Sir Mark Elder – knight on a mission

Sir Mark Elder broke off from putting the finishing touches to the Royal Opera‘s latest revival of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) to talk to WhatsOnStage ahead of its opening this Friday, 19 September.

Despite the rigours of rehearsing, he spoke with such animation and youthful enthusiasm that what follows only scratches the surface of a wide-ranging conversation.

Has your work with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment influenced your approach to Rossini?

Absolutely. Over the years at the Royal Opera I’ve tried to make a sound world for Rossini that gives the music its necessary edge and brilliance and wit. The orchestra has been marvellous. The first time we started was a long time ago when we did La cenerentola together, and many of the players thought that the way I wanted it was a bit odd. But we did it more than once, and the Barber as well, so now they come to expect it the way I like it.

Given your depth of experience, when you conduct a revival of an existing production such as this do you ever take issue with it and seek to modify it?

I did the premiere of this production so I’ve lived with it for a long time, and I still vividly remember the process of inventing it. But my response will very often come from the particular singers who are doing it. The style is so singer-led that what will work well for one won’t necessarily work well for another.

The revival director, Thomas Guthrie, is also very creative and we both have the same end in view: that the comedy only works when it’s played seriously by the people in it. Nobody must be consciously funny. This was the great thing that the two French directors, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, originally wanted. When we first did it I don’t think we got it totally right, but this cast of singers is bringing something to it that is often an improvement and enrichment of what we did originally. So it’s still a very creative process.

Il barbiere di Siviglia is one of the most popular works in the repertoire. As artistic director of Opera Rara, the record label that specialises in rare repertoire (as its name suggests), does it frustrate you that so many of Rossini’s other operas are neglected?

Not really, because the Barber is such a resilient, brilliantly original piece, and the music is so fresh and lasting.

But it would be marvellous to do a piece at the Royal Opera that’s never been done here, of course it would. I’m thinking of Maometto II, for instance – a brilliantly imaginative piece.

Still, I very much look forward to doing these rarities for Opera Rara – and the next one is the most amazing. It’s the world premiere of a new critical edition of Donizetti’s Les Martyrs, which was a new and expanded French version of his earlier opera Poliuto that he wrote for Naples. It’s a four-act grand opera – Donizetti playing his Meyerbeer hand – and nobody knows it, even though it’s based on a famous Corneille tragedy, Polyeucte.

Donizetti’s way with the French language and the ebb and flow of his music, constantly flexible with imaginative and lovely melodies, is really thrilling. We’re performing it with the OAE on Tuesday 4 November at the Royal Festival Hall, and we have Michael Spyres and Joyce El-Khoury, who are wonderful singers for this music, leading the cast.

The orchestral sound of last year’s Glyndebourne Falstaff with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was a revelation. Do you have any more plans for historically informed Verdi?

I’d love to do another piece there with the OAE in the pit. We do have some plans for the future but they’re not definite yet. The OAE is not always available to me at Glyndebourne because they’re often needed for Handel and Mozart; but that’s not to say we won’t do more. But this year I enjoyed doing La traviata there with the London Philharmonic Orchestra because it was a new experience for so many of the players.

I do have ideas of other pieces that I think would go particularly well at Glyndebourne. The tender intimacy and dramatic ‘wellie’ you can get there are very special.

Last year as well as Falstaff I heard you conduct Parsifal and Wozzeck. A more disparate trio it would be hard to imagine! Do you approach the business of preparation in the same way whatever the opera?

There’s obviously a connection there as late German romanticism went on to expand and explode into atonality. The big Wagnerian piece that upset the apple cart was Tristan und Isolde, but I believe the impact that Parsifal made harmonically was perhaps even greater. Its influence can be felt well into the 20th century. It’s a great piece to keep exploring and to think about, even though its imagery is so confused and muiltifarious.

But I approach each opera separately. Every great opera has a particular colour that’s right just for that piece. There isn’t a bar of Don Carlos that could be in La traviata, for example. Verdi found a particular style for that piece – he called it the ‘tinto’ of the opera. That’s something that I think about and analyse, along with the libretto, and I deepen my response to the notes through the meaning of the libretto. It’s essential to conduct the text, and the inner meaning of the words, not just the score. That takes time.

Your work rate seems to be relentless. How do you pace yourself?

The diary needs to be carefully balanced between old work and new work. The business of preparing differs from piece to piece; thinking of an opera from the first half of the nineteenth century is easier than mastering the complexities of an early 20th-century work. Wozzeck remains a phenomenally difficult piece: it’s so romantic in the way the story unfolds; the feeling the orchestra has to express is as intense as anything in Tristan and Parsifal and it needs the same ebb and flow of musical pulse. To get that right is incredibly hard. Berg is very specific in his annotations, so I spend longer working on it.

When I agree to something I need to know when in my life I’m going to have the space to study it. For instance, next spring, March to May, I’ll be conducting Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini (in the Terry Gilliam ENO production) in Amsterdam, so I’ll be based there and when I have a day off I’ll start looking at something for much further in advance.

Your tenure with the Hallé in Manchester has been another massive success. You have only recorded two of Wagner’s four Ring operas, though. Will you be able to complete the cycle?

All I will say is that there’s an understanding with my colleagues there that we’ve started something that needs finishing. This is music that I’ve been thinking about since I was a teenager. I was a young man at the Royal Opera and ENO when Reginald Goodall was conducting Wagner, and I learnt with him. I learnt Parsifal when he was conducting it, side by side with him, and when I was music director at ENO I begged him to come and work with us on Wagner, to stretch the orchestra and take them through Tristan and Parsifal.

So it’s music I’ve lived with for a long time and I find it inspiring and fulfilling to take a work like Die Walküre and show it to my orchestra. Right at the start I told them I believe that this is some of the greatest music that’s ever been written, but it’s also wonderful for an orchestra to get their teeth into because it improves their sound and forces us to make better chamber music. Because that’s what Wagner is: chamber music writ large. Conducting it requires a kind of informed relaxation before the sound will come right. That is something I learnt from Reggie: he managed to make a not-very-good orchestra at the time better than they’d ever been.

Do you ever itch for another opera MD-ship?

If the right opportunity arose it would be wonderful, but I’m very happy with the work I do at the moment. I feel incredibly welcome here at the Royal Opera and at Glyndebourne and in Paris and the two leading American houses. My life is full of variety, I conduct a lot of pieces I love conducting, and on top of that my relationship with Manchester is so fulfilling. But who knows? I hope that the future will bring some surprises!