“I have never been that nervous! Not before or since!” says Norwegian baritone Audun Iversen about his appearance in the final round of the 2007 Queen Sonja International Music Competition in Oslo. The aria he was about to sing – “Da geh’ ich zu Maxim” from The Merry Widow – was familiar enough, but before this competition he had only performed it in a Danish translation. Luckily, once he got onstage, the words came out in the right order and in the right language, and Iversen went on to win the whole thing, the second Norwegian to do so since the competition began in 1995. Since then, Iversen has performed on stages all around Europe and the US and has become something of a household name, especially in his native Norway. This summer we met for an interview in Oslo, just as Iversen was preparing to head to Denmark for his role debut as Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor.
Opera wasn’t always the way for him. Classical music could be heard frequently in Iversen’s parents’ home in the North Norwegian town of Harstad, but music was never an activity that took up much space in his childhood. “I didn’t play an instrument. When I was nine, I did sing in a boys’ choir and I took some singing lessons at the municipal music school, but that was it.” Only when he left home did he start taking an interest in the music he’d grown up with. After some time in Oslo, Iversen moved to Trondheim, and started thinking about taking up singing. “I started taking some singing lessons, and from there I joined the student choral society and sang in the chorus of the local opera company.” His real start in singing, however, was in musical theatre: “I had done a musical theatre masterclass just south of Oslo. Afterwards, I was approached by the manager of Trøndelag Teater, the repertory theatre in Trondheim, who asked me if I wanted to be in their production of Jesus Christ Superstar, which I said yes to. I had a great time, but doing that whole 79-performance run made me realise that what I really wanted to do was to sing opera. Classical music is what I really love.”
By the time of the 2007 Queen Sonja International Music Competition, Iversen had been studying singing for six years – first in Oslo and Leipzig, and then at the Royal Opera Academy in Copenhagen – and he still had one year left in Denmark. “Before the summer of 2007, I had the idea that if at least part of my income comes from working as a singer, after all these years of studying, I won’t have done too badly for myself. Then that summer happened, and I decided it might be time to rethink those goals.” That summer, Iversen became a finalist at the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition, before turning his attention towards Oslo.
Winning in Oslo meant overnight fame for Iversen. “I was a complete stranger. Even when I left Oslo, I was relatively unknown, but then after studying for two years in Copenhagen, almost no one in Oslo knew who I was.” But participating in the competition – and not least doing very well in it – meant that people started noticing him. “My performance in the Queen Sonja Competition really helped me build a network. It definitely helped with getting an agent and the subsequent auditions and castings. Not least, participating in the competition helped to better establish my name in Norway.”