You followed your father and your grandfather and became a doctor. Would you have become a professional musician if you hadn’t followed them?
No, I don’t think I would have been talented enough to become a musician. I always think I would like to have been a pianist. I do some concerts myself. But, if I had to go on stage at Wigmore Hall, that would be difficult. You’ve got to have the mental capacity. I have done a lot of performances of Gilbert and Sullivan, in parts where you get by on diction, and I could manage that. On the stage you can lose yourself in the character you’re playing but playing the piano you have to have a certain coolness.
Are there similarities between medicine and opera?
I think the only people who do it are those who really want to do it. They cannot be dissuaded.
So the combined love of opera and the pianist’s career has resulted in building your own opera company. Is it something you have been thinking about for a long time?
Oh, yes. But I have been doing music for a long time, from the age of seven when I first started playing the piano. When I did A-levels at school, I was practicing for Grade Eight. As a medical student I couldn’t have just done medicine and nothing else. A lot of my colleagues at medical school were musicians. I think we all felt that the music was what kept us going.
When I qualified as a doctor I was too busy, but by the second year I managed to join a Gilbert and Sullivan society, The Grosvenor Light Opera Company in London. I’ve always found time, however busy I am, to do it. I used to sing in that company and in the last five years they asked me to direct. I did that until about two years ago when I had to concentrate on my medical practice full time. That was the only time when I did just medicine. But I wasn’t very happy doing that so that’s what made me form West Dulwich Opera Company.
What are the targets of your opera company?
I don’t want to neglect G&S. I want to form a company which performs a range of opera and operetta, including Gilbert and Sullivan. I’d like to do less well-known works, so for instance in our inaugural concert you’ll hear excerpts from Princess Ida, very nice music which deserves to be heard. We should be able to show the audience how good these rare operas are. Also, I’m very interested in French operetta – we are doing La perichole amongst others. And obviously a whole range of opera, out of which you’ll hear extracts of The Bartered Bride and The Magic Flute. Although I am thinking towards doing a production of The Magic Flute, that’s not necessarily the sort of thing I want to do in the future; I’d rather do operas that are less well-known.
You are starting with two concerts in Dulwich Village. Are there plans to do fully-staged, whole operas?
I would like to. Obviously it’s very dependent on the economics. As an advantage, I am not only a director but also a pianist so I can take rehearsals myself and this hopefully saves on a lot of the cost. At the moment we are rehearsing at my house. I think it would be very difficult for a company to go straight to a fully-staged production. If we do The Magic Flute, I envisage it in a small venue. There is a good theatre in Dulwich College, with a gallery round the top. The seating can be altered so you can have rake seating or people can sit around the side. It would be nice to do a production there, with minimalist scenery. We may start off with just a piano, with the possibility of adding a glockenspiel. We might get some instrumentalists from the Academy. The biggest single cost in a production is the orchestra and it might be sensible to have a minimalist first production. Eventually I would like to do operas with an orchestra, although it is better to have a very good pianist than an orchestra that is not very good.
You insist on performing in the original language. This is quite rare amongst small and medium size opera companies at the moment.
In the first concert we are singing in four languages: German, English, French and Czech. It is quite a good start. We’ve got some linguists in the company who can help us with this. I think it is much more popular with singers to do it in the original language but from the point of view of the audience it could be quite a problem. I will probably be narrating the concert – or the singer can quickly go over what is happening in the aria, so the audience know what is happening and yet hear it in the original language.
A friend of mine, who is also a great fan of opera, much prefers not to understand what is being sung. He concentrates on the beauty of the line and the language. He says it disturbs him to hear how trivial the content really is when the aria has been translated into English. It becomes trivial, too obvious and "somehow wrong".
He’s obviously got a very sensitive ear. I think he must be more interested in the music than in the drama. If you’re interested in the drama, you must know what they are talking about. Once you become a director, you have to be conscious of the words. I think he misses out on a lot.
Here we come to the issue of surtitles. Surtitles are amazing and I am a great fan of them. Seeing surtitles in operas I’ve known very well for years and years has revealed all sorts of things that I had no idea about and made me realise that I hadn’t known the operas well enough.
Your friend's statement reminds me of my mother who goes to the opera, buys a programme but doesn’t look at it until she gets home. She uses the expression she likes the music ”to waft over her”. Then she goes home to find out what it was about. I think it is better to know what’s going on when you’re actually hearing it.
I was at Covent Garden at the first performance of The Tempest by Adès. It was a wonderful performance and a wonderful opera. The interesting thing here was that it was in English and we still had surtitles in English. On the whole, I disapprove. I have also recently seen Billy Budd with surtitles. I think it makes singers very lazy; there is no incentive to have good diction to get the words across. It makes you wonder if we are going to have plays with surtitles...
West Dulwich Opera is preparing its first performance at the moment. What is your recipe for auditions?
I put an advertisement in the Opera magazine and also one in The Stage. I’ve been brought up in The Grosvenor Light Opera Company who always did auditions in public and I was very impressed with that. It was in front of the whole company. I always thought it was a very good idea because fair play can be seen to be done and if the company didn’t agree with the casting, they could object as they would have seen what the audition was like.
I haven’t had public auditions because this is not a big company, but I would like to if the company gets bigger. Some people say that they would be too nervous to audition in front of a whole group of people. I would say, well in that case you wouldn’t be very good performing on the stage. I don’t see any reason not to have public auditions.
Your operatic knowledge is truly imposing. How did it all begin?
I had a musical childhood. I was taught the piano from an early age. I lived up in the Wirral and I was taken to Liverpool to hear The Mikado at the age of three. I don’t remember that performance well, or the subsequent one, but I remember being absolutely thrilled. I was looking forward to the whole opera, waiting for the Mikado himself to come on – and he doesn’t make his appearance until half-way through Act Two. I was so thrilled when he eventually arrived! I obviously had the theatre in my blood.
I was taken to lots of other Gilbert and Sullivan things when the old D’Oyly Carte company toured Liverpool. Then I think I was taken to an operetta, Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène, which I also saw in Liverpool. Finally, at the age of fifteen, I went to my first proper opera, Cavalleria Rusticana & I Pagliacci. That was way back in the sixties. Rita Hunter was Santuzza. Then I went on to see The Flying Dutchman, which was my first Wagner, Rigoletto, Madama Butterfly… And also Samson and Delilah, which I’ve always had great affection for.
I then went to university. I chose London for the music, not for the medicine; my family have all been to Liverpool University. I came to London in 1966 in the autumn and the first opera I went to was Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana at Sadler's Wells. I was totally bowled over. The seats were five shillings in those days, so I stood at the back. It was an absolutely wonderful production by Colin Graham.
Gloriana was written for the coronation in 1953 and was not a success at the time. When a concert performance was held at the Festival Hall on Britten’s 50th birthday, ten years later, during the evening the rumours of Kennedy’s assassination filtered in. It was 22nd November 1963. Three years later Gloriana, a wonderful opera, had its first revival at Sadler’s Wells theatre and only then was it a great success.
It was the first opera I went to see as a student. This is how my love for Britten's opera started. I think Gloriana has always been the least known of his operas until the recent performance in Opera North with Josephine Barstow. What I like about it is that it’s one of those operas where the historic aspect is alternated with the personal: the character of Queen Elizabeth with all her problems is set against an historical background. This also can be found in Verdi's operas.
They've revived it at the opera festival this year, comparing it to the life of our current Queen, who was present at the first performance of Gloriana, three days after her coronation in 1953. Perhaps rather unsuitably, they put before her the picture of an ageing queen with a lover, the Earl of Essex. It was not regarded a very nice thing for a 26-year old young woman who'd just become Queen at the time. That might have been one reason why Gloriana hasn't been successful.
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How did you discover Salzburg?
Salzburg is a lovely place. The only problem is that it's far too expensive. I think it's the most expensive festival in the world.
I first went there in 1989, during a summer holiday in Austria. We stayed in Salzburg for a few days, then went to the Tirol, did some walking up in the mountains and also stayed in Vienna for a few days.
I've been back to Salzburg quite a few times. Initially, we just went to Fringe events - they had some marvellous string quartets - because you couldn't get into the main events anyway. It was not until two or three years later we booked and I finally got into an opera there. We saw Janácek's From the House of the Dead. Later I saw Cosi fan tutte with Cecilia Bartoli and more recently, three or four years ago, The Trojans with Deborah Polaski. This year I was lucky enough to get into The Tales of Hoffmann, the production by David McVicar. It's one of my favourite operas and something I'd like to do with our company.
What are your other favourite operas?
I think my favourite operas are not the ones we could necessarily do with West Dulwich Opera; I am very fond of Wagner but I can't think of any Wagner we could do. Although I saw amateur singers produce the first scene of Das Rheingold at a music course and they were marvellous! Three girls from our company could sing the Rhein-Maidens and you just add Alberich to get the whole scene. That's something that could be done in a concert.
Generally, a lot of my favourite operas are those I saw many years ago. I retain a great affection for Gloriana and Samson and Dalilah.
They are not necessrily the best operas or the most performed operas but I am very fond of them.
I love Britten's Peter Grimes and Albert Herring.
I suppose my favourite opera composer of all is Verdi. I think you get a bit saturated with Wagner. As you get older your concentration isn't so great
and if you've got a back problem you shift around in the seat rather a lot. Especially when they do it without any intervals, like The Flying Dutchman I sat through.
That's scary.
That's the problem with opera in general: they seem to cut down on intervals. I think it's because the orchestra have to be out within three hours.
In The Tempest there was only one interval during three acts. Although I must say that was so good it didn't really matter.
Back to Verdi. Just about my favourite Verdi opera is Falstaff and I think the greatest one is probably Otello.
I have got a great affection for The Force of Destiny which is very rarely performed. I saw it years ago at the Coliseum with Pauline Tinsley who was a great, under-rated artist
and then more recently with Josephine Barstow. Kirov company brought it to London a couple of years ago in a very old-fashioned production.
Sometimes it's nice to see an old-fashioned production instead of a modern one.
Then, of course, Mozart. I've got a particular affection for The Magic Flute.
Puccini's Il trittico is perfect but I prefer Verdi to Puccini if I were to choose. I think if you keep hearing Puccini it does not get better, whereas Verdi gets better and better the more you know it. I never get sick of verdi. I sometimes get sick of Wagner but never Verdi.
How about your favourite opera of all time?
I'd have to say The Trojans, by one of my very favourite composers, Berlioz. They did it at the Coliseum last year in two parts. Strangely enough, they had two different designers for the two halves, with the same producer. I didn't particularly like the first one. Then I saw The Trojans in Salzburg three or four years ago. The one with John Elliot Gardiner in Paris last autumn was very, very impressive.
Have you got your favourite singers?
The greatest tenor of all time is certainly Domingo, as an all-round operatic performer, as a singer and an actor. I do think that Pavarotti has a wonderful voice but for me he was never an actor on the stage. A couple of weeks ago, in Covent Garden, I saw The Tales of Hoffmann. It was a revival of a production from 1980 by the film producer John Schlesinger. Domingo made his entrance in the opening scene of The Prologue looking unshaven and almost slid down the steps in a drunken stupor. I thought that was great acting, even before he'd sung.
His Otello, which I saw two or three times, was thrilling. The Otello in 1980 with Margaret Price as Desdemona and Carlos Kleiber conducting was probably the best opera performance I have ever heard. He may be a bit more lazy now but I forgive him. I forgive him anything.
The revival of The Tales of Hoffmann has a new Mexican tenor in it, Rolando Villazon. When he first came on, I thought, "that's not a Domingo". He didn't have Domingo's presence. I know it's silly to look for another Domingo. This chap was extremely good, a very stylish singer in French. Good tenors are so rare - but Villazon is excellent.
My favourite soprano has retired now. I used to like Valerie Masterson very much. She started her career in The D'Oyly Carte company when she was in her twenties. She went on to do lots of performances in the Coliseum and Covent Garden. She was particularly wonderful in the French repertoire. I remember her as Massenet's Manon, Gounod's Juliet and Marguerite. She also gave a wonderful performance in Handel's Julius Caesar, with Janet Baker, another favourite of mine. Valerie Masterson was so good because of her diction. The D'Oyly Carte may be a bit wooden and speak in the old-fashioned English of the 1950s but they did have excellent diction.
The greatest mezzo performer on stage, in my opinion, was Janet Baker. I heard a lot of her roles. Apart from Julius Caesar, I heard her in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, in her final performance at Glyndebourne in 1982. To me, she just became a young boy on stage, although she must have been in her early fifties. In Julius Caesar she WAS the emperor of Rome. I saw her Werther and Dido in The Trojans. She had the greatest mezzo voice, not just in opera. She sang recitals and oratorio, like Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius.
Janet Baker was not only a great voice but also a great actress. Dame Joan Sutherland had the most beautiful voice, and I only heard her at the end of her career, but there was not much diction. It takes a lot away, as far as I am concerned.
Then you are not so keen on bel canto opera?
I'm not a great fan of bel canto opera because it is mainly singing. However, I did hear a wonderful Lucia di Lammermoor in Vienna in 1989. The soprano was Edita Gruberova. That was the best bel canto performance I ever heard.
What would your ideal cast be if you had a chance to combine all ages?
I have been trying to avoid that question... I can cheat a bit and tell you about one that I did hear. I have very much enjoyed some performances of Handel. Handel is quite static with all the da capo repeats and the sequence of solos. But that has an accumulative effect. In 1979 Charles Mackerras conducted Julius Caesar at the Coliseum with Janet Baker, Valerie Masterson, Sarah Walker, Della Jones and John Tomlinson. I cannot imagine a better cast than that!
If I had to put together an ideal cast for the greatest ever opera performance, I would have to have Janet Baker and Domingo together.
You have mentioned Salzburg and Glyndebourne. Is your summer full of opera festivals?
I always try to go to Glyndebourne. You can get tickets on an ordinary public booking, if you are prepared to stand. However much people may criticise Glyndebourne, it is a wonderful place. They have no subsidy at all. It's a magical setting, a most beautiful theatre. You have to get down there by about 4pm. If it's a nice day, you put your picnic hamper down on the lawn of the gardens by the lake. Then you go to the performance. They also have a long interval which lasts about 90 mins.
The biggest regret of my whole life is that about 20 years ago I put my name on the waiting list for the Glyndebourne festival because that is the only way to secure your tickets. I was on the list for a few years and then suddenly, over 10 years ago, they sent me a letter demanding £50 to stay on the list. I thought it was outrageous. It was quite a lot of money in those days. I rang up and found out that people only come off the waiting list when they die. I did my calculation and figured out that I would not get on until I was about 90. So I didn't pay.
Soon after that they built a new theatre which had far more seats. I had lost my place in the queue and all for the sake of £50... A friend of mine has put his son on the waiting list, so his son can take him there when he is 90.
Have you been to other festivals?
I've applied every year to Bayreuth and they always say there are no tickets.
I have always wanted to go to Bayreuth. I have been there only once, to a dress rehearsal.
Five years ago a friend of a friend was working there as a repetiteur and she got us into the rehearsal of Gottendammerung. We had to show our passports at the door. The theatre goes back to 1876 and each row has a separate door to go in. You can't see the orchestra at all. The lights went down and out of nothing came the music of the Norns. You can't get that experience anywhere else. I was very lucky. I think if you apply to Bayreuth for ten years, you eventually get your tickets. It hasn't happened to me yet.
What are your hobbies?
My main hobby is art and going around art galleries. My secret hobby is painting. I have just started and haven't shown any of my work to anyone yet. I find it very relaxing to go on holiday and just sit and sketch. I'm better with just a pencil, I think I need to go to some watercolour lessons.
When I go on holiday I always head for a gallery. Every autumn I go for a week to Paris. Venice and Paris are my favourite places. The whole of Venice is a gallery itself and I love the Venetian painters. Then there is the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay where I get a museum ticket for a week. I also visit good galleries and exhibitions in London.
View West Dulwich Opera Company's page here.
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