James Conlon didn’t grow up in a musical family. After seeing his first opera at age 11, however, he begged for music lessons. He found his boy soprano voice and dreamed of singing the great roles in great operas one day on stage—everything from Boris Gudonov to Carmen. When he realized (for obvious reasons) that this was an unreachable goal, he chose the profession that his young heart and mind told him would allow him to be involved with all aspects of opera: conductor.
Now, as music director of Los Angeles Opera, the Ravinia Festival (the summer residence of the Chicago Symphony), and the Cincinnati May Festival (America’s oldest choral festival), Conlon does indeed seem to be doing it all. Former music director at the Paris Opera, he frequently appears as guest conductor with the most famous orchestras in the world. Conlon also dedicates a good portion of his time working with students at the Juilliard School of Music in a two-year appointment that began in the fall of 2007.
In addition, Maestro Conlon works tirelessly to promote the works of important composers whose music the Third Reich banned in Europe. He has devoted a considerable amount of time to programming their music in the venues at which he conducts, such as at the. L.A. Opera, which continues its “Recovered Voices” series this month (the series highlights four operas by such composers) with the opening of Der Zwerg by Alexander von Zemlinsky.
Conlon also encourages young artists at the Ravinia Festival to delve into the numerous Lieder of these composers, much to the singers’ delight.
Conlon sat down with CS to discuss the upcoming production, the ins and outs of the Ravinia Festival, what he looks for in an audition, and his recommendations for terrific Lieder choices for your next recital.
You’re lecturing at the Juilliard School in New York. Did you go to school there?
Yes, I began attending Juilliard right after graduating from New York City’s Music and Art High School. When I started there, I was 18 years old and the youngest in my class. In 1972, when I was 22, I got my bachelor’s degree, and I then took over conducting the Juilliard Orchestra—my conducting teacher was ill and the president of the school selected me for the position.
I was delighted, because that opportunity allowed me to build my orchestral repertory. Soon, I started conducting elsewhere as well, and by the time I was 24, I was a guest conductor at the New York Philharmonic. By 26, I was at the Met. After that, I went away for many years, but when I came back I again initiated a relationship with Juilliard. I’m very happy about this two-year project.
The most important question I want to cover with the students is: “What happens when classical arts collide with society?” I think that is an overwhelming issue for all of us. Certainly it’s talked about, but I don’t think it is being treated with the urgency it merits. It’s the No. 1 issue for all of us who are involved with the fine arts today. We need to do more than merely preserve our two to three thousand-year-old heritage. Our society has lost sight of the importance of the arts and we ignore that fact to our detriment.
I love conducting. I love my life. I’ve been employed doing something I enjoy all my life, but that is not enough. I feel a need to do something for those who will come after me, and I think that the position of art in our society is the most important issue of our time. I want to provoke a wide interest in it. I want to encourage those people who have no experience with classical music to be unafraid of it and to realize that it is not just for others. At the same time, I want to interest influential people in making classical music available to new audiences.
What should a high school student who wants to be a singer look for in a college or conservatory?
That’s very difficult. The human voice, which is the greatest gift of nature, is extremely fragile. We all know that voices have been ruined by the wrong type of teaching and the wrong choice of repertoire. The student must find a school and a teacher who will care for and nourish his or her voice. It’s hard for an 18-year-old to make the right choice. It’s just trial and error, whether the student is 18 or 40.
What is most important is that the young person be steeped in music and culture. I encourage young people who play instruments to continue that. Students should apply themselves to the study of fine arts as early as possible. The earlier they do this, the easier it is. Your success is actually built on your ability to be educable, not where you went to school. No matter what school you attend, you have to educate yourself, so seek out the people who can teach you the most and go to the places that will help you learn. Education is, of course, a lifelong process.
My own two children grew up speaking both French and English. Languages are amazingly easy for small children, but they become more difficult with every passing decade. Singers need French, Italian, and German, at least. Hopefully, they will also sing in Russian, Czech, and English. They need to study the cultures of the countries from which those languages come, too.
Singers have a God-given gift, but it is to sing music that was written by other people. They need to get those priorities clear from the beginning.
How do you determine the programs for each orchestra you conduct?
I think we are there to keep a large piece of the repertory out in front of the public. It’s my job to see that the audience hears a good representation of everything: Baroque, Classical, early and late Romantic, early and late 20th century, and contemporary music. They should hear music from various cultural sources: German, French, Italian, English, etc. It’s very important to keep a good balance between the known and the unknown.
There’s a whole lot of unknown music from the 19th century and, as I have been demonstrating with the whole Recovered Voices program, there is a lot of unknown music by known composers. All audiences need new experiences. People need to listen to great music from eras different from the one they are living in. That is just as important as playing contemporary music for them. As music director, I try to do that for each audience.
Can you tell us about the summer program for singers at the Ravinia Festival near Chicago?
There are several sessions each summer at the Steans Institute, which is part of the Ravinia Festival. It’s a marvelous program. There is a session where singers can study Lieder and song literature. They come for several weeks and are coached by first-rate faculty. It’s on a post-graduate level and excellent musicianship is already presumed. The students accepted are emerging professionals, some of whom already have careers.
I give a masterclass or two every summer. The program is excellent. Students may attend all the concerts while they are there, too. I would certainly advise anyone who has the opportunity to apply to do so. However, they don’t take many applicants, so a young singer shouldn’t get discouraged if he or she does not make it.
At Ravinia the emphasis is on Lieder. It’s not an opera program. At Los Angeles Opera, there is the brand new Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program. It’s less than a year old, but it is developing into an excellent resource and there are some very talented young singers in it right now.
Do you have any audition advice for young singers?
Come and sing the best you can. Only offer pieces you sing well. If you are too ill to sing well, it’s better to cancel. If you want to try something out, sing it for your friends. Don’t confuse the listeners as to your Fach, especially if you are in Germany, where the Fach system is quite rigid. If you are auditioning for Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, don’t sing Brünnhilde!
Be prepared to sing in several languages. Look good. Present yourself as well as you can, but don’t act out the part. I’m interested in hearing somebody sing. If they feel the music, if they feel the role, I will hear it. I see people showing up with props and I don’t think any of my colleagues are impressed by that. I would rather the auditionee do it all with the voice. Singers can be directed later.
What are your thoughts on modern stage direction?
Artists are the medium through which the composition flows. The composition passes through their hands to the listening public. My function as a conductor is to render a piece as close to what I believe to be the essence of that music as I can. It should be done in a totally committed fashion. The interpreter is there for the music, not the other way around. I can only accept virtuosity if it is in the service of music, not an end in itself.
In modern opera life I believe the following: The theater has constant need of innovation and renewal; therefore, it has certain challenges. I believe in innovation and renewal in the theater. I am open to all possibilities of how to rethink or re-present the theatrical aspects of any given opera, on one condition. On this I am absolutely dogmatic. The presentation must serve the piece. It must not deform the piece, it must not be contrary to the nature of the piece, and it must be respectful.
I believe you can be innovative and modern in your approach while retaining total fidelity to the composer, who is the dramatist when it comes to opera. Out of the universe of choices, the nature of music has already eliminated a great deal of what is true about the drama being presented. To reduce the work to the size of one idea is to do it violence.
It is possible to be both innovative and faithful to the composer. It’s all about substance, and no piece is exhausted by any one person’s vision. The beauty of classical music is that it is far bigger than any one performance.
Is there a hard and fast barrier between opera and musical comedy?
I don’t think there should be, but I’m not going to pretend that a barrier doesn’t exist. There was an attempt by composers in the ‘20s and ‘30s to live in both worlds.
How did you get interested in music that was banned during the Nazi era?
I fell in love with Alexander von Zemlinsky’s music in the early ‘90s. Because I had the opportunity to record and perform all his works for EMI, the door was opened for me. When I was learning about his music and performing it, I started reading material on other composers who suffered a similar fate. It was a big subject and it became a mission that demanded the attention of anyone who could be committed to it. It’s like a midlife love for me. I got to my forties as a performing artist with no real contact with entartete musik (degenerate music), music that was not allowed to be performed during the Nazi era.
Once I discovered this music, I found I was in the best place to learn about it: Germany. I was able to plunge into it and find people who knew a great deal about it. Very little of this music has been done in America, but this season Los Angeles Opera is doing four performances of a double bill consisting of Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) and Viktor Ullmann’s Der zerbrokene Krug (The Broken Jug). I have conducted it in France and Italy.
There is a new museum in Rome which has preserved an enormous amount of Holocaust music and I hope to visit it the next time I’m there.
From this recovered music, can you recommend some composers that students would do well to research?
Zemlinsky (1871-1942) wrote almost 200 songs. His early works reflect the end of the 19th century, while his later ones show his progression into the 1920s.
There is an enormous amount of Lieder by these composers, much of which has not been heard. I would recommend that singers research that.
Whenever I work with student orchestras, I try to include some of this work. It is also part of my purpose at Juilliard, because it’s the next generation that will bring this music forward. That’s very important.
I asked some people to sing Zemlinsky Lieder during the course of our summer at the Steans Institute at Ravinia and they ended up thanking me. Previously, they had no idea of his music. They were very glad to have been introduced to it and said they would continue to use it.
Zemlinsky had a lifelong attachment to the human voice and to the marriage of word and song. He wrote eight operas as well as Lieder. His greatest work is the Lyric Symphony, which also uses singers. His work spans the time from the end of the 19th century to his death in 1942. He is a passionate, expressive, deeply emotional composer.
Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), who studied with Schoenberg, was heavily influenced by Zemlinsky. His witty and intellectually fascinating music is thought-provoking and metaphysical. He combined those traits with a humanistic view of life. While interned in the concentration camp at Terezin, he wrote 20 compositions, an extraordinary accomplishment.
Pavel Haas (1899-1944) and Hans Kráza (1899-1944) were Czechs who incorporated some of the tortuous feeling of the time into their music. Franz Schreker (1878-1934) wrote a number of songs in an opulent, late-Romantic style. I like Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963). I’ve recorded some of his music and it’s very powerful.
Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) was one of the great avant-garde, imaginative personalities of his time. I will be performing the requiem by Erich Zeisl (1905-1959), who wrote beautifully for the voice. I not only know his music, I know his daughter! She is married to the son of Arnold Schoenberg. They are delightful people.
Do you have any recordings coming out?
Yes, I have two DVDs from Los Angeles Opera that will be released by the time this is published. One is Verdi’s La traviata, with Renée Fleming and Rolando Villazón. The other is [Kurt] Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, with Audra McDonald, Patti Lupone, and Anthony Dean Griffey. That was seen on PBS TV in December 2007.
What do you do in your spare time?
Now, I don’t have much. However, if I stopped conducting tomorrow, I would go to Italy and spend my time reading all the books that I have bought and have never had time to look at.
