Singers Samuel Youn, Yang Joon-mo draw listeners to Wagnerian world

Baritone Yang Joon-mo, 52, describes Alberich, the dwarf in Richard Wagner’s opera “Das Rheingold,” as a role that places considerable demands on singers, requiring them to navigate a wide vocal range and master the forceful articulation characteristic of German. He will share the role with Samuel Youn, 55, a world-renowned Wagnerian bass-baritone who holds the prestigious German title of Kammersänger, in the Korea National Opera’s production of “Das Rheingold,” opening Thursday.

“Das Rheingold” is the first opera in Wagner’s four-part “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” or “The Ring,” which took the composer 26 years to complete. After being mocked by the three Rhinemaidens while attempting to woo them, the dwarf Alberich renounces love, steals their gold and forges it into a ring.

When Wotan, king of the gods, takes the ring from him, Alberich curses its owner with destruction. As the curse drives the tragedy that unfolds through the remaining three operas — “Die Walküre,” “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung” — Alberich is a pivotal character who sets the entire saga in motion.

The Korea National Opera is marking the 150th anniversary of the complete premiere of “The Ring” this year with a plan to stage all four operas in succession through 2029. Once completed, the ambitious project will mark the first time in Korean opera history that a domestic company has produced and presented the entire cycle. Although overseas productions have been brought to Korea and local private companies have attempted the undertaking, none has completed the four-opera cycle.

Youn and Yang, two veteran singers who will lead the opening chapter, met with Hankook Ilbo on Oct. 20 at the Seoul Arts Center in Seocho-gu, Seoul. Both previously pursued careers overseas before returning to Korea, where Youn teaches at Seoul National University and Yang at Yonsei University.

Youn, who became the first Korean to take on a title role at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, Wagner’s spiritual home, with “Der fliegende Holländer” in 2012, said Alberich is rarely entrusted to Asian singers in Germany because of the linguistic demands of the role.

“Alberich requires a linguistic sensibility to handle difficult vocabulary, so in Germany they don’t often cast Asian singers in the role,” he said.

Yet the role opened up new possibilities for Youn. After Bayreuth, he performed “Der fliegende Holländer” nearly 150 times, eventually reaching a point where he wanted to escape the opera altogether. It was only when he first took on Alberich at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2016 that he discovered how much more he could bring to the stage.

“My desire not to do Wagner anymore was resolved through Alberich,” he said.

For Yang, Alberich is a role he both loves and resents.

“It’s a role I truly love, but one that made things incredibly difficult for me,” he said.

After passing an audition at a German theater, Yang studied the score on his own. At his first rehearsal as Alberich, the conductor reprimanded him severely and spent a month teaching him the role.

“Even now, when it’s difficult to produce a sound, I think back to that time,” he said. “I still keep the score I studied, piecing it together with tape where it had torn.”

The score even bears stains from kimchi broth.

Although both singers share experience performing on German opera stages, their careers have taken different paths. Youn spent 23 years as a permanent soloist at the Cologne Opera, while Yang performed under the name Antonio Yang, serving as a principal singer at the Semperoper Dresden before appearing in Hamburg, Zurich and other European cities.

The two knew of each other during their years in Europe but had never shared a role onstage until their appearance as Scarpia in the Seoul Metropolitan Opera’s 2024 production of “Tosca.” This will be their second time performing together.

“Because our vocal ranges and repertoires are different, we each bring a different Alberich to the same role,” Youn said. “It would be difficult to find a cast abroad that can show so many different sides of Alberich like this.”

The production is particularly unconventional even for the two singers, each of whom has performed Alberich more than 100 times.

“Of all the productions I’ve experienced, there’s nothing even remotely similar to the scenes in which Alberich appears,” Youn said.

Swiss director Lorenzo Fioroni, who presented “The Love for Three Oranges” to Korean audiences last year, brings Alberich onto the stage from the overture and follows him backstage with a live camera.

The Rhine is absent from the production. Instead, Nibelheim, the underground world of the dwarves, is depicted as a city piled with boxes and trash, while Valhalla, the gods’ castle, becomes a space filled with fluttering bundles of cash.

Youn describes Alberich in this production as “a violent character who also collapses in a devastating way.”

The elaborate makeup is another unfamiliar experience. Applying the fur required for the character takes two hours, and removing it takes roughly the same amount of time.

For the two singers, the significance of the production extends beyond performing the role successfully.

“We’re approaching this with the determination that Korean opera will develop further if we lay the groundwork as a steppingstone for younger singers performing in Europe and elsewhere to follow,” Yang said.

Youn, meanwhile, reflected on the limited time he may have left on the opera stage.

“We’re already in our mid-50s, so there isn’t much time left for us to perform in operas,” he said. “When will audiences get to see us perform Alberich again?”

“Das Rheingold” runs from Thursday to Sunday at the Opera House of the Seoul Arts Center. Youn performs Thursday and Saturday, while Yang takes the stage Friday and Sunday.

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.