Q & A: Carlo Rizzi on Conducting Three Metropolitan Opera Productions to Kick Off 2022-23 Season

By Francisco Salazar
(Credit: © Tessa Traeger)

On Sept. 26, Carlo Rizzi opened the Metropolitan Opera for the third time in his career. However, that experience was unique because he was conducting “Medea” for the time ever. And it’s just the first of three works at the Met this season.

A few days after the opening, the conductor returned to the podium to conduct “Tosca” before moving into rehearsals for the November opening of a four-act “Don Carlo.”

It isn’t all that surprising to see the conductor jump from one work to the next in such a short span of time. He is one of the foremost operatic conductors of his time and his vast repertoire spans everything from the foundation works of the operatic and symphonic canon to rarities by Bellini, Cimarosa, and Donizetti to Giordano, Pizzetti, and Montemezzi. His understanding of Italian opera is one that makes him so lauded.

OperaWire spoke to Rizzi about working at the Met this season, conducting three productions, and making swift transitions between Verdi, Cherubini, and Puccini.

OW: How do you feel returning to the Met for three productions this season?

Carlo Rizzi: Coming back to the Met is always a pleasure, it’s a place where I’ve conducted a lot and there’s always a good relationship with the orchestra and the chorus that are the main ‘ingredient’ for a conductor. To come back to the Met for three different productions is something that I’ve been looking forward to a lot, also because these three operas are completely different in style, and it’s the first time that I will do one of them, “Medea,” so I was really looking forward to exploring that particular piece.

Of course, conducting three different productions at the same time is very hard, because the schedule is really relentless once the season starts and there are so many things to fit in, so it takes a lot, both physically and mentally, to be really concentrated on what one is doing in the moment but also looking ahead to the greater span of the rehearsal period for that particular piece, to be sure that everything is done properly.

OW: What did it feel like to conduct the opening night production of the Metropolitan Opera What does it feel like to conduct a Met premiere?

CR: This has been my third opening of the Metropolitan Opera season, after “Cavalleria/Pagliacci” in 1999 and “Norma” in 2017. It is a big event, big stress but also a big honor, so when Peter Gelb asked me to do this of course I said yes.

I had never conducted or seen “Medea.” I had of course heard many different versions, in French and Italian, recent and older recordings, so I knew the piece, but it has always intrigued me, and to be able to do it at the opening of the Metropolitan Opera has definitely been a big honor and a big responsibility. The pressure is really high, because for many people the opening of the Met is a very important appointment in the opera world, but also because this was televised live in Times Square. Also for people who were passing by, who maybe don’t go to the opera, I felt that we had to do our best to show them what a great artform opera is.

OW: Tell me about working with Sondra Radvanovsky and David McVicar on this production. What did you learn from conducting this work?

CR: I had already worked with Sondra and David McVicar for “Norma,” the opening of the Metropolitan Opera season in 2017, and I’ve worked many other times with Sondra and David separately, so I know both of them very well. Working with them is great because it’s not just trying to put bars together but there is a work of deep research about what a role and a character is, what the meaning of the opera is. I’ve always been very interested in this work: we have an overture which is very “Sturm und Drang” style, completely classical in form, but the way Cherubini uses the first and the second theme are more advanced than the classical period.

Then you start with the big number one that is the chorus and Glauce’s aria, and it’s like Cherubini is looking back to the past, and then you get to the end of the opera and the last 15 minutes are like they have been written 100 years ahead. This opera is full of interesting points and contradictions, which is why I was very interested in doing it.

What I’ve learned from this work is that one has never to lose sight not only of the music but particularly of the drama – I feel that the uniqueness of this particular opera is in the strict union of what the music wants to express in the drama, in the words. This is why I think it’s not just obviously a huge role for the soprano – you don’t do “Medea” if you don’t have a singer who can sing it – but it’s not all in the vocal line, the orchestra plays such an important part not only in supporting but very often in describing what the music is. During the rehearsal period with Sondra and David we’ve been really looking into this to try and bring out what we believed in, what I believed Cherubini wanted to tell us with his music.

OW: A few days later you conducted “Tosca.” How do you move from Cherubini to Puccini?  In a few weeks, you will open “Don Carlo.” It is a monumental work. How do you pace yourself when you are conducting three productions in a row?

CR: How does one move from Cherubini to Puccini, to Verdi? For a conductor, it’s probably easier than for a singer, because obviously for a singer there are technical and vocal differences that sometimes make it impossible to go from one repertoire to the other so quickly.

For a conductor, it’s easier – of course, what is important is to concentrate on which kind of sound and style one wants to elicit from the orchestra, because it’s not so much the technique of conducting, which is more or less the same, but it’s the big picture of how one wants to portray a particular composer that is important. So although technically it is possible to conduct many different composers after all – and in a concert you often do this – it’s important to really concentrate on the differences in style and on the sound that one wants to get from the orchestra.

Pacing myself is all about give and take: when I perform I have to go all out on that performance, when I rehearse – for example today I have a rehearsal of “Don Carlo” in the morning and a performance of “Tosca” in the evening – obviously during the rehearsal I am much more ‘contained’. It will be challenging next week when I will have the big rehearsal in the morning of “Don Carlo” and in the evening performances of “Tosca” and the final performance of “Medea.” That will require some careful mental and physical planning, but experience comes in to help at this point.

OW: What are some of your favorite moments in “Tosca.” How has your interpretation grown over the years? How has it been to work with the cast of Tosca?

CR: I think that the really great part of “Tosca” is the duet between Scarpia and Tosca in Act two; it’s such an incredible psychological thriller, Scarpia circling around Tosca with innuendos and then with explosions of lust and then going back to pretending to be a good person… It’s incredible the way not only the libretto goes, but the way Puccini is so able to move with the music from the subtlety, the false kindness of Scarpia pretending to want to save Cavaradossi, to the great scream that he does – “Mia, mia!,” You’re mine you’re mine! – it’s wonderful. This for me is the center of the opera, the brutality, and the complexity of the character of Scarpia is what makes Tosca find the strength to actually kill him.

Obviously, there are incredible moments in Act three for a conductor: the morning waking up of Rome with the bells and the strings is something that is very evocative, and then the genius quartet of solo cellos and the introduction on the clarinet to “E lucevan le stelle” – it’s like time is suspended with this meandering theme, it’s absolutely magical. I love “Tosca,” I have conducted it many times and every time I try to do not something new – the conductor needs to interpret what is written in the score, and I will always strongly believe in this, you have to be a vessel for what the composer wants – I always look for new things that maybe I hadn’t noticed before, and Puccini is such a rich composer orchestrally that there’s always something to find and fine tune.

This is why during the pandemic I decided to make two symphonic suites on two operas by Puccini – one is “Tosca” and the other is “Madama Butterfly,” to prove how great a musician and orchestrator Puccini is, which sometimes people forget because they only think about the vocal line. He was a great, great orchestrator. This is something that I really want to champion.

OW: You will be doing the four-act version of “Don Carlo.” The Act Five version is a more unified work. What do you think about the four-act version and how do you make it so that audiences understand the relationship between Elisabetta and Carlo, which is established in Act one?

CR: This is a really good question. The various versions of “Don Carlos” are a little bit of a meander: I grew up with the standard four-act Italian version that we’re doing here at the Met this time. The audience here at the Met has just heard the French version that I have also done in its completeness, even with the first part which was not done here. I think that the French version is more complete, particularly because it explains very well the relationship between Carlo and Elisabetta: they saw each other, they fell in love, and then Elisabetta has to marry Filippo for political reasons.

I think that in the four-act Italian version, the lack of this act is a weakness because we don’t understand clearly why Carlo is so obsessed with having lost Elisabetta, and the only thing to do is to really use every word at the beginning, when Carlo comes on stage, to portray his desperation and underline the fact that they’ve been lovers only for one day and she’s been taken away.

This is clear in his aria “Io la vidi” and this aria is very interesting: although it’s written in a very lyrical way, it’s also very critical of his father, he said that the person who kidnapped his love is the king, his father. This is what we’re working on with Russell Thomas because this is the only moment where the audience can understand why there is a lot of history between Carlo and Elisabetta that we actually don’t see in this version.

OW: Tell me about this Verdi score compared to the other ones you have conducted. What do you think makes this score so popular and why do you think it is so relevant to the time we live in?

CR: “Don Carlos” is late Verdi, there are all the themes that Verdi has explored in his life: love for family, friends, and country. Rigoletto in the duet with Gilda says “you’re everything for me: you’re friend, you’re family, you’re religion, you’re my country,” and these older themes are clearly present in this opera. The theme of friendship between Carlo and Rodrigo, with the sacrifice that Rodrigo commits for his friend, dying in his place, the monumental duet between the two basses, Filippo II and the Grande Inquisitore, the power of the church, the power of the State with the bitter phrase at the end “So the throne will always have to bow in front of the altar…”

This was incredibly wise and contemporary when Verdi was writing. There is obviously the theme of love between Carlo and Elisabetta, and the theme of freedom of your country, with the lines of the six French deputies. This opera is incredibly multilayered, it’s a huge, monumental opera, and what I think is the beauty of this opera is that Verdi uses all his skills and his colour palette of sound to express this.

There are scenes like the “auto da fé” that are incredibly impressive and are a joy to conduct, but the best part for me are the intimate moments, like the aria between Carlo and Elisabetta in the last Act, the duet with this loss of hope and the phrase “Ma lassù ci rivedremo,” “We will see each other in the next world…” It’s absolutely divine, the way Verdi uses the orchestra is so mature, and yet so simple, that makes this moment incredibly poignant.

These themes are very current – love, betrayal, friendship, and oppression at this moment when we have this terrible war. It’s an incredibly current opera, like older operas often are. I really believe in the medium of opera as a moment of catharsis for life and everything that we find in life.

OW: All three of these productions are by David McVicar. Did you work with him on all three? What do you see in these productions that unite them?

CR: I’ve worked with David from the beginning on “Medea,” which has been a very interesting process, as it was very interesting and rewarding working with him when we opened the season in 2017 with “Norma.” David is a director that understands opera and understands music. I think that this is a major quality, because directing opera is not like directing theatre, there are so many different things that need to be taken into consideration that can make a production successful or not. David knows the music, not just the drama or what he has in mind as the director, he knows that music is at the base of everything, even if we express feeling with words it’s music that makes the opera worth hearing. After all, nobody is going to put on stage just the libretti of the librettist, it’s the music that makes the opera!

David knows and works with this, and this is the best thing you can ask an opera director. His visual world is a middle between reality and abstraction sometimes, and I think it works very well to give audiences a clue of what’s going on, but also leave their imagination free to interpret what they want to get from the production. I’ve really enjoyed working with him and I hope to work with him again soon.

OW: Conducting three different composers in such a short time must be challenging. What are the similarities between Verdi, Cherubini, and Puccini? What are the differences?

CR: Verdi, Cherubini, and Puccini are three genial composers. There is a difference between Verdi and Puccini on one side, and Cherubini on another side. Both Verdi and Puccini in their own ways are like the final product of an era, Verdi encompasses in his work all that was before him starting with bel canto and lyricism to more attention to the word and the drama. Puccini goes further but it’s also the end of a period; after Puccini there have been many strands in different directions starting with verismo, while Puccini really is the final product of the period coming before him. Both Verdi and Puccini give the best “summing up” of their kind of writing in music.

Cherubini is in the middle: he’s looking towards the past, projecting towards the future, it’s not a definitive way of writing. We can see it in the different styles he uses in “Medea:” the sinfonia is very progressive, the first number looks back, and the duets are very interesting in the way he uses the counterpoint of the orchestra to express the emotion rather than in the singing or the melodic line, ending with this finale which is definitely looking towards the future. Cherubini is much more in the middle of a developing kind of music writing, while Verdi and Puccini are summarizing the end of an era.

OW: What has been rewarding throughout these past months?

CR: I’m lucky, I’ve been able to conduct three different operas in one of the best theaters in the world, in a company that really has so many talents and I think that there is hardly a place where you can have this kind of experience. I’m really happy to be here, there is a lot of work to do of course but I have a feeling with this company that the orchestra and chorus are great and we work very well together, plus I love New York! So it’s been very positive for me during these three months at the Met.

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