INTERVIEW: Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen continues his rise in the opera world
Photo: Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen is a countertenor featured on the new PBO album Handel: Saul. Photo courtesy of artist / Provided by official press kit.
Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, the countertenor who at 25 years old has made quite the impression in the opera world, can be heard on the latest recording from Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Handel: Saul, under the direction of Nic McGegan, features Cohen in the role of David.
“It was a really amazing experience,” the singer said in a recent phone interview. “First, the cast was really fantastic. It was a cast that we really kind of connected on a personal level as well as [being] colleagues, and to me that really makes a difference in terms of the music-making and the trust you have for each other. … But getting to make music with the Philharmonia and Nic McGegan, truly a dream come true to me. I grew up on their recordings really musically. That was a huge part of my musical education was burning out these discs on my walkman of Philharmonia Baroque playing Handel conducted by Nic, so to get to make music with them was really a dream come true. To get to do so in a role like David in a piece like Saul I really couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Cohen called the role of David quite challenging, but still fulfilling. The character requires a lot of stamina because of the variety it demands. In particular, he appreciates the character arc that David goes through and the many sides that the audience gets to see of this man.
“Here’s the future king of Israel, and we see him off the battlefield,” Cohen said. “And we see this kind of fiery side of him musically, but we also see so much incredible tenderness and vulnerability from this man. And we see a portrayal of a homosexual relationship. I mean, we just see a really fascinating character, a character who just has a lot of complexity, and musically to get to bring that out I absolutely love. So it’s a challenge to go back and forth between these different styles of singing, but the feeling at the end of the night when you’ve gone on that journey is just fantastic to me as an artist.”
Handel is Cohen’s favorite composer; he finds that his voice fits the music perfectly. During his musical education, he enjoyed getting to know Handel’s working methods, including how the composer would write music for particular singers.
“They were tailoring everything that they were writing to specific singers, so when Handel would do a piece one time he would have it set for this cast of six singers,” he said. “And then if he would revive it, he would rewrite all sorts of things and change everything to fit the singers who were singing it. Now obviously today we don’t have that luxury of having Handel around to tell us, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll change that aria to fit your voice better,’ and so on, so what you have to do is kind of gravitate toward the roles that were sung by specific people whose voice is your own voice.”
Cohen’s path to his current success in the opera world was an unconventional one. He grew up singing in choirs back in middle school, but he doesn’t come from a musical family. His earliest experiences were singing for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus in New York City.
“It was made up of girls and boys whose voices hadn’t dropped yet,” Cohen said. “It was a treble, higher-voice choir, and we were doing these amazing gigs — singing at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center all the time. Doing some amazing pop gigs — singing behind Elton John at the Garden, singing behind Billy Joel and Sting and James Taylor. It was really quite a series of experiences to be having as an 11 or 12 or 13-year-old kid. I basically became a countertenor by accident because I didn’t want to leave the choir, so when my voice dropped, we were doing all these amazing gigs. And I wanted to stay in the choir, so I kind of finagled to still sing the high notes that weren’t as natural anymore. And I guess I did a convincing enough job of it that they let me stay in the choir, and I sure am glad they did because I think that’s what turned me into a countertenor.”
Eventually Cohen went off to LaGuardia High School of the Arts, a famous performing-arts high school made famous by Fame, the movie and musical. He had no intention of launching a music career, so he ended up attending Princeton University to study public policy — perhaps a major that is academically the furthest away from music.
“I planned on maybe going to law school and going into policy work, and while I was at Princeton I saw an opera for the first time,” Cohen remembers. “So despite having all those great experiences singing classical music in the choir as a kid, we didn’t go to the symphony. We didn’t go to the opera, anything like that, so it wasn’t until Princeton. It was the end of my freshman year. I won a raffle from the Princeton Music Department to see an opera at the Met for a free ticket, and to my great luck, the opera I won for, probably my 10th time entering, happened to be La Bohème. I knew nothing about opera, but La Bohème is still to this day my favorite opera. It’s probably the most famous opera, and it’s the perfect first opera. It really shows what opera as an art form can do, at least in my opinion. I went to La Bohème, and the Met’s production of it is this amazing, grand spectacle, this Franco Zeffirelli production. It just blew my mind, and just seeing these artists portray these larger-than-life emotions on stage, it really swept me away. And I just had the feeling that if there’s anyway I could do that, then that’s what I wanted to do. From there, I sort of made my way and won some fellowships from Princeton that allowed me to study music more deeply, and the rest is history.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen is featured on the new Philharomnia Baroque Orchestra album Handel: Saul. Click here for more information.
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