Interview With International Opera Star David Pittsinger About “South Pacific” at the Fox Theatre

K: When you are doing the opera overseas, are you part of a certain company or do you audition for jobs individually?

D: Unless you have what they call a thest contract, which are only offered in a couple of opera houses, you are completely on your own.  So, it enables you to make friendships.  I was single at the time, and got to travel all over Europe and sing in the best opera houses there.  You know what they say, “you’re never a profit in your own land, until you prove yourself elsewhere.” And then you know, I came back to the United States, and started singing a lot with the San Francisco Opera, and eventually the Metropolitan Opera. I sung a lot with both of those companies, as well as the New York City Opera.

So yeah, you’re never really affiliated with a company. I’ve been asked back at every place I’ve ever sung, including one of the first places that I really started my career, which was Brussels at the Royal Theater. I sung many productions there, many performances, and since then I have really been able to expand my career in Europe as well as the US.  It’s really nice because my children – I have twins who are 11 – are at an age now where I need to be in this country more in order to sort of keep up with them.  Singing in this country, and certainly on Broadway has allowed me to do that.

K: Speaking of Broadway, the revival of South Pacific was in early 2008, right?

D: Yes.  That was on Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater.  And I had to be released from a Metropolitan Opera contract in order to do this.  But the timing was right, and the Met was willing.  They understood my need to explore this opportunity, in a part that was written for one of my idols: an opera singer named Ezio Pinza. I wasn’t born by the time that he died, and finished singing, but I certainly am very familiar with his work, and felt that this was something right up my alley.  I was the right age to do it, and again it was right under the same offices of Lincoln Center, and that it was right next to the Met. It enabled me to be the first artist in history ever to perform a leading role in Broadway and a leading role in Opera in the same day.  They did a really wonderful story in the New York Times.

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