING OPERA by CNB