INTERVIEW WITH OPERA SINGER, DAVID SERERO¹
By Judith Roumani²

David Serero (center) in Romeo and Juliet, a Jewish adaptation of the classic tragedy.

SH: David Serero, thank you so much for making your time available for Sephardic Horizons! It is an honor to interview you. First, please tell us a little about yourself . . . .

DS: Thank you so much, all the honor to see you is mine. My family is of Moroccan Jewish culture, but I was born and grew up in Paris. My mother is Persian but my father is from Morocco, and his family originally came from Spain after 1492. In Paris, we followed Sephardic and Moroccan culture, I grew up in that joyful environment. I have dedicated my life to music and theater from an early age.

SH: You speak many languages (I heard in one evening, English, Italian, and Russian). Which do you consider your mother tongue?

DS: My native language is French, then I learned English, Italian, Hebrew and Russian, which I learned in Russia. I studied in St Petersburg for 2 years, where the quality standards are very high. I’ve always had a great love, passion and admiration for the Russian people and for the way they live. They are really passionate about their arts, especially the classical arts such as theater and opera. When I moved to New York in 2001, I understood that the Russians have a way of working that really fits me. In 2003, I was accepted to study at the St Petersburg Conservatory, which is one of the most important in the world. After a few months there, my name started to come to the ears of those running the Mariinsky Theater, who offered me to be part of the Young Singers Academy when I was only 23 years old, as was at that time the first non Russian to be accepted. It was great opportunity because I had the opportunity to see great performances every nights, see how great artists work. I learned a lot from different singers and directors.

SH: How old were you when you went to Russia?

DS: I was there from twenty-three years old to twenty-six years old.

SH: How did you feel in such a different culture? Or was it that you were in the atmosphere of opera and music, and so you felt right at home?

DS: In Russia you feel far from everything. Though there was internet at that time, it was not like today, we didn’t have iPhones...and in the evening, music was the only thing to do, so I studied very hardly every nights. During that time, I acquired a wonderful sense of discipline and focus, which pays off every single day regardless what I’m doing. In Russia, it’s cold... but there is a lot of warmth. In their houses, people were friendly and warm to me and we would sing from opera to Russian music all night with some vodka on the side...Some of them viewed me as a foreigner, but you know, I have been a foreigner all my life. It’s not new to me, I am a foreigner even in my own country. I am used to that and it made me stronger because I have to be twice better than any other. I had to fight to make my way in, even in New York. But wherever you go in the world, people respect you for your hard work. When they see that you’re a hard worker, they respect you for that.

SH: And of your many singing and acting roles during your career, which do you identify with most? And why?

DS: Interesting you ask that. I identify less with the comedic, and more with the tragic roles. Cyrano, Othello, Napoleon, Hamlet, Don Quijote, Shylock . . . When I am rehearsing and performing the same role for weeks or months, I feel that the role has taken something from me and that I have taken from the role. It’s like living with someone. The role I have identified the most with is Shylock, partly because just the year before I adapted and performed The Merchant of Venice, my best friend defrauded me of all my savings. It was extremely painful for me, I had to start from zero. I was broken morally and financially. So when I cried out “My daughter, my ducats! My daughter, my ducats!” I was especially identifying with Shylock as I had lost my best friend of 20 years and all my savings. In fact, I have written a sequel called Shylock’s Revenge, in which he goes to appeal and wins back everything.

SH: You have had and no doubt continue to have such a prestigious career: why did you turn to these relatively intimate endeavors of Sephardi interpretations of classics such as Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, etc.? And your shortened versions of Nabucco, and The Marriage of Figaro? I am sure they are overwhelmingly successful, as when I have attended Nabucco the theater was completely full.

David Serero and Ashley Brooke Miller play Romeo and Juliet in a Jewish adaptation of the classic tragedy.

DS: All these endeavors, intimate or not, continue to engage all of my attention, talents, health. I put these performances ahead of everything. I have this great collaboration with the wonderful Jason Guberman and the American Sephardi Federation. I staged these classics that I have adapted, directed and produced. Though it’s at the Center for Jewish History, I have all audiences attending. I’m very proud of that, as I always wished to remove any boundaries regarding culture and the audience trusts my choices and my ethics.

SH: I’d like to ask you more about the Merchant of Venice. In 2016 there were many events around the world, and especially Venice, commemorating the establishment of the first ghetto in Venice in 1516. I attended a mock reenactment in Washington called I think ‘Shylock’s Appeal’ at which Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court judge, substituted for Portia, and (surprise!) exonerated Shylock. Would you agree with this and exonerate him? I think when you performed Shylock you treated the pact between Shylock and Antonio as a sort of joke that went horribly wrong. What special insights did you reach regarding Shakespeare’s and English attitudes to Jews, as there were officially no Jews in Elizabethan England?

Shylock is the most honest character in the play, and there is no better monologue than the famous one, beginning “Hath not a Jew eyes?”. It really shows what Shylock has been suffering, and this monologue brings all of that suffering as he carries the voices of millions of people who are suffering because of their differences.

SH: Isn’t it amazing that a sixteenth century Englishman, who wasn’t even Jewish, could empathize with the Jewish situation.

DS: It’s such a good monologue! Shakespeare never went to Venice, however, among the other candidates who might have written Shakespeare’s plays, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, had visited most of the places portrayed in his plays, such as Verona and Venice. The play also follows some of the lines of Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, which I played in 2017 as Barrabas. There was an actual person called Michael Lock who defrauded Edward de Vere who had many shiploads of goods ruined through shipwrecks, and it is said that the ‘shy’ in ‘Shylock’ derives from the old word ‘shyster’, thief or con-man, and the ‘lock’ refers to Michael Lock. So there are several parallels to history.

SH: Now for that magnificent Nabucco, conveniently vacuum-packed into a one-hour performance. Could you tell us about the Italian politics of the time and Verdi’s intentions in writing it?

DS: Verdi had written several operas which were less successful, and he was about to give up when he conceived this one. After encouragement from the impresario Bartolomeo Merelli, he decided to complete it. This was the age of Italian nationalism and the beginning of the Risorgimento movement for Italian national unity, and Nabucco caught the spirit of that age.

SH: How has the song “Va, Pensiero . . .” weathered the decades of Italian history since it was composed?

DS: “Va, Pensiero” was performed at Verdi’s funeral, on his request. Ever since, and even today, though it was considered too long to become the national anthem, “Va Pensiero” is beloved by Italians and one sees them linking arms and singing it with emotion, as it brings them together (as you saw in the recent performance).

SH: But the Italian attitude toward the Jewish people certainly changed from Verdi’s time, when ancient Hebrews were a symbol of patriotism and the struggle for liberty, until during the Fascist period Jews became a despised enemy race . . .

DS: It was an unfortunate dark side of History. We must take lessons from it and search for the light as we are growing for the best. The Italian culture and particularly opera, fashion, cars and food have a very important place in my heart.

SH: I’m sure many people appreciate your tackling Sephardi and Ashkenazi tensions. I am sure your ‘Romeo and Juliet’ brings a new angle. Are you going to continue in this vein? What plans do you have for your interpretations of Sephardi culture?

DS: I am preparing my own jewish version of Hamlet, called « Chaim’let ». I have also a Sephardic version of Carmen coming in 2020 as well as a new production of the Merchant of Venice, a one man musical where I’ll be playing Leonardo da Vinci, Lost in the Disco (a musical featuring disco classics), a musical about Anne Frank written by a talented sephardi composer Jean-Pierre Hadida and many more projects coming in the 2019/20 season!

SH: What about, if I may suggest it, a new version of ‘Kasablan’? It’s a musical about Moroccan Jews in the early years of Israel, the fifties or perhaps the sixties, in the poorer areas of Tel Aviv, Yafo or perhaps Shehunat HaTikva. Today we might dismiss it as containing stereotypes, but it has been very popular in Israel over the decades. It’s a sort of Israeli West Side Story, as I remember.

DS: I haven’t heard of Kasablan but will look it up. It sounds interesting, maybe I’ll do a revival!

SH: And plans for your efforts to bring mini-operas to the masses and to youth? Would you for example go on tour?

DS: Yes, I would like to present something first in New York, and then take it on tour to theaters and JCCs around the country.

SH: What thoughts would you like to leave us with?

DS: I’d like to continue bringing opera and theater in a unique way and break codes while exploring new avenues and materials. I love to work. The idea of working is a passion to me. There are not enough hours in a day to do all that I want, but I’m getting there!

SH: Thanks so much for your time! Personally, I can’t wait for the next performance, and count me as one of your fans!

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¹ Actor and baritone, David Serero, has received international recognition and critical acclaim from all over the world. The wide variety of roles (from opera to classic theatre and Broadway musicals to comedy) that he has played and the quality of his work have earned him a worldwide reputation as a versatile talent.

He has sung more than 40 lead roles in opera, operetta and musical theater. In 2012, Serero performed Don Quixote from Man of La Mancha in Paris and the title role from the revival of Duke Ellington's only musical: Beggar's Holiday. In 2013, David performed with Jermaine Jackson in You Are Not Alone, a musical written, directed and produced by Serero. In 2015 and 2016, he played Off Broadway the lead roles of Shylock (Merchant of Venice) and Othello's title role with critical acclaim. He also performed Nabucco (Nabucco) in New York; and the title roles of Don Giovanni and Rigoletto at Carnegie Hall.

During the 2017/2018 season in New York, Serero starred as the title roles of Cyrano de Bergerac (Rostand), Don Giovanni (Mozart), Barabas (Marlowe's Jew of Malta), King Ahasuerus (from musical Queen Esther's Dilemma), King Lear (Jacob Gordin's The Yiddish King Lear), Napoleon, title role from Napoleon by Stanley Kubrick.

For the 2018/19 season in New York, Serero starred as Nabucco's title role, Romeo (Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in a Jewish adaptation), Figaro (Mozart's Marriage of Figaro) and Otto Frank (Anne Frank, The Musical).

² Judith Roumani is the editor of Sephardic Horizons, and translator, scholarly editor or author of four books.