SARASOTA – Preparing for an opera, takes more than voice training. “It’s at once a play,” Tenor Jonathan Burton said. “And it’s also at the other time, very intense classical music.”
Burton has played Turandot’s Prince Calaf before, but it’s different at every opera company.
“To just be flexible,” Burton said. “And to try to be imaginative and live in the moment because often you have a completely different cast every time you’ll do the same role, so even if you try to do it the same way, already it’s going to be vastly different.”
Burton got his start preforming rock and country. “I started playing guitar when I was about 8 years old,” Burton said. “And by the time I was about 8 years old I was playing in bands.”
Then at 18 he went to his voice coach. “He said ‘I think you’ve got a voice meant for opera have you ever thought about it,’”. Burton said. “I said no, I’ve never seen an opera, the first opera I ever saw I was in.”
He still dabbles in country, performing in an Opera to Opry show, that starts with arias and turns into a full country set.
“I think it’s pretty shocking for those people,” Burton said. “It’s like wait those were the opera singers, and they’re playing guitars and banjos and mandolin and what is happening.”
But as his partner tells the audience, the songs aren’t that different, they both sing about love, life and loss. “He says you know we’re all pretty much the same, we’re all telling the same stories,” Burton said. “The only difference is we do it in three minutes and you do it in three hours.”
Burton says it shows what is really at the heart of every performance. “Story telling itself is a very big part of what we do,” Burton said. “And I think sometimes singers lose sight of that because we have to concentrate so much on the vocal aspect.”
If you want to get a chance to see Jonathan perform, you can find information about tickets to Turandot at SarasotaOpera.Org.
