3 hours Ago By Francisco Salazar
Fabio Luisi is one of the world’s greatest conductors who has performed many great symphonic works and operatic repertoire. His work has been recognized through many awards including Italy’s Cavaliere della Repubblica Italiana and Commendatore della Stella d’Italia, and Genoa’s Grifo d’Oro, the highest honor given by the city of Genoa. He has served as music director at the Zurich Opera, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo.
Now as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director, a position he has held since 2020, he is taking on one of his most ambitious projects for the orchestra, The Ring Cycle. Having conducted the tetralogy in Dresden and at the Metropolitan Opera, Luisi has received praise for his reading. In anticipation of the project, the Italian conductor spoke to OperaWire about the upcoming Ring Cycle and the challenges of doing it with an orchestra.
OperaWire: The Dallas Symphony recently released a new recording of Franz Schmidt’s “The Book with Seven Seals” on its streaming platform. Tell me about the experience of performing this very unknown work. What does streaming mean to you currently in this panorama? Fabio Luisi: Starting with the streaming, I think streaming is important for an orchestra because it makes this orchestra accessible to everybody.
So it is a good help. It is not the real thing, of course, because the real thing is the concert, and the real thing is to have an audience have a physical connection with the orchestra in the concert hall. But it does help the visibility of the orchestra and bring it to the homes of the people who are interested in it.
So it can help. This is my opinion about streaming and I’m quite happy that we are streaming more and more. We are starting this initiative of streaming our concerts and of course, since we are also playing very rare pieces, streaming helps those composers and those pieces to become more familiar.
Of course, it’s not the usual Tchaikovsky Symphony or Beethoven Symphony or Brahm Symphony, but I think especially in classical music, we should keep this curiosity of knowing things we do not know. There are so many interesting, beautiful, great works that are almost never played. And so that’s why I’m happy that we are streaming this very piece.
OW: Do you think streaming has helped bring audiences into the concert hall? FL: I am a little bit skeptical about this. I don’t think that streaming helps in a consistent and real way to bring more people to the concert hall. But even if we make 10 people, 20 families or five kids curious about classical music and about the pieces we are playing, this is already a victory.
It cannot harm, and it can help. OW: One of the things that’s interesting about the Schmidt piece, is it’s not known. When we look at classical music, modern music has become an emphasis.
Still, it’s also important to look back at our history and many unknown pieces from composers that are also unknown. How do you go about choosing the rare pieces? What brings you to those pieces? FL: The paramount constant should be the quality. The principal question is why have these pieces been forgotten? The reason is they are not good enough.
It is a curiosity. We can play them once or twice, but they can not compare to the standard repertoire. So there is a reason behind these pieces not having been played for centuries or decades or a lot.
There are many especially operas, but also in the symphonic repertoire. There are pieces we actually do not need to hear more than one time. On the other side, there are pieces that have been forgotten for other reasons or for no reason at all.
In my opinion, Schmidt, is a controversial figure in the history of music because of his political choices. He also lived in a complicated time. He’s one of those composers who, in terms of quality of the works he wrote, deserves to be played.
If we can isolate them from the political context and the social context of the time, which is, in my opinion, legitimate, because he was thought to be a Nazi. He lived in that time, but he had a lot of jewish colleagues who were helped by him in critical times. He played with them in quartets and orchestras.
So I think we should isolate these components and focus on the music. And if we can, we will see it’s really great music. I have played and recorded all his symphonies, and they are all very good, especially the second and fourth.
This oratorio is one of the most important oratorios written in the 20th century. OW: Do you think that someone like Schmidt could be rediscovered and become part of the standard repertoire? FL: Yes and we are assisting. We are looking at the renaissance of Schmidt and this season, the Berlin Philharmonic played all its symphonies.
There is a new recording by Paavo Järvi of all the symphonies on Deutsche Grammophon. And I see a lot of my colleagues are starting to consider to put this composer in their repertoire. So I started 20 years ago conducting Schmidt regularly and the reaction has always been very warm and very enthusiastic.
So it has an appeal and it has a projection for the audience. So yes, he’s one of those composers who will be performed more often in the future. OW: You have such a wide variety of repertoire.
How do you go from one style to the next with such fluidity? What is the key to having such a wide variety of repertoire and being able to interpret different styles? FL: When I start to study something now, it doesn’t matter who the composer or the period it is from. I don’t think about the style and I think about the music I am studying in that very moment. The style questions come to me much later, and they are not prominent.
I try to understand what the composer wants and I can read the composers well. I can understand what they want and the differences in their languages. My first thought is not which style this is.
It’s just me and the score. And little by little during my study, it gets very clear to me which kind of language it is and how I should approach it. The style comes by itself.
OW: Today many conductors specialize in specific repertoire and you have done Belcanto, verismo, Wagner, and many diverse repertoire. What is the key to being able to conduct such a variety of works? FL: I think a key to this is, is the language. I speak German, I speak French, I speak Italian, so this helps.
For example, in Wagner and Strauss, I think it is impossible to understand their music if you don’t understand the language, especially if you conduct the operas. I mean, the music and the pacing of the phrases are so tightly connected to the spoken phrases and to the actual phrases that if you don’t understand the language it’s hard. I envy my colleagues who don’t speak German and they conduct Strauss and Wagner.
I could not, and this is why I’m so reluctant to do Russian operas. I did “Onegin” a couple of times, but my wife, who is Russian, helped me with the text, and that was necessary for me. I need to understand why the words sound like that because this is a help for the music.
So maybe this is also part of my approach. OW: This season you are doing The Ring Cycle with the orchestra. It is a piece that you have done on several occasions.
How has the entire tetralogy ring cycle developed for you and how has your approach changed? FL: I don’t know if my approach has changed. I first conducted the ring in Dresden in 2006 and then for several seasons, and then at the Met. I don’t have the feeling my approach changed, but of course, I’m getting older and my approach to many things changed.
It’s a natural process. I think it was not voluntary, maybe some things appear to me clearer now than was the case 15 years ago because I understand the music better and I have a deeper approach. I have the feeling and I think about music more deeply than I would, than I used to 20 or 30 years ago.
But I think it’s a natural process of getting older. OW: How do you pace for evenings as long as these works? How do you prepare yourself mentally? FL: Oh, I am happy. I have big expectations because this is the greatest music ever written, and it’s a joy.
It’s a privilege to do this as a conductor. I’m really very excited and very happy. And yes, it is demanding from a physical point of view, but it also gives me so much energy.
So I don’t ask myself this question. I don’t have a special preparation. Of course, I need to sleep before, but otherwise, I just welcome this.
It’s a joy to do this. OW: Having done opera with the orchestra since you started as Music Director, this Ring Cycle must be very special. What are you looking forward to? And how do you think the audience will respond to this? FL: Well, the response to the first two operas we did in the spring was overwhelming.
So it was really very enthusiastic a nd I expected this because it’s such a musical journey and i t’s traveling through these huge operas. It’s something special also for the audience because they are used to listening to 30 or 40 minutes of Beethoven or Brahm symphonies. And then all of a sudden they have to listen for five hours, three acts of “Walküre” or two and a half hours of “Rheingold” without a break.
I mean, it is demanding for them as well, but it’s an intellectual and physical trip. It is special, and especially for an audience that is not used to going to the opera. But in the end, every one of them was amazed.
You leave a different person after each performance. I t’s something that touches you deep down and i t is a spiritual journey. It is really special.
OW: Can you tell me about choosing this cast? What drew you to them? FL: Yes, there were some that I wanted for several reasons. First of all, because I knew them, and I knew that they could be motivated for such a project. And I knew they would come well prepared.
I mean, it’s very tricky. It’s very demanding because we don’t have enough rehearsals. And this is because we are a symphony orchestra.
So the rules are very different than in the opera house, and we can’t do four weeks of rehearsals. We have to prepare the operas in two weeks and so the conditions of working are a little bit different than in an opera house. So you have to come really motivated, prepared and willing to work a lot in a day and in a week.
So I chose them for this as well. Not only because I needed good singers for the roles, but also in terms of people I could trust. And this is important to me.
And this is something that I’m trying to do in Dallas. If I work with the artists, I want to make them part of our Dallas family so that we are happy if they come back. And they are happy to come back.
It’s like having an old friend come back and play music with us. So it’s not just the big name or discovering a new hyped artist, but also to make the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and our soloists a big family that we like to work with and we understand. OW: After the Ring Cycle, what other operatic works would you love to do with the Dallas Symphony? FL: I want to have my musicians know this opera repertoire.
As I said, I started with “Salome.” That was a very demanding score for the musicians. And then we did “Onegin” and then we planned “Othello,” which we could not do because of COVID.
Instead, we did an opera concert, which is not the same thing, but we did a Verdi Requiem, which is not an opera, but it’s in the style. So we did German repertoire, Russian repertoire, and Italian repertoire. We will go back to the Italian repertoire and probably at some point we will do something French.
And it also depends on how long I will stay with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. I hope very long. But most importantly I need my musicians to know this repertoire because most of them never played opera.
My very simple reasoning is how can you be a musician, a good musician, and not know Wagner’s Ring? How can you be a good musician and not know Verdi’s “Don Carlo” or Puccini’s “La Boheme?” They are important pieces musically and they give so much joy to people and they are fun and beautiful to play with. And this is the same with “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walküre.” When the musicians finished with these works they felt musically richer.
OW: You just won the Premio del Belcanto, ‘Rodolfo Celletti’ . Tell me about receiving this honor. FL: Well, it is something special because I started my activity as a conductor and as a professional musician at that festival.
And it was 1981, so 43 years ago. I started there and I learned a lot. I worked with Celletti very closely.
I worked with (Alberto) Zedda very closely and I was his assistant. I learned from these two guys everything I know about opera, especially the importance of the voices, how to treat voices, and why a singer is a good singer or not. And I learned from him and it is something I hold very, very dear.
It is important b ecause I see that most people today don’t know when a singer is good and when he or she is not good. And they cannot foresee whether his/her career will be long or short. With my training, I can tell immediately if a singer will sing for 20 more years or if it will be over in two years.
This is because I learned from Celletti how to listen to singers and what makes a good singer. These are, in my opinion, very important qualities for a conductor. And not many of my colleagues c an rely on this.
And the other part of this is that I grew up in this festival and I went back to this festival again and again. Then there was a little bit of a break and I came back with Alberto Triola and I was made music director, which I did not want, but they wanted me to do it. Now I received this prize that I did not want and w e really argued about this.
But it’s fine and I’m happy because it is like a full circle. Categories.
