Paulo Szot

Hometown: São Paulo, Brazil

Currently: Making his Broadway debut as dreamy French plantation owner Emile de Becque, the “wonderful guy” who wins the heart of Ensign Nellie Forbush Kelli O'Hara in Lincoln Center Theater's production of South Pacific.

Parlez-Vous? “Excuse me for my English,” Szot says at the beginning of a telephone chat just before South Pacific's opening night, but apologies aren't necessary—the international opera star speaks fluently, with a charming Brazilian accent. In fact, English is his third of six languages: Portuguese, Polish home country of his parents, English, Italian, French and “a bit” of Spanish. And now he gets to be a Frenchman speaking English on a Broadway stage! “That is really weird,” Szot says with a laugh, explaining that movies and TV became his best language tutor. “I had to erase a little of my own accent and insert a touch of French, but we didn't want to go very stereotypical with that.”

Music Man: The fifth child of music-loving parents, Szot began his arts education at age five with piano lessons, then added violin at age eight and classical ballet at nine. “My parents emigrated to Brazil after the second World War,” he says, “and when I was a teenager my dad arranged a scholarship for me to go to Poland to study dance as a professional. So I took a ship, 23 days in a cargo boat, and at first it was tough because everything was different. I was kind of a spoiled child in Brazil, and in Poland it was communism: They did not have chocolate, they didn't have toilet paper. I wanted to escape, but after a while, I found a wonderful universe of the arts. Brazil is all about football and samba and TV and carnavale and not so much about classical music.” When a knee injury ended Szot's dancing career, a teacher urged him to pursue voice lessons—and a baritone was born. “I was afraid to speak in public so I did not see myself as an actor,” he recalls. “It's very funny because now I am doing that every night!”

The Appeal of Emile: A fan of musicals since he memorized every song from A Chorus Line as a teen, Szot was intrigued when his agent sent him in to audition for South Pacific. “I found many of my colleagues from City Opera, from the Metropolitan, auditioning in the same room,” he recalls with amusement. “We all were singing ‘Some Enchanted Evening' and reading through the first scene with Nellie.” Once the part was his, Szot realized how much he admired Emile de Becque, the show's brave and oh-so-romantic hero. “He's an amazing guy, and it's a gift to be playing him,” Szot says. “To be able to communicate the things he says to the audience, to play a man who creates his own paradise on this island, and suddenly everything makes sense when he falls in love with this nurse—it's wonderful.”

A Matter of Trust: Szot credits the entire South Pacific company with helping him meet the challenge of telling a story in dialogue for the first time. “At the beginning of rehearsals, these wonderful actors had everything in their pockets,” he says of his co-stars' technical skill. “They could do anything! I felt really, really, really frustrated because I didn't know how to do it. I had always had music, and here I had to create the music through the speech. But everyone believed I could do it and helped me discover this new channel of communication.” As for his co-star, Kelli O'Hara, Szot says, “She was such an angel from the beginning. She said, ‘Don't worry; whatever you need, I will help you.' I really trusted her, and she is a great colleague. She onstage is amazing, she offstage is amazing, so I'm totally in love with Kelli. I cannot imagine doing this role with anyone else.”

One Track Mind: With his five beloved Weimaraners at home in Brazil “they would be craaazzy here!” he exclaims, Szot says, “I live, literally, to do this musical. I wake up, I eat, I go to the theater, I concentrate, I study, I come home and I sleep. I don't do anything else. In opera, we have at most three shows a week, so doing eight terrified me before we started. But I am honored to be in New York, which is a city that I love, doing this role and singing these wonderful songs. For a person coming from my background, it's a gift.”