Alexander Soddy

It's wonderful to be here, delighted.

Well, first of all, I'd like to say how delighted I am to be here. What a great privilege, and also what a great compliment. It's very special when you do a performance that obviously you invest everything you can into, and it's appreciated that someone with your knowledge and experience sees what at least I'm trying to do and sometimes achieve. And it sort of brings me back to your first question, because I think what having done this route, this slow route, you simply gather opera miles behind you. You have just many, many, many evenings in the theater, in the pit, at the piano where you just, without pressure all the time, without the constant observance, where you get to try things out, you get to experiment and work out, just extend your knowledge as far as possible. So I always believed that the best route to being a conductor was through the opera house. And certainly with my particular set of skills as a pianist, as a sight reader, with languages, it was what suited me. But I also believe it makes me a better conductor today because there are no shortcuts. You sit at the piano with a singer, and you coach them the role. You work in Italian, you work in German, you work in French, you work sometimes in English. Although I have to admit, being an Englishman, I'm probably the worst coach of English that there is, because it's much easier when it's not your own language. But what it does is give you an incredible understanding and knowledge of the framework of an opera and a piece.

And as you go—and it's not just that, you play the piano in the rehearsals, you coach the singers. I then often had to do the stage music behind the stage or giving the cue. I even had to prompt in the prompt box for several performances, Die Frau ohne Schatten for instance. And these early experiences give you a knowledge of a work that is just unbeatable. So I feel that for me, but I also believe generally, the best way not only to conducting opera well, but actually to really learning how to develop as a conductor is to do it like this. And I notice that the things I learnt then at the piano—you never forget. And you have this closeness to the singers, particularly, sitting with them next to them while they breathe, working out the way they use their breath, the way they breathe and the way they use their breath speed. You suddenly get this sort of instinct for when it's not going to work or what they're going to do. You know, because the problem with a Puccini opera, as you know—

—anything can happen. Anything can happen. So you're trying to do something very subtle with phrasing and what you really want to do, but inevitably you're presented with limitations. You're presented with a singer who's at the limit, or all of a sudden doesn't have enough breath to sustain the phrase, which is normal. You know, we're dealing with—and your ability to adjust to that and incorporate it quick enough into an organic rubato, organic phrasing is what you have to try and do. And you can only do that if you've reacted quick enough.

Well, I love these questions. This is what I love to talk about, because this is the kind of thing that I love. There are a couple of things—first of all, exactly what you say. What I find so fabulous about Puccini, there's not a single marking, not a single articulation that doesn't have purpose. It also means that there's not a single marking that should be exaggerated. Everything you see, every tenuto, every ritardando, every accent, every funny little hat, everywhere he writes allargando poco—they all have a meaning within the structure. They're all very carefully delineated. And the death of opera or the death of performance is our traditions. And what I mean by that is you have to be aware of traditions, but you have to understand why they came about, and you have to understand why you're doing something. And I think this generally, as a general rule, I always ask myself, why are we doing this fermata here? Why are we doing this corona? Is it just so the singer can show their top notes? That's a legitimate reason, especially in Italian music. But it's not always acceptable to allow simply a singer to decide that they sound good on this note, I'm just going to hold it as long as I can. Because the priority in Puccini is the drama. And I think that's the mistake people make often in Puccini, that it's often too slow, because they start to wallow in this sort of sound world. And so it's convincing people, it's helping an orchestra as well to keep going, to keep going over the barline, to keep flowing through the phrases. Because essentially, and particularly with Puccini and the same with Strauss, you basically are conducting the tempo of the spoken language. That's the only thing you need to be aware of.

And the only thing what I do most of the time when I'm coaching singers, I say, well, just say it. Say it in this language. Just say it for me. And most singers are good linguists or they have a good understanding of the language they're singing in, and they try and talk in it. I mean, I think essentially if you want to conduct operas, you should be able to speak the languages of the operas you're conducting. Because once you do, you understand intimately the sense of flow and the sense of pace that every language requires. And that essentially is the trick. I mean, Puccini—it shouldn't be wallowing in self-pity, it should be an amazing—he times it perfectly. He's written everything perfectly.

You know, of course, the story...

Well, first of all, I'd love to talk just briefly about your point about the drama and about this particular Butterfly. I think—and it's the same if you think about it in Boheme, it's the same in Tosca—he's amazing at painting pictures of insane love, passion, authenticity, but in flawed people. And I think particularly if you look at the way Cavaradossi thinks about Tosca, we know that he's actually talking about the beautiful blonde in the picture and kind of has to do a gear change to get himself back to Tosca. But he's inspired by other women, he's obviously got that element to him, he's a painter, and Rodolfo's a poet and he falls in love with Mimi straight away. I imagine he's fallen in love with quite a few women straight away. Mimi happens to stick, but you know, this is—I think sometimes we make—it's the same for me with Butterfly—we allow ourselves sometimes the excuse, if we make Pinkerton a horror, it allows us to distance ourselves from those elements of his personality, because we say, well, he's just a horrible human being. The truth is these things happened all the time. This was actually a moment in history which—and you know, I'm British, we have 400 times worse imperial history. The things that our nations in our history that we should be ashamed of, they happened. And if we make Pinkerton simply the most horrible creature ever, we actually end up excusing ourselves a little bit, or at least not really facing the truth. And I think what's fascinating about this is that Butterfly was the exception, not Pinkerton. Butterfly was the exception, because everyone around her, even her friends around her or her servants around her, they couldn't understand why she hadn't worked this one out, why she still thinks she's married. Because everyone else had known that this was the deal. And that's what makes it such a tragedy, is actually she is the most incredible creature. She's the one who stands out from her society and has expected something sublime and genuine. So I think one has to therefore, coming back to the piece, I conduct the first act like it's real love. Because in a way, in that moment, they both believe it in their own way, in that duet. And it's simply the second act—in this extraordinary span—is the process of this tragic heroine then coming to the fore. So that's one thing I wanted to say about how I kind of invest in the first act as well, why the love duet is so beautiful, because actually in that moment we believe it.

Well, she's—you know, first of all, we did Boheme together in Berlin actually. So I knew her a bit, and it was a role debut for her. It was a role debut which meant that I could sit with her at the piano every day myself and I worked with her extra, which is a huge luxury, because it meant that I had the girl who was going to do the Butterfly that I've always wanted. And she's Italian, I mean she sings her own language so beautifully. She phrases it so naturally. It just meant that actually it's a dream to do it with someone like that, because you don't have to question what they're going to do. Everything they do is so organic and so natural to the text.

I agree. I'd certainly agree with you. And I think the lines are far more blurred probably than they ever were, given the international nature of our industry, given the fact that we have so many nationalities within an orchestra. But I do agree with you entirely that there are certain things that with certain orchestras are very natural. I mean, I'm music director in Mannheim and they're very—they're very well known for their Wagner. Over the last 50 years, a huge number of Mannheim orchestra players played in Bayreuth every summer. Horst Stein was their chief in the 60s and 70s, Furtwängler was their chief, Erich Kleiber was their chief. They have a certain tradition. In their DNA is Wagner. And it's remarkable when we've done—I'll go back in a month, we're going to do the Ring cycle together. I've just done a premiere of Tristan with them. We play Parsifal every year on Good Friday. They have the oldest Wagner production in the world, their Parsifal, it's 64 years old, 65 years old. And so they've played it every year for 65 years. And there are just some moments when you simply start—I don't know, the beginning of the third act of Tristan, the beginning of the third act of Parsifal—everything. And when we do it, you're suddenly aware they just have an understanding of this language. And there are certain things in the way they play, there's just things you don't have to explain to them. I can imagine—I mean, I've not actually conducted in Italy, but I can imagine that there are some things then, exactly about that, particularly not only Puccini but I imagine a lot of things like the bel canto, Donizetti, Verdi accompaniments, the simple what we call "umpa" accompaniments that we take for granted, but actually they invest with this meaning all the time, understanding.

And why I always try and tell orchestras is that this is—you know, that investment of intention, while we may think it's simple, it actually underpins the drama.

Exactly.

Which you did. Which you did.

Well, that's the trick, I guess. Also, the Met's not very easy to conduct in, particularly Puccini, because it's so big. Everything—the space around you is so enormous. The hall is big. The pit feels big.

It's enormous. And so you get the sense it's like an oil tanker, you know, you're kind of—and you're trying to do something that requires, I don't know, a wonderful little Alfa Romeo or something. I don't know. And so you've got to actually adjust your conducting accordingly. And I try and stay very small and very precise. And it's amazing how that changes their sound. It simply—you can show everything. With great orchestras, they simply play your body language immediately.

That's why in front of great orchestras you have to be experienced and you have to be good, because they are responding to the minutest of things.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I was, but there was—I was trying to decide, but I actually ended up reading musicology, which—it was always—I was always unsure. I knew I wanted to—Cambridge is an amazing place to get involved in music and the student body, and it's a great university. But I knew that you could study English and still go into—you could study lots of things or languages. But in the end I was glad I studied musicology. I learned a lot just simply about—I had to write fugues, I had to study Schenker, I had to study symphonic progressive forms, and every time I do a Bruckner symphony or a Mahler symphony or a Beethoven symphony, I'm glad of all that work that I did. And composing—you know, I didn't carry on composing like, because unlike you, I had no talent.

He was pretty good. He was pretty good, right? But I sort of figured after a very quick look, there's enough bad music in the world, I certainly don't want to add to it.

Absolutely. I was, in fact, weirdly enough, one of the few people at Cambridge—during one of my dissertations, you know, everyone in Cambridge always wrote about I don't know Brahms or Beethoven and the symphonic form or whatever, and while I was fascinated by that, I thought, well, I'm going to do something different. So actually I wrote about Puccini in my dissertation. One of my dissertations, and I actually wrote about Butterfly as well. And I was trying to show how great he was, because I was determined to show that, you know, Butterfly is always called this sort of shabby little shocker or whatever they call it.

But no, it's certainly not. And actually what I tried to explain was even this idea of the exotic—he kind of does all that in the first act. He gets it over with. And it's why he was insistent on sewing together the second and third acts. He wanted the whole second part to be like a Greek tragedy, just a unity of time and place, and watch this awful descent of Madama Butterfly, how she goes from hope to despair to death. And it's structured harmonically—you could do a Schenker analysis of how unbelievably precise he is with the way he, for instance, takes vertical harmonies in the first part, and he sort of through the love duet he kind of puts them horizontally, you know, and the conflict of tonality that then gets resolved between the two of them is reflected in the chords that accompany Butterfly when she arrives.

Well, I nagged them a lot, yeah.

Yeah. I just took over one of the last shows because they'd already—I'd just that season I'd already done Elektra and Salome there.

Yeah, exactly. So the beginning of the last year I did Elektra and Salome. And so it was—often what happens is you have a number of shows there and they go, oh, could you possibly do a Carmen, we need a—I say, oh, go on then. And, you know, I had no rehearsal for any of them. A friend of mine who conducted there in November had no rehearsal either. He just went in and he conducted Carmen and it was his premiere too, and I said to him, are you insane? This is just—of all pieces, my god. But the only good news was I don't think it had the recitative, which was a good thing.

Yeah, but I imagine your question is this idea of conducting without rehearsal.

Well, you know what, it doesn't. And when you ask the question, why are there no Kleibers around, why was Kleiber so great or whatever—yes, towards the end of his life he had a hundred rehearsals. But the man started in German pits doing operetta on no rehearsal. And it's the best training for conductors. Because essentially, great orchestras—they want to see first. If you can show it, then you understand it. If you can do this, then your knowledge is good enough and they're good enough, they know it well enough. If you've got half an hour to stand and talk at them, you have to kind of earn that right. And I kind of am all for that. What am I—you know, I did Elektra on no rehearsal, I did Salome on no rehearsal in Vienna.

If I had one rehearsal, what am I going to realistically achieve in a rehearsal with the Vienna Philharmonic on Salome?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's—that's also tough. I mean, they get a few scenic rehearsals with piano and I'm there for that. So we do—I often will see my singers and do a music rehearsal with them. And, um, but again, that kind of also is an art, is a skill. What kind of music rehearsal can you do at that stage? Well, you have to do a very clever mixture of getting some of the things you want, establishing an agreement on essentially the tempi you want to take so they know what you're going to roughly conduct. But what you're really doing as well is you're listening very hard, because you know they'll do about 25% of what they'll manage, but most of the time they will fall back on what they've always done. So you're also listening and going, ok, she is going to breathe there. Or yes, she is going to take more time there than I want her to, but I'm prepared for it. So there are certain little tricks. But I do find—I mean, I spent a lot of my early, you know, when I was in Hamburg as a Kapellmeister and then even as a music director in Klagenfurt, just developing this knowledge of the repertoire and also developing the instincts that make it possible to then go in on no rehearsal.

Oh, I have had enormous fortune actually in the last years, because of that—actually Elektra and Salome in Vienna, I had an enormous success there with the orchestra. Thanks to my time in Mannheim, I was able to come in and really—I knew these pieces. And I came in on no rehearsal, and with the orchestra it was an immense privilege and also an immense joy and success, and with the press there I had an extremely fortunate, just a very positive experience. One paper even favorably said that this may be some of the best conducting since Carlos Kleiber here in Vienna. So I sort of said to myself, ok, well that's quite nice. We shall keep it in perspective. Don't you worry, I've known for a long time I've had just as many bad ones as I've had good ones—you know, you ignore both. But what it meant was that actually I suppose it's been a wonderful start in Vienna. And so we're actually going to—I'm finishing my contract in Mannheim, which has been a wonderful six years. And we're going to move to Vienna. And I have a lot of evenings in Vienna over the next years. I'm making my Covent Garden debut in a few months, and to do more in my home country is always what you want. I've never worked much in England. And I'm going to enjoy the next years really doing a lot more symphonic work, but also just enjoying guesting in big houses and enjoy that experience. But for me, I will always want to run my own opera house. Because what I've enjoyed in Mannheim and enjoyed in Klagenfurt even before that was the level of work you do in your own house is always your best. It's about being there all the time. I've been there all the time in Mannheim. I've said no all the time to other things because that closeness—it is a musical family. And you know, I have a family myself. I enjoy the balance of working in my own opera house as well. So I think I will always love opera. I will always feel at home in the opera pit because I just love the drama. I love the singers. I love the repertoire. But I look forward to also continuing my concert work and extending my repertoire and experiencing even more of that repertoire. So in other words, my goals are to be privileged enough to be doing what I'm already doing, which is to conduct amazing artists, beautiful orchestras and great singers. And hopefully meet great people like you who appreciate it.

I think you're so right, and it teaches you—opera teaches you risk. Because if you can phrase and make music in this amazingly complex thing which you're trying to hold together, if you're prepared to focus on musical values rather than just simply keeping it together, then conducting a symphony you're even more free. But I think most importantly, the only thing it teaches you is breath. Breathing is the key to all music making, to phrasing, to music—we essentially, how did we first play instruments, why did we first play instruments, why did we first create instruments, we were trying to recreate the human voice. And what you're trying to do is get another voice out of bones. And basically the orchestra is another voice, and you're trying to get them to phrase as one, to breathe as one and to balance as one and to make an organic, beautiful whole. I guess that's my musical mantra.

It's been a real pleasure. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.