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New Deal Scottish Opera's Alex Reedijk talks to Andrew Clark Fast-forward to the present. Scottish Opera is preparing to unveil Five:15, an experimental package (five 15-minute operas by composers and writers of proven merit) that is already the talk of the media. In six months’ time the company will make a long-awaited return to the Edinburgh Festival. Each of its mainstage productions next season involves a full chorus. It has a new music director. Touring outside Scotland is back on the agenda. Suddenly it’s as if all eyes are on the future, not the troubled past. So everything is rosy? Not quite: the season is still limited to four mainstage operas. Nor does Reedijk, a New Zealander of Dutch heritage, want to take all the credit for Scottish Opera’s turnaround. When he arrived the worst was over. The company had divested itself of responsibility for Glasgow’s Theatre Royal. Some of the new building blocks were already in place. But in his two years north of the border Reedijk has shown a faultless touch—not least through his repositioning of Scottish Opera as a company of self-help, eager to reach out to audiences, develop new work and adapt to the funding climate. The new strategy is best illustrated by Five:15, the entire £150,000 cost of which Reedijk raised privately. The formula—if that is the right word for something so deliciously unpredictable—is to be repeated in future seasons. Whatever the artistic result, Scottish Opera finally has something to sing about. Well, in truth it always did—not least through its popular, small-scale touring arm, which takes opera across a wider geographical and demographic spread than any other company in the world. Its educational arm—which, let’s not forget, was the first to be established by any UK opera company—continues to work wonders in the deprived areas of Scotland’s central belt. Its ‘Unwraps’—hour-long introductory guides using full sets and understudies—regularly attract audiences of up to 1,000. Its orchestra, trained to an extremely high level by Richard Armstrong, has not shown any fall-off in standard since his departure. A few weeks ago the company held its first open day, when hundreds of visitors thronged its Edington Street Technical Centre to touch, see, listen, sing—and even try on wigs and costumes. Scottish Opera’s reward for addressing the political and financial problems at its door is a three-year funding guarantee from the Scottish Executive, which now directly controls the purse-strings of national companies instead of channelling subsidy through the Scottish Arts Council. True, Scottish Opera’s subsidy is pegged at £8.2 million—a risible amount when you consider what other established UK companies receive, and how expensive it is to tour mainstage productions to places such as Inverness and Aberdeen. But a deal is a deal. With longer-term budgeting, the booking of artists should no longer be subject to the sort of hand-to-mouth arrangements of the recent past. There will be more to sing about soon. David McVicar is returning at the start of next season to stage his first Traviata—a welcome act of loyalty by an internationally recognized Scot. And under Francesco Corti, its new music director, the company will dip a toe into opera-in-concert as compensation for its mainstage limitations. It’s hard, nevertheless, to avoid the contrast posed by the poster adorning Reedijk’s office—an advertisement for the 2003-4 season, which included all four Ring operas plus Aida, La Bohème and The Magic Flute. Happier times? Not necessarily. Busier times, yes, ‘and we need to be busier’, Reedijk concedes at the start of a long and wide-ranging interview, in which he reveals himself as more a strategist and backstage fixer than an opera connoisseur. Given Scottish Opera’s predicament, those qualities will do just nicely. Informal in the way only an Antipodean can be, Reedijk proceeds to show an uncanny understanding of the territory he commands, an understanding he evidently seeks to share through consensus and behind-the-scenes bridge-building rather than strong-arm leadership. And yet a firm sense of leadership is there: at no point in our meeting does he show anything less than quiet confidence in the direction in which the company is moving. Reedijk, 47, is no newcomer to Scotland. Nor was Scottish Opera his first experience of resuscitating an opera company. His story begins in the early 1980s. Studying for an arts degree at Wellington University, he spent every spare hour as a stagehand at the city’s opera house. Eventually the stage edged out his studies: Reedijk left university without graduating. But no sooner had he signed up as technical manager at New Zealand Opera (for whom he had already lit The Turn of the Screw) than the company went bust. ‘It was the wrong repertoire for a very conservative public,’ he says. ‘It’s something I have not forgotten in terms of how an opera company relates to its audience.’ That was lesson number one. Footloose, he signed up with a touring production of Evita that took him halfway to London, where he worked in a variety of theatres (‘I had the typical New Zealand background—you could do a bit of everything’) before graduating to the post of stage manager for the Dublin Grand Opera Society. He spent four seasons there, ‘learning how to solve the operatic jigsaw puzzle before the art of it had really revealed itself to me’. That was lesson number two. Lesson three came as Elaine Padmore’s production manager at Wexford (1989-91), where he got to grips with the demands of a nightly turnaround, without the technical back-up available in bigger centres. Things were going well for Reedijk: when not working in Ireland, he freelanced for Glasgow’s Mayfest and got to know Scottish Opera and the Theatre Royal. In 1991 he was invited to return to New Zealand as technical director of the biennial international arts festival. The collapse of New Zealand Opera in 1982 had left a gap in the market into which the festival was proposing to move. Thanks to its successful concert-hall staging of Die Meistersinger in 1990, a Salome with Marilyn Zschau was imported for 1992, followed by the Ken Russell Madama Butterfly (from Victoria State Opera) in 1994. In 1996, at Reedijk’s initiative, the festival put on its first home-produced show, a Katya Kabanova directed by Gail Edwards, which ‘articulated to New Zealanders what opera to a high standard could be like’. There was no going back. In 1998 McVicar staged Fidelio, followed two years later by Stephen Lawless’s Simon Boccanegra and in 2002 a Gail Edwards Rosenkavalier—all this on 0.5 per cent public funding. Opera had become the jewel in the festival crown, even if it was being cross-subsidized by more lucrative offerings—such as the imported Edinburgh Tattoo, another of Reedijk’s Scottish threads. As executive director since 2000, he could take a large share of the credit for the festival’s growing importance. His people skills, not to mention his record as a manager and fund-raiser, were being noticed. And so it was to Reedijk that the board of the reconstituted NBR New Zealand Opera turned in 2002 to revive its fortunes. The next three years were to be a springboard for his return to Europe and the challenge of reviving Scottish Opera. His time with New Zealand Opera saw the company restored to solvency and reconnecting with audiences. His guiding principles were simple: to stay within the core repertory, to maintain high musical standards and ‘to connect between music and theatre. It was all about “the narrative truth”, telling a good story, theatricality,’ he recalls. There wasn’t enough money for home-grown productions; instead, Reedijk realized, imports had to ‘fit our theatres and match our audiences’ expectations’. Le nozze di Figaro, the Scottish Opera Tosca, Jonathan Miller’s Los Angeles Don Giovanni and a Canadian Opera Company Traviata did just that. But Reedijk’s tenure was about more than popular grandstanding. Having caught the theatre bug as a 12-year-old when the Royal New Zealand Ballet came to a suburb of Wellington, Reedijk wanted to take his opera company into the communities. With no financial provision for it, that was asking a lot—but thanks to Reedijk’s persistence one of New Zealand’s biggest business donors stumped up just enough money to set the 14-centre tour of The Barber of Seville rolling. On home territory it was Reedijk’s finest hour. Without realizing it, he had written his job application for another struggling company on the other side of the globe. In June 2005 he was headhunted for the top job at Scottish Opera. On reading the job description he felt he did not fit the usual mould for leading a UK opera company, having neither a tertiary educational qualification nor a conventional European-style background. All he had was ‘25 years of helping to make lots of interesting things happen’. Was it enough? He knew that sooner or later New Zealand Opera would need a different type of leader, ‘somebody more operatic’ (which it found in Aidan Lang). After a day of face-to-face interviews with the Scottish Opera board, supplemented by video link-ups, he sensed that ‘as long as I had great staff around me I could make a difference’. So what kind of company did he find when he walked into its Elmbank Crescent headquarters in Glasgow? Reedijk’s reply says a lot about Scottish Opera’s mindset in the aftermath of its humiliating 2005 bail-out by the Scottish Executive. ‘The job description was clear: they wanted somebody who knew a bit about fund-raising. The [only viable] opportunity for Scottish Opera to grow lay in the private sector. I found a company low on morale and low on funds, but not as bad as I had been led to believe. In New Zealand the problem had been “How do we get enough to pay the wages bill every fortnight?”. At Scottish Opera those questions didn’t exist any more. When I went round the company, people were actually quite chipper. There was some housekeeping to finish, but the financial controls had already been imposed, there were grounds for optimism. It was the middle of the no-performance season—a brilliant time for me to arrive. Richard Jarman, the interim general director, was immensely supportive. I started some strategic thinking, while trying not to be critical of the past. It seemed clear to me, though, that in ascending to the dizzy heights of its Ring cycle, the company had slightly lost touch with its audience.’
With structural problems addressed and funding limitations reluctantly accepted, Reedijk knew he had to address Scotland’s audiences. ‘The Ring had become a company obsession—we weren’t presenting a balanced basket of the top 15 operas in the repertoire. We had neglected the Italian repertoire. That’s why, since my arrival, we’ve done Lucia and Barber, with La traviata to come next season. We have to present works that have as much appeal as possible to as broad a public as possible. Much has, of necessity, been smaller-scale. We’ll arrive at a bolder repertoire in the fullness of time, but it has to be articulated carefully and quietly from a stable platform, because you’ve got to bring your audience with you. Every company needs a Figaro and a Barber, and we need to replenish that basket of work, building enough new productions so that we can return to those pieces without massive investment. We also need a balanced basket, including works that, maybe every couple of years, will have some appeal south of the border. If we were to stick only to Don Giovanni, no one would have any reason to look north.’ Where does that leave larger works such as Der Rosenkavalier, one of Scottish Opera’s hits of recent years (so much so that it is lending its production to English National Opera this season)? Reedijk says the company is not turning its back on such repertoire, but that it will be another two to three seasons before another big opera is attempted. ‘You run out of small-scale repertoire that people will come to, but our priority just now is to balance box office and resources. If we are going to do a larger piece, we need to choose it very carefully—a piece no one else in the UK is doing, but which we are fit and able to do. It’s not a question of lowering the company’s ambitions, more of tailoring them to the company’s resources. The message from the Scottish Executive is that funding is unlikely to grow in significant amounts, so the only way to make a difference in the way we expand the company’s reach—beyond four mainstage productions per season, three touring shows and a lot of educational work—is to go to the private sector.’ One upshot is the Scottish Opera Syndicate, to which Lord Laidlaw, Carole McWilliam and other donors have given five- and six-figure sums: that made a crucial difference to last year’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Another is the Play Your Part campaign, where individuals have been invited to contribute £100 or £200: that raised £45,000 for the last Rosenkavalier revival and £35,000 for this season’s Barber. Reedijk says the days are gone when Scotland’s national opera company could say ‘that we’re an opera company and so [by rights] we must have more state support. Instead we need to ask ourselves: where are the opportunities for further investment in Scottish Opera? How can we help ourselves and be seen to be helping ourselves? In other words, how do you make your own luck? In my journey through the private sector, I’ve realized the importance of saying that “if you give us more money, the boat will go faster, we’ll be able to do more opera”. While dreaming up Five:15 I was overwhelmed by the number of private individuals who said they’d support us. That’s what enables us to go beyond the four mainstage productions. In Five:15 we think ambition and capacity will meet each other. We’re hoping to make a small-scale contribution to this summer’s Edinburgh Festival. The aim of all this is to make Scottish Opera busier and deliver more opera to the Reedijk says he is heartened by signs that Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, has begun to realize that the arts in Scotland ‘punch above their weight’. ‘Salmond is clearly enamoured by the success of Black Watch [a play commissioned and performed by the National Theatre of Scotland, about Scots serving in the Iraq War], which shows the ability of the culture sector to resonate louder than its funding base would imply. We’re hoping to take Five:15 to Brussels. We’re flattered that David McVicar has chosen to do his first Traviata here—that’s another building block in terms of ambition. In the next couple of seasons every mainstage opera will have a chorus, and in 2008-9 all four mainstage productions will be new, not rentals.’ Does that mean he regrets getting rid of a salaried chorus? ‘I wouldn’t have wished it on any individuals or their families, but we had to come to terms with four mainstage operas a year. That’s at best five or six months’ work. It was the right call. We now operate on a free-market model, engaging people according to need and workload. I think this has given us a more energetic and flexible chorus, as musically rich and secure as before. That’s not to say that, in the medium-to-long term, we might not want to think again.’ And, Reedijk volunteers, the ceiling of four mainstage operas per season is not permanent: the company could conceivably move up to five or six productions within four years, depending on the success of fund-raising and a continued partnership with the Edinburgh Festival. It is also in ‘general discussions’ about resuming tours south of the border—albeit not to Newcastle, where Opera North is now entrenched. ‘It’s all about doing more performances of the work we already do,’ says Reedijk, adding that when Scottish Opera does finally cross the border, ‘it will be a way of saying to the world, “Here we are, we’re alive and well”. We want to put that word “troubled” off-limits. We are stable and solvent and healthy and quietly confident.’ Where does all this leave the Scottish Opera Orchestra? Given the plethora of other orchestras based in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the small workload of the opera musicians, there has been no shortage of voices suggesting an alternative blueprint for Scottish Opera, involving the rotational engagement of outside ensembles on the Netherlands Opera model. Reedijk will have none of it. ‘It takes time to rehearse and tour an opera. It also takes a special willingness to work in an orchestra pit. We have 53 [salaried] players, perfectly suited to the Mozart repertory, and we can draw on a freelance pool when we need it. As we get busier, it won’t take much to get the orchestra close to full working. I have no appetite for discussing what other models there might be for orchestral provision in Scotland. I acknowledge we’re not as busy as we should be, but we’re not far off.’ Mention of the orchestra compels mention of Richard Armstrong, the company’s former music director, who worked wonders to maintain standards, often at the expense of his personal popularity. Armstrong formally left the company six months before Reedijk arrived but returned to conduct two of Reedijk’s first three productions. Will he be invited back? Nothing is booked, says Reedijk. ‘There’s no lack of willingness to have him back’—but no evident rush either. Was there a proper leaving presen-tation? Reedijk admits Armstrong’s departure ‘wasn’t handled as well as it should He is happier talking about Francesco Corti, the man he has anointed as the company’s next music director. Corti’s job description will be different from Armstrong’s, given that Reedijk has taken over most of Armstrong’s artistic policy-making role. Corti’s appointment, which he takes up next season, has raised some eyebrows: he was chosen on the strength of a single revival of Madama Butterfly, during which the orchestra staged an almost political demonstration of support for him—a degree of approval that, in the eyes of some critics, Corti’s interpretation did not deserve. How and why was he chosen? ‘I made it plain right from the start that the search for a new music director was a problem I wanted to solve, and that it was crucial for the general director and the music director to have a working relationship. I wanted to find someone old enough to have a big body of repertoire under their belt, as anyone with experience of the German repertoire system has. We wanted a good colleague, someone who cared about Scottish Opera, who commanded the respect of the orchestra and had a clear view of repertoire, casting and the artistic shape of the company. In an ideal world we would have wanted a further trial, but when Francesco came, everything I’d been looking for coalesced in this one person. What impressed was his depth of operatic experience, his leadership of a 95-strong orchestra in Magdeburg and his record of working in Scandinavian countries and at the San Francisco Opera. It was serendipitous. He came out fulfilling all the criteria. It didn’t matter that the orchestra loved him; it did that they respected him. Time will be the judge. This is a journey we’re going to make together.’ And where does this leave the ‘Scottish-ness’ of Scottish Opera? In its early years the company was led by a Scot, and many of its principal singers were Scottish. Today there is nothing noticeably Scottish for audiences to identify with beyond its backstage staff and geographical domain. Even though several experienced Scottish artists have voiced their willingness to work with the company, it seems reluctant to respond. Where does Reedijk stand? ‘In New Zealand, when casting, we always asked if there was a New Zealand voice who could nail this or that role. If yes, were they available, and could we afford them? In Scotland we’re not quite so prescriptive. We do our best to “hear” Scottish singers and give the younger ones exposure in our touring work. Moving from one- to three-year planning should unlock our constraints and improve casting options, but we don’t want a quota system. Our approach to casting is “who is the best singer we can find and afford?”. I want the company’s Scottish-ness to express itself in other ways.’ One of those is Five:15, subtitled ‘Operas made in Scotland’, which brings together writers and composers of Scottish nationality or association—Alexander McCall Smith and Ian Rankin on the literary side, Craig Armstrong and Lyell Cresswell on the musical. Recalling the long line of premieres given by Scottish Opera in the past, Reedijk says the commissioning of new work remains part of its ‘duty to sustain the art form’, and that there has been no shortage of creative artists eager to take part. ‘The muse is clearly upon them—it’s amazing the number of people who feel compelled to write an opera. What we need is a fulcrum around which their ideas can be presented. Our approach has to be careful, because in our present position we don’t want to bet the family farm on one new work. When I came to Scotland, I wasn’t aware of who the leading composers were, but I fell into conversation with some of them and was impressed by how many had a desire to articulate their ideas in operatic form.’ One of his conversation partners was Craig Armstrong: Reedijk asked for a wish-list of collaborators, and the name of the novelist Ian Rankin popped up. In the case of the composer Gareth Williams, Reedijk had already detected story-telling skills in his work at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, but was less enthusiastic about Williams’s desire to write his own libretto. A pairing with the writer Bernard MacLaverty—no operatic experience—has got all participants enthused. Some of those approached by Reedijk were not interested in the 15-minute formula. Others Given the limited impact of the Genesis project in London, Reedijk is wise to have modest expectations. ‘But I don’t want Five:15 to be seen as a one-off soundbite. It’s a signal of serious intent, a context for getting things started, and that’s why the board has agreed to a four-year strategy.’ Year two is expected to produce eight or nine short pieces, some of which may be from outside Scotland or from the educational sector. Year three will be devoted to working up two of the original Five:15 operas into 30-to-40-minute works, or letting one of the original teams develop a fresh idea to that length. Year four is an open book. Reedijk himself winnowed through the initial submissions, before bringing in three collaborators to help refine the projects with most potential. Michael McCarthy of Music Theatre Wales is credited as dramaturge for the project, the Edinburgh-based director Ben Twist will direct two of the five, and Derek Clark, Scottish Opera’s head of music, will conduct them all. The unifying element is to be Andrew Storer’s single set: Reedijk says he didn’t want ‘15 minutes of opera and 15 minutes of scene change’. There will be an after-show forum at the Saturday performances in Glasgow and Edinburgh, where the future of opera, and the viability of the Five:15 format, will be debated. In both cities an unconventional venue has been chosen ‘with no proscenium expectations’. Summarizing prospects for the forthcoming adventure, Reedijk acknowledges that ‘some pieces will be more mature, more interesting than others. We hope some will have genuine legs. We may pick up one or two of the ideas for further development; other companies will be free to do the same. What I would hope is that in ten years the process will bring sufficient fruit to let Scottish Opera present a new work every second year as part of its regular basket of repertoire.’ No shortage of ambition, then—but will Reedijk be there to see it happen? Given his burgeoning reputation as a turnaround king, it’s a legitimate question. But with a young family, a small boat anchored in the Gareloch and a new home, he seems well settled. ‘I’ve told Veronica Gibson [Alexander Gibson’s widow] on a number of occasions that, without being sentimental, I am very mindful of my duty to those who founded Scottish Opera. My job is to keep the shop open for the opera-loving public of Scotland. The best way of doing that, as I tried to do in New Zealand, is to show a deep sense of care for the audience, and reflect the range of styles they might be interested in. If I can get that right, this company can live up to its reputation.’ This article appears in the February 2008 issue of OPERA (c) 2008 Andrew Clark Photo: Alex Reedijk (l.) and Francesco Corti. (c) Christoper Bowen Any reproduction of words or photos without the consent of the copyright holders is strictly forbidden. |
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The English Verdi? Ian Bostridge talks to Rupert Christiansen about Britten's tenor roles At Westminster, Bostridge’s public school, his enthusiasm for Britten went into abeyance as another of his mentors, Richard Stokes, introduced him to the world of Lieder, and it wasn’t until he was an Oxford undergraduate that it was re-ignited. ‘I was obsessed with Fischer-Dieskau at that point and listened to everything he’d done compulsively. One day I got round to the recording he’d made of the Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, with Peter Pears singing the Holy Sonnets of John Donne on the other side. I was completely blown away, and by some triumph of will over technique, I made myself learn them and sang them in a competition and on a local radio station.’ In the 20-odd years since this Damascene moment, Bostridge has sung an extraordinary range of Britten’s vocal music. ‘I’m shy of the Scottish songs because I can’t face the dialect, and I’ve only done The Poet’s Echo in English translation, but I’ve done pretty much everything else I want to do. The War Requiem I must have performed more often than anything else in my career—I guess about 40 times.’ Among the cycles, the relatively neglected Nocturne is his particular favourite, ‘because I love the great romantic outburst that comes in the end, after all the fragmentary glimpses of things that have come before’. He also marvels at the ‘wonderfully rich and Italianate lyrical cantilena’ of the Seven Sonnets from Michelangelo—‘where did that come from? Rossini?’. But the Britten operas are something he has tackled more slowly than the concert works. First, at the 1994 Edinburgh Festival, came Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for an Australian Opera production, directed by Baz Luhrmann. ‘It was my professional opera debut. Baz was hyperactive but terrific fun, and by the time we got on stage I was enjoying myself. It’s my favourite Britten opera—not to sing, but to listen to—and I don’t mind admitting that the end makes me cry, every time.’
In 2004 he sang the Male Chorus in Warner’s production of The Rape of Lucretia in Munich and found a continuity with The Turn of the Screw. ‘It’s a very Quintish role—you’re there the whole time watching, in a slightly ambiguous relation to the main action. The Male Chorus is a very odd and unpleasant figure, puritanical and full of derision and contempt, balanced by the more compassionate Female Chorus.’ He has some affection for Ronald Duncan’s maligned libretto. ‘Some of it falls flat because of its poetic ambitions, but the spoken passage, as he describes Tarquinius on his way to the rape, is marvellous.’ Now Bostridge is back with Warner for a third Britten collaboration, when he sings for the first time Aschenbach in English National Opera’s new production of Death in Venice—a project originally planned for the Aldeburgh Festival (which will now be presenting its own production almost simultaneously, with Alan Oke as Aschenbach). It seems an odd choice for Bostridge, given that Britten wrote the role as a vehicle for Pears at the end of his career—he was 63 when he first sang it in 1973, 20 years older than Bostridge is now. ‘Well, we’ve decided not to get hung up on that one. Maybe my being younger can even open something up. After all, Mann was in his mid-30s when he had the experience that led him to write the novella, and Aschenbach is described as being 53, so in that respect you could say I’m bang in the middle. Much more problematic to me is the question of what the opera is actually about. Everyone is hung up on the paedophilia thing today, but it seems to me more centrally about death and humiliation—I think Aschenbach’s loss of dignity in falling in love with a boy is at the heart of the tragedy. What I also find very haunting is the story in Humphrey Carpenter’s biography that during the Turn of the Screw period, Pears had to drag Britten away from Venice because his infatuation with David Hemmings was getting out of hand. It seems extraordinarily self-lacerating to revisit something that must have been such a painful memory. ‘The accompanied music has been quite easy to learn, but the free recitative is proving much trickier. Originally, Britten thought that this text would be spoken, until he decided that it would be too difficult for the singer to move in and out of speech. He writes in the preface to the score that it should be “sung freely with varying speeds”, and that it should always be “declamatory rather than lyrical, not sung in the manner of recitativo secco, but always with some expression”—odd that he evidently thought that recitativo secco shouldn’t be sung with expression!’ In December, Bostridge will backtrack to a Britten opera written in 1951, when he sings his first Captain Vere in Billy Budd for two London Symphony Orchestra concerts at the Barbican, to be conducted by Daniel Harding. ‘Daniel was the incentive for doing this. I love working with him—in fact, my operatic ideal would be to work with him and Deborah the whole time.’ To date, that dream team has been assembled only for the 2002 revival of The Turn of the Screw. It amounts to a somewhat erratic trajectory. Bostridge has missed out the obviously ‘youthful’ role of Albert Herring (‘there was talk of my recording it with Richard Hickox, but it didn’t happen and I can’t say I’m heartbroken’), and he has never been asked to sing Essex in Gloriana, which would surely suit him beautifully. He and Warner have long had their eyes on Curlew River, and he thinks ‘it might well happen one day’, but the bigger outstanding issue is Peter Grimes. ‘I go on and off that one: perhaps if the right orchestra and conductor were in place. I don’t know if it’s really a bigger sing than the other operas, but it’s a role that seems to have been taken over by Heldentenors now, and that’s put me off. Very flatteringly, Harold Pinter told me that I should sing it, but I have to say that I’m not mad on the piece. I think it shows Britten trying to be the English Verdi, and I find characters like Auntie too picturesque.’ Any tenor singing Britten’s music has to confront the ghost of Peter Pears. Bostridge considers himself fortunate in that he isn’t old enough ever to have met him, let alone heard him in live performance. ‘I think it must have been much harder for my seniors like Philip Langridge, Bob Tear and Tony Rolfe Johnson, who did have that direct contact. I don’t feel oppressed by the shadow of Pears’s recordings the way that I used to either, and sometimes when I go back and listen to them now—something like the War Requiem, for example—I’m fascinated at how far I seem to have travelled from his interpretation. To be honest, although I still find his singing of Britten amazing, I don’t much like him singing anything else. ‘My voice is Pears-ish in that it isn’t very easy at the top, but I don’t have the same register break on the E that Britten exploits so often—I noticed him using it again in Death in Venice when Aschenbach declares himself at the opera’s opening. [“I, Aschenbach, famous as a master-writer …”] There are some other little tics that pop up again and again, such as staccati, which Pears sings in a very distinctive way that I try not to think about. And there’s almost always one top B flat, or perhaps two, thrown in somewhere. The only time I’ve noticed anything higher is a rather hysterical shriek of a B for Vere in Billy Budd. ‘The setting of the English language is what absorbs me. It can’t ever have been done better by anyone, and I don’t think it’s something he worked out consciously—he seems to have had a completely instinctive understanding of the appropriate note length and pitch. Nothing is scratchy, rushed or chewy: it always comes out sounding like real English, even when the text is something like a Donne sonnet that on the page you can’t imagine translating into music.’ Bostridge is a great proselytizer for Britten. ‘I’ve been trying to persuade Anna Netrebko to sing The Poet’s Echo, and talking to Simon Keenlyside about transposing some of the tenor cycles down. I know this is music that is hugely popular and performed everywhere, but I still feel that in terms of style and interpretation, it needs opening up a bit.’ Bostridge’s own singing is a valuable part of that enterprise too. Ian Bostridge sings Aschenbach in ENO’s new ‘Death in Venice’, c. Edward Gardner, p. Deborah Warner—May 24, 26, 30, June 2, 5, 7, 9, 13.
This article appears in the May 2007 issue of OPERA (c) 2007 Rupert Christiansen Photo: Ian Bostridge as Quint in Deborah Warner’s Royal Opera staging of ‘The Turn of the Screw’. (c) Catherine Ashmore Any reproduction of words or photos without the consent of the copyright holders is strictly forbidden.
PLUS see below for extracts from three other recent OPERA articles … No turning back Elaine Padmore talks to Andrew Clark about the Royal Opera’s 60th birthday and her vision for its future More than a company was brought to life at Covent Garden 60 years ago this month. A tradition was founded to which the present company is heir. Those 60 years have seen a fair flowering of great performances, but you wonít find champagne flowing in Bow Street on January 14. There will not be so much as a commemorative Carmen on that date, even though the companyís new production runs throughout the month. An anniversary exhibition in the amphitheatre foyer is as much as weíll see. The reason is simple: a 60th birthday is not like a 50th or a 75th, and the Royal Ballet, which shares the premises, has only just got its 75th out of the way. Opera companies that reach 60 are striplings compared to the great houses of Milan, Berlin, Paris, St Petersburg and New York. Itís a reflection on British cultural values that it took so long to found a permanent ënationalí company on these shores. Covent Garden had previously been a receiving house, playing host to anyone who could afford to rent it.
Where opera management is concerned, you could never accuse Padmore of putting heart before head: a trained singer and pianist, she is too much of a realist, recognizing that the Royal Operaís missionódoubly so in the wake of the late-1990s debaclesóis to provide stability, quality and a high box-office return. And though there are plenty of sentimentalists in and around Covent Garden, sentiment does not loom large in her outlook. Unlike some older colleagues backstage, she is not part of the brickwork. For most of her life she has known Covent Garden as an outsideróinitially as a student (her first visit, as a member of Anthony Lewisís music degree course at Birmingham University, was in 1965 for the Solti-Hall Moses und Aron), and later as BBC Radio 3ís head of opera, planning and producing the Royal Operaís broadcasts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. ëI have a past here,í she smiles, citing the 1976 Ring, Joan Sutherlandís farewell performance and Pl·cido Domingo in LíAfricaine among other Covent Garden peaks, ëbecause at that time I was regularly here on professional duty, so I know what the ìoldî house was about. But then I went awayíóto Wexford (1982-94), where she greatly increased the scope and prestige of the festival, and Copenhagen (1993-2000), where she also fuelled an international blossomingóëso I missed out on the 1990s when things were getting difficult. When I came back so much had changed. Thatís what appealed. Michael Kaiser [the American administrator enlisted by the new board] had sorted things out. It felt like a new place within the same four wallsóand yet there were still a lot of people from before who had a loyalty to the place and were determined to see it through the teething problems.í By the time Padmore became a salaried employee, the overriding priority was to re-establish the companyís reputation. ëThe traditions of excellence in crafts and costumes, the skills you need in a big theatre, the sense of wanting to be perfectóall that was still here. In a sense more has changed front-of-house than backstage. The biggest change was the removal of the stone stairs to the amphitheatre, the legacy of the old fire regulations in London theatres. For me the symbol of the new Covent Garden is the escalator [connecting Floral Hall to amphitheatre]. The amphitheatre now has the best bar in the building. Itís still an imposing buildingóyou canít get round that institutional lookóbut we no longer have Sergeant Martin in uniform and epaulettes, taking his key to unlock the chains on the doors at six and let people in: you couldnít get into the building unless you had a ticket to a performance. Now the doors are open all day, you can come in for coffee or have a decent lunch or attend a free lunchtime event. Thereís a mix of people at all times and on all levels. Thatís important to me.í Talking to the ageless Padmore in her office overlooking the Covent Garden piazza, you get the impression she is not there to indulge a lifelong passion, to make the right political noises or do PR for the house, but to get on with a complex job of artistic management, ëand Iíll stay until Iím too old to workí. But she does permit herself a glance through the statistics for whatever truths they might tell, and the immediate revelation is that ëweíre doing the same rep. Itís amazing how many of the same operas are still there, despite changing taste and fashioní. La BohËme is the most popular across those 60 years, notching up 313 performances, followed by Carmen (282) andósurprisingly, given the workís troubled history at Covent Garden over the past 25 yearsóAida (274). Puccini weighs in again with Tosca (251), before Mozart in fifth and sixth position with Le nozze di Figaro (236) and Die Zauberfl–te (203). Verdi returns with Rigoletto (203) and La traviata (189), while Puccini rounds off the top ten with Turandot (185) and Madama Butterfly (181)ó making the maestro of Torre del Lago easily the companyís most bankable composer. Well, who would have believed it? … This article continues in the January 2007 issue of OPERA (c) 2007 Andrew Clark Photo: The Royal Opera House with the Floral Hall extension, unveiled in 1999. (c) Rob Moore
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There was more to it than that, of course. Reedijk cites three debilitating factors which, taken together, help to explain why Scottish Opera had been brought to its knees. The first was the proposed merger with Scottish Ballet, which ended in failure—to Reedijk’s evident relief. The second was the draining impact of Glasgow’s Theatre Royal on money, manpower and willpower—a problem solved when, before his arrival, management of the building (but not ownership) passed to the Ambassador Theatre Group. The third was the problem of standstill funding. ‘There had been no largesse [in Scottish Opera’s expenditure],’ says Reedijk, adding that the overspend on the 1999 Macbeth came about only because, after committing to the project, the company had failed to secure a sufficient number of co-production partners. ‘The problem wasn’t Macbeth—nor the Ring, which had a perfectly balanced budget. It was more to do with the underlying health of the company, driven by consistent under-
The turning point came three years later, however, when he sang Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw, inaugurating a close and continuing collaboration and friendship with its director Deborah Warner. ‘I sang it first at the Barbican and then at Covent Garden in 2002,’ a performance that was memorably recorded, ‘but I won’t do it again: it’s not really much of a role vocally. I can’t get to grips with the “ceremony of innocence” opening of Act 2—the use of the text from Yeats seems very heavy-handed—and I think that only Peter Pears has ever managed to sing the melismatic passages properly. I know I can’t. But it was wonderful to act, and I loved the way the production restored to the opera some of the ambiguity that exists in James’s novel. What freed me up was the licence Deborah gave me to be myself on stage—I just roamed around in my corduroy jacket, and I think that made it so much more scary.’
Itís equally a reflection of the current mood that the Royal Opera is too busy thinking of the future to dwell much
on its past. That sort of feet-on-the-
ground attitude is entirely characteristic of Elaine Padmore, the companyís Yorkshire-born, no-airs-or-graces director of opera. Since her appointment in 2000 Padmore has been the anchor of the Royal Operaís triumvirate: itís she who holds the fort while Antonio Pappano, the companyís music director, is in the pit or guest-conducting
elsewhere; and though Peter Katona, director of casting, has been at Covent Garden far longer (since 1983) and has more power over who sings what, he keeps himself in the shadows.