The title of Bruno de Sá’s next album, Mille Affetti, means ‘a thousand emotions’. I was originally going to ask him what it was about Lindoro’s original quote, ‘In mezzo a mille affanni’ (‘amidst a thousand hardships’) that didn’t resonate with him, but the uplifting and passionate nature of Bruno de Sá was evident as soon as I joined the Zoom meeting. Of course he is no stranger to hardships, being a queer, male soprano from Brazil (where LGBTQ+ rights are legally inclusive but socially divisive), nevertheless his commitment to being and expressing himself has always come first. Whereas de Sá’s first album, Roma Travestita, was a statement, Mille Affetti is much more a vulnerable exploration.

De Sá is speaking to me on one of his rare days off at home. We talk about a usual day in his life, of which he has one version for touring and another for home. ‘I work very well with structures,’ he says. ‘When your body and voice can be so different from day to day, having some aspects to your day that are inflexible, to give this structure, it’s very important.’

He seems so completely at home in his voice and his creative practice, and I wondered whether that had always been the case. ‘During my teens, I felt extremely uncomfortable and insecure because of all the voice transitions. But I remember one day, I was rehearsing this song on my parent’s balcony and I was cracking on one note. I thought: “Nobody’s hearing me, nobody’s judging me, literally nobody’s here”. I remember just looking down, imagining that my living room was my audience and thinking: “OK, now I will let it go, whatever it is, I will let it go”. Later on, I discovered that you just release the muscles, you empower your abdomen and support the breath.’

‘It doesn’t matter what you think about my performance,’ says de Sá. ‘It will never, ever erase my story’ (photo: Clemens Manser)

This turning point for de Sá helped him discover his confidence and explore the capabilities of his voice, though he remains realistic: ‘Nobody’s perfect, and you need to face the problems you need to work on. There’s no other way. And by working on them, it won’t erase your qualities and things you can do well.’ This seed of self-acceptance was planted early, and is representative of a broader philosophy that de Sá subscribes to. ‘Singing is actually a journey of self-knowledge. Once, a teacher told me that it’s not about inputting things. So, when you develop your technique, you don’t add things. Instead, you are taking out tension, taking out fear, taking out uncontrolled muscles. Then you discover yourself because, at the end, what remains is you.’

The self, however, is a fluid being; it doesn’t stop to settle, and in Bruno de Sá’s case, Mille Affetti shows just this. His meandering travels across the gender spectrum are as much a part of him as his voice, the thread that draws his many ‘affetti’ together. He likens his identity to water, an element he feels a strong affinity towards and that features heavily in the album’s photography. ‘I have a strong connection with water. What I love about water as an element is that it shows itself in such a different variety of ways. You have river, lake, waves, rain, waterfall, fog, bubbles, foam. Water can present in so many different emotions and different aspects. And what I like as well – connecting to the repertoire of the new album – is that we have sacred music and operatic … there is no distinction. The same water that runs from the source is the same as the river.’

Is this fluidity widely-accepted though? The classical music industry hasn’t always been the most welcoming to people who fall outside of the norm and often finds it easier to categorise its musicians into boxes. ‘I’m not saying that boxes are not important. To exist outside a box, we need to know which box we’ve left.’ Take the term ‘countertenor’, for example, which de Sá has publicly renounced several times. He feels that ‘male soprano’ or ‘sopranist’ is less constrictive in terms of repertoire, particularly with his capacity for incredible vocal versatility.

Though ‘for the casting directors,’ he acknowledges, ‘they don’t know where to put you. You are like an alien.’ The hypocrisy is obvious, when trouser roles are so accepted and expected, yet the reverse is an outrage. When so many operas are rooted in magic, mystery and fantasy, how does it feel that programming a man to sing a soprano role is deemed unbelievable and too controversial. ‘I think it’s because we live in a society where, for a woman to reject her femininity and show masculinity, it’s empowering. But the other way round, it’s shameful. You are rejecting your masculinity, it’s less worthy, it’s less dignified, it’s less acceptable, and I should be ashamed of that.’

When one’s identity stirs up the same conversation again and again, it’s understandable that it starts to feel a little reductive. De Sá sounds weary: ‘At the end of the day, I’m just a singer. I just have a voice, I sing about emotions, I sing about feelings.’ Being unable to register for competitions because the automated systems won’t let him simultaneously select his gender and the repertoire he wants to sing is tiresome, as are the offensive comments he receives online. He is learning to process the online comments pragmatically though, first turning inwards to ask himself whether he feels the comment is true or not, and whether there is anything constructive he can take from it. If not, he discards it and looks outwards for feedback from people he values the opinions of: his manager, his teacher, or his parents.

De Sá’s mentor, Nicolau de Figueiredo, holds a particularly special place in Mille Affetti. ‘You have to sing Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate’, he told de Sá. ‘Mozart was thinking of you and your voice when he composed it.’ And so, work on the challenging motet commenced and, just as de Figueiredo had envisioned, the music came naturally to de Sá. He perfected the second and third arias quickly, but there was something about the first that was simply insurmountable.

Despite de Figueiredo enthusiastically and regularly checking in on how it was going, Exsultate faded from de Sá’s priorities. It wasn’t until several years later when he was planning his final examination repertoire that he aimed to revive the motet in full, and the pair planned to fine tune the work together upon de Sá’s imminent return from a festival. Tragically, while away, he received the news that de Figueiredo had suddenly died from a heart attack. ‘It was a shock, and all this grief process,’ de Sá mourns. ‘The guy who believed in me, who put all this effort into me singing this piece, he never had the opportunity to hear it.’ The coexistence of Mozart’s melodic lightness and de Sá’s emotional gravitas is palpable in the recording, and serves as the perfect showcase of the ‘affetti’that guide him so strongly in his life and musical practice. ‘It doesn’t matter what you think about my performance. It will never, ever erase my story. No one can steal that from me.’

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Opera Now. Never miss an issue – subscribe today