You are currently directing your 200th production—a remarkable milestone. Please tell us how you’ve seen the world of opera change over the course of your career.
Opera has changed radically over that time. Singers now educate themselves in a more comprehensive way, characters on stage are more believable, and the value of interpretation has been catching up against the bad traditions of superficial emoting and gestural hollowness. If I were to sit down today to write a new edition of my book, The Third Line, some chapters might be changed from hope to cheer because people are already on board.
How so?
The methodology I propose in The Third Line, which is to keep the interaction of text and music as paramount for successful score rendering, is here to stay. Our guiding light should always be the score, not this trend or that trend or that person’s opinion. How was the opera intended? What were the composer and librettist after? All we need to do is as honestly as possible give them our best answer.
And yet it seems like we always filter it through our own imaginations.
You used a key word: imagination. Performers—and I carefully choose that word, performers, not singers—must use their imaginations. They are to be creative. We are the third link of the process, after composer and librettist. We owe them our own creativity and imagination. Opera exists through reinterpretation. The third line that I talk about constantly challenges us because it does not exist until we imagine it.
You are in Utah working on a production of Carmen, which you have directed many times. Where did you start with this particular production?
I always start from scratch. As a matter of fact, I always start with a new score so that I don’t repeat myself.
You do?
Yes, and I encourage every singer to start new. Never assume that your past experience was better—bettering is always ahead of you.
Does that mean you have a whole stack of Carmen scores at home?
Absolutely! Always start from scratch because you must be absolutely open-minded.
How did you find your way to directing opera?
I was working as a journalist in my native Argentina to support my studies in architecture. Those studies were truncated by external circumstances—dictatorship.
Suddenly I found myself putting to use degrees in stage direction and set design. Degrees I acquired not because it was going to be my profession, but because it was my curiosity, my love affair.
I left the country and worked in the field of my love affair with excellent people in Italy, Israel, Austria, Germany, and France. What was a hobby became my profession. Eventually, I came to the U.S. and made it my home—though I continued working elsewhere including Argentina, when the political winds changed.
You spent a good part of your career at Opera San José. Would you like to tell us about your time with the company?
San José has been my home for a little over 30 years now. I was hired to help turn what was a community opera into a professional opera. In 18 years there, I created all the production departments, redesigned the performing venues, put together the artistic design teams, and pushed the administration to create world premieres and explore the baroque. All in all, I directed 60 productions. It was a very fruitful period.
That makes me wonder if there was a particular time in your life when you feel you came of age as a director?
Each accomplishment makes me believe that I’ve done so, but fortunately the next morning I feel ready to innovate and explore anew—just like when I started 200 productions ago.
You travel a lot. Do you like the gypsy lifestyle?
I think it is a must because you have to continuously collect pictures, information, and knowledge. We should know how people are working in other latitudes. The moment you stand still, you know, you go backwards.
Now, in terms of coming of age, I hope that I am still an immature teenager when it comes to creativity. Being young doesn’t have anything to do with chronology. It has to do with attitude. I think creativity is an issue of constant motion, so I surround myself with people that will remind me that I am not standing still and that I have the ability to be challenging and revolutionizing. Art is nothing but constant evolution—and to evolve, you need to revolve. That’s my motto.
You’ve worked all over the world. Can you think of specific things that you learned by directing in, say, Finland, or Costa Rica, or Canada?
To paraphrase a well known author, the opera world is flat. Some answers to your question derive from financial situations. In Finland, when I go to an island to put on a little festival, we have to do everything with two pieces of wood because boats can’t bring the furniture and props we imagine in our dreams—but opera can still be alive and well. When I direct at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, which is one of the most accomplished houses in the world, it’s fascinating to see that what I learned at the little island in Finland applies to this enormous international opera house. It’s interesting to go for broke when someone gives you a big budget, but the essence is still the performer.
What’s one of the most unusual things you’ve incorporated into a production?
One day, somebody asked me to stage Menotti’s The Telephone, but I had to use a set that another company was using to do a theater piece. There was sand on stage and there was a beach house. So guess what? Now The Telephone is set at a beach house and the telephone line stretches from the kitchen to the terrace that overlooks the beach!
The most fascinating thing we do is respond to challenges. As long as you don’t betray the text, you should allow your imagination to go wild.
Opera suffers only when we are not sure of ourselves. Then we become defensive and we start arguing. There is no time for arguing, because in two weeks you have to open. The best time that a director can have is when people come well prepared, and then they can go wherever you need them to go. Preparation gives you a foundation, and that’s when you can fly.
Even when you’ve prepared well, have you ever thought, “I just blew it with this one?”
In my career, I have been fortunate to do a lot. The fact that I have been so fortunate has helped me acquire certain tools to keep things afloat. So, yes, sometimes you don’t achieve your dream production, but you never go below your safety net. That’s where experience is helpful.
I think some directors repeat themselves because they’re afraid to try something new.
That’s museum, not opera. We can’t continue doing the work of the taxidermist. We can’t embalm a dead animal in order to preserve it, as it was when it was alive. I refuse to say anything but that opera must stay alive. It must not be embalmed.
Costumes, sets, gestures, etc., cannot live in any arbitrary past, just like today’s films cannot perpetuate the idioms of the silent era. To honor the value of a score means to reimagine its story, as long as we betray neither its text nor its music. On one hand, Cio-Cio-San will always be 15 years old—this information is in the score. But, on the other hand, today we have a different position vis-à-vis the seduction of a teenager by an American sailor.
What about the world of ballet, where we might buy a ticket to see Balanchine’s Jewels exactly as the master created it?
True—but, you see, you mention another art form. Ballet is our sibling, but we speak different languages. We speak the language of opera, which is the combination of many things, but none of them separately. We have to deliver theater, text, and music in motion.
You’ve directed many university productions. What is it that calls you to that work?
I recently premiered the opera The Three Fat Women of Antibes at San José State. It is something special to premiere a piece with the composer sitting nearby and to be able to explore questions like “Why is it you have a cadenza here?” and “Why do you need a rest there?”
At an educational institution, you have the responsibility to premiere because, in my opinion, a score is a terrible thing to waste. A learning institution is like a laboratory where the future of the art form should be ensured.
When you direct a piece by someone who is alive, do you always try to contact him or her personally?
Absolutely. If I’m studying The Barber of Seville, I wish I could talk to Rossini. The only answer I get from Rossini is the score, and I can try to read his mind. When it’s a living composer, I get the score plus the chance to ask about his or her mind.
When I was directing The Crucible, I invited Robert Ward to come talk to the cast. He said, “That’s great, but everyone does The Crucible. No one does my favorite piece.” I asked, “What’s your favorite piece?” “Roman Fever.” I said, “Send me a score.” That’s when things happen. I wouldn’t have known this particular wish of his without his direct input.
What inspired you to write your own opera?
It was around my 180th production and nobody had yet invited me to direct Les Contes d’Hoffmann, which is one of my favorite scores. My friend, the composer Craig Bohmler, suggested that we write our own version. So, you could say I wrote it out of spite. Of course, two months after I opened my own The Tale of the Nutcracker, I was invited to direct my first Offenbach “Hoffmann.”
What the process confirmed to me is how crucial it is for singers to understand the interaction between text and music. Opera is not a musical art form. It is a musical and theatrical art form. That is the subject of my book. That is what I preach. And that is how I stage my shows.
Interestingly, I chose not to direct the world premiere of my own opera because, again, of the third-line principle. I believe that there is a librettist who creates a story, a composer who shapes it dramatically, and an interpreter who completes it.
Speaking of text, I want to ask you about your work with supertitles. They’re a controversial topic for opera enthusiasts. Should opera be presented in the language of the audience or in the language of the writer or composer who created the piece?
Operas have to be done in the original language no matter what. It’s respecting the wish of the composer. No matter what we do or how revolutionary we are, we cannot ignore what the composer writes.
I started to write supertitles because I was tired of cheaters—directors who twist the plot in order to feed their own approach. In Italian, there is a word for “translator,” which is traduttore, and there is a word for “traitor,” which is traditore. The translator is, in a way, betraying. I want the audience to enjoy, as close as possible, the original intent of the creator, so every time I can, I write my own titles. The world is not perfect, but one tries to make it as perfect as possible.
You wrote your book, The Third Line, with anthropologist William O. Beeman. How did you meet?
He was one of my students during an opera workshop some years ago. He heard me preach the things I preach and said, “You have to write a book.” I said, “You’re out of your mind—I don’t even speak English.” As an anthropologist, he had written several books and offered to help.
So, in the evenings of that opera boot camp, we’d sit across a table. He would ask me questions that I had written and I would speak my answers into a microphone. Of course, writing is about rewriting, so we spent two more years working on the book. Many people now say that the book sounds like me, and we owe that to its origin, which was speaking into a microphone.
Are there any other thoughts that you’d like to leave us with?
I’d like to share the thought that in our society, we still have a boundary between what we think of as musical theater and opera. To me, there is no boundary whatsoever. It is all singing theater. Singers would be much better off if they looked at it as such. That’s what I fight for. That’s what I believe.
Daniel Helfgot is a director, writer, and educator. His credits as a director include more than 200 productions of over 100 operas, operettas, and zarzuelas. As a writer, he authored The Third Line: The Opera Performer as Interpreter, a definitive book on the training of singers, and the libretto for the opera The Tale of the Nutcracker with music by Craig Bohmler. Currently, he teaches Opera Styles and Interpretation at San José State University. For more information, visit his website at www.danielhelfgot.com.
