You are going to conduct in Australia next month. Australia features strongly in your biography.
Australia: the wine, for a start, is fantastic. (he laughs) It is a very inviting place. The weather is good. Fresh food. Wonderful scenery. I went there when I was in my twenties to work for the Australian Opera. I had no idea what to expect. I was there for nearly seven years.
Originally, I was offered a job as a general musician, which involved working as a repetiteur, coach and rehearsal pianist. It was fantastic. I learned about 50 operas when I was there. It was a wonderful apprenticeship. I conducted my first operas there, I assisted the conductors, I prompted, I worked with the chorus, I played for the rehearsals. I left after seven years – and then I started coming back as a guest conductor. This time I’ll be conducting Gounod’s Romeo and Juliette, for Opera Queensland in Brisbane.
What was the first opera you conducted?
It was The Barber of Seville, in the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. A lot of managements are under the impression that Rossini’s comic operas are quite easy to do, so they give them to a junior conductor. But actually they are very, very difficult. And nothing I have done since has been quite as difficult (he laughs) . Even Mozart is not as hard as Rossini.
With Rossini, the conductor needs to get great precision and delicacy both from the orchestra and the ensembles. His music needs to be sung with such vocal panache. And it’s not a style that comes easily to us these days. It is not a part of our culture to sing in the bel canto way.
And of course, at that age, I didn’t know much about it anyway. It was fine but I was very glad to come back to the piece about 12 years later and do it again, and find that I was much more comfortable then.
Who is your favourite opera composer?
Naturally, I have a favourite composer, but it’s not always been the same one. It’s very difficult to put one above the others. The one I admire most is probably Wagner. I’ve done only one Wagner, Die Meistersinger, and I don’t feel I’m really absorbed in Wagner at all. I’d quite like to be but I never really had the time. I can understand how people’s lives are taken over by Wagner. He is so addictive. One of the most impressive things about him is the sheer craft with which he writes. His scores are beautifully laid out. Every detail is so scrupulously marked. Everything works.
Have you ever been to Bayreuth?
I went to Bayreuth several years ago, just for the dress rehearsals of the Ring. You begin to understand how to do Wagner’s music from listening to the Bayreuth acoustic. The theatre is built in such a way that the orchestra is hidden and you cannot see the conductor at all. You can safely wear a T-shirt and shorts there – and they do! (he laughs)
The extraordinary thing is that, unlike in the Coliseum, they can do all the dynamics there, from the quietest to the very loudest. And as long as you’ve cast the opera adequately, it never covers the singers. So you get this tremendously exciting sound that is always underneath the singers and never on top of them. It’s always clear and vivid. And you realise that’s the way you should do it. I can’t understand why more theatres haven’t copied the design! The brass at the back are yards lower than the conductor.
The only piece Wagner wrote for this theatre was Parsifal . They say it’s the only place where you can hear a good performance of Parsifal because it’s the only place where the sound really works.
Wagner was such an over-gifted man: he was a composer, a writer, a philosopher, a polemicist, a politician, a sound designer, an architect… And he was a megalomaniac and a nutcase probably as well.
You have conducted quite a lot of Verdi.
The first Verdi piece I ever learned was Macbeth. It was at Glyndebourne where I worked as a repetiteur and helped to train the chorus. Macbeth was also the first Verdi opera I conducted, in Australia.
Now I am about to conductRigoletto in Holland Park, which should be great as I haven’t done it for twenty years. I’ve been lucky to do Traviata, Otello twice, Luisa Miller, Simone Boccanegra.
Verdi’s early music is quite primitive, in a way. As you go through his output, the later works are more subtle and sophisticated, and the harmonic language that he finds is so original. If you look at Othello, Falstaff and Requiem, the way he uses chord progressions and modulations is quite unlike any other composer. It is something he found for himself in the later part of his life. It is interesting to compare Verdi and Wagner: their styles changed so much during their own lifetime.
I love the raw quality of Verdi. There is nothing artificial about his music. It is honest. Absolutely honest.
Last year I did Verdi’s Requiem in Belgrade. I didn’t know what to expect. The Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra was very good and they played it wonderfully. They had some unbelievably good instrumentalists there. The chorus was drilled to the last inch. They were terrific. English choirs can sometimes make a polite and reserved sound. This was not like that, but from the gut. I loved that. The Requiemis an extraordinary piece.
How did your interest in opera originate?
I was sent to piano lessons when I was seven. It was OK but I never got very far. I hated practicing scales and arpeggios. I just wanted to play the tunes. My mother played the piano a little and I used to try to read the music we had in the piano stool. When I was eleven, my grandfather died, and it turned out he left me some money to have organ lessons with our local church organist. He wanted me to be an organist. Once you start playing the organ, it’s all noise and power, and you stop taking the piano seriously! (he laughs) I did that until I was about twenty. I was going to be an organist, I conducted church choirs, sometimes bigger choirs. I went to university and I continued to conduct little concerts there.
I’d been to some operas with my parents, like Gilbert and Sullivan. We lived in Hartlepool, in the North-East, and there wasn’t that much opera around there. Sometimes Sadlers Wells would come to Newcastle. When I was at Oxford, group of people from my college used to hire a van and take eight to ten people to see an opera at Covent Garden.
The first opera that really turned me on was Wozzeck. Can you imagine that? (he laughs) I suddenly realised how powerful opera can be as a medium. I didn’t really understand the music, but I felt it was having an effect on me.
I got involved in the university opera. Just because I was known as a conductor and musician, I got to conduct an opera, and then another one… I began to know people who were in the profession and they suggested I did an audition for Glyndebourne – and that’s what I did. I’m still rather surprised they gave me a job at Glyndebourne at that age. I never had any other training, I just came straight out of Oxford. I didn’t go to music college. I didn’t do a three-year repetiteur course. Straight in! It was great.
I worked there as a repetiteur, as chorus master and as an assistant conductor. It all turns out to be a part of the same process. Coaching singers is second nature to me. When I’m conducting an opera, I want to coach the singers. I always feel that I need to spend time with them at the piano. I can actually communicate best with the singer by playing the piano for them. Sometimes you cannot do that; you work with a pianist. But it’s actually often quicker and easier if the conductor plays the piano himself. I’ve been fortunate to be able to do that.
How do you perceive the difference between a coach and a conductor?
As a process, I don’t see a lot of difference between being a coach and being a conductor. As a conductor, obviously, you have to stand up and wave your arms in front of an orchestra, but the mental process, the musical process, is exactly the same. You are always listening and you find that fine line between leading and following, between conducting and accompanying.
What works did you tackle at Glyndebourne?
The first opera I ever worked on there wasCosi fan tutte. I had to play for some rehearsals for the Glyndebourne Tour, which they do in the autumn after the season.
I was way down the list, the fifth pianist, the bottom of the food chain, £18 a week. I just used to sit and listen to coaches coaching singers because my knowledge of the profession was almost non-existent. I knew a little bit of Cosi fan tutte, I learned it and tried to play it, but I didn’t know about the Italian, or the recitatives, or balancing ensembles. I picked all that up by osmosis, really.
One of the great things I did there was working on Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses. It was in the days when the only versions available were those by Raymond Leppard, a British conductor and musicologist, who resurrected the Monteverdi operas and did his own performing versions of them. They have now, sadly, fallen into disrepute as too 19thcentury, too luscious. He didn’t allow anyone to improvise anything; it was all written out, as if it was an opera by Puccini. But he got the operas onto the stage. He turned them into theatrical events. I was lucky enough to work on Ulysses when it was absolutely new, with Janet Baker, Benjamin Luxon, Richard Lewis and other singers from the seventies. It was terrific. I also played one of the little continuo organs in the pit, so I was right inside it.
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Macbeth was the first Verdi opera that I learned in Glyndebourne. Then Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, Ariadne auf Naxos, La Boheme.
There was a wonderful man there, in his seventies when I first met him, called Jani Strasser. He’d been the chief coach there since 1937. He was Hungarian. He was an iconic figure. Most people, including me, were absolutely terrified of him. But I learned so much from him, particularly about Mozart. What he didn’t know about Mozart operas wasn’t worth knowing. When I was in Australia, he used to come there as a guest coach. I remember conducting The Magic Flute there and Jani coming to the rehearsals and sharing his notes with me about all the important details. It has stayed with me ever since. Extraordinary man. There is a whole generation of singers and coaches who were all influenced very much by Jani Strasser: Richard Van Allan, Ryland Davies, Ken Montgomery, Martin Isepp, Jonathan Hinden.
From there you went to Australia and then to ENO. What’s performing at the Coliseum like? It is such a huge space.
The problem there is that the sound of the orchestra is so live from the pit that you always have to modify the dynamics. In the very big pieces, like Wagner or Strauss, it’s very easy to drown the stage. You need to find a style of conducting which isn’t over-demonstrative. You need to have a real sense what works acoustically in that house. I found I could only do that after I’ve been there for two or three years and actually heard other people conducting there. It is very difficult to guess it from the pit. The balance might be OK for someone in the Dress Circle but not for someone in the Upper Circle. You have to try to make it right but the acoustic differs a lot. I think it was improved during the recent refurbishment, but I’m saying this from the point of view of the audience.
I worked there for nine years in the eighties. It was terrific. There was a real sense of purpose then. Mark Elder was the Music Director and David Pountney was the Director of Productions. They seemed to have a very clear vision about what they should do. They had quite adventurous repertoire. We did some wonderful things there: Monteverdi’s Orfeo, lots of good Mozart, Cosi fan tutte, Nicholas Hytner’s Magic Flute, Jonathan Miller’sMagic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro, The Mikado and Rigoletto.. ENO had good values in those days. Of course, I’m not saying they don’t have them now.
What does Coliseum acoustic demand from the singer?
The Coliseum requires a particular kind of voice with quite a big sound that projects well – and with very clear text. If there is any sense of strain, it’s not going to work. Valerie Masterson was a principal soprano there for years. She had a very beautiful, very pure soprano, which didn’t sound all that big in a room, but it had this extraordinary gift of projection. You could hear her quietest singing very clearly from the back of the theatre.
What are your other projects?
In the last few years I’ve done a lot of things in the Royal Albert Hall for the Raymond Gubbay Ltd. It serves a terrific purpose. It is extraordinary how he packs the hall every night with 5,000 people! It is very cleverly marketed. They get coach-loads of people from outside London for slightly reduced prices. It is done in English and it’s very enjoyable, I think.
I’ve done four operas for them: Madama Butterfly, which I think is the best thing we’ve done, Tosca, Aida and Carmen. We’re doingMadama Butterflyagain next year.
How does one deal with that kind of space?
Well, it’s very difficult because everything is miked. The singers have radio microphones. The orchestra have microphones as well and there is a whole team of sound engineers who blend the sound. The most difficult thing for the conductor is that you have your back to the singers the whole time. They can see you on little TV screens, but you cannot see them. It makes you realise how much you rely on seeing the singers, seeing their faces and especially their eyes! In the Albert Hall you have to guess. You just hope that when you start “Un bel di”, the soprano is watching you on the television. Or that she has not collapsed on the floor…
You are also involved with British Youth Opera.
I’ve been involved with it ever since it started in 1986. I’ve done a number of shows with them. Last year it was Romeo et Juliette, directed by Olivia Fuchs, this year's repertoire has not been decided yet.
I think it’s a really valuable and important company; it has become more and more so over the twenty ears of its existence. It’s a real bridge between the colleges and the profession. I agreed with Olivia that apart from the fact that all the singers are quite young, it doesn’t feel any different from doing an ordinary professional show. You don’t feel you have to make any allowances or treat them in any different way. They all have been very well prepared and coached.
British Youth Opera (BYO) is now using a very good orchestra, called Southbank Sinfonia which is composed of people at the same stage as the singers: just out of college and not quite in the profession. They are very, very good. They are just like a professional orchestra.
The great thing about BYO, the unique thing, is the link system, where each young singer is given some time with a distinguished singer who has done the role. If you’re working on Fiordiligi, for example, you might get to work with Kiri Te Kanawa. Last year, we had Valerie Masterson working on Juliette. Also Richard van Allan, Gwynne Howell, Ryland Davies, either coaching or giving advice. As far as I know, there is no other programme in the world at the moment that does that. Good idea, I think
And it’s wonderful how generous these artists are with their time. We never get any refusals.
You are also working with Opera Holland Park.
Yes, three years ago I was asked to do Fidelio there, with Olivia Fuchs. We had a very good cast. It all worked together very well, the chorus and the orchestra. It was considered to be a success. The following summer I did Luisa Miller and then Andrea Chenier.
It’s a lovely place to work. James Clutton has a rare talent to make you feel that what you’re doing is really important and that he is pleased that you’re there. Not all managements have that skill.
I’ve been very lucky with the elements in Holland Park during the performance. I remember seeing a Suor Angelica where someone doing a small scene was completely obliterated by a huge storm. By the time the rain had stopped the poor girl had gone off and wasn’t to be heard again…
The worst experience I had there was a terrific rain one afternoon before Luisa Miller…
…of which OperaTalent has a review: it was 3rd of August 2004. The poor reviewer got completely soaked.
On that day, I set off very early and when I arrived, I got stuck in Notting Hill for about half an hour. Just couldn’t move. There was water in the car. When I got there, they told me the lights were going to work, but not the organ. And the organ in Luisa Miller is completely on its own! It has a solo moment in the last scene. But it’s not working. So what are we going to do? There was no piano to replace it. I said the only thing we could do was to write it out for the woodwind to play. But the stage manager didn’t have any manuscript paper.
I had a big chocolate bar with me. So there I was, sitting in my dressing room, at 6.50, ruling the lines with the edge of the chocolate bar, trying to arrange the music in my head, transposing it from the organ to the woodwind. I finished at 7.25. It was there!
What do you do in your spare time?
I wish I could say that I did something really interesting, like surfing or climbing mountains. Unfortunately, all my hobbies are sedentary: going to the theatre, reading books and going to the cinema. I’m fanatical about cricket and I also follow my football club, Hartlepool United. I’ve decided to take up golf, which is really a gentle walk punctuated by short bursts of mild activity - and a great deal of frustration...
Peter Robinson is represented by Musichall Ltd.
www.musichall.uk.com
View our Luisa Miller review HERE.
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