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Opera21

magazine

Collaborative magazine for the 21st Century Opera Enthusiast

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Photographs of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra were taken by Pedro Diaz and Bruno Eicher.

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The opinions expressed in Opera21 do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or publisher.

O21 Table of Contents Volume2 | No.4

3 Interview with Jerry Grossman: Cello Kim Feltkamp

21 Interview with Julia Pilant: French horn Ilana Walder-­‐Biesanz

7 Interview with David Chan: Violin Kevin Ng

25 Interview with Susan Spector: Oboe Jennifer Choi

11 Beyond the Standard Repertoire Ilana Walder-­‐Biesanz

29 The Royal Opera on the Big Screen Lewis Wolstanholme

13 Interview with Melissa Robason: Library Laura Petrarcha

31 Different, and Luckier Griffin Candey

15 The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Jennifer Choi

33 Interview with Anthony McGill: Clarinet Gregory Moomjy

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

Interview with Jerry Grossman, Principal Cellist

By Kim Feltkamp The Metropolitan Opera was bustling with activity when I came backstage to conduct an interview with Jerry Grossman, the principal cellist for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. It was mid-afternoon and the company had just finished a dress rehearsal. Everyone else was preparing for the evening’s performance. Mr. Grossman was cheerful and eager when we sat down to talk about opera.

When did you first start playing the cello?

The year was 1959, if they must know. I was in 4th grade. I grew up in Cambridge, Mass. and there was, near my house, the Longy School of Music. I used to walk to my cello lessons there; I had an older brother who took piano lessons. So it was a big part of my family life. I started with the piano, but it didn’t work.

So your parents introduced you to classical music?

Yes. Were you listening to classical music when you were younger?

It was always on in the house, so that was the only music I knew.

Were your parents professional musicians?

No, they were just music lovers. I have a brother who’s a pianist who went on to get a PhD in Musicology. But it’s not the kind of performing career that I have.

Do you find it’s hard to be a performer? Is it difficult as a lifestyle/career choice? Or do you feel that it’s something that was just inevitable?

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It’s what happened to me. I’m glad that I have the talent for it, because I don’t know what else I would do. My hours are odd, as it is for all performers, but you have to accept that. When a lot of people are relaxing, you’re working.

Was the Met Opera Orchestra a specific goal of yours?

No, no, not at all. It just happened. My specific goal was to play chamber music. I really wanted to have a string quartet. And it just never happened. I never came up with the people that I really wanted to have a quartet with. Years went by and I decided, “Well, I’m in my thirties. I better get myself a job.” [laughs] So, here I am.

I see that you’ve guested with Emerson String Quartet…

JG: Yes, I’ve done plenty of chamber music.

What do you like specifically about chamber music, rather than opera music? Because they are extremely different.

Music is music. It’s all great stuff. The thing about chamber music and string quartets is that it’s one to a part, for one thing. I’m not playing in a cello section, with seven other people playing the same part. So you get to hear yourself. It has different challenges, different rewards.

I know that you came from the Chicago Symphony. How is it transitioning from symphonic music to opera?

Well, I was two years in the Chicago Symphony, I played in the Philharmonic for two years, and I freelanced for years with a lot of different orchestras, so I have plenty of orchestral experience, even opera experience. I had done my share of opera; I knew what I was getting into. The biggest switch for me was from being in a section to being principal. That’s a very different role.

What are your responsibilities as Principal Cellist?

I’m in charge of the whole section. There’s not a whole lot I can do, but I have been in charge of making sure that the parts have bowings [written in] and I’ve had to make decisions on the fly.

If you’re in rehearsal and something’s not working, you have to fix it on the spot, because you’re not going to have time to have sectional rehearsals. Although every once and while, I dream of having a sectional rehearsal, fixing like ten little spots that have, over the years, never gotten fixed. I dream of strange things. But the main thing is playing the solos. Otherwise, you swim along with the rest of the school most of the time.

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Cellist Jerry Grossman

What’s your favorite solo?

Oh, I don’t have a favorite. But this season, I played Die Frau Ohne Schatten [R. Strauss] which has an extraordinary solo in the second Act. It’s a lot of fun to play, especially as part of such a remarkable performance. It felt like a big event. I wish I could see it. I always have my back to it.

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

How do you feel about opera in general?

I love it. I love it all. The big difference between playing this job and playing, say, in the Philharmonic, is that we only very, very rarely play bad music. I’m not going to say names, but there are some things I don’t enjoy playing. In symphony orchestra, they tend to have more experimental programs, more new music, some of which is fantastic. But some of it is also not ready for primetime. Some of it is difficult and unrewarding. The orchestra repertoire isn’t always so consistent. But opera – even bel canto, with the right cast—is heavenly. [Bel canto opera] is hard to play, because you’re just oom-pah-pahing all night long. You have to place very little pizzicato; it’s nerve-wracking. You don’t know what rubato is going on onstage.

That’s a big difference between playing in an opera orchestra and playing in a symphony. In opera, you have to be prepared for anything to happen onstage. In a symphony, you pretty much know what’s going to happen. So, in opera, you’ve got to be paying attention. Listening, listening, listening. Then, you have these big orchestral parts, and you have to sound like the greatest orchestra in the world. So, we have to do it all.

Yes, I’m always so impressed by how you change between all the different styles of music all the time. I think, how do they go from bel canto to Wagner to Baroque? It amazes me.

It’s the same way you go from very loud to very soft in the same piece of music. Most great pieces have a wide range of variety and expression. We are trained to bring that out. The range is just a little bit greater.

What is your favorite opera to play?

That’s an impossible question. I would never pick one opera. If I had a desert island opera, I’d pick Don Carlo…or the last two Verdi operas, Falstaff and Othello. I love playing it all.

Arabella is a lot of fun, except it’s just too much, too many notes. Rosenkavalier is a blast.

I think Rosenkavalier is the greatest opera.

A bunch of years ago, we did Rosenkavalier with Carlos Kleiber. It was incredible.

His recording of Rosenkavalier is my favorite. He’s right up there with Karajan. It’s so cool to think that you’ve played under Kleiber.

Four operas: Boheme, Traviata, Othello, and Rosenkavalier.

That’s brilliant. Do you have any favorite singers that you’ve worked with?

Well, I have to say my wife, of course, Korliss Uecker. She sang here for 12 years. But favorite singer… Joyce DiDonato. I’ll pick her out. There are so many fabulous singers. Diana Damrau.

And this tenor that sang in Sonnambula [Javier Camarena]. Just phenomenal. The usual suspects. Of course, there are some famous singers that I don’t think were so amazing. But we don’t have to name them.

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[laughs] No, we don’t. What do you like to do when you’re not playing?

I don’t have a lot of time. I have a kid in high school and I spent as much time as she’ll let me, at this point. [laughs] That’s fun. And I’ve got a dog, which sucks up a lot of time. I don’t have any memorable hobbies. I do have a beautiful, substantial coral reef tank.

Besides opera, what kind of music do you listen to for fun?

I listen to classic jazz, the usual suspects. Every once in a while, I go on a listening jag. For example, I discovered the recordings of Haydn symphonies that Adam Fischer made and I decided it’s time to learn all of them. So when I’d walk the dog, I’d put my headphones on and listen to a Haydn symphony. It’s the perfect length. I’m starting Bach cantatas now. So, I have listening projects. Otherwise, mostly jazz. Then, of course, my daughter, who’s not into classical music particularly, will have One Direction playing, which I hope is a passing phase. I end up having to hear all the pop music. I wouldn’t say I listen to it. Mostly, I can’t tell it all apart; it’s a lot of the same thing.

If you could have chosen something different, career-wise, what would you have chosen? [long pause] That’s a tough one. Nothing’s rising to the surface.

That’s a good sign!

It is a good sign! It’s who I am. When I was thirteen, I fell in love with music. Deeply. You couldn’t tear me away from my phonograph or my cello. By the time I graduated from high school, I knew most of the basic repertoire. I just gobbled it up and I never gave thought, ever, to doing anything else. So it’s a damn good thing that I had enough talent to get myself a job.

Is there anything you’d like to say to the opera world of the 21st century?

Come buy tickets and see the opera! It’s the greatest s*** in the world! It’s the best stuff there is. So many people out there think that coming to the opera will make them feel stupid, because they don’t know that they’ll have the words in front of them. They’re still surprised to see that there. If you like music, if you like singing, if you like a good story, if you like to cry and laugh, then come to the opera. At best, there’s even some poetry in there. Last night, at Sonnambula, the crowd just went wild. You just don’t get that visceral reaction with other types of music.

Chamber music is no less exquisite, but it’s a different experience.

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Cellist Jerry Grossman

Kim is a mezzo-soprano currently pursuing her MM at Bard College in Dawn Upshaw’s Vocal Arts Program. She has been part of the online opera community as OperaRox, providing interactive opera liveshows and contests to educate and unite the opera community. You can find her at OperaRox, Kimozart, and her professional website.

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

Interview with David Chan, Principal Violinist

By Kevin Ng

You’ve been the concertmaster of the Met orchestra since 2000. As we know, job openings in that orchestra don’t come up particularly frequently. Could you tell us about how you found out about the job, and how you got to where you are today?

Well, you’re right in that job openings don’t come up very frequently – my predecessor Raymond Gniewek spent 43 years as concertmaster. He happened to be retiring at the time I was looking for a job, and I had been in the finals of some other orchestral jobs. So I guess my name was out there, and I happened to be playing with a couple of members of the Met Orchestra, and that’s how my name got thrown into the mix. I’m oversimplifying a bit, but it’s a testament to being in the right place at the right time and having built my resume enough that I was able to take advantage of that opportunity.

Before you got your job at the Met, you had competed and won prizes in various competitions, including the Tchaikovsky and the Gingold. What are some of the factors that led you to a career as an orchestral musician rather than as a soloist or chamber musician exclusively?

Between finishing my master’s at Juilliard and working at the Met was a period of 3 years.

During that time I did a variety of things, including solo concerts, playing in string ensembles, concertmastering chamber orchestras, and looking back it was good preparation and experience for what was to come. Looking at all of these things, the least enjoyable were the solo concerts, which were supposed to be my big projects. Ironically, I enjoyed everything else more, because 7

of the heightened sense of community. A concerto performance or a recital date out of town is a lot of time on the road alone, working very hard in terms of practice, and not always arriving at the level I wanted. On the other hand, chamber music or orchestra playing had sense of going to the same place to work every day. In rehearsing with the same people on the same programme for a week or two, I enjoyed that a lot more than the sheer ego of doing a solo concert. That got me thinking about finding a job where I could find more stability, sleep at home more days than not, and have a sense of community. I never thought that my first orchestral job would be as concertmaster of a major orchestra, but that’s how it turned out to be. It turned out to be all that rolled into one, because I was working with and leading people, so there was still some degree of solo playing. This job has given me a chance to do all of those things, and it’s a wonderful place.

Certainly among opera houses it’s without compare, and many would argue that we even stand in good comparison with symphony orchestras.

Many would certainly agree that the Met Orchestra can indeed be compared with some of the major symphony orchestras. What is so special about playing in an opera orchestra as opposed to in a symphony orchestra? I suppose it’s less glamorous, sitting in the pit, but at the same time the range of repertoire is huge.

Absolutely. I mean, we play with singers all the time, and that sort of vocal approach that can be heard in our playing is almost second nature to us at this point. It gives us the same sort of reference point as Vienna, for example, or Dresden, since they also play in the opera house.

What they can bring to other sorts of repertoire is that vocal quality and the inherent drama, and that’s built into the playing. It would be very difficult to convince me that the drama and passion that you find in Verdi and Puccini is not equally functional and wonderful in Beethoven and Brahms symphonies. That’s not saying that there’s a different kind of discipline required for that music, but we all have that from our training, and we also play that repertoire in our symphonic series at Carnegie Hall. Not with the frequency of a symphony orchestra, perhaps, but not of that repertoire is unfamiliar to us. All of that day-in day-out collaboration with singers, and the unpredictability of stage performances that can inject that other dimension of excitement, these are all reference points we have that the non-operatic world may not have to the same degree.

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Violinist David Chan

You mentioned the vocal quality of the orchestra. Is that explicit, like matching bowings to a singer’s phrasing and breathing, or more a way of thinking about the music?

It’s less conscious than that – it’s like how people do certain things with their families, for example. It just becomes second nature, and part of your approach. The bowings for any piece are always dictated by the competing demands of the technical demands and what the musical phrase requires, and that is always one of those things that as a violinist you have to work out regardless of context. Since that context is constantly changing, it’s not something that you can really analyze in that respect, and you primarily have to rely on intuition for that.

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

The Met orchestra plays an incredibly diverse range of repertoire – in the latter part of the 2013-2014 season, you played everything from Enchanted Island to Wozzeck to Arabella.

How do you switch styles for each performance or rehearsal, sometimes within a day?

Well, that in itself is one of the most appealing aspects of this job. The fact that you can rehearse Wozzeck one morning and play Enchanted Island that night is incredibly stimulating in its diversity. Now and then there will be an undiscovered work that is less than top-drawer, but the operas that persist in our repertoire are more or less all masterpieces. Even certain types of opera that some purists with certain stylistic mindsets will turn their noses up at, they’re all hard to criticize on the basis of their effectiveness in the theatre. I guess what I’m saying is that the opportunity to play such masterpieces from different styles and periods offsets the challenge of maintaining them all in the repertoire at the same time. It is a challenge, but compared to a symphonic programme with a world premiere on it and having to rehearse it and play it maybe four times within the span of a week, and then having a completely new programme the next week is a challenge too. It’s a different schedule for us – some weeks are absolutely frantic, trying to get three or four pieces under our fingers, but then we play it for three or four weeks.

During my fourteen years at the Met, the volume of music hasn’t become any easier, but obviously familiarity does help, and I love the diversity of the programming.

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How familiar were you with opera before getting this job at the Met? Did you go to the opera often, or play in opera orchestras in college?

I hadn’t played in a lot of operas, but what I did have going for me was the fact that from my high school days, I had become a big opera nut. Every Saturday I would listen to the Texaco broadcasts, I watched whatever opera came up on TV, I studied the motifs of the Ring cycle, I mean, I was really into it. It’s funny that I never imagined that I would end up in this position, though I was just struggling to become a violinist with an income at all. Although I had success in certain competitions and I knew that my playing was of a certain level, having a career is still a challenge, and as I was making the switch in my mind from having a solo career to an orchestral career, I thought I would start somewhere, hopefully become concertmaster someday, and then work my way up. Again, I didn’t know that my first job would be this one, but looking back it’s very fitting with my knowledge and passion for opera. I didn’t have much experience with playing opera, nor did it really occur to me until the opportunity came up, that this would be my actual career path.

As concertmaster, there are a number of great solos – off the top of my head, I can think of Thaïs, obviously, but also Giulio Cesare, Salome, Faust, Lulu, and so on. Which one is your favourite to play and why?

It’s hard to pick one, but I can mention a couple of favourites. One is the Frau ohne Schatten one, because it’s such a pivotal moment in the emotions of the act. It follows the most savage orchestral interlude, and after that comes a moment of utter peace. There’s something incredibly calming yet emotional about that solo – it’s really one where the action stops for the solo, rather than accompanying a scene. The Méditation from Thaïs takes that one step further, in that it’s actually the intermezzo between two scenes. The curtain is closed, and all that’s there is the violin solo. Those stand out, but there are many others. The solo in I Lombardi is exceptional for its virtuosity, and the technical demands of that solo are closer to the ones you find in the symphonic literature as opposed to the more lyrical aspects of the violin emphasized in opera.

Those are kind of polar opposites, I guess – Frau ohne Schatten and Thaïs on the lyrical side, I Lombardi on the technical side. I also have to make special mention of the Berg operas – Wozzeck certainly, but especially Lulu. For the concertmaster there are an absolutely unprecedented number of solos, from very short little segments to the very technical and involved cadenzas in the third act.

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Violinist David Chan

Kevin Ng is an immunologist and violinist in training. He spends all of his copious spare time at the opera house, and is currently concertmaster of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

The Opera Industry: Is it broken?

Rethinking the Canon

By Ilana Walder-Biesanz ‘It seems like there are only about twenty or thirty operas that are ever performed,’ a friend once told me. ‘Is that right?’

It’s easy to see how someone could get that impression. The opera world revolves around a relatively small standard repertoire. Operabase’s most recent season statistics (2012/13) include 553 performances of the most-performed opera, Verdi’s La Traviata. The top ten operas (by just five composers—Verdi, Bizet, Puccini, Mozart, and Rossini) received a total of 4,338 performances, accounting for nearly 18% of all catalogued opera performances. 2,415 operas were presented that season, but they averaged just ten performances apiece—35 times fewer than it takes to make the top ten.

Of course, some operas are performed more than others for a perfectly good reason: some operas are simply better than others. (I don’t claim to be an objective judge of an opera’s quality, but there’s definitely consensus in the opera world that some operas at least deserve discussion and some are unutterably awful.) Over the past few centuries, many operas have been hastily written, produced once, and promptly forgotten, never to be revived. In most cases, they undoubtedly deserved their fate.

But opera companies don’t just present some operas more because they are better; they also present them because they sell better. And that’s not quite the same thing. An opera’s quality has some bearing on whether people will buy tickets, but so does its current reputation and recent marketing. A cycle develops that reinforces the canon: companies present popular operas because they will sell, and operas become popular because they are frequently presented.

Why is having such an established standard repertoire a problem? It's not just that seasoned opera-goers would like more variety, though that's certainly true. There are other reasons as well: • Many classic operas are painfully racist or sexist. Madame Butterfly (#6) romanticizes an American’s purchase and abandonment of a Japanese child bride. The one explicitly darkskinned character in The Magic Flute (#4) is an evil rapist. Even the title of Così fan tutte (#14) posits that all women are inevitably flighty and faithless. Turandot (#17), Carmen (#2), and Aida (#12) all have problematic traces of orientalism. Thoughtful directors can and do address these operas’ problems in their stagings, but we could still use other operas that serve as counterpoints by addressing the same issues from a different perspective.

• The roles in the current canon don’t match the gender demographics of opera singers. Far more women than men apply to, attend, and graduate from opera training programs, but the principal roles available in the standard repertoire are mostly male. The nineteenthcentury operas that dominate the top ten tend to have a star prima donna surrounded by men. La traviata (#1) revolves around a soprano, a tenor, and a baritone; La bohème (#3), a soprano, a tenor, and the tenor’s many (male) friends; Tosca (#5), a soprano, a tenor, and a baritone; and so on. Even minor roles are overwhelmingly male. I recognize that it 11

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would be an impossible task to exactly match available singer fachs with available role fachs when planning seasons, but an influx of Handel (and/or similarly women- or castrati-filled old works) and new operas with more female roles could make the numbers a tad more reasonable.

Operas written decades or centuries ago do not directly address many contemporary concerns. Some do, of course—for instance, you can find plenty of exploration of crossdressing, gender ambiguity, and homosexuality in Baroque opera. However, other staples of modern life (like social media) are understandably absent from the texts of older operas. Creative directors can find ways to make old texts speak to new topics, but it would be nice to have more operas that were written explicitly for that purpose.

Ilana holds degrees in engineering (Olin College) and European literature (University of Cambridge), but she actually spent most of her student years in rehearsals and onstage as an actress and operatic mezzo-soprano. She is currently watching operas in Munich on a Fulbright scholarship. She tweets about opera a lot (@ilana_wb).

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The Opera Industry: Is it broken?

The good news is that the canon does change, albeit slowly. The bel canto revival of the 1950s, led by singers such as Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, and Beverly Sills, brought Rossini’s, Donizetti’s, and Bellini’s works back from obscurity. Mozart began to languish in the late 1800s and early 1900s (when Verdi, Puccini, and Wagner dominated the stages), but he regained his prominence in the mid-twentieth century, surpassing even Wagner to become the third-mostperformed opera composer. Handel was similarly forgotten after his death (as an opera composer—his oratorios remained popular), but revived along with other early music in the 1960s. Between 2008 and 2013, he was the eighth-most-performed opera composer, with 479 productions of 54 operas!

However, these major repertoire shifts all took place 50 years ago or more. They were also all actively promoted by groups of singers or academics. We can’t count on repertoire to change itself. Without advocates, good forgotten works will remain obscure. Without commissions (or at least interest in producing them), new works will not get written. The opera industry and the people associated with it—managers, singers, instrumentalists, audiences, critics, scholars, etc.— have to be the driving force behind changing the operatic canon in ways that address its problems and secure opera’s future as a medium.

I’m not suggesting we give up the standard repertoire altogether. There will always be a special place in my heart for La traviata, Figaro, and Carmen, and it would be a shame not to be able to see them from time to time. But more creative programming, including new commissions, little-known gems, and revivals of ‘dead’ operas, could improve the position of the opera industry in the global cultural conversation. It could give companies better tools than the current canon to showcase singers, address timely topics, and intersect with other media. Moving away from a season full of guaranteed bestsellers will take courage, especially when so many companies are struggling financially, but it’s essential if we want this art form to thrive for further centuries.

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

Conversation with Melissa Robason, Librarian

By Laura Petrarcha In 2003, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Librarian, Karen Schackenberg, led an effort to gather old sets of sheet music and repurpose it for the Iraqi National Philharmonic.

At the time, the INSO was working with depleted resources after their theater had been burned in the April 2003 invasion of Iraq. Schnackenberg, with the help of MOLA— the Major Orchestra Librarians Association-- , was able to provide the INSO with hundreds of scores, recordings, and supplies, enough to provide the INSO with a small library. The Dallas Morning News picked up the story, and a local high school music student named Melissa Robason read about the orchestra librarians’ efforts to help musicians in need and wondered if she had found her calling.

“When I was a senior in high school, I knew I wanted to be involved in music with my career, and I thought the only options available were music education and performance. And I wasn’t too satisfied with either, and I thought, well, I guess I’ll go into music education,” Robason says now, ten years later in the press room at the Metropolitan Opera. But after reading about Schnackenberg’s quest to help the INSO, she realized there might be another way to pursue a career in music.

“I said to myself, what in the world is an orchestra librarian, and I might be interested in that!

So I called [Schnackenberg] up and said ‘hey, I might want to be an orchestra librarian!” The call certainly came as a shock to Schnackenberg, at least as Robason recounts it: “Whenever she tells the story, she says that she fell out her chair! She said to herself, who is this high school senior who wants to be an orchestra librarian? So, she was like, well, come to the library, I’ll show you what we do, maybe you can intern for a little. She showed me around, and I ended up interning there and working there part time during the summers. After I graduated college, it turned into a full time position; everything came into alignment.”

Robason has come a long way from the audacious high school senior who picked up the phone and called up a woman she read about in the paper. We have about half an hour to talk before Robason has to get to work for the evening’s performance of Strauss’s Arabella, so I start by asking her what her job is, and why she’s not a librarian in the traditional sense: “We’re almost nothing like librarians,” she says. “We have what’s called a performance library, and everything in there is sheet music. And the reason performance is a big aspect of performance library is because everything we do is for the performance of the opera. With every set of music we have to do bowings. I like to explain it as if you go to an orchestra concert, 13

Laura is a first year master’s student at Fordham University. She works in digital marketing and studies English literature. She spends her spare time running up and down the velvet steps at the Met. You can find her at fyeahoperasingers.tumblr.com and on Twitter as @petrarchian.

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Librarian Melissa Robason

you’ll notice that all of the string players bow up at the same time and they all bow down at the same time. There is an aesthetic aspect to it, it looks pretty, but I think the more important thing is that you get a specific sound by doing that. It’s easier when you’re going downbow to sound soft and light.” She goes on to explain the process: the principal concertmaster decides what he or she wants to do with the bowings, and then the principal second violinist, violist, cellist and bassist write their bowings based on what the concertmaster does. It is then the job of the librarians to make sure that all of musicians receive scores with accurate and up-to-date bowings.

Robason does mention that the Met uses a lot of older scores, some of which have bowings already written in, and part of her job is keeping those scores in proper working condition for the musicians. But what happens when the Met is working with a brand new piece, like Nico Muhly’s Two Boys?

“It came to us blank,” she says of Two Boys. “If it’s something new, we have to start it from scratch. It just takes longer to prepare. We have to make sure page turns work out; you can’t really be playing and turning the page at the same.

It’s Robason’s job to think of these things so the musicians don’t find themselves stuck in any tough corners during the performance. Tonight, she’s making sure that the only thing the orchestra has to worry about is performing a sterling rendition of Arabella. She’s here two hours early in case any of the musicians need a score or have any other problems or questions. An hour and a half before the performance, the librarians are busy setting out the music for orchestra and making sure that everything is in the right place. “Our pit is really tight,” Robason admits, “so we try to make sure everyone has enough space to play and to bow properly.” The librarians also keep track of music and direct traffic whenever an opera calls for a banda, a group of musicians that plays from the wings or even in costume from the stage.

It’s a gruelling job, and it requires an astounding amount of attention to both logistical and musical detail. Robason has been working at the Met for eight months, after spending five years in her native Dallas with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. She never imagined herself as a librarian for an opera orchestra, and it was a class in college that introduced her to the operatic repertoire. “I was thinking you know, symphonies often play a lot of opera extracts, so it’s good to know this information. But the operatic coach who taught the class really helped me develop a love of opera, and I had no idea it was even there, and I had a lot of fun in that class. And when this job came open… I knew I had to at least try, and I was lucky enough to get the job. And it’s only deepened my appreciation for opera.”

Robason could not have guessed that her adolescent curiosity about orchestra libraries would lead her to one of America’s most august operatic institutions. But to hear her talk about it, you can tell that she’s motivated not by prestige, but by a sincere desire to participate in great musicmaking. “The greatest joy I get from this job is knowing that I had some small part in making the performance happen. It’s really a satisfying feeling.”

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

By Jennifer Choi A night at the opera is always a gamble. You can make a series of decisions to increases the likelihood of having a great night out, but there is never a guarantee. Your favorite singer may be under the weather, may even cancel due to illness. The new production could be flashy but empty drivel. The new singer on whom you took a chance could be just another skinny, pretty flash in the pan with a boring voice. The Metropolitan Opera has been my opera home since the very beginning of my love affair with opera, and I have experienced enthralling, goose-bump inducing performances as well as expensive, hours-long naps. No matter what the performance though, the orchestra seems to come with a ‘guaranteed for approval’ sticker. I have yet to attend a performance at the Met where I felt disappointed by the orchestra.

It wasn’t until a couple of months ago, when I was sitting in a performance of Der Rosenkavalier in Washington D.C. and straining to barely hear the principals who were drowned out by the orchestra, that I realized just how spoiled I had been by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Often hailed as one of the best orchestras in the world, the Met Orchestra has been a beacon of excellence through a troubling couple of years for the house, both financially and artistically. I sat down with Jessica Phillips, who plays second clarinet, to talk about the orchestra. Jessica is also the chair of the orchestra committee, and she was on the forefront of the orchestra’s turbulent round of renegotiations with the house during these past couple of months. She was the first woman to join the clarinet section in the orchestra’s history, and as we talked, I felt myself wishing she had been my clarinet teacher growing up, a feeling I quickly willed away and I felt like I was being unfaithful to my own teacher. Later we were joined by Susan Spector, who had arrived a couple of minutes early for her own interview.

What does a day at the Met look like for an orchestra musician?

JP: Rehearsals usually start at 10:30am and end around 2-2:30pm. Depending on the week, we all do between 4-5 out of the 7 shows a week. I’ll do between 4-5, and if it’s a non-switching show, I’ll do 5 performances. This week we’re rehearsing Arabella, and last week we were

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doing Chenier. Whatever opera is being rehearsed that week is what will be performing the week after. The number of rehearsals we have depends on the level of difficulty of the opera.

Usually I try to warm up in the morning, get here early, and look at the part. Arabella is really, really hard. I am the chair of the orchestra committee, so in the afternoon, I’m doing a lot of work related to that. A lot of times, I teach privately, and I teach at Rutgers as well, depending on the day of the week we have rehearsals here. Shows are at 7:30pm, and generally I leave my house at 6:30pm. I get here and eat dinner here and warm up. For this show, Chenier – I have to remember how to put a bass clarinet together – it’s one solo in the middle of the opera. That also makes me nervous. So today was 10:30am – 2pm, back at 6:30pm. Rinse and repeat.

So most people are here in the morning and in the evening as well.

JP: Usually, I’m here for rehearsal 3-5 days of the week. Last week, I was here every day. We don’t have a structured schedule like symphony, where they have performances on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. We could be here on any given night. Some people will do a double performance on Saturday. It just depends on what the rep is. Right now, I’m doing Chenier and Arabella.

We have such a big orchestra so that we can cover all of the shows each week. We go through periods where the show is only 3 hours instead of 4, or the rep is really hard. Then you go through really hard times like the Ring Cycle, and my shoulders are like “oh god.”

In terms of rotations of players, do people specialize in rep? How is that assigned?

JP: My teacher, David Weber, played here from 1941 to 1943. Back then, he specialized in German rep and the other guy specialized in Italian rep. It was how they did it, and it was really, really strict. But now, no, at least not in my section. I have the best section! At the beginning of the year, we sit down and go through the schedule. We pick out what we like to do, and what works with our personal schedules. It takes about 6 hours to assign all of the operas.

Sometimes you go through about a 2-month period where you’re working with the same people over and over again. Chenier, Arabella, and Wozzeck are non-switching operas, so you play all the performances because they’re so difficult. You don’t have a lot of flexibility in your schedule, so I might not see people who don’t play in those.

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Clarinetist Jessica Phillips

So each section assigns performances separately?

JP: Each section divides up who is playing what. The principals divide what they’re going to do, because they rotate, and I work with Jim [the other 2nd clarinet player], and we figure out what we’re going to do. He specializes on bass clarinet, so he plays anything with bass. But he’s currently on leave, which is why I’m playing bass clarinet for Chenier. I was like, I’m going to try it. He’s playing with the Philharmonic for the rest of the season.

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

What is the difference between playing in a symphony orchestra and an opera orchestra?

JP: The biggest differences are that we’re listening to the singers, and that we’re not in the spotlight, both figuratively and literally. We’re not on stage, under the bright lights. We’ve been lucky in the last couple of years – we’ve played some of best of the operatic rep - Strauss, Wagner, even some of the Rossini. So we get our day in the sun, but what makes us different is that we’re constantly listening and adjusting to singers. So that gives us this lyrical quality and it gives us flexibility. Singers can rush or take a long breath, and we have to wait or move along as necessary.

SS: Sometimes we have to push for the singer. We know they’re going to take their time, and some conductors will be like “no.” But we know the aria and we know the singer, so we’ll adjust to the singer. You can really tell with the new orchestra people. There is a joke – at the end of the show, the audience will be clapping and we’re looking at the stage and somebody will say, “Oh, there are singers in this?” It takes a while to adjust your whole consciousness.

Arabella is such a thickly scored opera, so when it says mezzo forte, we have to play much more softly. I’ve seen symphonic orchestras where the conductor will do something weird and everybody goes wrong. But here, we’re just so used to that – it takes a lot to throw us. We call that ‘stump the band.’

Are there are particular conductors the orchestra clicks really well with?

JP + SS: At the end of the year, we will talk with Gelb about what worked and what didn’t. Generally I think we’re pretty easy to please. But sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there. We’ve had conductors that other orchestras will love, and we don’t feel that way. But that might be the difference between opera and symphony. There was a lot of love for Fabio Luisi. He came off the bench and conducted the Ring for the first time. He is elegant and extremely courteous and got to know all of us.

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It’s not just a one-week thing when conductors come here. They come here early, work with the singers, do some staging, then they work with the orchestra only, then we go to the pit and put it all together. So there’s 3 weeks of rehearsals right there before the show has even started. Then the run can be 3 weeks. Daniele Gatti [who conducted the Met’s run of Parsifal during the 2-13 season] was a huge love affair. Everyone really loved him. Simon Rattle. Muti. We also love Marco Armiliato. He has a photographic, so when he’s conducting, he’s literally reacting to everything we’re doing, laughing, smiling, he knows everybody by name.

What makes a singer easy or difficult to work with? How much rehearsal time do you get with the singers?

JP: You get one rehearsal, 10:30am – 2:30pm for each act, and that’s in the pit. Then we have a full dress in the pit. We might have a sitzprobe. We usually give singers one sitzprobe, and that’s on the orchestra level rehearsal rooms.

Sometimes, singers will be sick and will not be able to attend rehearsals.

That happened with Vittorio Grigolo for La Boheme. We didn’t get a chance to rehearse with him before opening night. That’s one of those things where I will look at my colleagues and think, “Wow, this is a great orchestra, because we followed Grigolo to the ends of the earth and back.” Then the second time we performed it, it was fine. That happens when someone gets sick. But when they’re so exciting, like Grigolo is, and when they bring something new and fresh to a role, it’s exciting for us too.

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Oboist Susan Spector

SS: Sometimes, it’s difficult when singers mark during dress rehearsal.

I’m sure it’s hard for whoever is listening to check for balance. I understand Thomas Hampson was sick, and we had no Wozzeck for the dress rehearsal. It doesn’t happen very often, and we certainly understand

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why it happens. But I would say that is more challenging.

JP: What’s frustrates me even more are stage directors. In the new Carmen, they put the singers all the way in the back of the stage, and there is a quartet in Carmen that’s very tricky for us no matter what. The stage director put all of them in the back, and we can’t hear them at all. Jimmy [Levine], he will always be like, “Baby, baby, come forward.” But some conductors don’t feel comfortable doing that. We get different kinds of directors who don’t know a lot about opera, and I think that’s my biggest pet peeve.

Are there are pieces or composers that the orchestra enjoys more?

JP: We love the big stuff, like the Strausses. I think this orchestra plays Wagner amazingly, especially with Jimmy. Fabio did a great job. I do enjoy the Boheme here, and I really like Barber of Seville.

SS: I like it because I can leave early because there’s no part for me later on.

JP: We also like Wozzeck and Lulu.

SS: I really like Verdi. When you’re in symphonic orchestra, you don’t get to play like Verdi.

We get such a wealth of amazing music.

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JP: Don Carlo, Otello, Falstaff…

SS: I miss Beethoven. We don’t do Fidelio enough. He only has one opera and we don’t do it often.

JP: I know! I’ve been thinking about doing Fidelio a lot actually. When someone gets a job in a symphonic orchestra, I’ll say, “You know, Don Juan versus Der Rosenkavalier.” Even the symphonic Strauss is nothing like opera Strauss. This year, we got really lucky and got to do Frau and Der Rosenkavalier and Arabaella all in one year.

SS: The oboist who gave Strauss the idea for his last concerto, which was for oboe, was a teacher of mine named John de Lancie. He was a soldier in WWII, stationed near Garmisch. So he sought out Strauss. And he asked Strauss, “You write so beautifully for oboe in all of your operas. Have you ever considered writing an oboe concerto?” And apparently, the answer was a flat no. Then later, it says on the title page of the Strauss oboe concerto, “Dedicated to an American soldier.

Who runs the Twitter account? Because it is really well done!

JP: I started it. Well, Susan actually really started it.

SS: When we were approaching negotiations, and I wanted to make sure we had the domain name. I made sure we had metorchetramusicians.org JP: When do you your own Twitter, it’s hard to do both. And Susan is really prolific with her own account. I started doing it, and I didn’t really understand how Twitter works.

Well, you do an amazing job. A lot of the young opera fans have said, “We don’t know who is running this account, but all of the other opera companies need to take a lesson from the Met Orchestra Twitter.”

JP: It’s easier when it’s not personal. There are so many fun things going on.

SS: Yeah, when you’re tweeting your own life, you feel self-conscious. But when it’s a group, you’re supposed to tweet your own horn.

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Clarinetist Jessica Phillips

The increased online presence – was that to increase exposure?

JP: The original idea was, “We’re pretty good and no one seems to notice us.” We wanted there to be access to us and just see what happens. I think it’s doing all right. We’re doing it on our own, on our spare time. The press office at the Met doesn’t do anything for us because nobody’s ever thought to do it. We thought maybe this would be something cool.

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Interview with Julia Pilant, Assistant Principal Horn

By Ilana Walder-Biesanz Julia Pilant, Assistant Principal Horn for the Metropolitan Opera, has an illustrious professional résumé: degrees from Eastman and Julliard, an American Horn Competition victory, and engagements with major symphonies in America and Japan. But she is friendly and approachable as we chat over Google+ after one of her rehearsals. She appears on my screen with frizzy hair and a big smile. We blink at each other for a few moments and mouth words back and forth before figuring out how to turn on the sound. She laughs and introduces herself.

I decide to start at the beginning. Why the French horn? She explains that her father played in high school and convinced her and her brothers to follow in his footsteps: “When it came time for us to choose instruments in elementary school, my dad said, ‘Ugh! Too many strings, too many flutes, woodwinds squeak. Why don’t you play the French horn? And I can teach you how to play.’ So my brothers and I were like, ‘Great! One-on-one time with dad!’ So that was how it all happened, how it all began.”

Most people don’t turn their elementary school instruments into a career, I insist.

“That’s true,” she laughs. Despite a life-long passion for music, she originally planned to study political science and become a lawyer. “But there was a horn professor at University of Missouri who came down to visit, and he said, ‘So, what music schools are you applying to?’ And I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘What do you mean, what? I have to ask you, what? What, you aren’t applying to music school?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ And he said, ‘Well, why not?’ And I said, ‘Because I don’t want to live in a cardboard box.’”

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She chuckles, and adds, “Meanwhile, my parents are thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh, what’s this man saying to our daughter? He’s going to talk her into pursuing music. Aaaaah! Our worst nightmare! We just wanted her to appreciate it; we didn’t want her to try to make a living from it!’ So I ended up applying to schools that had music schools as well as good political science programs, with the idea, ‘OK, well, I’ll give the music thing a shot, and if it doesn’t work out I can fall back on a different degree.’ Luckily, things worked out!”

“Pretty well,” I agree. I ask how she first got exposed to opera.

“My godmother actually grew up in Brooklyn, with the City Opera and coming to the Met occasionally. Every Christmas, we would watch an opera. That was our post-Christmas dinner ritual.” She pauses for a moment, thinking back, then corrects herself. “It was either opera or the new Muppet movie. So… ridiculous, sublime.”

I don’t ask which is which.

A Shakespeare in Opera class at Eastman School of Music during her undergraduate studies and listening sessions with her brother’s opera-loving tennis coach decided her fate: “I was just sold, between the opera class, and my godparents, and my brother’s tennis coach, listening to these unbelievable voices and I was just like, ‘That’s it! If I had to choose any job in the world, I would love to be in the Metropolitan Opera. But that’s a long shot, so whatever.’”

Of course, she plays in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra now. How did she secure her dream job?

“I auditioned! My way of thinking was, ‘Any job would be great. But if I were pressed, I would choose the Met, just because they play like the singers sing, and I’ve always been drawn to that kind of playing style.’ I actually auditioned for two other positions before I won the position I’m in now. One was for a third horn and I totally choked. I wanted it too badly—I didn’t even make it out of the first round. And then the second audition was ten years later, for assistant, and I was ready for it, and then the day of the finals—I made it to the finals, and I had the flu! No disrespect at all to my colleagues who won the jobs—they’re fantastic players, obviously. But I was just like, ‘Really? The flu?’ Luckily, miracles do happen and the third time was a charm.”

Her face lights up. “I’m really a sucker for Puccini. I love the heart-on-your-sleeve emotion and passion and raw expression.” After a pause, she adds, “I loved Rosenkavalier—it’s a great horn part, it’s Strauss. You never know whether he loves or hates the horn because his parts are so

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French Hornist Julia Pilant

Now that she’s at the Met, what are her favorite things to play?

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challenging.” She takes a moment to address Strauss: “I know your dad played horn… Did you like your dad? I can’t really tell.” We both laugh.

Puccini and Strauss are obviously quite different, but the Met’s repertoire encompasses an even broader variety of styles. Julia admits that it’s a challenge. “It’s using your lips in a different way.

Puccini is really well-written for the horn, for the most part, so you can kind of just relax and let it happen more organically, whereas something like Strauss or Wagner is like weight-lifting. You really have to be in good shape, do your exercises and your stretches beforehand, and power through it. You need a lot more air, a lot more support. And things like Mozart—it’s so delicate, you really have to have a lot of good flexibility. So it’s hard, if you’re playing Wagner one night and Mozart the next day. I really have to take a lot more time to warm down after the Wagner, make sure I’m loose after the performance, and then the next day make sure I have a really comfortable warm-up so that I can play the delicate stuff really lightly.”

“Have you ever been part of one of the onstage ensembles at the Met?” I ask.

“I have not been in costume yet! I keep hoping… But I think everybody really likes to do it. It’s a little silly. For Don Giovanni, you get your tights and your britches and your wig, and you need to wear your skullcap for your wig. I haven’t gotten to do that. It’s silly, but it looks so fun! So maybe sometime in the future.” Not that she minds the pit. “From where I sit, I can see everything, so that’s fun too. I have this great job, and I get to watch opera while I play opera!”

As an opera fan, I have to admit that it sounds like a great gig. But she insists that the biggest perk is not all the operas she sees, but the camaraderie in the orchestra. “As hard as this orchestra works, it’s a happy orchestra, and everyone really gets along, and everyone really is supportive of each other. I think in this industry it can be exceptional because there are other orchestras where you have people who sit side by side and don’t speak for years.” She laughs, “And you come to the Met, and people are wonderful and competent and kind and complimentary. It’s a really nice family.”

I ask whether she listens to opera outside of work. She doesn’t have much spare time for any music listening, she admits. “I’m here so much! When I get my down time, I’m either sleeping or fixing a meal or practicing. In the summertime, when I have more time, I listen to more pop, rock, alternative, country—I really listen to everything. I try to go to more fun concerts. I actually just went to hear this bluegrass band called the Punch Brothers. And they are spectacular. I like all kinds of music; I’m not really restricted to one genre. If it’s well-done, and something kind of off the beaten track, and has a good beat to it, I’m all for it.”

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How can a Met Orchestra member fit a social life around such an intense schedule with full evenings?

“I can’t lie, it’s a little socially difficult. But I think my position is exceptional. It’s feast or famine. If they’re doing Mozart operas, unless I’m filling in for someone, I’m usually not needed, so there can be weeks where I’m like, ‘Ooh! I have four nights off!’ I also really love being here.

So it doesn’t feel like as much of a burden as maybe it would for normal people. You make time where you can. In the summer, I usually make up for a lot of lost time. We do have Sundays off, and when I’m not teaching on Sundays I make an effort to get all my friends together and cook a meal or go to the park.”

Right, teaching. In addition to her job at the Met, Julia is member of the faculty at Bard College Conservatory of Music. When I ask her about it, she says she loves her students but is worried about the future of classical music in general. “When [the students] first come, they usually already have a passion for the instrument, and they usually have already been exposed to classical music to a degree. My main concern is just that in the United States, so many music programs are being cut from the schools. My concern, I guess, is making sure that the younger kids are exposed to playing an instrument. Because by the time they get to Bard or decide they want to go to music school, they’ve usually been fortunate enough to have participated in a music program or a youth symphony, so they have a good idea of what they’re getting into.”

I can’t resist asking one final question: If she didn’t play the French horn, what instrument would she play?

Julia lets out a deep sigh as a dreamy look enters her eyes. “Cello. I just love it. It’s got that beautiful mid-to-low-register warm sound, and they get these exquisite solos in opera, just heartwrenching. We just finished a run of Andrea Chénier and it’s just…” As her voice trails off, she sighs again. “What you can say in those solos! It’s just… Total instrument envy.”

She snaps back to the present and laughs at little at her own wistfulness. We thank each other and say our goodbyes. Time for that nap.

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French Hornist Julia Pilant

Ilana holds degrees in engineering (Olin College) and European literature (University of Cambridge), but she actually spent most of her student years in rehearsals and onstage as an actress and operatic mezzo-soprano. She is currently watching operas in Munich on a Fulbright scholarship. She tweets about opera a lot (@ilana_wb).

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

Interview with Susan Spector, Second Oboe

By Jennifer Choi

Born in Kansas, raised in Oklahoma, Susan Spector comes from a family of musicians. On Twitter, she is known as @PerfectPitchMLB, and her Twitter biography reads “Second Oboist with @MetOrchestra. Mom of @MsOperaGeek. New York Mets Season Ticket Holder, fan & occasional blogger.

Proud @Local_802_AFM member.” With her active presence on social media, she is a bit of a minor celebrity in the opera Twittersphere.

When did you start your first instrument?

My mom taught me how to play piano when I was 6. Then I decided I wanted to play the alto saxophone in 5th grade. Our public school music program didn’t start until 7th grade, but my dad was a band director so he got me started on that. Then by 8th grade I wanted to play the oboe.

My parents were both music majors, mostly educators, but they have also performed.

If you could play a different instrument, what would it be?

As far as an orchestra instrument, french horn. I also really like to play bagpipes. I’ve sort of fiddled around with them, but not seriously. Maybe in my retirement years.

How were you introduced to classical music?

It was always playing in our house. My parents had a wall full of LPs, and I can still picture in my mind. My mother was an elementary school music teacher. I was in her class from 3-6th grade, so I got exposure that way.

What made you decide that you wanted a career in classical music?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because Melanie [daughter] will be going to college soon. She’s known for a long time that she wanted to study music. I didn’t really. It seemed 25

every time I performed, people would say how great I was and how I did so well. So I thought, “Wow, I must be okay with this.” So I tentatively decided to major in music performance at Witchita State. I never considered going to a conservatory – I was not that confident of my abilities. Both of my parents had majored in education, and they questioned me, “Are you sure you don’t want something to fall back on?” And I said, “No. If I can’t perform, I want to do something else.” But I was not always confident about my career choice, and at the end of every year, I asked my teacher what my chances are of being successful at playing the oboe. She said there are no guarantees but if I kept progressing the way I did, I would be fine. I then went to graduate school in Philadelphia at Temple University. I studied with the principal oboist of the Philadelphia orchestra. The longer I was in school, the more I saw that I was compared favorably with other people my age, I was encouraged to keep trying. And I really, really wanted to do it.

What was your first exposure to opera?

I think the first time was just on recordings. Then when I went to undergraduate school, we did Don Giovanni with Alan Held. He was at my school too, and he was Leperollo. We also did Bluebeard’s Castle by Bartok, with 2 faculty members and I loved it. I can’t believe they assigned the school orchestra to do it because it’s difficult, but I loved it. Other than those and a concert orchestra with the Spokane Symphony, everything else was symphony.

Why did you choose to play for an opera house instead of a symphony? How did you end up at the Met? The short answer is – this is the audition I won. I took 15 auditions after I got my job with the Spokane Symphony. I kept taking auditions because I didn’t really see myself staying in Spokane. I wasn’t sure I wanted to play opera, but I thought, “What the chances of winning an audition?” Then I won the audition, so I said I guess I’ll learn to like opera.

How is being a musician at the opera house different from being in a symphony?

The hours are much longer and harder. They a sign in the garage – what time the different halls at Lincoln Center get out, and we always get out so much later.

You’ve had the chance to perform on the Met stage during the operas. What was that like?

I loved it! I’d love to do more of it, but it’s mainly trumpet players who get to do those things, like in Aida. I had a lot more respect for singers after those experiences. I’m already a huge fan

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Oboist Susan Spector

Also, in a symphonic orchestra, when you have a soloist, you’re trying to listen to them. But listening is such an essential part of our job. I’m not saying other top orchestras don’t listen to each other – of course they do. But it takes someone who can think on his or her feet to do really well here. We have a probationary period of 2 years, and it’s that long because when most people first come here, everything is new. It’s a lot to learn, to adjust to the idea of playing in the pit and accompanying singers.

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of singers, but when I was on stage, I really had trouble hearing the orchestra sometimes and I wasn’t that far upstage. Sometimes, when you’re in the pit, you think, “Can’t the singers hear they’re behind, etc?” I can totally see how they can’t. Of course there are two monitors, a conductor, and a prompter, so any direction you turn, you can see a feed. But it’s more comfortable to hear than just go by looking. The visual help is better than nothing, but I was really astonished. It also depends on the volume of the orchestra, but what I played in Francesa de Rimini, I wanted to be in time with the orchestra and be in tune, and I couldn’t quite hear them.

What do you listen to for fun?

I really like bluegrass music. I like jazz. There aren’t many genres of music that I don’t like. I don’t particularly like rap, but I like pop. I really like listening to good bluegrass music.

Do you have a favorite opera?

Tristan and Isolde. It used to be Der Rosenkavalier, but now it’s Tristan.

How has the classical music world changed from when you were a student?

There is a community that is really nice, and that didn’t exist before the Internet. I can connect with people because of Twitter and Facebook. It’s possible to share the passion of the art form with people you’ve never met and then you can meet those people. That’s really fun, and that’s totally different. Ivis – she’s such a charming person! She’s a person I never would have met, but I made some comment on Twitter about opera and she started following me and vice versa.

We’ve had conversations on Facebook about politics and other things like that.

That’s good for students, and that will help them make more connections. There is practicing and preparing for audition, and those are all things you need to have. But sometimes, it helps to have connections and being in the right place at the right time. So I think that all this would be helpful, and it’s something I didn’t have back then.

As for schools, I don’t know for sure – I’ll have to see once Melanie gets into school.

Sometimes when I listen to auditions, it seems like there are lot more players that are technically phenomenal and flawless, but I don’t hear a lot of musical expression, personal nuances. Not everybody is like that, obviously, but that disappoints me a little bit. We always end up hiring people who have great technique but also have something to say personally and musically. But I just have to wonder if there is a lot of emphasis in music schools these days on being perfect at the expense of being personal and expressive, and I’d be curious to see what other people who listen to auditions have to say about that. I sit on a number of committees now, and it kind of surprises me.

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What are some of the challenges that young musicians face in the classical music scene?

I think it’s very competitive. There are a lot of people looking for very few jobs. That was true when I was young too, but every time we have an opening, I’m amazed by how many people do fly in. These days, it’s not terribly great in general for college graduates going out in the workforce, so I would think there would be pressure from family to pursue something else that has more of an assurance of a job when they graduate. My parents said they trusted me. You have to follow your bliss.

I’ve talked about this a lot with Melanie. She wants to be a singer. I assume that came from singing on stage at the Met and being in costume and she just loved the whole thing. But she also plays the horn, and I have to be very careful not to push that on her because in my heart, I wish I played the horn. I think she’d encounter much less competition by going on the horn, but I can’t push her to do that. It has to be something she has a passion for. She has asked me, “What if I can’t make it?” And I tell her, “When you’re in music school, keep your mind open to other things.”

Melanie is a great pianist.

She can accompany voice students, do it to make money. It can be very rewarding to do that. I reminded her that when I was in undergraduate school, I got a job at a public radio station on campus because the radio people found it was much easier to take music majors and teach them how to work technical equipment than it was taking the radio people and teaching them how to pronounce Dvorak. I never thought I would do that, but I loved it. That came along and all my musical knowledge and training came in handy.

You’re a big fan of the Mets. How did you become such a big fan?

Through marriage. My husband grew up in the Albany area, and he’s been a Mets fan since they started in 1962. I sort of came by it that way, but I’ve gotten just as passionate about it as he has.

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Oboist Susan Spector

So I would say to anyone who is coming up and studying music, I would say, keep your options open. Students today would do best by thinking big, keeping their mind open.

The Opera Industry: Is it broken?

The Royal Opera on the Big Screen

By Lewis Wolstanholme As anyone else who lives in an average British town will surely be none-too-familiar with, seeing a live opera performance is a difficult task. Whilst there may be an annual opportunity locally to see a travelling Opera Company, or even an amateur performance during the summer, for someone with a fuelled passion, this just isn’t enough, which therefore leaves two options: you can either travel a significant distance to one of the larger cities, or go down to your local cinema. This year, for the first time, my own local cinema screened 5 opera performances live from the Royal Opera House.

The performances are broadcast via satellites direct to the partnering cinemas, allowing people across the world to watch the show alongside the in-house audience. This is cleverly integrated with extra material during the intervals for the cinemagoers, e.g. interviews, backstage glimpses, and a live twitter feed displaying viewer comments. The Metropolitan Opera originally pioneered this type of live screening in 2006, but by 2011 the Royal Opera House, along with many other leading opera companies, had joined the trend.

The aforementioned season included Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’, and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see such a monumental work ten-minutes from my doorstep. And I’m glad I didn’t; all those involved succeeded immensely in bringing the opera to life with a very modern approach to setting and staging; Angela Denoke provided a breathtaking performance of Kundry that has stayed with me ever since.

Personally, I felt being in a cinema rather than Covent Garden was a commendable alternative; the next best thing if you will. You’re still in a social environment that promotes attentive listening/viewing (compared to watching an opera at home where you can go off and make a cup of tea during Act 3) and everyone there has the same intent and focus as you. And yes, whilst it may be argued that a cinema isn’t quite as apollonian as an opera house, who can afford to be so fastidious?

I recently spoke to Tom Cundy, the manager of my local cinema, about how he felt the season went. He was all round positive about the entire experience, expressing his excitement for the next season and other similar livestream opportunities that he has now taken on board, whilst celebrating the passionate audience that was in attendance for every performance. These onenight events were held in the cinema’s largest room (a seating capacity of 300) and sold on average around 80 tickets for each performance. The audience demographic was made up mainly of older generations, which appears to me as an on-going trend with performances of this nature; therefore, I don’t deem it noteworthy enough to delve into without losing focus.

In 2011, the Huffington Post rightly stated that the Met had become a “content provider”1 by selling its live performances in this new way. In the grand scheme of things, is this a productive development or just a trend? On the surface level, this makes a niche style of media more accessible to the masses, which is evident when you look at figures. In the UK, nearly 35,000 people attended the Royal Opera House’s 2013 screening of Verdi’s Nabucco, and when

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Sources 1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivan-katz-/and-so-falleth-the-sky_b_815462.html 2. http://static.roh.org.uk/for/pdfs/tickets-cinema-season-201314.pdf 3. Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jacques Attali, p.85 Lewis Wolstanholme is a composer and pianist who has an enthusiastic approach to musicology. He has spent the last year performing, travelling and building up a back catalogue of compositions while waiting to begin studying an undergraduate music degree in London this September. Find him at www.lewiswolstanholme.co.uk 30

The Opera Industry: Is it broken?

Puccini’s La Bohéme was shown earlier the same year it was “the second highest grossing film that night”2. Evidently, the strategy to incorporate a wider audience has been a success; but socially is it just another hopeful attempt to keep public entertainment alive?

In the digital age, most media now can be accessed with similar ease just by staying at home.

Often, specific art channels on television will regularly broadcast opera recordings, and with websites like YouTube, where you can access multi-lingual subtitles, you can almost watch an opera whenever you want. Some opera companies are even doing free livestreams, as was the case with the premiere of this year’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ by Charles Wuorinen, which could be viewed online for a limited period. With all of this competitive media, not to mention the countless CD recordings available, an issue raised by Jacques Attalli springs to mind: “public performance becomes a simulacrum of the record: an audience generally familiar with the artist’s recordings attends to hear their live replication.”3 Are we simply losing touch with live performance being a social ideal? And furthermore, is this just a clever innovation for opera companies to stay afloat? With the closing of the New York City Opera late last year, it cannot be denied that some companies indeed are struggling.

It seems redundant to compare the pros and cons between live performance and recorded performance, but with something like opera that has such varied display of audio and visual qualities that differs between companies, seasons, and even individual performances, there are always new flavours that can’t be contained in one definitive recording. Every time you see an opera live in person, even if it’s one you’ve seen before, it creates an impact solely individual to that performance.

This could also pose the threat of monopolising any forms of amateur operatic performance.

With the leading companies and others of a similar standard branching out in this way, could smaller opera companies become overshadowed by the global stage? However, on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, it could ignite new enthusiastic opera societies in smaller communities by bringing opera to its new ever-growing audience. This cinematic medium is still in its infancy so only time can tell; but with continued success, who knows?

The next Royal Opera season contains 7 operas that will reach around 400 screens across the UK alone, whilst the English National Opera are set to join them with their first attempts at cinema broadcasts. So, if the opera industry is falling apart and this solution only serves temporarily, at least for the time being it’s found a good foothold and is managing to expand on its successes in a really positive way.

The Opera Industry: Is it broken?

Different, and Luckier

by Griffin Candey In its simplest terms, we’re discussing “The Death of Opera” not because Death has arrived, but because we hear what we think are its plodding footsteps down the hallway. New signs appear almost daily: New York City Opera folds, then Opera Boston. San Diego Opera endures a large shake up, dies, and rises again – the Lazarus company. Currently, we are bombarded by news of the internal strife at The Metropolitan Opera, a battle large enough that it might bring the whole place to a standstill. Those stories, combined with reports of sinking ticket sales and public disinterest, paint opera as a lifeless, dusty thing – the Old Yeller of music, awaiting the same fate.

Compelling though the evidence seems, I do not subscribe to that tortured portrait.

-///1. #NotAllOperaCompanies Those stories of folding opera houses are rarely tales of dwindling artistry, but rather of managerial and organizational failure. New York Opera succumbed to it after many years of well-known mismanagement. When San Diego announced its sudden closing, they were still in the black and had multi-million dollar budgets. Their woes came solely from an inability for their governing bodies to prioritize effectively, which occurs at many levels and in many fields with depressing frequency. The beauty of what we do does not exempt us from those common, nagging hardships.

Of course, we hear these disaster stories more frequently because they sell: they sound more ‘news-worthy’ and spark more conversation. (Sometimes, shouting matches.) We read them, share them, Tweet them – I am as guilty as anyone of perpetuating this cycle. “[The] absence of disaster doesn’t make a compelling headline,” mentions Paul Krugman in the NY Times (although he’s referring to the Affordable Care Act,) “and the people who falsely predicted doom just keep coming back with dire new warnings.”

Less frequently shared are the success stories. Chicago Lyric saw an 8% growth in ticket sales this year, including a 16.2% increase in sales to younger audiences. Houston Grand, successful in their own right, just received $175K from the Mellon Foundation to help commission five new operas, including shows from American flagship composers like Carlisle Floyd and Jake Heggie. Minnesota Opera received the same. Opera Theater Saint Louis notes its own 8.1% box office jump, including a tremendous showing from its Young Friends subscription program. (By the way: that program, which caters directly to Generation X and Y audiences, has grown an outrageous 93% in the past two years and sold out literally all of its available tickets this season.)

Alongside this success in the upper echelons, let’s not forget that Opera America has recorded that 128 new opera companies have formed since the year 2000, including current staples like Gotham Chamber Opera. Such promising numbers provide a much-needed glimpse

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into the fresh directions and risks that we’re taking, the front lines of change. This sort of success is becoming the rule, not the exception.

These numbers are not symptomatic of a dying art.

2. Every Day I’m Tumbl-ing Let’s zoom out for a moment.

I’m writing this opinion article for Opera 21 – a monthly non-profit online magazine which addresses the art form’s important issues, from questioning opera’s treatment of race and gender to the emerging role of technology, all the way to our current “Death” edition. This publication was founded by Jen Choi, who self-describes as “a grad student who moonlights as an opera fan.” The magazine’s editors, contributors, and audience range through all walks of life, musicians and otherwise, and hail from many cities in multiple countries.

This community formed primarily through Tumblr, an online social media outlet that allows one to share a wide swath of photos, media, and stories – and what began as many, many young people caring about and talking about opera has evolved into live-Tweets of operas, multiple live and archived video conferences about opera’s future and ethical aspects, organized groups of fans attending live performances together, interviews with well-known singers and composers, and more. We swoon about opera singers in the way that others fangirl about members of One Direction. We become emotionally invested in the upcoming seasons of opera houses and newly-premiered works (and discuss them at length.) We organize concerts, compose things for one another, share stories about careers and auditions. For Heaven’s sake, we write fan fictions about opera characters. (Lookin’ at you, Kim.) Devotion like that is not casual: it is abiding.

This level of devotion is not symptomatic of a dying art – not by a long shot.

We continually talk about the “Death of Opera” as an all-encompassing, body-and-soul death that promises to swallow us up, our past as well as our future. That view, while cinematic, is terribly overdramatic and unlikely – and beyond that, I whole-heartedly support the more controlled, more cleansing type of death.

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The Opera Industry: Is it broken?

3. Necessary Death Fitting is Walt Whitman’s description of death in the sixth poem of “Song of Myself:” “What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

Griffin is both an opera singer and a composer, with a MM in Music Performance from UIUC.

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The Opera Industry: Is it broken?

Think, for a moment, about how opera has reimagined itself in the past four centuries – now, only in the past four decades. Pieces of opera die off all of the time: it’s not just a common occurrence, but a literal necessity. The lifespans of individual operas often extend through many centuries, but the way that we approach them culturally, musically, technologically, and emotionally changes with each successive generation that produces them. Opera is art, and art is a living thing – and living things adapt.

This adaptation, however, requires action on our part – and while it is often a natural process, it is still an intentional process. Members of each artistic generation have the choice to view change along a spectrum. On one end, the choice to idolize the past, bemoan that things are changing, and herald that change as failure – on the other, the choice to push enthusiastically toward the future, knowing that the things achieved there will eventually become the innovative present (and eventually, the idolized past.) Difficulties arise when the former overpowers the latter. Luckily, I sense that we are shifting in the other direction.

As ideas change rapidly in our field and in the world at large, we naturally outgrow the things that weigh us down. There is no choice in the matter. The small glimpses of death that we experience do not prophecy further death, but simply make room for more life, the tallest tree falling in a dense forest.

Change is not, and never will be, symptomatic of a dying art.

-///The vitality of opera is not dictated solely by the rise and fall of the largest houses, a la some form of operatic stock ticker. Despite the gloom that dominates headlines, opera is alive – fully, unquestionably, full-of-piss-and-vinegar alive. I see its life in enthusiastic students and committed teachers – I see it in thriving online communities – I see it in the dozens of new operas and forward-thinking productions that premiere each season. I see more than enough life in the cheap seats to make up for any faltering in the box seats.

At the end of the day, any form of art is kept alive by those who can’t live without it – and from that vantage, it seems to me that opera is more alive than ever.

Further: while opera’s future relies on that kind of love, it can only benefit when it is an active kind of love. Immeasurable progress has been made, even in the past few years, by the thoughtful and equitable application of many individuals’ passion, and there is ample room for further progress. There are so many outlets for a single individual’s commitment to this art form that I cannot even begin to list them – but I can tell you that there is one that suits you, and I can tell you that your voice is larger and can make a broader impact than you might ever imagine.

Your commitment can set the tone for where this art form goes. Make yourself heard.

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

Interview with Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinetist

By Gregory Moomjy *Note: Interview was conducted before Mr.McGill left the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Anthony McGill has been principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra for 10 years.

His talents are not limited only to opera though. He has also played chamber music for some of the world’s finest orchestras and soloists. His first eponymous solo CD came out in 2010.

You have been on many television programs – do you see yourself as an ambassador for classical music when you go on TV? I think it’s a part of our time, what we must do as performers. We have a duty to show people why music education is important. I grew up in a little neighborhood that was tough in Chicago and it’s a part of who I am. My brother and I are both classical musicians so it’s a part of my way of sharing that’s a way that I can give back. It’s an incredible honor to give back.

What made you first decide that you wanted a career in classical music?

There was a flute in the closet. I wanted to play the sax but it was too big. Listening to my brother practice is what got me to want to play. I started when I was 9yrs old but I really fell in love with it when I attended the Interlochen camp in. I fell in love with the culture of artsy people. I was on stage in the youth orchestra. I would get chills throughout my body. I fell in love. I had no choice but to say this is what I wanted to do from there on in my life.

Tell me about performing at Obama’s inauguration?

It was and is going to be the greatest honor of my life. It still feels like a dream,. It was shocking and amazing for my parents. It was great to be a part of history. It was his first inauguration.

This year marks your 10th year at the Met, any thoughts on the past 10 years?

It is immensely fulfilling, emotionally and spiritually. I couldn’t have asked for this amount of satisfaction. Hearing a great performance is beautiful. The percentage of great performances is very high. It’s amazing to be a part of that. It is very special. I don’t take that for granted.

What’s your favorite opera?

La Boheme. The one I’m most familiar with and is still my favorite.

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Tell me about the Met’s trip to Japan?

It was very interesting, challenging, and tough. It was so great to connect with these people through music. Nobody had been visiting Japan because of what happened but music helped us connect with them. Music is a communicator of emotion. It was wonderful.

Which composers do you feel write especially well for the clarinet?

Mozart is a great writer for the clarinet. He captures the soprano range. But Strauss has amazing orchestration. It’s difficult to say because they all have their strengths.

As a musician, what’s it like now that James Levine has returned to the Met? It’s absolutely wonderful. What I remember 10 years ago, the rehearsals felt like musical lessons. He communicates like we are the instruments and he coaxes it so that it sounds like one instrument. It has a very specific sound underneath. It’s about what quality he is getting.

Performances respond very uniquely under his direction.

How do they respond uniquely?

I think there is a strong sound but very lean as well. At the first rehearsal this season, he would have us repeat the chords over and over until we were one. And he would say “when you get it right, you sound like yourselves”. It is a James Levine sound- he cultivates it.

You worked with several orchestras other than the Met, which organizations have you particularly enjoyed working with?

The first orchestra position was in my twenties. I was with the Cincinnati Orchestra. I was the Associate principal clarinetist. It was a fabulous orchestra and still is.

What’s it like to work with younger musicians?

It’s absolutely wonderful. I’m teaching in a bunch of different schools. I’m learning from them, philosophically, technically etc. it’s about how much do you love it. I do work with kids from different cities. I see myself as an ambassador. I started in a community center in Chicago.

You worked not only with young musicians but with young children as well. Are there any classical music educational initiatives that you admire? And why?

I was a member of the merit school of music in Chicago. It was a great program and tuition free.

On Saturday we would have lessons. It was first for inner city kids. But now it is for everyone.

There are some program organizations in Queens, Philadelphia and Atlanta, that are changing the world, giving kids the opportunity to play music. You change the world one kid at a time.

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Clarinetist Anthony McGill

What are the challenges they face in the modern classical music scene?

Its similar {to when I was growing up} the competition is very stiff for musicians. People are taking other paths to reach audiences. Whether it’ s working with new young composers in chamber music. Many people are having a lot of success because of it.