conducting haiku

Do I know the score?
How strong is the pulse in me?
Where is it going?

Viene la sera

“Viene la sera”

My first Madama Butterfly was in the summer of 1991 with the New York City Opera.  The company engaged me for a run of nine Butterfly performances and a pair of Mikado’s after hiring me for a ten-week national tour of La bohème the previous winter.  The legendary Frank Corsaro himself directed his own decades-old Butterfly production in a major revival.

I had prepared the work once before for the San Diego Opera, did my usual homework, memorized the score, rehearsed diligently with the cast and girded my loins for what I knew would be limited rehearsal time with the orchestra.   They did grant me two 2-½ hour rehearsals, one with singers.  The catch was that the first was with two-thirds of the orchestra in New York and the second was the next day with the remaining third in Washington.  We opened that very night at the Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts, without a proper dress rehearsal, without my ever having seen the chorus and orchestra together or been in the pit.  The highlight of the performance, for me at least, was when the principal oboe failed to play the lick at Suzuki’s entrance because he was ASLEEP.  Mind you, this was within the first eight minutes of the opera (“WAKE UP!” one of his wind colleagues yelled through a whisper).  The rest of the evening proceeded without further mishap, but there was something indescribably poignant about performing Butterfly outdoors as night began to fall, Pinkerton serenading Butterfly, “Viene la sera…”

Next stop, the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center.  By this time, a few weeks later, I felt more confident with the work and was excited about my New York debut.  My parents flew in from Minneapolis, my teacher from Ann Arbor; my sister arranged for the post-performance reception on the Club level of the fancy hotel at which she was a concierge.  She even contrived to have a little grand piano made of white and dark chocolate for the occasion.  The performance went well, everybody left happy.  Except for the reviewer from the New York Times.  Dad and I went out early next morning in search of the paper; we opened it to the Arts sections and read, first a paragraph about the production, another paragraph about the stage direction, another about the singers, all good.  The fourth paragraph began, “The problem with the evening was…” and devolved from there.  I was understandably devastated.

The next morning, Maestro Christopher Keene, general and artistic director of NYCO, called me in to his office and told me that the company stood firmly behind me.  At one point in the run, the soprano singing the title role made a snide remark about my tempos literally as we were bowing on stage before the public; I mentioned something to the administration; the next day a note of apology appeared under my dressing room door.  I was profoundly grateful for their support; not only did the company see me through the Butterfly production, it reengaged me for the next season. The following summer, I was entrusted with another major revival, that of Bizet’s lovely Les pêcheurs de perles (1863).  For Pêcheurs I took the bold but (in my opinion) historically justified step of rewriting the ending, music, orchestration, text and storyline, reworking material from the opera.  The company agreed to perform my version, as long as the press wasn’t informed in advance.  The production was a surprise hit; none of the critics noticed the new ending, not even the Times reviewer who was generous with his praise of my work, the same who lambasted me one year earlier.

My second season at NYCO ended with two more Butterfly’s, same Corsaro production.  I just stepped in to them, no rehearsal.  A lot of fun, that.  Seriously, if you have your craft down, it is exciting and you know that your gesture really matters, that the orchestra (most of the musicians, at any rate) are actually looking.  One anomaly: At the final performance of the run, the offstage “Humming” chorus began a half bar off and stayed that way for the rest of the act. I forget exactly how it happened, must have been my fault, I suppose.  These things do occur on occasion; the company nonetheless engaged for a third season.

I was delighted when they offered me Die Fledermaus.  It was again my first chance to conduct the work, having done the musical preparation on it years earlier.  Less than delighted when they mentioned Bohème (“One of our most treasured productions”).  In spite of my pleading, they pretty much forced it on me: Don’t worry, assured the artistic administrator, the orchestra can play it in their sleep.  An ill-considered cliché, given my Wolf Trap experience.  “That’s the problem – they do,” I replied.

Fledermaus turned out to be one of those “Everything you know is wrong” experiences.  I agonized over Hans Swarovsky’s critical edition of the score, in which he convincingly challenges all of the traditions encrusted on this masterwork.  I ended up compromising, keeping some traditions, overturning others.  In the process, I personally went through the orchestra material, revising phrasings and adjusting dynamics.  I was particularly happy with the tempo of the second act concertato, “Brüderlein, Brüderlein und Schwesterlein,” which I led in a slow but robust 1.  The company was not totally behind my efforts, but at the opening performance in Saratoga in upstate New York (another venue for pre-season run-outs; it was so chilly on opening night, some strings played wearing cut-out mittens), even the artistic administrator commented with enthusiasm, “Well!” after a brisk, virtuoso rendition of the overture.

Curiously, as with Butterfly two years prior, things were less happy when we returned to New York to prepare for the Lincoln Center opening.  Even though the production had already been successfully performed on the road, a chorus member challenged me in rehearsal and in front of the cast and staff, insisting about a tempo in Act 2, “We can’t sing it at this speed.”  No one had my back that day, not even the chorusmaster.  Nor did anyone leave a note of apology under my door this time when, during a performance, the concertmaster loudly demanded “Get your f__king marks out of my part” as I went to shake his hand at the close of Act 2, the public applauding above us in the house.

Bohème went no better, and my tenure as a staff conductor at the New York City Opera came to an end.  Hence I learned one of my three crucial rules for young artists, “Pack lightly.”  Since then however, there have been more Butterfly’s, more Bohèmes, and I remain thankful to the City Opera for affording me the opportunity to lead these two works for the first time in my career.  Puccini has never come easy to me; I still find his titles challenging to conduct.  Nothing for me is more difficult than leading a well shaped Act 3 of La bohème, the work I’ve conducted more than any other.  Alas, there have been no Pêcheurs productions since and I do miss The Mikado; Lotfi Mansouri’s production for City Opera remains a highlight of my career, even though I just stepped into them; it was delightful, gorgeous to look at and exquisitely humorous.  But as it is said, one door closes, another opens; we move on, and forward.

I share this story with you, readers, in anticipation of an article specifically about “Viene la sera,” one of the great duets in our literature; how to prepare it, how to conduct it, how to help make singers shine in it and above all, what to do when the snoring starts.

- Mark Gibson