Mark Gresham | 23 FEB 2022
Arthur Fagen (courtesy of Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University)
Mark Gresham: This production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville marks your return to the Atlanta Opera podium. When was the last show that you conducted here?
Arthur Fagen: It was Salomé, at the end of January 2020, about a month before COVID started. I haven’t worked with the orchestra in two years. I really look forward to being back.
Gresham: But you’ve been actively conducting otherwise?
Fagen: Yes. As soon as I was vaccinated, I started working again. This past summer, I did concerts in Italy at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari and in Costa Rica with the Orquestra Sinfonica Nacional. Since then, I have been conducting opera and concerts regularly.
August 2021: Arthur Fagen, as guest conductor, leads a socially-distanced Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Costa Rica in the Symphony in D minor by César Franck. (image: OSN-CR)
Gresham: Let’s go then directly to The Barber of Seville. It is, of course, one of the most familiar operas in the repertoire, and I believe you have some stories about your experiences with this opera as a core piece of the repertoire. What’s your favorite tale amongst those.
Fagen: My personal experiences with Barber go back to when I saw it for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera when I was about 14 or 15. I worked on this piece in great detail with Alberto Zedda, who prepared the critical edition of The Barber of Seville that’s now used worldwide.
When I first had to conduct it in 1982 in Germany, I went to see Zedda. We spent the whole day on it. That was a very interesting experience because he said, “You know I’m a musicologist, but I am also a practicing conductor. So many of the traditions do not appear in my edition.”
Cover art from the Alceo Galliera recording on the EMI 3-LP with Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi. (EMI)
I had worked for several years with Tito Gobbi. I told Zedda that I had the Alceo Galliera recording with Maria Callas and Gobbi. And I said. “That recording was made long before your edition came out, and I’ve always loved the recording. I’ve also got a Claudio Abbado recording with Teresa Berganza, a recording that is based entirely on your critical edition. Abbado takes slower tempos so he could have absolutely every note that’s written in the very fast-moving Finale. But on the older recording, it goes much faster. They do leave out a lot of notes, but the effect is much more exciting.”
So I asked him: “What do you prefer?” He said he preferred the old recording, which I thought was funny because it was based on the old editions that predated his critical edition.
It’s an interesting thing because The Barber of Seville is a mixture of opera buffa and bel canto, but the opera buffa element is taken to an extreme. In The Barber of Seville, people get into a frenzy during the big ensembles, like the end of the Act I Finale. They start singing in a patter that is incredibly fast to portray a state of total chaos. It’s one of the most exciting moments in all of comic opera.
Gresham: Can you speak about how the orchestra functions and its role in the drama, specifically in this opera?
Fagen: Sometimes, there is a bit of introductory material in the orchestra that sets up the mood of a particular number as well as the singing style.
While it sets up the action, you cannot always tell the meaning of the text or what the dramatic mood is from just listening to the orchestra. I’ll give you an example with The Barber Seville overture.
Gioachino Rossini as a young man, circa 1810–1815 (uncredited portrait)
When you hear it in the context of The Barber of Seville, you think this must be the overture to a comic opera. However, because Rossini wrote the entire opera in under three weeks, he did not have time to complete a new overture specifically for the Barber. Instead, he stole an overture that he had used in two other operas: Aureliano in Palmira and a very serious opera, Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra (“Elizabeth, Queen of England”).
Because The Barber of Seville is such a famous opera, the overture has become known as The Barber of Seville overture, not the overture to Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra, or Aureliano in Palmira.
So there are two facets to what I say: Yes, the orchestra often sets up what the singers will do, but you cannot always tell dramatic mood from just the orchestration. You can, very much, with Puccini, even with Verdi, and, of course, with Wagner and R. Strauss.
Gresham: What are the main differences between conducting an opera and conducting an orchestral concert?
Fagen: The differences are enormous.
To conduct an opera well, you have to understand the libretto. You have to understand singers and completely relate to what a singer is doing.
If the singer feels that the conductor is connected to what the singer is doing ‒ in terms of breath, support, and everything else ‒ that singer is much more likely to do what the conductor wants than if there is no connection.
Often you see symphony conductors doing opera, and they see a score, and they conduct it in a way so that the singer can fit in. But that’s not the way it should be. Conductor and singer should be, absolutely, of one mind. They have to be precisely on the same beat. Now the conductor can do that by breathing with the singer, internally singing the vocal line, and at the same time having complete control over the orchestra. It’s a very demanding task.
Arthur Fagen conducts a performance by The Atlanta Opera. (photo: Jeff Roffman)
When you’re conducting opera, you have to find a kind of fusion between the interpretation of a well-known singer who has done the role several hundred times and the interpretation of the conductor. It’s not the same with a young singer because the conductor can then help shape what the younger singer is doing. But if you work with a big star, you have to respect their tremendous experience with the piece so that the end product is a fusion between the singer’s and the conductor’s interpretation.
Also, the conductor needs to be highly effective in propelling the dramatic flow while at the same time shaping the orchestral detail and sound in such a way that the orchestra both follows the conductor and listens to the singer. When the orchestra listens to the singer, the performance comes up an extra notch rather than if the orchestra is just following the conductor’s beat. It becomes more like chamber music where the musicians listen to each other.
When conducting a symphonic work, one is dealing only with the orchestra. It is easier to achieve one’s vision of a work. It’s not quite the same when you do an opera where there are the added elements of singers, chorus, the distance between the pit and stage, backstage bands that have to be coordinated, stage action, etc. This is one of the great attributes of the Atlanta Opera Orchestra. They are extremely flexible and can adjust to whatever happens onstage.
Gresham: I was thinking if you were conducting an orchestral concert with a piano soloist, as with a singer, you’ve got still some given and taken there?
Fagen: Oh yes. You always have give and take. Here is an example:
I did a Rossini CD for BMG with Vesselina Kasarova, a very famous mezzo, and Juan Diego Flores when he was very young at the beginning of his career. Kasarova has the Rossini style so ingrained in her that she would improvise different ornamentation and cadenzas in every take for the recording. So in that sense, I had to be constantly flexible and adjust one minute to the next every time we did a take, and the orchestra had to adjust with me.
Her ability with regard to improvising ornamentation is remarkable in the present day. It’s typical of the way singers were at the time of Rossini, where they could actually improvise their ornamentation right on the spot just like a jazz performer would nowadays. These days, singers want to be absolutely sure of what they’re doing and have learned their ornamentation to perfection.
Especially with Italian Opera like the Barber, what you need as a conductor in terms of spontaneity and flexibility can sometimes be pretty extreme. When you conduct a Strauss opera or a Wagner opera, it’s all in the hands of the conductor. When doing a bel canto opera, it’s really between the conductor and the singer. The singer has much more input because there’s much more freedom and flexibility in the style of bel canto and opera buffa.
TAO music director Arthur Fagen and stage director Michael Shell in rehearsal for Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. (credit: Felipe Barral/The Atlanta Opera).
Gresham: I understand that Michael Shell, the stage director for this production, is now on the faculty at Indiana University, where you are.
Fagen: That’s right. We’ve done several operas together –Cosi fan Tutte, Hansel and Gretel, and The Magic Flute. Michael always creates interesting productions that are easily accessible to the public. I think he does some very innovative things with Barber that will be highly entertaining.
I also want to mention that we have an excellent cast. This is my eighth production of The Barber of Seville. Many cast members are Barber veterans: the stylish tenor Tyler Stanton, who plays Count Almaviva, has done, I think, over eighty performances. Giovanni Romero, our wonderful Italian Doctor Bartolo, has done fifty-six performances, and our excellent Rosina, Stephanie Lauricella, has done many, many productions. David Crawford, the fine bass who has done a number of roles with the Atlanta Opera, will be our Basilio. We have a debuting artist, Joseph Lattanzi, doing Figaro for the first time but seems so well suited for the role. Our Berta is Cadie Bryan, a very promising young artist. ■
External links:
- Arthur Fagen: arthurfagen.com
- The Atlanta Opera: atlantaopera.org
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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