CANADA COURIER: Taras Kulish: how to succeed in opera (10/19/97)

CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

Taras Kulish: how to succeed in opera

There's little dispute that Luciano Pavarotti has transformed opera into big business. The Italian superstar tenor was scheduled to perform in Ottawa on November 5. Citing scheduling problems, Mr. Pavarotti had to cancel his concert, which commanded a price for VIP tickets as high as $1,200 (about $880 U.S.).

Commanding a following that more befits say a pop or rock star, Mr. Pavarotti has also popularized his musical genre and brought along all the trappings that come with the cult of celebrity that surround him.

Taras Kulish has learned how opera is, well, show business. "It's who you know," he says. "If you don't have the right contacts and you're not at the right place at the right time, nobody's going to care."

Right now, Mr. Kulish, a boyish-looking 29-year-old Montreal native, lives in Vancouver. He seems to be in the right place at the right time.

Young by operatic standards, the Ukrainian Canadian bass-baritone is a member of the Vancouver Opera Company's Young Artists Ensemble. As such, he and his ensemble colleagues take home about $800 (about $580 U.S.) a week.

This season, Mr. Kulish will have a role in the Vancouver Opera Company's production of "Salome" in November, "La Bohème" next spring and a school tour of "Hansel and Gretel" in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. He just finished playing Friar Laurence in "Romeo and Juliet."

During the past summer, Mr. Kulish played the leading role of Leporello in Mozart's "Don Giovanni" at Colorado's Aspen Music Festival under the baton of Metropolitan Opera conductor Julius Rudel. (Leporello is the sidekick who helps Don Giovanni in his conquests of women.)

Not bad for a guy who only began training for opera as a young adult.

In school, Mr. Kulish played trumpet in the Montreal-based Ukrainian-Canadian band Trembita. But he has good singing genes. Mr. Kulish's maternal aunt, Myroslava Werbigska, is an accomplished lyric soprano who has recorded a few albums for the community.

But the turning point for him, when he decided to train those deep, basement pipes God gave him, came when, as a boy, his parents took him to see an opera based on Taras Shevchenko's "Kateryna."

"I remember it still. The lead soprano at the end commits suicide by jumping off a cliff," recalls Mr. Kulish. The high drama impressed the 7-year-old and put an idea in his head that would come to fruition years later.

In 1990, Mr. Kulish enrolled in McGill University's bachelor of music program in Montreal. Five years later, he obtained his degree, majoring in voice. During that time, Mr. Kulish also made his operatic debut - albeit as a member of the chorus - in Tchaivovsky's "Eugene Onegin."

In 1992, a turning point occurred in his career. Mr. Kulish met Saskatchewan-born Carmen Mehta, a dramatic soprano whose father claimed a 50 percent Ukrainian heritage.

"She's the one who showed me the beauty of singing and enjoying this career," explains Mr. Kulish. "She has really been my mentor."

Indirectly, Ms. Mehta perhaps offered Mr. Kulish a glimpse into the show business side to opera in the process.

Once married to world-renowned conductor Zubin Mehta for seven years, and producing two children in the process, Ms. Mehta left Mr. Mehta. Though she had enough of Zubin, his brother, Zarin, seemed eager to help her out with the kids. So, Ms. Mehta married Zarin, about 30 years ago, and the couple lives in Chicago where Zarin Mehta heads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Hanging out with the heavy-duty opera stars also taught Mr. Kulish a thing or two professionally: aim your goals as high as the notes pushed from your throat on stage.

So he does.

Soon, when he creeps into his 30s, Mr. Kulish will become a "free agent" in the opera world. When that happens, he will have to negotiate his own fees with companies. Standing 5-foot-11, weighing in at 190 pounds and blessed with a booming (perhaps intimidating, when used in that way) voice, Mr. Kulish will likely have little problem playing hardball.

Fluent in five languages (English, French, Russian, Italian and Ukrainian, which he spoke exclusively for the first five years of his life), Mr. Kulish is poised to take on the great opera houses of Europe and the United States.

"I could survive in Canada, but I'm aiming a bit higher," he says. "I'm hoping that works out. But from everything that's happened so far, it looks like it will."

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