Ben Heppner: Riding a Voice That’s High and Mighty

Ben Heppner has been hailed by critics around the world as the latest great hope in the excruciatingly difficult Wagnerian heldentenor repertory. But the 42-year-old Canadian didn’t always soar in those rarefied heights.

“Early on, when I was 18 through 22 . . . I didn’t have an easy access to the upper part of the voice,” said Heppner, who will make his Orange County recital debut Sunday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in a program co-sponsored by the theater and the Philharmonic Society.

Sure, he had already drawn attention by winning a major Canadian competition in 1979 and by becoming a member of the Canadian Opera Company in the ‘80s. But something major needed to click.

That happened when he won the prestigious Birgit Nilsson prize at the 1987 Metropolitan Opera Auditions in New York.

With that endorsement, he instantaneously zoomed to international attention. Within two years, he was singing at Covent Garden in London, La Scala in Italy, the Met and at other top houses.

Nor did he start out in secondary parts. He began by singing title roles such as Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes and Wagner’s Lohengrin and Tristan. American composer William Bolcom even created the title role of his opera “McTeague,” which premiered in 1992 at the Chicago Lyric Opera, for him.

How did he deal with being thrust into that limelight?

“With a good healthy dose of naivete,” the tenor said with a laugh. “I probably didn’t realize what I was actually doing. I think if I had stopped and thought about it, I may have frozen.”

Born in a rural Murrayville, near Vancouver, British Columbia, Heppner is the youngest of nine children in a Mennonite farming family.

“I come from very, very humble roots,” he said.

He was reared in Dawson Creek and majored in music and theology at the University of British Columbia. He won the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. talent competition in 1979, began studying opera in Toronto and by the mid-’80s had joined Canadian Opera Company.

“It was difficult sometimes to make the ends meet,” he recalled. “I just recently had married. Two years later, there was a young child in our house. Responsibilities piled on very quickly. There was not much movement in income level. It was financially difficult.

“But I look back on those times with real fondness. I kind of miss them. I never felt it was a struggle,” he said.

What vaulted him into the big leagues was the decision to study in 1987 with Toronto-based William Neill, who immediately advised him to switch from lyric to dramatic repertory.

“The [change] unlocked my voice,” Heppner said. “It felt gradual, but I did it in eight or nine months. . . . The rest of my training--which is still going on--was on my feet.”

Preparing for a role dramatically, Heppner said, “I always study and translate and try to find the insides of the character. . . . “Sometimes you can say a line 30 to 50 times, but you realize when doing it on stage that it didn’t mean exactly what you had thought, or that it has an underlying meaning that didn’t occur to me earlier.”

Heppner is modest about his mastery of his craft.

“The dramatic side of things has come to me somewhat late,” he said. “I don’t consider I’m a particular expert at that. It’s something I work at on a regular basis. Every time I go on stage, I think, ‘How can I do this better?’ I didn’t come to opera from a dramatics point of view. I came to it because I love singing.”

What is his philosophy of singing?

“I find if I’m trying to express the dramatic in any given phrase, I’m lost. However, if I look for the lyric in every phrase, I come out OK.”

It’s a philosophy that has drawn Heppner lots of critical accolades, but, he says, “If you live and die by the critics--the reviews you get--you’re certainly going to be disappointed. I have had days when I’ve sung quite badly and gotten good reviews and sung well and gotten bad reviews.”

Heppner looks forward to singing the two Siegfrieds in Wagner’s “Ring,” plus other Wagnerian roles such as Tannhauser and Sigmund. But not right now.

“It will depend on how my voice will change over the next eight to 10 years,” he said.

“I would [also] love to do [Verdi’s] Don Carlos and [Rhadames] in ‘Aida.’ Those would be very good roles for me and keep me healthy, really thinking of the voice. [Verdi’s] Otello too. It’s planned. I won’t say where.”

Indeed, with this kind of repertory, Heppner could work as much as he wanted.

“I could fill in practically every week of the year. But what is the point of that? I have enough to live on. Beyond that, why go after the bucks all the time? I have other priorities. . . .

“My family is here [in Toronto], and they have their support group around them. We all need each other. It’s that village thing they talk about.”

Singing recitals, as he will do Sunday, is “a wonderful change” for him.

“It’s so different from Wagner’s line, having that big orchestra and riding that wave,” he said. “It’s a different feeling, a whole new way of expressing yourself.”

Heppner said he hoped those who attend his performance will “feel somewhat entertained and a bit of edification.”

* Tenor Ben Heppner will sing operatic arias as well as lieder by Beethoven, Liszt, Strauss and other composers Sunday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. 3 p.m. $30-$40. (949) 854-4646. Also Jan. 21 at the McCallum Theatre for the Performing Arts, 73000 Fred Waring Drive, Palm Desert. 8 p.m. $30-$50. (760) 340-2787.