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September 26 - October 24, 2015
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There’s another factor that preoccupies
Freud and his colleagues: “We own and live
in one of the largest opera theaters in the
world. When you perform in a 3,600-seat
house, the core of your repertoire may be very
different from a company based in a house half
that size. That’s not to say that Lyric doesn’t
encompass the full operatic repertoire in the
Civic Opera House – we do! We’ve found ways
to make small-scale pieces work in a large-scale
environment. It’s important, though, given
that we’re a large company in a large house, to
commit to doing the repertoire’s largest works
as regularly we can afford. We wouldn’t be
fulfilling our potential as an opera company if
we didn’t do that.”
Freud keeps the big picture in mind by
looking at the operas on paper, spaced out
over an extended period. He believes in the
value of a ten-year rolling repertoire grid. With
just eight operas “we can’t cover the breadth
of repertoire in a given season, so it’s crucial
to have that overview of how our repertoire
evolves. That way, over ten years we can give
enough attention to various styles of opera. Of
course, not everything on the rep grid is fully
committed. They are just ideas on a piece of
paper. But that ten-year rolling perspective is
important.”
Once the list for a given season is created,
it’s presented to Lyric’s senior management
team, who test it objectively. If it passes, then
it moves to the next stage – scheduling and
budgeting. If it doesn’t pass that test, it needs
to be reworked and resubmitted. “It would be
irresponsible to move ahead with a repertoire
that didn’t satisfy the objective testing while
also generating the right level of excitement,”
says Freud.
Thanks to the need to book major artists
whose availability may be limited, Lyric and
other comparable international companies
plan their seasons very far ahead. For the next
five years, repertoire is reasonably solid – and
for the next three years, it’s
completely
solid.
On the other hand, cautions Freud, “To
consider it ‘set in stone’ is misleading, since
repertoire changes are sometimes unavoidable,
whether due to budgets or because a key
artistic component of a project has a problem.”
Audiences expect Lyric to cover a fairly
broad repertoire. The most popular titles
return once every five years or so. When
it comes to more rarely heard pieces, it’s
inevitable that the schedule will reflect the
taste of the company’s artistic directorship. Sir
Andrew’s arrival as music director has brought
to Lyric numerous pieces for which he has
a particular enthusiasm, among them
Billy
Budd
,
Lulu, Jenůfa
, and this season’s
Wozzeck
,
a work he has longed to perform for years.
Freud notes, “My conversations with Andrew
result in our identifying repertoire priorities
for him and for me that we then incorporate
into our repertoire grid. If they’re important to
Andrew and a number of other reasons make
them sensible choices for us, then prioritizing
his wish list is a major objective for me.”
Davis notes with both gratitude and
enthusiasm that Lyric’s current
Wozzeck
is
“driven by the fact that I’ve never done it,
opera season
Five of the major composers figuring prominently in Lyric’s planning,
represented here by productions during the past two seasons: previous page –
Mozart (
Don Giovanni
, with Mariusz Kwiecień and Andrea Silvestrelli);
Verdi (
La traviata
, with Marina Rebeka); Puccini (
Tosca
, with Tatiana Serjan
and Evgeny Nikitin); this page – Wagner (
Tannhäuser
, with Gerald Finley
and Amber Wagner) and Strauss (
Capriccio
, with William Burden and Renée Fleming).
TODD ROSENBERG
MICHAEL BROSILOW
CORY WEAVER/SAN DIEGO OPERA
Verdi's formidable
Nabucco
is returning
to Lyric this season for only the third time
in company history.