Die Walküre Program

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L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O
14 | November 1 - 30, 2017
The Conductor’s Life
In his thirtieth-anniversary season at Lyric,
music director Sir Andrew Davis
exudes enthusiasm for his profession By Roger Pines
SSir Andrew Davis is a naturally enthusiastic person, with a musical
curiosity and sense of adventure that are limitless. He rejoices in
uncovering new repertoire, as well as revealing new insights into
familiar works, working in a repertoire extending across more than
250 years of music.
As a longtime member of the international conducting elite, Lyric’s
music director has maintained a highly peripatetic existence for four
decades. He’s a past master of all the intimidating artistic and logistical
challenges that invariably color the life of any world-renowned
conductor. Last May, immediately before his latest engagement with
the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (and just a few days before being
appointed the TSO’s interim music director), he took time out for a
freewheeling conversation covering all aspects of his career.
This season marks the thirtieth anniversary of Davis’s Lyric debut
(The Marriage of Figaro, 1987/88). At Lyric this season – his eighteenth
as music director – he is taking charge of three highly contrasting
works. First is Die Walküre, which he led during the 2002/03 and
2004/05 seasons (the latter marking his first complete Ring), and also
conducted in Japan on a 2006 Met tour (replacing James Levine with
no rehearsal!). He eagerly anticipates leading Act Two, “with that long
exchange between Wotan and Brünnhilde, certainly one of the most
significant episodes in the whole cycle. The way that scene evolves
musically, dramatically, and psychologically is immensely important.
The emotional development has to move almost imperceptibly.”