He broke with mediocrity
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R
Rachel Einarsson4 min read|8. February 2024
As a student he was more ambitious than the study environment was geared for.
At only 26 he was hired by Die Volksoper Wien.
He later left the established framework of a permanent position, and for 30 years now he has made his living as a freelance singer around the world.
Bo Boje Skovhus has lived outside Denmark for 36 years. And he says with conviction in his voice that he will not return to the country of his birth.
Sunday 11 February 2024 will nevertheless be an exception, when Bo Boje Skovhus can be experienced in Copenhagen in a concert with Danmarks Underholdningsorkester.
Bo Boje Skovhus comes across as a personality who has perhaps been convinced all his life; certain in his choices in life and guided by an inner compass towards particular goals.
Once he had found his track in the musical direction, things moved quickly towards the most important stages in classical music around the world. ”I actually wanted to be a doctor, but I failed the little Latin test”, he says serenely about a short chapter of his life. But he took the failed test as one more sign that he was to follow the path of music. ”Now our daughter has become a doctor, so in that way the dream has come true after all, a little”, he remarks with a certain calm. He has the daughter with his wife, who is a cultural manager in Austria, runs various festivals and also works for a gallery in Salzburg. There are thus several things that keep Bo Boje Skovhus in Vienna, where the family now lives.
But it all began in Ikast, where Bo Boje Skovhus grew up and went to upper secondary school. There he was discovered by an attentive pair of teachers, and that proved decisive.
Incidentally, we talk by telephone for the interview. At the time of our conversation Bo Boje Skovhus is in Madrid, where from the end of January until 7 February he is singing the demanding and rather sombre role of King Lear in Aribert Reimann's opera ”Lear” – an opera whose libretto follows W. Shakespeare's text in ”King Lear” from 1605. The opera premiered in 1978 in Munich, while the current production is at the Teatro Real in the middle of the Spanish capital. It is a so-called modern opera, which Bo Boje Skovhus has sung before in Paris, and which, with its often chaotic melodic universe and its almost aggressive process of downfall, tears at the ear canal. But Bo Boje Skovhus thrives on the whole spectrum of classical singing – the new, experimental works as well as the grand, old classical ones. In fact especially the new ones.
We will hear more about that a little later.
For there was the matter of the pair of teachers from Ikast.
”I experienced good music teachers, both in primary school and in upper secondary school, some who could teach us pupils music. That does not exist in that way today”, he recalls and reflects. ”I was lucky. I got into upper secondary school, where the teaching couple Hanna and Åge Christiansen helped me. They sent me on to a teacher in Aarhus”, he says with gratitude in his voice.
From there the journey continued to Det Jyske Musikkonservatorium in Aarhus, where Bo Boje Skovhus ran into challenges with part of the Danish mentality.
”The problem back then was that when you came to the conservatoire, you arrived with great enthusiasm. I wanted to make a living from singing. But you got hit with it: We are going to become teachers, and we are going to sing in choirs, people said all around”, he remembers. ”Mediocrity must prevail, that is Danish. The idea that nobody should be better than anybody else, but that we aim for the great middle", he says about the spirit of Danish musical life at the time.
In spite of this he found his own way forward all the same.
”I have been lucky to be picked out”, he remarks. ”I had a course with Lone Koppel, and she said: ”You must go to Copenhagen and sing at the opera school (Det Kgl. Teaters Operaskole, ed.)”. He did go, and there he received singing lessons from Lone Koppel and her husband, Björn Asker.
”You can, if you want to”, says Bo Boje Skovhus, referring to the level of ambition in Denmark, in which he could not find himself. ”It is completely different in Austria, and I am very glad to have got out of Denmark”, he remarks, again with a clear tone in his voice. I asked him to elaborate on this, and he arrived at the following explanation:
”I do not think I would want to move back to Denmark. First of all, naturally, because I am married to a “Viennese“, who could never live anywhere other than Vienna. But also because, for 35 years, I have grown used to the fact that what I do as a profession in Vienna absolutely ranks as number one. Being a well-known opera singer in Vienna is perhaps like being a great footballer in Denmark. And that really says more than I need to explain…..!”, he writes to me after the telephone interview.
Read the rest of the interview at Klassisk bureau: https://klassiskbureau.com/danmarks-st-rke-stemme-i-wien