(Photo: FreddieF)

This year’s International Händel Festival in Göttingen kicks off on May 16th and will run until May 25th. The festival will present a range of events dedicated to the composer, including lectures, concerts, recitals, and readings, along with the eighth edition of its Händel competition. The centerpiece of the festival will be five staged performances of the composer’s 1724 opera “Tamerlano,” which will take place in the city’s Deutsche Theater. There will also be a performance of his oratorio “Solomon,” which will be performed at Göttingen’s Stadthalle on the opening evening.

OperaWire visited with the festival’s artistic director and Händel specialist, George Petrou, about his love for baroque music, his fascination with Händel, and the scheduled performances of “Tamerlano” and “Solomon,” both of which he will be conducting.

OperaWire will also be there to review both performances.

OperaWire: You conduct a wide range of repertoire, but you seem to focus on the baroque. Would that be a fair statement to make?

George Petrou: No, I don’t think so anymore. I would say that I conduct a rather wide repertoire, but certainly baroque is one of my great loves, especially Händel.

Possibly the image you have of me as a baroque specialist comes from the recordings I have made. For a number of years, it was a big part of what I was doing because there was so much new repertoire to be discovered.

OW: What is it that attracts you to the baroque, and why to Händel specifically?

GP: What attracts me is that baroque music contains some of the greatest musical moments in history, and I like great music; it would be impossible for me to ignore it! Bach, Vivaldi, Händel, and others; you just cannot help falling in love with their music. We are so fortunate to have so many wonderful operatic works from the 18th century; they stand out because they contain so much dramaturgy. Händel was such a great dramatist that his works not only qualify as 18th century masterpieces, but they also look forward to the 19th and even the 20th centuries. They are treasures of the baroque, and that’s why nowadays they are considered to be classics within the opera repertoire, whereas not so long ago his operas were considered to be novelties; people were even surprised if you staged one. Nowadays, I think that everybody agrees that Händel was one of the greatest operatic composers of all time. He can be placed alongside, for example, Mozart and Rossini.

OW: How have performances of baroque music changed during your career?

GP: First of all, I think that the 1990s and the first decade of the millennium were mostly dedicated to trying to define authenticity and then attempting to be as authentic as possible; the term ‘historically informed’ was very much in fashion. It was the quest for many artists to try and discover what was actually happening in the 18th century, at the high point of baroque opera, and how we could make our music sound, not like Puccini, but used to recreate the flavor of the golden era of baroque opera. I think we have taken great steps in this direction and have now come very close, or at least as close as we can, to achieving what we call an authentic sound and an authentic approach.

The question now is, once you achieve this, why would I want to sound like an 18th century musician or singer or even produce operas like they did in the 18th century? And actually, I believe there is no point! We are children of our own age; we have inside us as much Bach as we do Tchaikovsky, and as much Mozart as we do Shostakovich. Our perception of time and volume is completely different from that of an 18th century person, so if we’re going to make this music speak to us, we have to use the vehicle of the past, which is the music itself, and a certain framework of rules that can be applied to performance practice, but actually spoken with our own modern words in order to be understood because otherwise we would be creating a museum.

You could ask, what is wrong with a museum? Nothing. Museums can be very enjoyable. However, if you go to the Acropolis in Athens and admire all the beautiful art and the science, answer this question: would you want to live at this time? Would you want to live 3000 years ago, or are you happy with where you are now? I want the past to inspire me, but I don’t want to exist in the past.

We are now in the fortunate position to have accumulated a large amount of knowledge about opera in 18th century, which has been accumulated with great difficulty; there were no recordings, and only fragmentary treatises regarding performance practices and we have had to put in a lot of hard study. We have now reached a point, through trial and error, where we can use this language in order to be modern, and by modern I mean contemporary, to be people of our own time.

Several years ago, and I don’t mean too many years, if I tried to show a modern orchestra a few things relating to 18th century music, it would be new to them; the conventional training of an orchestral player started with Mozart. They had no idea! Today, everywhere, everybody knows, to a greater or lesser extent, what you are talking about. Now, they even ask you if you would like a piece to be played with vibrato or without vibrato. Musicians can now do both. They know what an ornament is and how to ornament, when it is allowed and when it’s not. All these questions have now been solved. I no longer have to be a teacher to anybody, especially with good, modern orchestras. They know how to play baroque music. You can let them play the music and enjoy it because they have the knowledge.

Yes, we have come a long way in the past 15 years. Today, everyone is aware of historical practices and the timeline. We can decide how we want to play a piece of music; it is our choice. We are not living in the past. People live in the present and want to be moved by being able to relate to the greatest masterpieces of the past, of which baroque opera is a part, in a voice they understand.

OW: What do you, therefore, think of the plans to rebuild the world’s first public opera house, namely the San Cassiano theatre in Venice? Is it a worthwhile exercise?

GP: It is a wonderful idea! It is absolutely worthwhile rebuilding it because it is a monument. It has a history behind it, and it should be rebuilt as a monument.

It would be interesting to see a performance there. Firstly, to view opera as it would have been back then, or as close as we can get to that. Obviously, we cannot create it exactly as it was because that would be impossible; we’re different; we understand life and time differently than the people of that era. Secondly, I would also like to see a modern performance, and by this, I mean a performance not restricted to the rules of 17th century opera, but with a staging inspired by this theatre. I took this approach in Drottningholm, which is probably the most authentic historical theatre surviving from the 18th century baroque. It was a performance of “Giustino,” which I both conducted and staged. It was interesting, as I could not neglect the theatre in my staging. There is the theatre with its history and the machinery, and you cannot neglect that. How to use it, however, is your decision. You can use it according to the rules of the 18th century or engage with it as a 21st century person to tell a story in a way they will understand to touch people’s hearts.

So, I think it is very important and very inspiring that these monuments are preserved or reconstructed.

OW: What do you try to bring to a performance, whether it is an opera, an oratorio or any other musical piece?

GP: What I am trying to do is to ensure that there is at least one second of magic, real magic, during the performance. If I achieve that, then I’m very happy. When this occurs, I think that we all understand that it is happening, whether as performers or as an audience member.

This is actually what I look for when I am a member of the audience; if I get one or two seconds of magic in which my hair stands on end or I smile or laugh, then I think that the mission has been accomplished. I don’t judge a performance by the accuracy of the details! Of course, we have to take care of the details; it is our job. We have to make sure that it’s accurate and consistent and has high quality, but this also relates to our paranoia as performers who want their work of art to be perfect. This is their bottom line! But is it a good performance? Maybe, maybe not. If you don’t manage to create this one second of magic, then I would say it is not. I need to prepare myself with the aim of creating these moments of magic, even if they last for only a second.

I have been to many performances where this magic doesn’t happen, but I have been to many performances in which there are many minutes, even hours, where the magic occurs, and people are inspired. At such times I feel very fortunate that I was there. These moments are so precious because they are so rare. Any artist that can achieve this in the minds of the audience is a great artist, and we can say it is a great performance.

OW: How much freedom do you give to your musicians and singers? For example, do you allow them to write their own embellishments?

GP: I used to write the embellishments. Nowadays, most singers have the experience and skills to write their own. Clearly, a singer knows their voice very well; they know what they can do and what they prefer. Providing they are tasteful, then I’m very happy to accept them. If, however, I feel I don’t like something, I’m quite straight with them and will let them know that I don’t think they work and suggest that we try to find something else.

I have to admit that in the past, I was much more generous in accepting their ornamentations, which, by the way, I’m sure was the historically correct way of doing things; I’m sure that in the 18th century some singers did more ornamentations than others, and some singers did it more tastefully and others less so. Lately, however, I find an ornamentation interesting only if it serves a dramatic purpose and is not only for decorative purposes. Anything that is just decorative tends to ruin the overall scheme and diminish the performance. I realize this is not a historical approach, but I try to think about what the composer was trying to achieve with a certain melody or passage of writing. I use ornamentations to emphasize or highlight the meaning of the words, that is, to bring the spotlight on   if an ornamentation accomplishes this, I strongly support it, but a lot of times they don’t. What is the purpose of the da capo in a baroque opera? It is emphasis. It’s exactly what we do in our everyday life when we repeat things. Why do we repeat things? To emphasize them. How do you emphasize things with music? You have to make them stronger. If you simply decorate things, does it make the music stronger? No, you probably make it sound stupid. This is what has been in my mind for the past two or three years; we should look for the emphasis, rather than focusing on decoration, and sometimes emphasis means having no decoration but interpretation.

OW: What attracted you to taking up the post of artistic director at the International Händel Festival in Göttingen?

GP: It is a great honor to be here because it has a great history. It is the oldest Baroque opera festival and one of the oldest opera festivals in the world. We can also say that the renaissance of Händel operas started here. Someone decided to put on a completely unknown opera by a completely unknown opera composer who nobody took seriously at the time. Everybody thought that opera really started with Gluck; nobody took the operas by Händel or by Vivaldi seriously. When Beethoven said that Händel was the greatest composer he knew of and that he would take his hat off and bow in front of his grave, he really had no idea about Händel’s operas. He probably said that based on “The Messiah” or his Concerti Grossi. Can you imagine what would have happened if Beethoven knew about Händel’s operas?

Händel’s music was so operatic, even in his instrumental music. He is always describing a situation. He gets his fire from everyday life; he’s not a composer who is writing as an academic exercise.

OW: You are also a stage director. What attracted you to this aspect of opera?

GP: Two things attracted me. Firstly, in order to do my job as a conductor as well as I can, I have to go deeply into the music and into the relationship between the drama of a story and the music. If you go deep enough, then you start seeing images and discovering intentions that are hidden in the baseline or in a strange instrumentation or in the way a certain word is set to the music. Often, you feel that stage directors don’t see this, and this aspect of the work is lost. I do not mean they are not good at their jobs, only that they are unable to see it. I don’t know if what I see is good or bad, but I see it, and at some point I just felt the need to see it on the stage. I knew that I had to see my own mistakes, my own misjudgments, my own failings, and my own sins on the stage. It has been very inspiring for me because it has allowed me to bring together my love for the theatre and for music.

Secondly, as a conductor, you find that the more you work in theatre, the more you encounter stage directors who don’t know their job. To an extent, I’m there to help them, but there is a point where my help is not serving anybody, and the result is a lost opportunity. So, as a musician, I need my peace of mind, and therefore I need to take on the responsibility myself.

OW: Do you intervene when you are not happy with the stage direction?

GP: There are a lot of reasons for not liking a staging. It might irritate you, or you might find it insulting or boring. It might be very well done, but you can’t see the point. So, my reactions differ. I try to discover inside myself what it is that is irritating me. Why am I getting angry? Is it because I think they’re slaughtering the piece or is it because they have triggered something inside of me? If it is the latter, they’re doing their job well. However, I always try to be generous in my judgements. I am never dismissive because I know it takes a lot of work for an artist to be up there and to present a work of art and to be open to judgement.

Talking of judgement, this brings me onto the role of critics. I read all the reviews about my performances, and I respect most of them. I don’t mind if they are positive or negative, but occasionally there are times that I think that a critic has understood nothing. And I don’t necessarily blame the critic for this, because this is what they have understood from watching the performance, and therefore, I accept it. It could be that I have not communicated what I wanted to, and then it is my mistake! The only time I get angry is when a critic is dismissive of an artist. They are putting themselves out there to be judged, and although it is right that critics can say what they want, they should always be respectful. I have read reviews recently where they have compared cast A to cast B. This is so disrespectful. There should be protocols in place to stop this!

OW: Is your approach to conducting a concert performance different from that of a stage performance?

GP: Images give rise to a certain interpretation. For example, we did a production of “Giulio Cesare,” and for one of the arias, we did an aria with an improvisation between the singer and the solo violinist, who was an Egyptian folk violinist. So, the improvisation was done using oriental scales, which Cesare would imitate. I thought it made perfect sense for the staging; whether you liked it is another matter, but at least dramaturgically it was justified. I would never do that in a concert. If I did, people would think I was crazy and would wonder why I was doing this. So yes, I do have a different approach. In a concert, people create their own images and become their own stage director, which is something that a lot of people like, and it’s beautiful. People in the audience hear the music and create their own ideal staging, and I don’t want to interfere with that. I don’t want to impose things that people will not understand. However, if it’s a staged performance and it’s justified, then I am very happy to present it, and it is then up to the audience to decide whether or not they like it.

OW: Last year in Göttingen, you conducted a concert performance of Händel’s “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno,” which used live close-up images of the soloists and orchestra projected onto a large screen and caught the emotions on the faces of the performers in a way a staged production cannot, simply because many in the audience are too far from the stage. What were your impressions of it?

GP: I loved it, and I loved the piece. I knew that the cast consisted of extremely expressive singers, who are able to transmit emotions, and I thought that this would be the best way to put it in front of the audience; by magnifying the faces, the audience can become part of it.

Actually, it was something more than a concert. I like the idea of having people come and think they will be watching a concert performance but then develop it into something unexpected. Performances such as this can be very inspiring, even to the point of being more successful than a stage performance.

I thought it was a very moving experience, and one that the audience could relate to, but it needed special types of singers for this to work successfully, and fortunately that is what we had.

OW: This year at the International Händel Festival in Göttingen, you will be conducting a concert performance of “Solomon” and a staged performance of “Tamerlano.” Why did you select these two works?

GP: I have never performed “Solomon,” and I thought it was time for me to do so. I made a recording of “Tamerlano” in 2005, which received an Echo Award, and of which I am very proud. Since then, I have not returned to it. It has been 20 years, and it has been too long. It is one of my favorite operas, so after last year’s production of “Sarrasine,” I thought we should return to a Händel milestone.

OW: What can the audience expect from this production of “Tamerlano?”

GP: It will be directed by Rosetta Cucchi, who has a musical background as a pianist playing with great singers. She is a musical stage director. I have worked with her in the past, and because she is musical, she is able to take the score and see the work from a musical and textural perspective. She will not arrive at rehearsal carrying a booklet from a CD, as some directors do!

She is very much into the relationships between the roles and possesses good insights into their psychological mindset; “Tamerlano” is a very psychological work with a lot of conflict, and I thought Rosetta would be the perfect person to direct it.

OW: Will “Solomon” have any surprises, or will it be a more traditional concert performance than “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno?”

GP: It will be a more traditional presentation because we are presenting it in two different locations, one day after the other. However, “Solomon” is a more brilliant piece, and it is less emotional and psychological than “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno,” so it does not lend itself to such a presentation.

With “Solomon,” you will be able to enjoy the brilliance of Händel’s music. With “Tamerlano,” however, you will enjoy his skills as a great musical dramatist and realize how far ahead of his time he was, especially with the third act, in which you may have the feeling that you are witnessing a Verdi opera with its powerful use of recitativo accompagnata that accompanies Bajazet’s death. I think this is something that was never repeated either by Händel himself or by any other composer of his time.