Opera expert Murray Dahm meets opera conductor Stuart Stratford
Murray Dahm has spoken to Stuart Stratford, making his Opera Australia debut as the conductor of Aida.
Murray reports:
Stuart Stratford
He has been to Australia before – performing at the Adelaide Festival with Scottish Opera in 2020, and he conducted the opera film of The Eternity Man by Johnathan Mills about Arthur Stace (filmed in Sydney in 2008). I did apologise for the weather Sydney has turned up during his current stay but, being from Scotland, he had been in the hotel pool!
I congratulated him on the opening night of Aida on June 19 (see my review here); he was full of praise for the company: “One of the greatest things about this company is the resource of the chorus and the orchestra. They’re both absolutely world-class – and with Aida, if you’ve got a world-class chorus, you’re halfway there.” More than that, however, he said, “Opera Australia are fabulous and very welcoming. They’ve clearly put a lot of pride in the way that they treat people and relate to visiting artists; it’s really a wonderful place to be, I have to say.”
Stuart’s skills extend beyond his masterful control of orchestra and singers; he studied as a student in Russia, so can speak Russian to both Uzbekastani tenor Najmiddin Mavlyanov who is singing Radames and French-Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Gabouri (Amneris). Of course, the international casts speak multiple languages.
I asked if his approach as a conductor to a work changes based on the composer (he will follow Aida with productions of Richard Strauss and Gioachino Rossini back in Scotland). He replied “in some ways you treat everything equally; you start with making sure you know exactly what is happening with the language and then you learn it. You play it, you sing it yourself and then, by the time you have done that, it is in your fingers and in your voice and you work out what you want to do with it.” And then he brings his experience to each composer, knowing what Verdi or Rossini means by a particular marking in the score. But, in order to keep things fresh, he begins each work from the beginning again “especially if it is a piece you have done several times; I’ll start again and try and refresh it in a new way.” This is the methodology he brings to every work he conducts. Similarly, the speeds and people’s voices change the precise way a role is approached, even the acoustic of one theatre or another – rather than andante (Italian for ‘walking pace’) being a set speed – the walking speed of different characters will be faster or slower depending on the character and how they are realised. All of this makes each and every opera (and cast) different and they offer new insights and opportunities for exploration. A too-fast or too-slow speed (“a metronome marking in your head”) is no good if it doesn’t suit the singers – “you’ve got to listen to your singers” he said; a wonderful and excellent approach all round – and he likened the singers to the ingredients of baking an ‘opera cake’ – you have to improvise with the ingredients you have to make a “delicious feast” for the ears.
If the work is a new one which he has not conducted before, Stuart will not listen to any recordings until “I have really got my own firm ideas about it”. “If you listen to a recording too early it can put you on the wrong path or become too influential and it is hard to get back to the text.” Listening to recordings is a last step in his process.
I also asked whether the style of production affects the way he conducts a particular production – this production of Aida uses moveable LED panels. The only difference Stuart noted was some of the timings, allowing for the panels to move balletically to get the panels and music to coincide precisely. Although acknowledging Aida is an intimate opera, it is also grand, and the panels, he thinks, bring a sense of that scale; “a big vista”. He added that he liked the large “godly figures”. When I pointed out the advantage of the panels was of having a great deal of the singing done in front of the proscenium, at the front of the stage, he commented, “it’s a very workable and practical production”, and something current productions with Scottish Opera are also exploring.
I put Stuart on the spot and asked if he has a favourite opera which he likes to conduct: “Whenever anyone asks me that, I always say it’s the one I am doing at the moment! You throw yourself into it so I’m really loving Aida at the moment.” He added, “That’s the joy of it, you can fall in love again and again with each piece that you are working on.” He debuted as a conductor at music college with Benjamin Britten’s The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966).
After this Aida run, Stuart returns to Scotland for performances of Dafne by Richard Strauss and The Barber of Seville by Rossini. Before Aida, he finished a run of Ainadamar by Argentinian Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov – Stuart enthused so much about this work (where Flamenco meets opera, like a dance-oratorio, about the life of Federico Garcia Lorca – “a very powerful piece” which is going to the Met in New York, Huston, Detroit) I did immediately go and track down a recording! This work, too, was a learning opportunity – with Flamenco singers Stuart was in awe of and also how Flamenco dancers count entirely differently to classical musicians. I finished by asking about possible future collaborations between Scottish Opera and Opera Australia – Stuart knows incoming Artistic Director Jo Davies very well and “hopefully there might be opportunities there.” Hopefully so. The intelligent, energetic, joyous, sympathetic approach of Stuart Stratford’s conversation can be seen in how he conducts the Aida – which runs until July 6.
