The Atlanta Opera opens its production of Gilbert & Sillivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” this Saturday
Mark Gresham | 20 JAN 2022
Francesco Milioto
Mark Gresham: What drew you into opera and how did you get your start with it as a conductor?
Francesco Milioto: I’m a pianist, and I speak Italian, so when I was in undergraduate studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, I was asked quite a bit to coach and play for some singers. One day, in one of the vocal studios that I happened to be playing for, the professor said, “You know you really should talk to the people at the [university] opera,” and so I did. That’s how I started getting involved with more and more things with opera, mainly at the keyboard.
But the conducting came from an interesting story in the same university. I was sitting in a class for ear training and sight singing, and I happened to leave the classroom to go to the washroom and instead I heard the orchestra playing went to the rehearsal room and I opened the door and I sat in that rehearsal for the remainder of the two hours. When the conductor, Jerome Summers, whom I did not know, came off the podium and walked around to leave the rehearsal, I stopped him and I said.
“Well, sir, professor, I don’t know who you are, and you don’t know who I am, but you have to teach me what you do on that podium. And he said, “First of all, who are you?” And I said, “I’m Francesco Milioto, a top scholarship winner and I’m here studying piano with Dr. Ronald Turini. Lucky for me, he happened to be in a trio and was close friends with my piano professor, and he said, “Okay, if you’re serious, just come in my office next week, and we’ll talk.” And from there, that’s how I started conducting. Jerry gave me assignments to do and really just let me learn on my own. He gave me some guidance and assigned me to a couple of smaller things. The following year, I was the assistant to the orchestra, and in another year, I got to conduct Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture.
That’s basically how it all started when I was an undergrad in piano performance. All of those things conveniently overlapped with piano playing, opera learning, and conducting, mostly on my own in a way on the side of the degree until I went to McGill University to do a double degree in Orchestral Conducting and Opera Repetition.
MG: Let’s fast forward to how you got engaged to conduct The Atlanta Opera. You made your company debut with The Threepenny Opera last season, you’re conducting The Pirates of Penzance this month, and then in June you are scheduled to return to conduct the musical Cabaret. Because these three productions are this close together with one company, someone like me looks at and thinks, “Okay, there’s a strong professional relationship here.” Even if one that developed rather quickly
FM: Atlanta has certainly been on my radar for a long time. It seems like it’s a really big and widespread business, but, as you know, classical music is super small.
I already had some connection to Meredith Wallace, who works as the company’s artistic administration for [general and artistic director] Tomer Zvulun. I met her in Dallas when she was at the Dallas Opera and when I was there. I assisted on Moby Dick and Falstaff, but also I was asked to conduct children’s performances of a couple of operas. So with what I’ve done there and then my introduction to Tomer , I was given a chance to conduct The Threepenny Opera with The Atlanta Opera.
I’m also a jazz pianist. I’ve always done that on the side, so I get excited about pieces like Kurt Weill’s operas and musicals like Cabaret. That level of improvisation, that level of manipulation of the score. I think Tomer and I really hit it off speaking about Threepenny Opera before I was engaged to do it, just the level of collaboration that it takes to do that piece, my style of conducting that music, and Tomer’s style of directing it, I think he was looking for someone that is a musical collaborator and is free to say, “Okay let’s do this, let’s do that, let’s try this but time this better; someone connected to the drama and has that level of flexibility. It’s essential for pieces like that and for us putting it in the The Big Tent. So my first conducting experience in Atlanta was in a tent, where I wasn’t even in the same tent as the performers. It was like conducting a video game because I had to watch on a TV screen and listen through speakers.
Tomer and I hit it off on our initial conversations, and then, getting into the rehearsal room, it just felt like we had worked together many times. It felt very comfortable, and it was very easy for us to speak to each other back and forth. So it was easily collaborative, and we just trusted each other on a level that it was like we had a lot of experience with each other even though it was the first time we were ever in a rehearsal together.
During Threepenny Opera, they started to talk to me about Pirates of Penzance. I am experiencing the same thing working with Sean Curran as the choreographer. He’s flexible in figuring out the steps, what needs to be done, and who has that attachment to the drama on stage, and the willingness to help and collaborate.
It’s what I think Tomer wants in a guest conductor, too, and that’s what I crave: collaboration with the stage. My job is to enhance everything on the stage, whether it’s the step, a stab, or a kiss. There is architecture to setting up and coming away from those points in that tension and relaxation. They can only come from me observing the stage and trying to connect to it. We do that a lot in the rehearsals.
I’m sure somebody would think, “Are you over-rehearsing that recitative?” No, because it must sound organic. There’s only a certain way that we can do that with what we need to do one stage. that sort of spontaneous collaboration in observing and enhancing and working with everyone is why I conduct. That is where I get the most joy.
MG: You worked with a the small ensemble in the tent with Threepenny Opera, so this will be your first time conducting the full Atlanta Opera Orchestra. What are some of your anticipations or The Pirates of Penzance? What do you want to communicate to the orchestra players?
FM: What I want to communicate to the orchestra in the rehearsals is that while it’s not Strauss, it’s not Wagner, Sullivan’s music complicated in its own way. There is influence from Schubert and Schumann, but especially that of Mendelssohn and Rossini: that lightness, that transparency, that joy. Getting the orchestra to listen to the singers, listening to the words, and getting into that groove together, then picking the points where we want to be overly sentimental and to be a little bit heavy-handed in the drama.
The pianist working with the singers, Elena Kholodova, is fantastic. In the spots where Sullivan blurs the line between dialogue and recitative and starting a piece, keeping those places alive and connected to the stage is what I’m looking forward to working on, translating that to the orchestra and giving the singers an expanded color palette with which to work.
I treat the orchestra as I treat the chorus: I treat the chorus as another important principal character, and to me, the orchestra is also a principal character. We are the support, punctuation, and atmosphere; we are what creates that sonic world into which we bring the audience. We are in a lot of ways what inspires everything that’s happening on stage; we’re taking what’s happening on stage as our inspiration. Understanding and figuring out what we inspire and react to is what I find the most interesting, the most fun, and what I think helps the entire production come to life. We’re an immense part of it, and I want to bring that to the forefront. I want the orchestra to be happy and proud of what we’re doing, feel connected. What I always try to inspire and bring forward is that the singers rely on the orchestra, and we rely on them. That mutual reliance is paramount to everything I do. ■
External & Related Links:
- Francesco Milioto: francescomilioto.com
- The Atlanta Opera: atlantaopera.org
- Article: The Atlanta Opera adjusts COVID requirements, creates livestream option for The Pirates of Penzance [18 JAN 202]
Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. he began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.
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