Lidiya Yankovskaya

Hello, Michael. Thanks so much for having me.

Well, I think we're so lucky right now that there is so much great opera being written in the United States. We have so many composers and more and more librettists in the field who really know what they're doing, who are starting to get real training also in this and varied experience that allows for the writing of opera. Um, and there's some just phenomenal work. I think right now, to me, the United States is the center for new opera. This is where it's being created, this is where it's more vibrant. We've also reached a time in our history where we're ready to put ourselves into this art form, to make art through opera, art that is relevant, that is about us, that is of today and for today. Uh, so we were just speaking about Kamala Sankaram's Taking Up Serpents, which I just closed at COT, for instance. Um, it was written by composer Kamala Sankaram and librettist Jerre Dye, and the work uh takes place in Alabama and the central characters are um in a Pentecostal snake-handling church. And the opera isn't really about that, it's about the character's journey and uh spiritual journey, it's about the main character's journey in leaving her faith and then returning to it, and returning to her faith and her family. Um, but it takes place in such an American setting that is so specific to our continent, to our culture, to our country. Um, and to me that is very exciting, because this is where we live, and to me that's how opera survives and thrives into the future, by speaking to us, about us.

Absolutely. Well, I think if there's no quality, then what are we doing here, right? And sometimes, I think in any situation, people uh for instance, when we speak about equity in art, there are so many amazing creators there of all backgrounds, of all colors, of all creeds. Um, but sometimes it takes more work to find them because they haven't been given the opportunities for one reason or another. I think in general, finding work of quality takes time, it takes effort, it takes sifting through a lot of scores that get sent your way, it takes really um, uh, digging into them and trying to understand them, and speaking to the creators. And I think what you're referring to is that sometimes people just don't take the time to really dig in, and the result is that they they perpetuate the same inequities just in a different way. So then maybe they're programming even, let's say, a certain composer of color who is very accomplished, but then it's just that composer being programmed by every single company over and over again, when there's a slew of others who may be equally or even more qualified.

I love that you brought up Koussevitzky, in particular, because I spent the early years of my career in Boston and uh was involved with the Boston Symphony and did some work with them, and uh just that history of Koussevitzky and the early 20th century, just the number of composers that he brought to the fore. Some were Russian composers whom he knew from Eastern Europe, but others were American composers, he supported composers of different backgrounds, different creeds who were coming up, um, and I think that's so important. Boulez, to me, is another person like that.

Yeah, Pierre Boulez, who also, and uh, was a composer himself, but also held up other composers and brought their works uh to the fore. And I think, as conductors, we have the responsibility to do that. And I think in a culture of jet-setting and guest conducting from place to place to place, um, it first of all becomes harder to do that, but also the expectations have changed, and I think so often conductors are not involved in programming as much as they used to, are not necessarily interested in seeking out um those—

I just did the Mozart in— in Seattle, actually. But that was a whole interesting COVID experience.

Absolutely. Absolutely, I think it goes vice versa. And with uh, with the— the Da Ponte operas, which I've done, and— and multiple occasions, it's, you start to think about the composer, the process, the librettist in a totally different way. And you start to appreciate them in a much deeper way. When you spend a lot of time developing work and thinking very carefully about how each word is shaped, how each word is set, how each dramatic moment is set, so it creates the right dramatic timing, I think then when you approach something like— like I just did this Don Giovanni in Seattle and when you're looking at, well, why did Mozart repeat this particular text, and what are those slight differences that totally change the color, the quality, the dramatic meaning of it? And how this meaning sometimes, through history, has been warped and maybe uh misinterpreted, and what— what were they perhaps trying to convey, and how can we understand that?

Uh, sometimes, but rarely. I would say it has more to do with how the singers deliver the text, what is the overall dramatic arc of the story, um, more than anything. But yes, of course, occasionally.

Absolutely. I think the words— I, I also, the way I learn operas, I start with the words, because the composer started with the words, right? That's the first thing the composer looked at before they set any music, and that's what they worked with. And also, that's the— starts to guide the story that we're trying to tell. Obviously, the music brings all of the richness and depth and nuance to it, but that is the start. Um, I think the words are absolutely crucial, and I think because we now have supertitles or subtitles, depending on how you're watching the opera, because we now have titles in opera, um, I think often there is less of a focus on singers delivering text really clearly. When you listen to some of these old recordings, in any language, that come from the middle of the 20th century, early 20th century, you understand every single word. And that even goes uh, not only operas that I hear, for instance, in Russian, which is my language, where everything is crystal clear, but languages that I speak, but maybe am not as fluent on. Suddenly I understand every single word because how it's delivered. Um, and I think that's essential for our work now, and I think also composers, in some cases, because we have titles and I encounter this sometimes in my work where composers will say, "Well, it doesn't matter, they'll see the titles."

Of course, and this is where musical theater actually gets it right, I think, that in opera sometimes we forget. And not everybody, of course, and there are many composers who don't— most composers don't view things that way. But it's essential for the words to come through clearly, and that is the responsibility of the composer, it is the responsibility of the librettist as well, to write words that one can set easily and not to make it so wordy that it becomes impossible. It is the responsibility of the performers, of myself as the conductor, of the singers, of the director, of everyone on stage.

Yeah. So, um, I think sometimes it's easy to forget that all of us in, especially in the United States, all of us have a refugee background usually, or an immigrant background, in one way or another. Even if you're, let's say, Native American, Native Americans were forced across the country from one part to the other, and had to be refugees within this land. Um, and I think it's easy for people to forget just how important refugees and immigrants have been to the cultural development of our country and of the world, frankly. Um, so one of the things we do with Refugee Orchestra Project is just try to showcase how throughout generations, throughout history, throughout the world, uh, giving people refuge has led to the creation of great art and culture. Um, so in some cases we feature living composers, but we also, uh for instance, have featured work by Chopin, whom everybody sees as a French composer, but of course he was originally Polish and we forget that, or Donizetti, who was an Italian composer, but at that point Italy was a set of city-states, and certain city-states he had to flee because of political persecution and censorship of his work, um or Irving Berlin in the United States, who in some ways has uh uh created the foundation of much of popular music today.

Yes, we did, we did. Yeah, we— I mean, we've done a number of these, but the most recently, we did the one in partnership with Chicago Opera Theater in Chicago uh this fall.

(Lankovskaya laughs) So, uh, Rimsky Rebooted is uh a perfect pandemic story. It was originally uh a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Invisible City of Kitezh, which is a masterpiece, it's Rimsky-Korsakov—he himself considered it to be his greatest work.

It's not done enough, yeah, it's an incredible piece.

I know. It's— it's uh, but it's an amazing piece. I think it's been on tour here uh, with— the Mariinsky has brought it, but it's rarely done um for many reasons. But it's a beautiful, beautiful work. So, that's what we were supposed to do in the fall, and then at the start of the pandemic, first, it changed to kind of a concert semi-staged version of it, then we realized that we can't have a giant chorus on stage, so we scaled that down, then we scaled it down more, but— but there's no way you can reduce, take out the chorus in that piece or reduce the orchestra, so much of it is just the— the orchestration, the depth of the orchestration. So, then we changed it to Rimsky-Korsakov's Kashchey the Deathless, which is a very small cast, it's only an hour long, much smaller opera, also fantastic and should be done more. Um, but then the pandemic continued to become more and more serious, things weren't improving as we had hoped, and in the end, it morphed into Rimsky Rebooted, which was um uh a performance uh, it was with piano and a number of singers. I played half the program and the colleague of mine played the other half of the program, and it was uh music from Kashchey the Deathless, a large scene from Kashchey the Deathless, other works by Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as some contemporary work and other things from COT's repertoire. Um, we had um, wonderful, wonderful singers, primarily the baritone, uh, Will Liverman, and mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen, who are both just phenomenal performers. Um, it was— it was uh, fun for me to play, for a change, which I never get to do anymore. And we had again a crazy story with that, because the day before we were supposed to film this concert, we had the venue lined up, everything was set, the concert—so we switched to a concert format, I think, just two weeks before Kashchey the Deathless was supposed to happen because the city regulations became even more stringent, it became clear that it wasn't safe. So we switched to this concert format, and then the day before we presented the concert, the venue said to us that, actually, you can't come in tomorrow, we've decided that we don't want any singers in our space because we're afraid of super-spreading um from singers. Of course, we had very, very stringent regulations on everything, but the venue didn't ask us about our regulations and made that call. So, we had 3 hours to find an alternate space. (Lankovskaya laughs) Uh, luckily venues were sitting empty, so we found a phenomenal venue in the Chicago area and we were able to record this concert, but I think we counted at the end that we had something like at least seven versions of this performance before it finally happened.

Yeah, and I, in particular, for our— uh, Stacy Garrop was part of our Vanguard program, which is for composers—

—yeah, for— for in— in— embarking on writing operas. Um, so, specifically for our Vanguard program, in particular, we are definitely planning to keep streaming and to keep sharing all of this, because it is so essential, especially for an— a lesser-known composer, to get the— someone to come out to their work from out of the city or out of the country is very hard. Um, for bigger works, we are hoping to stream as much as we can, but we run into challenges because of the costs, and the costs are not just the streaming itself and the audio, those of course are large costs in themselves. It is um, that many of the union structures are set up in such a way that they still relate to times when we could make big sales, or for things that work on Broadway, or maybe work with Met HD or something like that, where you have really, really large distribution models and people are willing to pay to watch Hamilton, or Disney+ is willing to pay to stream Hamilton, for instance. Um, so without those massive distribution processes, uh, certainly we don't make money off of these um, performances, but it becomes very challenging, and I worry about that for the art form, because, yes, I think we have this opportunity here to make these pieces more accessible and frankly, also, to make less of a— an impact on the environment as all of us who are in the industry hop from country to country to see specific works and people, um, and to expose— bring more exposure to artists. We talked about equity earlier. Um, it's usually things that are already well known and that already have buzz about them that people go to travel to see, but this could be an opportunity to just experience more work from up-and-coming creators as well.

Exactly, emerging. (Laughs) If you have a better word, let me know.

Yeah, it's— it's challenging, because opera is a theatrical art form, right? And most composers' training is uh focused, the way it's structured in our universities, it's focused on music theory, the— the— theories of composition and orchestration, and studying symphonic scores. We don't talk about theater, and also there's little training for writing for the voice. So if you're not someone who, for instance, also happens to be a coach or someone who grew up in the theater in some other way, it's difficult to gain those skills. Um, what we have done is uh, made sure that composers— and these are composers coming in who already have a compositional voice. So they know what they want to say musically and how they want to say it, for the most part, so we're not teaching the basic kind of tools.

Exactly. In— and so what we're doing uh, with the Vanguard program, is that we are infusing the composer— the composers become an integral part of the company. They sit in on all staging rehearsals for all the productions that we do. See the— the process beginning to end. They see everything that happens behind the scenes on the administrative side and on the mechanical side of making an opera happen, because that also is very important. And plus, as you know, the opera world is so competitive, there are so few new operas being done that it's important for composers to understand the practicalities of how some of these decisions get made. Um, and they work a lot with singers, all kinds of singers. So, they work closely with our young artist program, but they— we also have these Fach sessions where I will bring in many singers of um— a certain Fach, what that— that's like soprano or mezzo-soprano, but let's say soprano, and we will have five or six different kinds of sopranos with different kinds of voices who do very different kinds of things.

Exactly, and so, the Fach, yes. So we'll have a dramatic soprano, um, a lyric coloratura versus a dramatic coloratura, a subret, a lyric, different kinds of lyric sopranos, right? Singing different roles so that uh, the composer starts to see the challenges of writing for an individual, for a unique voice, because every voice is unique and is capable of different things. Uh, but also some of the similarities across the board. Um, and they work closely with um, uh, we— we meet every month and we talk through standard repertory, because even if someone wants to go in a totally different direction and write an opera that has nothing to do with uh, standard repertory, I think it's very informative to have deeply dug— deeply dug into the works of Verdi and Puccini and Mozart and uh, Schoenberg and (Lankovskaya laughs) anybody, right, to all of the composers of— of throughout time. We just studied Wozzeck actually, for instance, or— or Britten, really, all genres and contemporary work that's being written. We even look at very early work as well, to see how different composers—

Exactly, Monteverdi as well, to see how different composers have tackled certain problems, what has worked and what hasn't worked. And why next the next generation of composers maybe has taken a totally different approach. Why, and— and what, again, what are the benefits of the Mozart recitativo ensemble model as we spoke earlier, and what are the benefits of something much more through-composed that the next generation had taken, um, what certain musical language, how does it change how text is set or how the voice is written for, how does Berg write differently from Verdi and how do they write the same way, although their musical language is different, or Berg and Puccini, um, for instance? So, we spend time studying repertory. They, during normal times, they also go to rehearsals at the Lyric Opera of Chicago to see other, some of that repertory staged. Um, and at the end of their two years, they also write their own opera, chamber opera, for a kind of a modified pierrot-sized ensemble, and they work with a very experienced librettist, because I want to be sure that that doesn't hold the composers back in any way. So they partner with an experienced librettist and write this short piece, which is an opportunity to dip their feet in, to have something that they can use as a calling card for future opportunities, um, and uh to gain the experience, because ultimately, un— until you do it, it's very hard to do it. (Lankovskaya laughs)

Thank you so much for having me, Michael. It's really— it's an honor to be here. I really appreciate it.