OperaWire: We know the Tchaikovsky work of “Mazeppa.” How did you discover Clémence de Grandval’s “Mazeppa?”

Alexandre Dratwicki: We’ve been doing a lot of work in recent years rediscovering women composers. Palazzetto Bru Zane has been recording them since we started, because we focus on lesser-known French composers. So, I was already used to reading through scores when I came across “Mazeppa” – it caught my eye because of the title. And when I looked more closely, I realised it was written by a woman.

Clémence de Grandval is such an exciting composer. “Mazeppa” isn’t absolutely modern, but it’s on the level of Gounod and Massenet.

While working on “Mazeppa,” we quickly realised it would make a great staged recording. Shortly after, we went to Munich – partners there were already looking for works by women composers, and so we put “Mazeppa” forward. We ended up doing the concerts and recording it there, with a staged production in Dortmund as well. I know other opera houses are now considering the work too.

And to be honest, while we were deep in “Mazeppa,” we naturally started looking at Grandval’s other symphonic and lyric pieces. That’s what led us to plan a complete Grandval cycle for next season. So “Mazeppa” really just marked the beginning of our relationship with her.

OW: There’s a Tchaikovsky opera that’s very well-known with the same title. Are there any similarities in the storyline in the librettos?

AD: Well, I think maybe some pianists, they know the Transcendental Étude No. 4 that is named “Mazeppa.”

What Grandval adds is the soprano – Matrena has a mad scene at the end, like Ophelia in Hamlet, and there are these romantic, lyrical moments that belong entirely to her. Because of that female character, who carries so much weight, Mazeppa becomes psychologically more complex than Tchaikovsky’s version. Mazeppa himself is not exactly a hero; he plays people politically, he manoeuvres. So, he’s a more ambiguous figure in Grandval’s telling. But by the end, it’s Matrena you’re thinking about, more than him.

That’s very typical of late Romanticism, especially in France. In Werther you leave thinking of Charlotte, not Werther. In Gounod, it’s Juliette who sticks in your mind, not Romeo – Marguerite lingers, not Faust.

OW: Are there any plans to show the work at a house like the Opéra de Paris or the Opéra Comique or any theatre like these?

AD: I know that Nicole Car, who recorded the album and sings a lot at Paris Opera with her husband, Étienne Dupuis, had a discussion with the administration of the Paris Opera about “Mazeppa.” I don’t know what will come of it. The problem with big houses like Vienna or Berlin is that they need at least two full casts of well-known singers, and if someone falls ill they have to bring in a name at short notice. That’s why they keep returning to “Traviata” and “Rigoletto.” It’s expensive, it’s complicated, and honestly I understand why those houses can’t easily take a chance on something like this.

OW: How did you guys get Nicole Car on board for the project?

AD: Well in fact, we are friends with Nicole and she has told me she would love to be part of our projects.

So, the first one I suggested for her was “Mazeppa”. She read the music with the pianist and with me and immediately after reading she said: I want to sing this.

After more than 15 years at the Palazzetto Bru Zane, I can state that lots of well-known singers, like Marina Rebeka or Véronique Gens, or Nicole Car, they have a desire to be part of this adventure – it’s special and a way to have a recording.

I think they also see it as something valuable for the profession itself. They know we take time – real rehearsal time – and that’s something a big opera house rarely offers. Sometimes singers arrive, get pushed onstage after a single piano rehearsal, and do what they can.

For some of them, just having the space to work properly, with a good team, reminds them why they entered the industry. After all the competitions and everything that comes with building a career – not just jumping in to sing a Traviata they could do in their sleep, but sitting with colleagues and working through every bar meticulously as if it’s the most important thing in the world – there’s great pleasure in that.

OW: How did you get involved in this work of rediscovering and finding these lost works and these rarely performed works?

AD: When I was young, with my twin brother, we were in a little city in France, called Metz – it’s near Germany. We did a lot of chamber music because we played instruments and there was a huge library and you could go and take what you wanted. I remember we did some viola quintets, for example. And I remember I went and I took the Spohr and Michael Haydn and we read this as if it was Mozart, Brahms or Schumann.

We were maybe 16, and we found it so exciting. So I suppose I am used to playing rarities for my pleasure, from when I was playing piano with my brother. Ultimately, it comes down to treating this music with the same respect you’d give Mozart or Brahms – making considered choices about casting, giving the work the time and care it deserves – it deserves this.

And yes, there are countless recordings of “Le Nozze di Figaro,” “Rigoletto,” “Traviata.” People need to hear those works where they live, and there’s always room for a singer to bring their own interpretation of the Countess – but we have so many versions already. With something rare, you can offer something more.

OW: What is that process of recording given that it is becoming a lost art and what have you found to be the biggest challenges of getting those recordings out?

AD: Well, as you know, today you have fewer recordings of a complete opera, an increasing number of people who want to do recording. If you want to exist in the communication of today, you have to record a video or at least one aria or one little passage. And so, it means that we have lots of partners, especially orchestras and choirs. They are free and happy to be part of this adventure.

It also means that they can invest money, at least the salaries and they can bring the venue. They can bring the orchestra with all the instruments you need. I think it’s easy to find a place and people to do recordings because they want to do it.

For opera recording specifically, you’re casting for the microphone. Some voices are extraordinary in a large venue – volume, projection, all of that – but the moment you put a microphone on them, the chest voice and vibrato become troublesome. The French isn’t really French anymore, the articulation goes, the sound loses a certain something. So what you’re really looking for are singers who work for a live audience and for a recording at the same time.

That’s why sometimes a voice that isn’t the biggest in the room can be exactly right on a CD. Tassis Christoyannis, who sings Mazeppa, makes colors that are so interesting to hear in the recording. And Nicole is ideal because she can fill a big house but also pull back to a true pianissimo – she doesn’t push the chest voice, and her French has a quality that makes a real difference. That’s what sets a recording apart.

OW: Tell me about the process of choosing the work and how do you know it’s the right project?

AD: It’s intuition. And this is something you can’t explain. You feel that this is interesting and with this singer, it could be even more interesting and with this conductor it’ll all just come together – a kind of magic.

You have to understand the music, the text, and see it dramatically. It’s not enough that it’s well written for the voice, the text must also be interesting.

The first thing we do at the very beginning of each opera project is to read it on the piano. And not only once.

For example, for “Mazeppa,” I remember we played this with my brother 16 years ago. It’s not just two months before we decide to do it. It means that you have to read it again and two years after that you take the score again and you play again – it’s a long process.

Before any of that, I have to work with my colleagues on the music publishing side – tracking down whether a score and orchestral parts even exist, because sometimes all you have is a piano reduction and that’s not enough. Two situations tend to come up: either everything seems lost and you have to go back to the manuscripts and prepare a new edition from scratch, or you find a publisher who still holds the material. Sometimes we give up entirely. I have a list of titles we’ve been waiting on for years – “Fausto” by Louise Bertin, for instance, which we’d abandoned for a decade before it suddenly turned up at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.

With “Mazeppa” we were connected to the publisher Choudens, so we asked to look at the score and the orchestral parts. And that’s when things got complicated – what we found didn’t match the piano score exactly, because it turned out there are two versions of “Mazeppa,” and you have to know which one you’re dealing with. While these differences are not big, there are a lot of details that can differ between versions. In some there are 10 bars more, and others 10 bars less. And in one you don’t have the women’s choir and perhaps the other you don’t have the top D. Then you have to reconsider Choudens’ edition.

In this scenario, we propose to the publisher that we ourselves make a correction in the score and part. So, they keep the property, but the revision is by Palazzetto Bru Zane. Then you start to cast it, and you know you have lots of people you want and some people who agreed to or are free to do it. Almost always, for our initial cast list, we have at least six singers on each role.

And then when you perform a rarity, you have no recording for them. So what I do first is a sort of piano karaoke with the pianist and we prepare a recording one year before, playing at the right tempo. I can send this to all the singers and they all arrive prepared with the same tempo for each piece. It helps a lot, because they have the music – the pianists also play the melodic lines and the accompaniment. So, it’s a big job.

For those that aren’t French, I record the text spoken piece by piece and I give them some details on the diphthong and vocals. For the choir, I prepare the score with accentuation and declamation marked – every voice, every number, every place where you need to accentuate. When they arrive, they already have the right accents in place. I go to the choirs directly, Budapest, Tokyo, Munich, do the coaching there, and then at some point I try to get everyone together with the conductor to align on tempi, because that matters. And then it begins.

For staged productions, if the director hasn’t heard the music yet, I’ll have a pianist play through it and do what I call a staging karaoke – I speak all the characters’ text over the piano, live, so the director gets a sense of the dramatic timing. While he’s thinking about his staging he can listen to the music and hear my voice giving him the exact length, the rhythm of the declamation. He understands immediately whether something moves quickly or slowly, and it gives him a much clearer picture of what he’ll be working with when he finally hears the singers.

OW: What are some of the pieces that you would like to do in the future? 

AD: Yes, “Vercingétorix” by Félix Fourdrain. The opera is set during Julius Caesar’s Empire. Act one is set in France during that time and features big battles. And then Act two, is in Rome.

I have a lot of titles for example “Bacchus” by Massenet, and “Étienne Marcel” by Saint-Saëns and all these works are unrecorded at the moment, as you can imagine. We have a big list.