Opera japonica/Ken Howard

Photo: Pablo Mason

Ken Howard

Photographers have been attending opera performances since the end of the 19th century - photographing the stars, productions and venues, providing newspaper and magazine illustrations, souvenir postcards and pictures for artists to sign and give to their fans. One of the most celebrated was Herman Mishkin, who took studio portraits at the Met during the first half of the 20th century.

In contrast, many present-day opera photographers are working closely with directors and designers to record the whole theatrical event, rather than just the performances of the singers. Ken Howard is a leader in this field. Many of his stage pictures, taken in operahouses in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, London, Amsterdam, New York and Paris, can be found on this website, as well as in opera-related publications around the world.

Maria Nockin interviewed Ken Howard in Phoenix in August 2002. They talked about his work and his enthusiasm for opera. He was accompanied by Nancy Sylbert, his professional and personal partner, who also contributed to the discussion.

Maria Nockin: Are you an opera fan?

Ken HOWARD: I don't think you could do what I do and not like opera. Those of us who make a living photographing it, probably all listen to opera in our spare time. There are only 6 or 8 of us who do opera all the time in the USA but there are many other people who sometimes shoot an opera. I didn't love opera when I started out but I'd always been involved in classical music. I have played both piano and the trombone so I have been something of a musician and I love classical music.

Nockin: Where did you grow up?

HOWARD: I was born in Port Angeles, Washington. My dad was an officer in the US Navy so I grew up all over the place. After living in Japan for a couple of years, I went to Washington and Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia. I went to college in San Diego and Berkeley, California. I've lived all over the country and that was good because I got used to moving around and being in new situations. It made me comfortable with traveling.

Nockin: When did you start liking classical music?

HOWARD: We had live music around the house all the time when I was a child. Although my father was a naval officer, he'd been considered something of a prodigy when he was a child. He gave concerts and played Mozart at the age of twelve. He also played in dance bands through college. When he came home from a 12-hour day at the Pentagon he would relax playing 40's dance band music on the piano.

My mother loved music, too, and often played recordings. She was also a flute player, so I have heard live music all my life. I had piano lessons for ten or twelve years and I learned to play the trombone so I could be in marching and dance bands as well as the high school orchestra, but when I graduated I stopped making music except for a little piano playing because I got involved in other things.

The final scene from Hamlet at the Opera Theatre of St Louis, 2002: (left to right) Dorothy Byrne as Gertrude, Nathan Gunn as Hamlet, and Lauren Skuce as Ophelia

In college I had a triple major: history, political science and philosophy. I knew a lot when I graduated but I couldn't do a darned thing. I was thinking of being a writer at that point. Since I had already acted at the Globe Theater in San Diego as a student, I knew I didn't want to be an actor, but I did think of writing for the theater. I had taken those courses thinking they would help me as a writer but, in fact, I ended up going into the military because we were then engaged in the Vietnam War. I joined the Coast Guard and they made me a public information officer, since I had no skills that they recognized, and they assigned photographers to work for me.

At one point, when I was writing a series of articles about lighthouses, I suggested to my military photographer that we take a weekend trip to the lighthouse at Point Sur. He wanted that time off so I asked him to give me the camera and show me what to do. I went to the light house, took my own pictures and they were not bad at all !

Someone once asked me if I didn't find my current photos much better than the ones I had done early on, but in fact one of the reasons I became a photographer was that my early work was good. I never took courses to learn photography. I think it's nice to learn in school, but like anything else in the arts, you learn by doing it. There are certain things you can learn from a book, but after that you just have to go take pictures.

Madama Butterfly in San Diego 1997, with sets by Michael Yeargan, directed by Francesca Zambello: Yoko Watanabe in the title role

Nockin: How did you get into theater and opera photography?

HOWARD: When I came out of the Coast Guard I was married to an actress who studied at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco. She told people that her husband did 'head shots', so I started taking pictures for actors. I was interested in theater and it was my doing pictures of actors and models that led to my association with the Marin Shakespeare Festival.

I can remember the night I first went to a show at ACT. It was Tartuffe - with Rene Auberjonois, Ken Ruta, Austin Pendleton, Deanne Mears, Judith Mihayli, Ramon Bieri and others - amazing I can remember all that, no? - and as I entered the lobby I looked up to see five huge photos of the show in black and white, hung over the doors into the hall. Pictures by a guy named Hank Krantzler. Brilliant, exciting, perfectly timed and exposed pictures - 3-foot by 6-foot prints. And I stood there, looking up at those pictures and thought "That's where I want to be. Right there in the face of the action". It was a catharsis moment, and it can still give me chills.

Soon I was shooting all of the important theatrical productions in San Francisco: The Lamplighters, a Gilbert and Sullivan Company, as well as the San Francisco Symphony and Ballet. I also did publicity shots for two of the three major TV stations there, so I covered the cultural gamut.

John Packard as Joseph de Rocher in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking at the San Francisco Opera, 2000

One day, when I was having lunch with a television station public relations woman, she said, "You ought to meet Margaret Norton, the head of PR for the San Francisco Opera". I made an appointment with Margaret that day, and when she saw my portfolio, she said, "What are you doing tomorrow night? Could you shoot an opera?" I said, "Gee, could I see one first?" She suggested that I come that night and see Falstaff. That was my very first opera.

The following evening I photographed Siegfried - talk about being thrown into the deep end - the show was done in almost no light, behind scrims. I'd never shot pictures through a scrim in my life!

I actually went backstage and walked all the way around the cyclorama. Siegfried, who had just killed Fafner, came out with the golden Tarnhelm on his belt, his sword in the hand on which he was wearing the ring of the Nibelungen. I happened to arrive at a spot where there was an opening through which I could get a picture of him with his sword in the air, so I got the picture without the scrim in front of it.

Having done theater, I came at opera quite differently from the regular opera photographers. That night I took a picture of Jess Thomas as Siegfried that has been used over and over again. It is on the cover of a book that his wife wrote. San Francisco Opera loved the pictures that I took that night and I still shoot the same way. Most opera pictures are taken from a stationary camera mounted on a tripod placed in the center of the theater at about the third or fourth row. So all the shots are usually at this same angle.

Håkan Hagegård as Wozzeck and Anne Schwanewilms as Marie at Santa Fe, 2001

Nancy SYLBERT: Ken goes to rehearsals and notes down the photo opportunities so that he won't miss them when he shoots that production. Actually, he runs all over the theater getting different shots at various angles.

Nockin: How are you treated by singers backstage?

HOWARD: That varies. Most singers don't notice the photographer, but I know a lot of singers personally. Sometimes singers will actually play to me when they know I'm out there with a camera, and I love that.

Andrew Wentzel played a blind puppeteer in The Tale of Genji, which I shot at the Opera Theater of Saint Louis [OTSL]. There was a moment when he was holding the head of a puppet, which he had made to look like his wife. When he realizes that his wife is having an affair with one of his apprentices he sets the head down and sings.

I went backstage and said, "Andy, I don't want you to change what you are doing, but would it be possible for you to put the head down facing the audience rather than in profile?" The next time he did that scene, he set the head down facing out toward the audience and I shot the picture with both his face and the face of the puppet. They have it hanging on the wall now at OTSL. By the way, Colin Graham, the director, was so sharp that he noticed the change and gave Andy a note on it, telling him to turn the puppet the other way.

The premiere of Tobias Picker's Therese Raquin at the Dallas Opera, 2001: Sara Fulgoni as Therese and Richard Bernstein as Laurent, directed by Francesca Zambello

Nockin: Is all your current work connected to opera?

HOWARD: No, that would be way too narrow and artistically dangerous. I just did a huge photo session with Blue Man Group. a performance art theater piece with three mimes who are totally blue. It's an incredible show. They are funny, even crazy, with live music on stage. In New York they are in a tiny theater, but in Las Vegas, where we did a special shooting for them, they put on a huge show with amazing lighting and two large structures which held band members playing instruments made out of industrial tubing.

Nockin: Are you based in San Diego?

HOWARD: I spend a lot of time there, but I mostly live in cyberspace. When anyone asks me where I would like to be it's always somewhere else. I spend five weeks a year in St. Louis and summers in Santa Fe. This fall I'm taking photos in New York, Paris and London. I shoot all over the place. Last summer I squeezed in St Louis, Santa Fe, Cincinnati and the Utah Festival Opera.

In Cincinnati I shot Nicholas Muni's Elektra. I love Nic's work. He's one of those directors who doesn't let you blink. Operas are often about the most terrible people in horrendous situations. Some people do Dialogues of the Carmelites in such a respectful manner. People can leave the theater admiring the music, forgetting that the plot tells of the murder of thirteen nuns. Francesca Zambello's production brought out that plot. I shot it in Paris and she, too, doesn't let you blink. You never lose track of the fact that the story is about blood and murder. Some people just want to hear pretty music but Muni's Elektra and Zambello's Dialogues were quite horrifying and powerful.

Nicholas Muni's Elektra in Cincinnati, 2002: Deborah Polaski in the title role

Nockin: How is the remuneration from opera companies?

HOWARD: I don't know anyone who is getting rich in the theater. Because of the way in which I think pictures should be taken, I do a lot of extra work. I believe that what I do has to be done right or not done at all.

Nockin: Most of your pictures seem to be taken from the front of the house. Do you also do documentary style pictures backstage?

HOWARD: Yes, I do some of that but it depends on the company. I took a lot of pictures backstage in St Louis, but in Cincinnati, my stay was not long enough to do anything like that. OTSL specifically wanted a good bit of backstage material. I also shoot a lot of 'making of the opera' pictures in Santa Fe. But basically, you take the pictures the public relations person requests.

Ariodante at San Diego, 2002: Rosemary Joshua as Ginevra (left) and Vivica Genaux in the title role

Nockin: You have the ability to capture the defining moment of an opera in a single image. . .

HOWARD: I am influenced by the war photographers and the great Life Magazine photojournalists. These guys went out and waded right into the center of what was happening. Robert Capa's motto was "if your picture doesn't fill the frame, you're not close enough to the action". A lot of my pictures are very intense, close in to what the performers are doing - right in their faces. I guess my goal there is to get the immediacy and power into my photos that the war photographers got into theirs, without the flying bullets.

I get my daily inspiration from what I have called my 'dance' with the performers onstage, and the 'mission' I have to bring to life, for people who were not there, the experience I had when I saw it. I don't want to just record what it was, I want to recreate the emotion and drama - the visceral experience of what was happening onstage. I want to transmit the magic of theater being created in front of me to people who were unable to see it live.

Elizabeth Futral as Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Santa Fe Opera, 1999

Nockin: What is the secret of your sharp, color-saturated pictures?

HOWARD: Some of that skill comes from having done theater photography for a long time. I have lots of practice. The film makes a difference, too. This year, for the first time, I'm using a digital camera and the pictures it takes are just fantastic. For the past two or three years I have been scanning my color negatives. You put them on the computer screen and improve them with Photoshop which allows you to punch up the color.

SYLBERT: He does all the steps himself. If he can avoid sending to a lab he will. Controlling the process from start to finish makes a big quality difference. Then he gives the opera company a finished product.

HOWARD: When I was shooting slides, it was the same way. Slide film is very unforgiving. If you underexpose the shot the detail disappears, if you overexpose your highlights disappear. I used to 'bracket' each shot by taking a light, a medium and a dark version of each picture. This meant taking three pictures for every one used, but that way I could be sure that I had the best possible slide of each one.

Alexandrina Pendatchanska as Vitellia (left) and Christine Jepson as Sesto in La clemenza di Tito at Santa Fe, 2002

SYLBERT: Talk about the exercises that you do. Because of them his hands are steady enough to shoot a dark stage with a hand held camera.

HOWARD: I've successfully shot pictures at 1/8 second without a tripod, possibly because I do weight lifting exercises that work on specific muscles that are used to hold the camera steady. I take weights in my hands and raise them to exactly the place at which I hold the camera so those muscles are exercised. I also do push ups and other exercises that work on those muscles every day.

Nancy [Sylbert] is not only a graphic designer, she's also a computer expert, so I get a great deal of advice for free. I've been working hard at the edge of the technological envelope in order to help opera companies and theaters move their PR efforts into the digital world. You have to have the right kind of scanner for the job, as well as a computer with a huge hard drive. Even with 30 gigabyte capacity I've had to empty it out twice this summer.

Ken Howard at work

Nockin: What kind of cameras do you use?

HOWARD: I have only had the digital camera since May 2002. Before that I used film in 35 mm cameras. I've shot with all kinds of cameras in the theater: Nikons, Leicaflexes, Contaxes with Zeiss lenses. Six or eight years ago Canon came out with superb cameras with fantastic lenses. They made it very easy to take a picture.

Nockin: Do you find that opera is primarily a visual or an aural experience?

HOWARD: To me opera is a theatrical experience. I don't believe that Cosi fan tutte was just a musical experience to Mozart. I think the motto of San Diego Opera is a good one: 'We make music worth seeing'. I don't think of myself as primarily a visual person, though, I'm a word person. I love the language.

Boris Godunov at the Bastille in Paris, 2002: Vladimir Matorine (left) as Pimen and Robert Brubaker as the false Dimitri, directed by Francesca Zambello

Nockin: Are there any designers whose work you are particularly fond of?

HOWARD: Michael Yeargan is one. His work is just brilliant. He does a great many of Francesca Zambello's productions and I consider her one of the great directors in the world at the moment. Alison Chitty also does beautiful work, often with Francesca. Another great designer is Gerald Scarfe who did Die Zauberflöte in Los Angeles, this past season. He is an artist who does design. Another amazing designer is Robert Brill, a young man on the way up. He has done very little opera. If some opera company picks him up he will be a hot item.

Someone once asked me what I would do if money were no object. I would take two years and do nothing but photograph Zambello operas. I think that they are that important.

I love what I do. I love being in theaters, and if money were no object, I'd just do more of what I do every day right now. The only real difference is I'd be able to pay my rent on time. It would make my landlord very happy.

At the Bastille in Paris, 2000: Vassili Gerello as Napoleon in War and Peace, directed by Francesca Zambello

All photos by Ken Howard, except the portrait at the beginning of this interview.