Air is Everything: Baritone Gregory Dahl on Lessons from Opera's Biggest Roles
A rollicking conversation that reflects on making peace with a massive voice, playing nice in the sandbox, and his signature sound, and the curious ;/ emoji he sends his friends
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Ashley Daniel Foot:
We're Inside Vancouver Opera, and my name is Ashley Daniel Foot. Today, we're talking with baritone extraordinaire, Greg Dahl. Audiences from Vancouver will remember him last season as the lead role in The Flying Dutchman.
And he's back! Back in Vancouver for another title role as Don Pasquale, opening on February 10th at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. And I had the honour to pull him from rehearsal for a few minutes to talk a little bit about his craft.
Greg, you have sung pretty much everything when I look at the list of repertoire that you've performed all over Canada, all over the place. Did you know when you were young that this was the trajectory?
Gregory Dahl:
No, I was a school teacher. I started out as a school teacher.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
What were you teaching?
Gregory Dahl:
Music. I come from a very musical home. And when I was 16, I ended up seeing the movie Amadeus, and then I really got inspired with classical music.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
That movie's amazing.
Gregory Dahl:
And I wanted to do this. I was a choral conductor first. I went to this college and did choral conducting and then I sort of sang, but I was never the lead and never was the guy. I really wanted to be an actor, I think, more than anything. And then I started teaching. And my first year, I had a contract to start a choral program in a kind of a vocational high school in Winnipeg. And I got laid off after four months... not because I was bad, but because they ran out of money and it was the numbers game. I was the last guy… first one out. Mel Braun, who was my teacher at the time at University of Manitoba, got a call from John Hess. He said, we need a baritone out in Banff for this program... And I said, okay, I'll try this. And I went back for the summer program, met Mary Morrison. I was an older guy. I was 28 already, 28. I think I went to opera school at the age of 28 or 29.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
So you were one of the oldest people there then, right?
Gregory Dahl:
Close to one of the oldest people, yeah.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
And you went... Where did you go?
Gregory Dahl:
I got into the University of Toronto Opera School with Pomeroy. Pomeroy was the youngest guy there. I was the oldest guy there. It was good times.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
And then you worked together many times since.
Gregory Dahl:
Many times, yeah. Many times since then.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
We're talking about tenor David Pomeroy.
Gregory Dahl:
Hi David! And I went to opera school for two years, and then after four months being out of opera school, I got into the ensemble here in Vancouver. The Young Artist Program. My first real kind of professional opera gig was here. I was hired to do Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, and I shouldn't have been Capulet for the first role. So I was Gregorio suddenly. It was a lot. So I became Gregorio and learned it in three days and was fencing and yeah.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
You were having fun though, I'm guessing. A little and terror.
Gregory Dahl:
Terror. I mean, when you don't know your music, it's never fun.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
No, no, no!
Gregory Dahl:
But I knew my music by the end. Gregorio was much more into my zone at that moment, and he had a lot less to do than Don Pasquale does, let me tell you.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
From Gregorio to Don Pasquale, which you are hard at work on, we just pulled you out of rehearsal. What is going on down there? What are you doing there? Tell us a little bit about the role and your preparation.
Gregory Dahl:
Oh, my preparation. Well, text, text, text I mean 2,800 words, if I can say that again. I mean, I have just such a great team. I have to say, Jacques Lacombe is maestro and Renaud Doucet as the director. When you have the marriage of the singer and the director and the maestro all doing in the same direction, it works.
But when somebody's like... You're fighting one of them, it never works. And I'm not one to be a fighter with these people because I know my job is really... It's much easier when we all get along. It's playing in the sandbox, so don't throw sand.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
That's important advice in general for life, I would say, right?
Gregory Dahl:
Life and for every singer, no matter where you are in your stage of development, you have to... Just because I'm older doesn't mean I can't... I play well in the sandbox. In fact, I find it's more important for me to be more collegial, to be a better colleague. Because as I was told once, when you're playing the lead role, you want everybody else to feel like they're way more important than you. And that's the key, because that elevates the whole show when you get everybody going in the same direction. And that's why downstairs, we got great leaders leading this charge, as it were.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
So there's a responsibility to have the lead. It's not just coming in. It's far beyond what you're also singing and performing. It's setting the tone in so many ways.
Gregory Dahl:
I think so. I think it's important for you to really set the tone, and it's really important for us to get along as a team. It's funny, I am married to a social... My partner is a social worker, and it's something called group work. She said, we form, we storm, we norm, we perform, and then we adjourn.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
It's the same thing!
Gregory Dahl:
It's the same thing. We get together as a group. I'm never in... Even if I do a remount of some production, I've never been in exactly the same cast ever. This is it. This moment in time, we're doing this. This is the cast, this is the people, this is the maestro, the director. And then we go from there. And so it's very important for everybody in this business to I think get along. I know, which it sounds like we've got big egos in the room, but-
Ashley Daniel Foot:
It's not true. It's a rumour, isn't it?
Gregory Dahl:
It's not really that true. No… big heads. Big mouths!
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Well, in your case, yes.
Gregory Dahl:
Yeah, big mouth! When I was born, the doctor said “10 fingers, 10 toes, big mouth.” It's written on my chart.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
That should be also on your bio.
Gregory Dahl:
It was destiny.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Talk about the idea of destiny as a singer. Do you think that's a thing?
Gregory Dahl:
Yes and no. I mean, you start out as a singer and you have all these grandiose ideas of where you're going to go. And there's a lot of luck involved too. And along the way… being in the right place at the right time, certain people, and there's so much that's out of your control.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Like what? Tell us.
Gregory Dahl:
Well, I don't know what they're doing next year, and if they're not doing something that I'm good at singing, then I'm not going to have work, right?
Ashley Daniel Foot:
But that's the challenge across this industry, right?
Gregory Dahl:
That's right.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Is there some stress and anxiety that comes up with that?
Gregory Dahl:
Oh yes, talk to my family!
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Because you've got bills to pay and things to-
Gregory Dahl:
Yes. Yes. And I've started, last five years, teaching a little bit on the side, but that's not my main income. My main income is still these two little chords in my throat.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Those two little chords inside your throat, how do you keep them safe?
Gregory Dahl:
I just act like a normal guy.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Do you do things like vocal rest.
Gregory Dahl:
No, no. I'm actually the worst with that.
Gregory Dahl:
I'm wash-and-wear singer. You don't want to know what I do in my private life. Just keep it at that. In the end, I have to get sleep. Sleep is the most important thing for you. Rest. Mentally rested, physically rested, especially for a role like this, because there's a lot to do in the evening and it can get very tiring. For me, because I come with a lot of energy already in my-
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Right. You don't say.
Gregory Dahl:
Yeah. Yeah. Like the Energizer bunny. Brian Deedrick said, "Working with Greg Dahl is like working with the energy of a box of kittens."
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Talking of kittens, we've got lots on this show.
Gregory Dahl:
That's right. That's right. We do!
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I think that I was talking to the prop master, 123 cats in various forms.
Gregory Dahl:
This is the type of story that you can pretty much interpolate your ideas onto it of what we're going to set it. We're going to set it... Originally it's set in Rome, but we've updated it to 1960s Rome, La Dolce Vita.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Gregory Dahl:
Fellini. Yeah, yeah. That whole kind of feeling. And I'm a man of seven years. I'm on in life, and I have an infatuation with cats.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Cats, not the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber .
Gregory Dahl:
No, not the music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. But the thing is, I'm allergic to cats, which is kind of funny because I personally am also allergic to cats.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Oh, dear.
Gregory Dahl:
So basically on the stage, you're going to see these green coloured cats. Which are cats from in my imagination. They're not real. And then there's all these porcelain cats, which I collect. I'm a collector. And they're precious to me. And he's got a bit of an infatuation with Catwoman, of course then.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
You have to see what happens next.
Gregory Dahl:
Yeah, we won't have a spoiler alert either.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I'm going to ask you... We've never done this before, but you're here. It's an opera podcast. How on earth do you do this thing? Where does it all begin, the sound that you start to make?
Gregory Dahl:
Air. Air is everything. It's like my bow. See here, I have a theory. I believe we all know how to sing.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I agree.
Gregory Dahl:
Everyone go, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Right? We can all do that. But have you ever heard anybody sing Happy Birthday? Well, that's going through-
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Well, that's another question.
Gregory Dahl:
That's another question, because that's going through another passagio as it were.
This goes one, two, three, four. And in the guitar, you go one, two, three, four, and then you got to switch either strings or you switch... You go to the next string, or you got to move your hand up, right? Same thing with the voice. You got these passageways, and then it goes into a new passage and then another section. So for me, it's just keeping-
Ashley Daniel Foot:
What does that sound like?
Gregory Dahl:
[Sings]
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Why does it sound so different when I do it?
Gregory Dahl:
I know, I know. And just keeping the larynx down. If you count backwards from 10, you go… Count backwards from 10.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Gregory Dahl:
Your voice went down in pitch as everyone's does, and you're running out of air and you put your larynx down. And when you speak, you go up. You got to keep it down. That's the space.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
The shiny floor, you could polish a floor with that.
Gregory Dahl:
I do. I try to. I also tell my kids, keep it in your shoes.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
You mentioned that you also teach. What does that mean in terms of your practice and how that works?
Gregory Dahl:
They're saving my career because in order to teach, you have to know what you're doing. And I just thought, what am I going to do? I have to explain what I'm doing.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
You may have had some experience.
Gregory Dahl:
Yes. And I feel I have a better technique though, because from telling others what to do, and it's been a really eye-opening and wonderful experience doing that. And I really like teaching. And it's a fun, enjoyable... I mean, if you could say, would you rather do teach or sing? I'd probably say sing. But then again, in the end, you can be 75 and go “Sing that again…”
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Do you think there's a responsibility to pass along some of this experience?
Gregory Dahl:
Look, there's not a lot of us around that do this work.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
You're a rare bird.
Gregory Dahl:
Yeah, opera singers, right? So we have to... I gather knowledge from people ahead of me, and it's sort of you impart knowledge and that's sort of the way it works. Although in so many ways, I'm not... I look at these young singers and I'm just like them. I got a knapsack that's full of a score that I need to learn. And I got notes from a maestro that I just got today that I got to fix.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Oh my goodness.
Gregory Dahl:
There's no difference. And I'm always like, where's my next gig? It doesn't change as you age, you just walk slower.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Well, when I'm looking at the list of all of these operas, and I'm just struck by the sheer volume of heavy repertoire here, these are the biggest guns of all. The Toscas, the Carmens, the Fidelios, the Rigolettos. You are definitely swimming in the deepest of waters.
Gregory Dahl:
That's right. Big-boy pants.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Absolutely. Do you ever have a moment when you're like, this is so much, how will I maintain this pace?
Gregory Dahl:
If you know what you're doing and you're singing well, it can work. The funny thing is I was kind of blessed with a bigger voice.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
You don't say.
Gregory Dahl:
But it took me a while to grow into it. Only now do I feel at this age, oh, okay, that makes sense. But when I was 20, it was like, oh, no-
Ashley Daniel Foot:
It felt incongruous.
Gregory Dahl:
Yeah. It didn't work the way I wanted it to. It was like then I was a lamp without a lampshade. Let's just put it that way. It was more I needed to hone it and find it. But then again, singing these roles teaches you how to sing. It's interesting because you have to learn how to negotiate what the composer's written. And if it's a composer like Verdi, then it's beautifully written. He understood the voice.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
There is a sound that is... I would say everyone who I talk to about you say you got to ask him about the sound.
Gregory Dahl:
*phvvt*
I think it was John Dodington back in the day was doing this in rehearsal. I don't know, making this sound. It's a bit of a *phvvt*. And then Richard Margison was doing it for a while, and then I just started doing it back in... I don't know why. And then when these cell phones came out, okay, and you started texting people smiley faces?
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gregory Dahl:
And I was thinking to myself, okay, these phones and this texting, it's always embarrassing. You send a text and you don't really know if you're sending it to the right number at the beginning, right, what you're saying. So yeah. So I came up with this symbol, ;/ It's sort of like when we used start walkie-talkies and we say “Over.”
So now when I text you as a friend, I go *phvvt*. A friend of mine said, Robert Pomakov said, what does *phvvt* mean? And I said, *phvvt* means *phvvt*. And he got it. Pomakov is singing at the Met. Okay? He's at the Met. He's singing Monterone, and he's getting pulled up by these... It’s the final opera. And he hasn't really chatted with these fellas next to him. I mean, he's chatted with them. So it's the last show and he's about to get drawn up to the stage.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
It's the crew, right?
Gregory Dahl:
Yeah. Yeah. And he's got these extras beside him and Pomakov on one show, I think last show or something, he went *phvvt*, the fellow to the right of him said, "You know Greg Dahl?" Yes!
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Your reputation precedes you.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
The very last question, I love to ask this. What is the most insane thing that has gone wrong in a performance?
Gregory Dahl:
Oh, I don't know gone wrong, but you know okay. Last time I sang the The Barber of Seville and there was a part that was moving, and I had sung the aria. I was at this one section and it was a big patter section, and I was feeling a little bit probably, maybe a little cocky. Anyways, let's just put it this way, before this patter section started, I came in a bar early. That was terrifying because I was lost for a page and a half and you're up there going-
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Oh my God!
Gregory Dahl:
... blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
That's terrifying. Like sheer terror.
Gregory Dahl:
Awful. Awful.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
So what helped you in that moment?
Gregory Dahl:
Nothing! I just kept going. Nothing helped me. What do you mean helped me? I was like, it's a mess. It's a mess. I can't imagine what came out of my mouth. The stage manager at the time, I came off stage and he said, "The Italian gibberish police will be here in an hour." It's like, yeah, look, it's live. So I mean, it's funny because when things go wrong, my brain will kind of slow down in time. But if you're watching-
Ashley Daniel Foot:
It's like a blip.
Gregory Dahl:
... you don't really notice it. But I mean, I'll go home and go, wow, that was good...
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Well, that was amazing! It's always a pleasure to welcome Greg Dahl into the studio and so glad that he could spare a moment from rehearsals. Make sure you grab your tickets to Don Pasquale from Feb 10th to 18th at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre if you haven't already.
We have lots more great programming coming up on this season of Inside Vancouver Opera. We're about to get started soon with rehearsals for our Vancouver Opera in Schools collaboration with Pacific Opera Victoria. The Flight of the Hummingbird will be going on tour all across BC, stopping at over 70 schools. So we'll be getting into that.
And of course, the big dog, Carmen itself, it's coming. We'll be digging into that in episodes ahead. So as always, thanks to our trusted producer, Mack McGillivray, and I'll see you at the opera.
Gregory Dahl is one of Canada’s most in demand baritones for the works of Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, and Strauss. Dahl has appeared at every Canadian opera company, with highlights including the title role of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Hollander (Opéra de Québec), Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca (Calgary Opera, Opéra de Montréal, & Manitoba Opera), and the title role of Verdi’s Rigoletto (Calgary Opera & Opéra de Québec). Equally at home on the concert stage, he has performed across Canada, from Symphony Nova Scotia to Vancouver Symphony, as a featured soloist in some of the most renowned works of the canon. A consummate musician, Dahl has premiered roles with great acclaim, including Rolfe’s Beatrice Chancy and Estacio’s Filumena. This year, Gregory performed and directed a new, filmed production of Filumena with Brott Music Festival. Pursuing his passion for education, Dahl is currently on the voice faculty of the University of Toronto.
Inside Vancouver Opera is hosted by Ashley Daniel Foot, Vancouver Opera’s Director of Engagement and Civic Practice. Boundlessly creative and fascinated by the way that art is created and presented, Ashley has guided arts organizations across Canada to craft messages and tell unique stories.
At Vancouver Opera, Ashley carefully develops all programming that takes place off the mainstage and looks for unique and unexpected ways to highlight the power of opera in the community. He also manages all education, community partnerships, and guides the company’s commitment to justice, equity, reconciliation, and diversity. He’s particularly proud of his recent collaborations with with the Vancouver Public Library, BC Alliance for Arts and Culture, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Rumble Theatre. He is also the co-chair of the City of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Advisory Committee.
Inside Vancouver Opera is produced by Mack McGillivray, an audio producer creating shows for radio and podcast. Mack is passionate about cultivating local community and a lifelong lover of opera.