The lyrical singer, who caused a sensation at the opening ceremony thanks to her duet with the metal group Gojira, speaks to BFMTV.
A few months ago, she stunned the whole world by joining her operatic voice to the guitars of the metal group Gojira, for a striking duet during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Since then, lyrical singer Marina Viotti has unveiled a new album entitled Melankhôliain which she links her two loves: classical and extreme rock.
“I love going to a metal room after leaving the opera, feeling that sweat, that energy, that raw side, and I learn a lot from it,” she told BFMTV.
For this 38-year-old Franco-Swiss, these two disciplines are complementary: “There are still many things that we can improve in classical music, the recital, in contact with the public. In the same way, the artistic requirement in classical music can be very useful when moving towards other musical genres.”
Metallica with classic sauce
Thus, on Melankhôlia, Marina Viotti mixes genres and eras. When she performs music by John Dowland, Renaissance composer, it is accompanied by synthesizers and electric guitars. When she sings current titles, notably Nothing Else Matters by Metallica, it is accompanied by an archlute, a 15th century instrument.
“For me, it’s necessary. It’s part of who I am and I think that when you are authentic and sincere in your approach, you can’t go wrong.”
A secret fight against illness
The album cover, on which she appears with a shaved head, constitutes an approach in itself. The photo was taken five years ago; Marina Viotti was then undergoing treatment for lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. At the time, she said nothing about it:
“I was at the very beginning of my career, I was going to start at La Scala eight months later,” she recalls. “I knew that if I called La Scala and said ‘I have cancer’, this contract was going to be cancelled, that’s logical. They were going to say I was unreliable.”
“I didn’t want this label of cancer (…) I first wanted to get out of it and I told myself that one day I would talk about it, for all the people who are going through this. It’s worth it. It’s still a bit dangerous for me to do it because in the profession now it’s known… but too bad.”
