Turkish tenor relishes dying onstage

Yes, he would love to sing more in the United States.
"Of course!" says Bezdüz in a Turkish accent that could pass for French. "But I don’t care about big theater, small theater. I like to sing well, to make a good impression, to have good friends …" He trails off.
This is the man who’s already booked for 2005 to sing at the two top opera houses in the world, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and La Scala in Milan, Italy.
"I just do what I can," he explains. "If you are so excited and stressed, it doesn’t help."
The Lammermoor setup might sound a bit cold: characters with Italian first names and Scottish last names waving swords about and losing their minds. But this is Italian opera at its most accessible and most powerful. Great tunes, hair-raising choruses and puissant solos.
Bezdüz has the task of dying well in "Lammermoor," possibly the greatest of Donizetti’s works. As Edgardo, suitor of the titular Lucia who is doomed to madness, he has the final scene, in which, mistakenly thinking she is dead, he kills himself.
Other highlights include the duet with Lucia that closes Act 1, Part 1, the sextet in Act 2 when he returns to claim his bride, and her mad scene with the imaginary wedding. Ben and J.Lo have nothing on these lovers.
Bezdüz is a good actor and says singing opposite the German-based American soprano Sandra Moon has proved easy. He says there are no full-blown, egotistical leading ladies left in opera, but there are some watered-down divas who are hard to click with on stage.
"Some singers, maybe they don’t act (like divas), but they are cold," he says. "There is a kind of wall that you cannot pass, and it doesn’t help on the stage."
He finds the American way of rehearsing professional and thorough, not rushed as it can be at some European houses. The place he most enjoys playing is Marseille, France, where he was young Gennaro in "Lucrezia Borgia."
His eyes light up as he describes the audience applauding everyone except the director, whom they roundly booed:
"It was amazing. I was so surprised. I like it. It’s so cruel, but it has to be. Everyone has to have their prize. We work hard." So hard that he usually cannot sleep for five hours after a show.
The youngest of eight in an unmusical family (he occasionally sang folk tunes with his mother), Bezdüz fell into opera. He wanted to study metalwork at a university, but a music teacher spotted him for a lyric tenor.
"Maybe a little bit spinto (powerful)," he says of his own voice.
It all clicked after six months when he heard a recording of the great Otello, Mario del Monaco (1915-1982). "I was fascinated," he says. Two years later he was at the state opera in Mersin, Turkey.
"I believe in destiny. You’re 20 years old, and you don’t know the opera, then you know it."
His hobby is big motorbikes, and he claims to have done 180 mph on his Kawasaki GPZ 1100 on a Turkish autobahn. Time out in Portland for one of the global village’s star singers is pleasant and comfortable, if a little dull. There hasn’t been much time for sightseeing.
"Saks Fifth Avenue and the mall," he says pleasantly, referring to Pioneer Place.
He was an expert gymnast on the parallel bars at school and has been working out at the hotel gym.
"I do one hour on the treadmill, then swim 15 minutes, go to have dinner, see my e-mails," he says.
Bezdüz has many friends in the opera world, he adds, some through his high-powered agent in London, Athole Still: "Ben Heppner, José Carreras, (the young Argentine tenor) Dario Volonté …"
Being a globe-trotter doesn’t mean hanging out that much, though.
"We don’t see each other very often, but we chat in the MSN Messenger," he says.
Like the audience, he aims to put aside the mundane and reach for something sublime. With his death scene, the opera ends on a tragic, yet uplifting note.
"I love this scene, really, this is beautiful — he prepares to die," Bezdüz says. "We prepared beautifully. It’s not just tenor crying and dying, which is the traditional way."