A Chat with Deborah Polaski.

The silence was overwhelming when the lights faded at the conclusion of Elektra at the Metropolitan Opera house last season. Then came the applause and what The New York Times described as an "ecstatic ovation" as the stage lights went on again and the audience rose to its feet. There, alone on stage, was Deborah Polaski, the American dramatic soprano who had sung the title role. The emotional depth of her performance in this demanding role was searing. Her powerful voice cut through the Strauss orchestra, then became a model of lyrical beauty in the Recognition scene when Elektra's brother Orest returns home to avenge their father's death.

Polaski first sang the role on May 26, 1984, her 35th birthday. She is currently singing it at the Vienna State Opera, and in the spring of 2005 she will sing three different productions of the opera: first in Japan, then at La Scala, and finally at the Opera Bastille in Paris.

"Elektra is my favorite role", she says. "First of all, it's very dysfunctional, and I come from a very functional family, so there's a lot of acting involved. But I think the real reason it's my favorite is because the emotions are so deep and everything is underlined musically so it's not just a matter of doing it acting-wise; it's a matter of doing it through the text and through the music. For me, that's the ultimate."

Elektra is not only her favorite role, but her most famous. After her London performances in 1997, for instance, one critic asked, "Has any Elektra, since the work's premiere in Dresden in 1909, ever brought quite so much to every dimension of the role?"

Polaski talked about her interpretation of Elektra this past December while in her dressing room backstage at the Met. She had just sung another Strauss role, the Dyer's wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten, a portrayal again remarkable for its emotional depth and rich vocal colors. Offstage, one is struck by the warmth of her personality and her genuine, non-diva manner. She is tall and broad-shouldered, with strong features and reddish-brown hair pulled back from her face. When asked about the vulnerability she brings to her portrayal of Elektra, Polaski says, "That's all in the character. She's the result of her upbringing and of the culture. Everything she feels is on an extremely deep level: her love for her father, the resentment of Aegisth, a certain kind of hatred toward her mother--even though in the scene with her mother there are still moments when she maybe wants to feel the nearness of her mother, but knows she can't give in to that. Think back to what her relationship was to her mother before her father was killed. That's an element that's never brought into it. It could be she was an old hag like she was after the murder, but it could also be there was a caring between Elektra and her mother. And the 'could-be' possibilities are the things that have to be built into the subtext--or can be built into it. That's what makes it interesting and exciting."

In Polaski's hands, any character seems to be more than the sum of concepts and research and information gleaned from without. She feels that finding the inner core of a character is a matter of the heart and the spine, meaning the spine as the nerve center, as the repository of human experience. "If you don't have anything inside to give, all the outside at some point flakes off", she says. "My whole point is to get to the inside of a person, into the emotional level and not just to make pretty, perfect sounds--because I don't make perfect sounds. I make some very good ones, but I make soul sounds. And that's what it's all about: to reach another soul. Not just to get to the ears."

The Wisconsin-born soprano studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and in 1975 she participated in a summer workshop in Graz where she studied with George London. She returned to Graz in 1976 and made her professional debut that fall as Senta in The Flying Dutchman. She began to perform in a number of small regional opera houses in Germany, and laughs the hearty laugh that is typical of her as she enumerates the list of minor roles she played: the first lady in The Magic Flute, the second elf in Rusalka, the third Norn in Götterdämmerung, the fourth maid in Elektra, and the fifth unborn child in Frau. "It's important to start small and go rung by rung on that ladder", she says, becoming serious. "That day-to-day routine in a low-profile situation allows you the time you need to mature emotionally, vocally, on every level."

She gradually became known for major roles in the Wagner and Strauss repertoire. Then came the break-through that brought international recognition: her debut at Bayreuth in 1988, the first of many performances at that legendary opera house. In the 90s, the Berlin State Opera became her artistic home as she starred in a number of new productions there. She made her Met debut in 1992 as Kundry in Parsifal, and went on to sing Ortrud (Lohengrin), Brünnhilde (Walküre), and during the past two seasons, Elektra, the Dyer's wife, and her first-ever Kostelnicka in Jenufa. She describes the Janacek role as "one of the two hardest learning times ever", the other being the double roles of Dido and Cassandra in Les Troyens, which she performed at her Salzburg Festival debut in 2000.

Since the soprano's career is centered in Europe, she is better known there than in her native United States. In addition to Berlin, she has performed with all the major European opera companies, including the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and companies in Holland, Switzerland, and Spain as well as Russia and Japan.

Her family lives in Indiana and she misses them deeply, particularly on holidays and birthdays. "We're extremely close", she says, talking about her parents and two siblings. "I'm very connected there." She regretted missing this past Christmas with them, even though she was eager to return to Berlin for performances of Tristan und Isolde.

She refers to Isolde as "a glorious role where I can give a lot emotionally and vocally". And yet her favorite Wagnerian role is Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung "because that's got the whole gamut of emotions too, and then she gets to recap all those emotions in that final scene. Give me Götterdämmerung any day over Isolde! I certainly don't want to sell Isolde short, but Brünnhilde is a heroine and she's a goddess and she returns in some way to that state at the end of the piece. Those are the elements that Isolde doesn't have."

Polaski is booked in Europe through 2008 and future appearances at the Met are in the talking stage. Despite, or perhaps because of, her heavy work schedule, she is trying "very consciously" to make time for her other interests such as cooking and intensive language courses. Spanish is her language of choice at the moment because she returns to Barcelona's Liceu in April for two and a half months to sing Brünnhilde in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. She repeats Frau in Munich, Walküre in Berlin, Tristan in Vienna, and then come those three different productions of Elektra in the spring of 2005. By the end of that run, she will have sung the role 150 times. "That hasn't worked itself just into my muscles," she says. "That's worked itself into my bones!"

As for the silence at the final curtain that often occurs when she has sung Elektra, Deborah Polaski seems awed as she recalls those moments: "It's wonderful because then you know you've got the public so involved in the emotions of the piece that they cannot react. And that's what Elektra should do to you. It should make you absolutely speechless."

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Deborah Polaski in a more functional mood.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE)

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By Bridget Paolucci