Interview with Ivor Klayman (baritone)
Interview with Ivor Klayman (baritone)
Long ago, in the 1970s, a young fellow from Edinburgh finished his schooling and went up to St Andrews University to study Mediaeval History and French. During this transitional period, he discovered he had quite a decent voice, and he set out to learn as many operas as he could, as he had developed a burning ambition to be an opera singer. Scottish Opera had been founded in 1962, and by the early 70s, was beginning to be noticed internationally. It was a great time for our young singer, who happened to be me, to hear top class opera both from Scottish Opera and at the Edinburgh International Festival, whose director, Peter Diamand, was acquainted with some of the great contemporary singers of the time through his work as an important arts administrator. I heard Helga Dernesch, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Heather Harper, David Ward, Franco Bonisolli, Geraint Evans and Teresa Berganza among others, all at this time. It was a marvellous time to live in Edinburgh, but of course all these great singers were a million miles from my experience.
Since Scottish Opera was based in Glasgow, there was no professional opera in the capital city. However, there was an amateur group, Edinburgh Grand Opera, which put on very decent performances, and my father knew someone who knew one of the singers, so I was invited along to a performance of Verdi’s ‘Macbeth’ to see, at close hand, how opera worked. The friend of a friend was called John Shiels, and he was singing Macbeth. I got to see him getting made up and dressed for the show and watched in awe as layer upon layer of make-up was applied. I watched from the wings as John sang the dramatic role of Macbeth, quite well, but with a histrionic style which would have embarrassed a silent movie actor. I was of course mesmerised and loved every minute, and afterwards, I pleaded with my parents to be allowed to go to a further performance.
This duly happened, but, and this is the reason for all the preceding story, the Macbeth that second night was a nice Edinburgh lawyer, called Ivor Klayman, moonlighting as an opera singer. Well, his performance could not have been more different from Mr Shiels! Gently persuasive as an actor, and with a voice as smooth as velvet, Mr Klayman delivered his role in a manner that even I as a teenager could see was more suitable and authentic.
Fifty years later, Ivor is still a stalwart of Edinburgh singing, now retired from the legal profession which kept him busy for so many years, but still offering his wisdom to young singers, and still singing in the Edinburgh Festival Chorus which has benefited from his smooth baritone for all this time.
I thought it might be interesting for our readers to learn more about this mighty figure, and we spoke recently.
BBS: Ivor, you and I first met in 1978 at Edinburgh University Opera Club. I was doing the one year Teacher Training course at Moray House (my parents insisted I had something to fall back on if my crazy idea to be a professional singer didn’t work – thank goodness it did work, as I would have been a terrible teacher!), and I think you had recently started your legal work. We sang in ‘Don Procopio’, a little known comedy by Bizet, in which you sang the title role and I was cast as Don Andronico, both miserable old misers who are duped by the young hero and heroine. I don’t know if you were aware, but you were there as a witness to my operatic and stage debut! I had no idea about acting, but I was beginning to understand singing. The following year, I went down to London to the Guildhall School of Music, where I suppose it all began in earnest, to study with Laura Sarti (who has just celebrated her 101st birthday!).
Can you tell us a bit about how you got to that stage in your musical life, your training, and the early years?
IK: My mother always said I sang “Loch Lomond” in my pram but I can’t be sure. However, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t singing, even if only in my head. I must have had a decent treble voice as I was often asked to sing in my Hebrew classes, “pour encourager les autres” but that just put my fellow students’ backs up, which made me self-conscious about singing in public. I gave my first concert aged about 11 in the front room of a friend (whose house oddly enough was about a minute’s walk from where I now live). I sang with my back to the audience, which helped the self-consciousness. I sang at school but was deprived of my debut in the Usher Hall school concert when my voice broke. I think I was 11 or 12.
Once my voice had settled to a light baritone, I debuted at a concert in the Jewish Community’s Communal Hall singing George Formby’s “When I’m cleaning windows”, accompanying myself on a banjo ukulele I had found in a cupboard and “fixed up”. I was then co-opted into a rock and roll band called “The Rapiers” which played semi-professionally in and around Edinburgh, including the USAF airbase at Kirknewton where I was forced to find my falsetto, (that’s a long story!) but which stood me in very good stead for Carmina Burana later in life. Playing in the band burned off the last of my self-consciousness though!
The band worked steadily until 1963 when I started first year law at Edinburgh University and joined the Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group (EUSOG) chorus for HMS Pinafore which went on in February 1964-and shortly after that the band broke up as we were all going in different professional directions. I stayed on for “Iolanthe” in 1964/65 and through a chain of coincidences, ended up understudying all the male roles (other than the tenor). I was then cast as King Hildebrand in ‘Princess Ida’ in ‘65/66 and that was the start of my “proper” singing career. I was encouraged (or commanded) by my girlfriend at the time to take singing lessons. She was training with Marie Tainsh so I applied to study with her husband, John Tainsh, a very well know Scottish tenor. As a result of gaining roles with EUSOG, I was asked to join Opera da Camera, a company started by Ian and Sheila McNab, stalwarts of EUSOG and vastly experienced, to perform Mozart and similar operas and after singing in the chorus of Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni (Count and Don, John Shiels! and Figaro and Leporello, Peter Morrison) and understudying Masetto, I was cast as Belcore in L’Elisir d’Amore, then as Silvano in Edinburgh Grand Opera’s “A Masked Ball” (John Shiels again as Renato). Then I became a sort of fixture with EGO while starting a parallel course in oratorio and concert work. John Tainsh sadly died after a year of working with me and I moved on to Marie Tainsh for the next four years. She had some wonderful accompanists for her lessons. Sandra Brown, John Bryden, Angela Livingstone, Susan Tomes to name but four-and I’m sure I recall Malcolm Martineau too. After she retired, I just carried on using what I had learned.
BBS: Was it ever an ambition of yours to jack in the Law and become a professional singer. I remember all those years ago that people in the know reckoned you had the voice. Did you have the ambition and the drive, or was it never a serious proposition? Were you advised against it? I know you have spent a lifetime singing solos in oratorios professionally around Scotland. Was there ever a time when you thought to give it a go?
IK: Not really. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could perhaps make a career of singing. Singing was just something I had always done and knew I was good at but I had no background in music apart from a great familiarity with G & S from recordings and the annual visit of D’Oyly Carte. My main listening in the 50’s was to the hit parade of the time and the growing phenomena of rock and roll and blues. That helped in my band days. My hero then was Howlin’ Wolf! I had no experience of opera, oratorio, Lieder or very much “serious” music at all. I only joined EUSOG because a friend from school, who was starting a degree in zymology with a view to becoming a brewer, saw their stand at the Fresher’s Fair and said he would join if I did. They say life is a series of coincidences and accidents. That moment was the key to everything that followed for me regarding singing. I had, however, at about age 12, decided I was going to be a lawyer. Why, I have no idea. I had no family background in law-I didn’t know any lawyers. I think it was because I saw “Witness for the Prosecution” and “Twelve Angry Men” at the cinema in quick succession. I occasionally wondered what a singing career might have been like but I’m pretty sure I would only have had comprimario (minor) roles - though I have sung several Verdi roles, I’m not a “Verdi baritone” - and I doubt I would have had much of a living singing small roles, oratorio and Lieder. I went on a concert tour once round South West Scotland with Opera on a Shoestring, with whom I sang a number of roles, at The Cottier and the Citizens’ Theatre in Glasgow and in concert, mostly comprimario apart from Malatesta in Don Pasquale, but living out of a suitcase for a week in a new and sometimes strange bed every night convinced me that it would not have been the life for me. I like my home comforts too much!
BBS: Like me, you have watched over the years as Scottish Opera has bloomed, wilted, bloomed again, wilted again and generally burbled along. It seems to be on a mini-high at the moment, although putting on a quite different level of performance to that which I was used to in the 1970s as a spectator and when I was a company soloist from 1982-85. What have been your highlights watching our national company over the years? Since I was never invited back after 1985 (until 2019 when I was just about to retire), I spent most of my career outside Scotland, as did most of my generation of Scottish singers, and was literally not involved. You have been here all this time. Have you a view on what happened, and could things have been different?
IK: I still recall the first season when I saw Faust with several Scottish singers (Josie McQueen as Siebel sticks in my mind) and later, ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ with Janet Baker as Octavian and ‘Boris Godunov’ with John Robertson as the Simpleton and Margaret Aronson (then under her maiden name, Marshall) as the Tzarevich with Don Garrard as Pimen -he played Boris in a later revival I recall when I think Bill McCue was Pimen.
After the first management change, as I recall, English and international singers were cast in roles which established Scottish singers could well have taken, and taken well, and a generation of young Scottish singers were sucked in, over parted before they had any real experience, and spat out, sometimes damaged vocally, after a year or two. If the same ethos as the founders espoused had continued, I think things could have been very different. As it is, I rather fell out of love with SO after the change in direction and though I have gone to the occasional opera for particular reasons since, I haven’t, I’m ashamed to say, been a regular supporter.
BBS: You have spent decades singing in the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, since the great days of Arthur Oldham, and have watched as Festival Directors and Chorus Masters came and went. What were your highlights? What sticks in the memory as special experiences?
IK: I joined half way through the 1969/70 season, in April 1970. Arthur told me later that my audition notes read “Good voice, shame about the sight reading.” Little has changed. Highlights? There have been so many. A few - ‘Missa Solemnis’ in 1970 with Giulini, Verdi Requiem in 1975 with Giulini, Martina Arroyo (replaced by Rita Hunter at the second performance), Fiorenza Cossotto, Pavarotti and Rafaele Arie (by then past his best), the Requiem again some years later with Margaret Price, Jessye Norman (alto!), Jose Carreras and Ruggero Raimondi conducted by Muti, Mozart Requiem with the Leningrad Phil the night Gorbachev went missing which was the most intense performance of that work I ever experienced, several concerts and recordings with Sir Charles MacKerras –so many others I could fill a book!, and on a personal level, as baritone soloist in Chichester Psalms with Leonard Bernstein, singing First Prisoner in ‘Leonora’ by Beethoven with Sir Charles Mackerras, and recently as baritone soloist in Sir Jonathan Mills ‘Sandokan Threnody’. However, I almost made my Festival debut as The Flamenco Singer in ‘La Vida Breve’ with Jesus Lopez-Cobos, but that’s another story!
BBS: How have you kept your voice working over these years? I was constantly working on my voice during my career, consulting various teachers and great singers for advice and input. I had a great revelation in the late 1990s, when I went to work with Anthony Roden, the fine Australian tenor, who single handedly released my tongue from the wrong position when singing and opened up scores of extra roles that I had never thought to sing. He also freed me from the bass fear of high notes, suddenly transforming me into someone who enjoyed singing high, thrilling notes (high for a bass, I might add). I sang Wotan, Baron Ochs, The Theatre Director in ‘Capriccio’, Falstaff, Elijah and the Britten War Requiem during the last 25 years, none of which I would have given a moment’s thought to before!
Did you have any revelations of that sort throughout your singing career, or have you stayed within the baritone range you always had? How did you manage to keep a balance between your legal work and your musical life?
IK: I have no idea! I have tried to follow Mrs Tainsh’s maxim “Sing on the interest, not the capital” which I understand to mean “don’t push, don’t force.” For many years I was singing opera, oratorio and lieder and in Festival Chorus consistently from September to March/April and then in the chorus through the run up to, and in, the Festival which kept me in trim, more or less, though some Festival concerts were and are challenging when it comes to avoiding pushing or forcing! Now the phone rings much less often but I’ve been singing with Fife Opera and singing concerts and Lieder for the past few years so I usually have something I have to work on. At the moment it’s ‘An die ferne Geliebte’ and ‘Schwannengesang’ for Fringe recitals with John Bryden at St Mary’s, Palmerston Place. I try to sing through what I have to work on for at least 10/15 minutes every couple of days. I also have the benefit of being able to work with accompanists such as Martyn Strachan and Nancy Crook. It’s all so different when you have an accompanist to work with. I listen to what works (and what doesn’t) and concentrate on sorting out any problems as I go.
No, no revelations - my range has shifted a little up and down over the years but I’m very much same old in terms of range and repertoire. I found that singing kept me sane from legal work and vice versa and I was fortunate as a partner in my firm to be able to structure my working times around my singing obligations without adversely affected either of them.
BBS: Looking back over a really successful double career, how would you sum up your career? Are there roles you wanted to sing but never did? Are there moments when you made choices which might have taken you elsewhere?
IK: It’s difficult to sum up a legal career of 52 years, 50 with one firm, but I do recall a review that said I was the Gandalf of the legal profession - which I took as a compliment.
On my singing career, I’m still going though, as I’m now 80, the light at the end of the tunnel is rather fainter than it once was. I tried to work to a maxim I was taught many years ago - always get asked back. I always try to serve the poet or librettist and the composer so as to give an audience the best version of a piece that I can and if I have managed to shed a new light on a well-known piece for only one person, I’ll rest content.
As to roles I wish I had sung, I sang Scarpia once in a concert performance of ‘Tosca’ - I would have loved to perform that odious creep in a production. ‘Rigoletto’ or Verdi’s ‘Falstaff’ (I’ve sung Vaughn Williams’ version) would have been high points - but otherwise, I’ve been able to perform pretty well all the roles (over 60 at my last count) I wanted to.
I think I have had the best of the balance between a job I enjoyed and which paid the bills and the singing opportunities I have had. I never seriously considered changing that balance.
BBS: It’s been a pleasure to have known you all these years, and I hope this little interview has introduced you to lots of people who have enjoyed your singing but have perhaps been unaware of the other side of your life.
Final thoughts?
IK: For me too. I often wonder what I’ll do when I can’t sing any more to the standard I’m satisfied with but I will rely on good friends like you to tell me when that time comes. Oh - is it that time already?
If you’d like to hear Ivor singing in Edinburgh, go to St Mary’s Cathedral in Palmerston Place on 5th August at 11am to hear him and John Bryden in Beethoven’s ‘An die ferne Geliebte’ and on 7th August also at 11am, for Schubert’s ‘Schwanenegesang’.
