I Must Accept Being Assessed Interview with Péter Eötvös

 

I do not remember how our cooperation started but I really enjoyed this excellently accomplished work. Since then, we have been in close contact and I was therefore especially pleased that he would direct Senza Sangue in 2015. The piece is being composed on commission by several operas and there will be several stagings and several orchestras will perform it.

 

 

That will be interesting, how young people will perform it, considering that one of the characters is 63 and another is 72. Naively, I thought older opera singers would be necessary but several directors have said that I should not think it depends on their age. There is certainly a limit, under which this work cannot be performed, but this limit depends on the maturity of the singer. And indeed, sometimes you can meet very mature and yet young artists.

 

 

I was looking for something that would be a suitable pair with Bluebeard?s Castle because everywhere in the world it is a problem to find something to play next to Bartók?s one-act opera. I am working on a composition that creates a unity with Bluebeard both in atmosphere and in dramaturgy. I like Baricco?s works very much and that?s how I found Senza Sangue. I am not using the entire short story, just the epilogue to compose a one-act opera. As the story goes, after the war in Spain, soldiers attack a family and shoot the father and son but the daughter manages to hide. Even though a young gunman sees her, he does not kill her. After that, the girl will look for this man who is nine years her senior for the rest of her life. She finds him fifty years later, when selling a lottery ticket. The opera is about this meeting. The story has many colours and what most concerns me is how it develops through the recollections and narration. In the past, I would mostly write operas with a lot of action, with the only exception being The Three Sisters. Now I would like to write an opera in which the action appears only through narration and musical interpretation.

 

 

This is still an open question. I will certainly write it first in the original language, in Italian, because it will be shown in several countries and it is therefore important that they should not differ from each other. Most probably, they will perform it in Italian in Hungary too. By the way, this will be my first Italian-language opera. For every opera, I have chosen the language that matched it best: each has different colour, different rhythm and character. The relationship between the opera and the language is an interesting question. Practice has showed that it is best to see each opera in the original because that?s how they sound best. Anja Silja once told me that when we initially put on Janacek?s opera The Makropoulus Case, she learnt the role in Czech. Then when she got invited to Stuttgart where they insisted that she should sing in German, she had a hard time with the lyrics despite German being her mother tongue because it did not match the character of the music.

 

 

It is a unique competition and I found it really good right from the start. Ágnes Havas has come up with an excellent idea. A new structure for opera has developed through this evaluation and festival, which involves a younger generation. I have worked with many young singers in the past decade and a half and I know how much they pay attention to what?s playing where and they are looking for opportunities to get involved. Opera houses need new talent and this is an excellent form of selection. It is a type of audition which enables them to get to know a singer through a production and see his or her stage presence. We have left behind the era when a good voice was enough for success.

 

 

It is actually best to have diverse selections. Events that follow an excessively clear path do not work well. It?s not good to have a programme that only consists of masterpieces. They did not exist until the 19th century and only in the 20th century did they started putting together such series, but they constitute a very bad dramaturgy.

 

 

Such simultaneous work has advantages and disadvantages. Composing an opera is a lengthy process and it takes years to work with an opera, on the libretto and selecting singers. Their operation is very complicated and premieres require complex organising efforts, therefore it is normal to plan three or four years ahead. When everything comes together and I know who will sing the different characters, how many rehearsals and how many performances we?ll have, I start composing. The choice of work for the day depends on my mood and how I woke up that morning.

 

 

No, I still divide the year into six months of conducting and six months of composing. Conducting currently takes the lead: I started the autumn with the Luzern festival and I will follow with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. In the case of composition, I have clearly marked in my calendar the deadline for different works, and having a deadline is a great motivator.

 

 

There is a problem with attitude in Hungary. The mistake is that if something is not immediately successful it will be dropped without delay. And that applies not only to music. But those that know from practice that a single unsuccessful attempt should not result in surrender can reach good results. Havas is a rare exception, a bulldog-type, someone who will not let go as long as they carry out what they originally planned. When I presented Three Sisters in Lyon, the opera had a long preparatory phase which involved the organisers visiting local schools. I met two women a year before the premiere. One of them prepared the groundwork for the music and the other for the literature. They informed the teachers who then introduced the work to some six hundred children. The youngsters were invited to the Three Sisters performance and I had a great question and answer session with them afterward. But there have been other examples, as well. In November, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra will invite some thousand students to one of my rehearsals where they will have the chance to hear a work by contemporary Austrian composer Friedrich Cerha. The children were given a CD recording six months ago and they will therefore have the chance to discuss with the performers a composition they already know.

 

 

Hungary lacks a layer in society who understand modern music and are ready to work for it. I cannot see this situation changing at home. Initiatives similar to Armel, novel approaches, should get support at every level. It would only benefit the country to get connected with international culture.

 

The situation is not ideal there, either. Not everything works well, but the important difference is that opera houses will still dare present contemporary operas and they will keep them in the repertoire for several seasons. It is common to have joint efforts not only in the case of operas but also for symphonic works. Four or five orchestras would get together and commission new compositions from contemporary composers. It would be important to notice in Hungary how very important Havas?s efforts are and help them.

 

 

I am now at an age where I must accept being assessed this way. It helps me a great lot that I have conducted Bartók?s opera very many times and I have a close, physical relationship with the work. That?s actually the most difficult thing for me: to match Bluebeard in quality but avoid any allusions and citations in my compositions.

 

Interviewer: Zsuzsanna Réfi