Alan Stone
Founder and Artistic Director
of the
Chicago Opera Theater
Four Conversations with Bruce Duffie
Alan Stone (April 28, 1929 – July
9, 2008) was an American opera director, opera singer, and vocal coach.
Born and raised in Chicago, Stone founded the Chicago Opera Studio,
Inc., which later became the Chicago Opera Theater. He served
as Artistic Director until 1984, and remained with the company
as an advisor until 1993.
Some of the Chicago premieres presented under Stone's
tenure include Virgil
Thomson's The Mother of Us All, Marc Blitzstein's Regina,
Carlisle Floyd's
Susannah and Of Mice and Men, Robert Ward's The
Crucible and Dominick Argento's
Postcard from Morocco.
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With the exception of my second conversation with
George Jellinek,
all of the interviews I did for WNIB from 1975 to 2001 were pre-taped.
I would then edit a portion for use on the air. That
way my guests and I could relax and not have to watch the clock.
This method also afforded me the opportunity to speak with these
musicians about many areas of mutual interest. When transcribing
them for my website, the entire encounters have been presented, and
I am happy to report that the response from readers has been completely
positive.
Most of the meetings were singular events. Occasionally
I would be able to speak with a guest twice, but the material on
this webpage presents four times I interviewed the Founder of the Chicago
Opera Theater, Alan Stone. While the first purpose was to promote
specific upcoming performances, Stone also gave much insight into
the workings and problem-solving needed to sustain a small and growing
opera company.
In each case there
was much laughter, as well as serious discussion. For this
website presentation, I have eliminated most of the detailed listings
of exact locations, dates, times, and ticket prices. The radio
audience needed that information, but it is unnecessary here. All
names which are links refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.
Several other guests have been interviewed (and used on the air),
but have not been transcribed as yet. Those are indicated by an asterisk
(*). When they do get posted, links will be added to this webpage.
Brief biographies of some of the other artists he mentions are scattered
throughout the webpage, and are indicated by two asterisks (**).
We begin in February of 1979 . . . . .
Bruce Duffie: As you head
into your fifth anniversary season, are you pleased with where
the company is heading?
Alan Stone:
We’ve come a long way. If you remember, when we started
the organization in 1974 with our first production of Così
Fan Tutte, we were called The Chicago Opera Studio.
We changed our name over a year and a half ago, and that also reflects
a change in the company toward a more professional look and feel,
and away from the school image that the word ‘studio’ represented.
Certainly, when we did our first production, we were a studio.
Nobody was paid, including myself. The singers were not
paid, the directors were not paid, and the orchestra was a very
minimal student orchestra.
BD:
Now you have a permanent home, or a semi-permanent home at
the Athenaeum Theater?
Alan Stone: This will
be our second season at the Athenaeum.
BD: Is it working out
the way you want it?
Alan Stone: Yes. We
have found a very congenial home in many ways. Being
about 930 seats is just right for our size operation, and my
own concept of the way opera should be seen, in a relatively small
theater. It is very much like the European theaters, most of
which are about 1,000 or 1,500 seats.
It looks like an
old-world theater. It has a little bit of that feel and
charm. People think opera ought to be in that kind of a place.
BD: In these five years
you’ve made a lot of progress with your group?
Alan Stone: We’ve
made extraordinary progress. People these days measure
things with dollars and cents, and in those terms our first annual
budget was $8,000 for the entire year. This year our annual
budget will be reach about $240,000. We’re also up to doing three
productions a year, whereas for the first two seasons we only performed
one opera a year. Then for three seasons we did two operas. This
is our fifth birthday, and we’re up to three productions. We’re
doing six performances of the first work, four of the second, and
six of the third, so we’ve got sixteen performances of three different
works. We’ve got 16,000 tickets to sell.
BD: What are the three
operas that you are doing this year?
Alan Stone: We’re doing
Così Fan Tutte again, but I want to stress to
all of your listeners that this is not the same production. The
first production was done with spit and gum, and cardboard cracker-jack
sets, and rented costumes, and borrowed props. It was a real
thrown-together production. We had no money. In fact,
you shouldn’t call it the old production! It was a no-production
because we have nothing left of it. It was all fed to the fire
when the show closed. Now we have a really beautiful and exciting
production. We received a grant from the National Endowment
for the Arts in the visual arts program, to have a local artist design
the sets and costumes. We commissioned the Chicago artist,
Roger Brown**, who is very well known in this area, to do this production.
He has paintings hanging in the Art Institute, and the Contemporary
Arts Museum. Along with this all-new production, Corinna Taylor
has been working with Roger doing the costumes. We also have a
mostly new cast. Two of the cast members appeared in the first production,
but they are appearing in different roles in this production. Warren
Fremling**, who sang Mr. Ford most recently in our The Merry Wives
of Windsor as Mr. Ford, and is probably best remembered as Figaro
in The Marriage of Figaro, sang the part of Don Alfonso in the
first production of Così in 1974, but in this production,
I have cast him in the role of Guglielmo.
BD: Isn’t that a higher
part?
Alan Stone: Strangely
enough, it isn’t higher. People think it’s higher,
but it’s actually lower, and in the ensembles, the Guglielmo
part is written under the Don Alfonso. But they’re very, very
close.
BD: Isn’t Guglielmo the
more lyric part?
Alan Stone: It’s a more
lyric part. It’s a role for a younger man, whereas Alfonso
is the older bachelor. But I thought we had given Warren
enough of those heavy villainous roles, and for once we ought
to capitalize on his charm, and his wonderful warm personality.
BD: Let him play a lover
this time?
Alan Stone: Let him be
a lover like he did in Figaro. He’s lovable as
Guglielmo. The other hold-over, and turn-around, is our
wonderfully popular Robert
Orth. He did Guglielmo before, and now I have cast him
as Don Alfonso. Bob is a wonderful actor, and I felt that
Alfonso offers much more opportunity for subtlety of acting. I’m
from the old-time school when Alfonso was sung by a baritone.
The first time I heard Così Fan Tutte was with one of
the greatest Mozart baritones, John Brownlee. He was the classic
Don Alfonso, and Count, and Don Giovanni, and many other roles as well.
BD: Being an armchair impresario,
I would have given Orth the part of Guglielmo, as you did earlier.
Alan Stone: Yes, but his
suavity and his elegance sold him in the role of Alfonso.
So, they are the only two that appeared in the original production,
and it will be interesting to see them in these new roles. They’re
also very excited about the challenge of doing the other parts.
BD: We’ve talked about
two of the three men. Who is the tenor?
Alan Stone: The tenor
is a wonderful man who has appeared with us in two previous
productions. His name is William Eichorn.
You will remember him from The Mother of Us All in
1976. He did the part of John Adams, and the next year
he sang a much more prominent role, Belmonte in The Abduction
from the Seraglio. He is a fine tenor, a wonderful Mozart
singer, and we’re very proud of the fact that just recently he
won the Plácido Domingo Award for Singers in Barcelona, Spain.
He had all kinds of notoriety, and we’re really proud to have him.
BD: Who will be singing
the three female parts?
Alan Stone: In the role
of Despina, the little maid to the two elegant Ferrarese sisters,
we have our really lovely and beloved Maria Lagios**. She
has appeared with us as Norina in Don Pasquale, Rosina
in The Barber of Seville, Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro,
and she was also in The Mother of Us All. Maria is
really a staple with the company, and whenever I see these kinds of
roles, I already have her in mind. She’s absolutely adorable
in all these parts, and Despina is a role that was made for her.
In the role of the younger of the two sisters, Dorabella, we have a
very lovely lady from Chicago, a mezzo-soprano from the Calumet City
area, whom I have known, and who has auditioned for us for many, many
years, but we never have seemed to find the right part for her. But
this year she scored. Her name is Joyce Carter. Then, in the
role of Fiordiligi, the older, sedate, more elegant and strong-minded sister,
we have a young lady who is a student at Northwestern University. I
was very much impressed when she auditioned for us, and Karen Huffstodt**
is her name. In addition, I have a group of alternate singers
who will be not only covering these other people in case of an emergency
or illness, but they will be doing one matinee student performance
that we’re doing for the Urban Gateways Group, sponsored by the Field
Foundation on February 28th. That group includes Diane Ragains**,
who sang this last season at Grant Park, and has appeared with the
Symphony, who will be doing Fiordiligi; Kathleen Ferrin, who
sings with the Chicago Symphony Chorus, and has done lots of work in
Chicago, will be Dorabella; Arlene Barkley-Bright, who has appeared
with us in the past as Blonde in Seraglio is our Despina; Henry
Hunt, who was our Ernesto in Don Pasquale will be singing Ferrando,
and Lee Snook will be our alternate Guglielmo. Snook also has appeared
with us in touring performances Don Pasquale. Our alternate
Don Alfonso will be Warren Fremling, who is doing our Guglielmo.
He already knew the role, and it was an expeditious thing to
do. So, we’re covered now in case of accident and, with this
winter so far, we never know what’s going to happen, be it illness,
or a car that doesn’t start, or snow...
BD: [Feigning alarm] Don’t
say snow! We have already had more than enough this winter!
[Both laugh]
Alan Stone: I shouldn’t
mention snow! I’m never going to do The Snow Maiden
of Rimsky-Korsakov. We’ll skip that one, and do only summer-scene
operas!
BD: We’ll rename you The
Fair-Weather Opera Company!
Alan Stone: Right, and
we won’t do all of La Bohème because of the snowflakes
in act three. We’ll just have to cut that act right out
of the opera!
BD: Keeping that in mind,
what are the other operas that you are doing this season?
Alan Stone: We’re doing
a most interesting season of which I’m really proud. It’s
going to be hard for me to find a similar balance in future seasons.
Our first work is Mozart, so that’s the late eighteenth
century. Then our second work is a brilliant opera that has
never been done in Chicago, so we’re adding still another Chicago
premiere to our list. We’ve done several Chicago premieres,
as you know. In the past, The Merry Wives of Windsor
was a Chicago premiere in a professional production, as was The
Mother of Us All, and Summer and Smoke [by Lee Hoiby]. Our
production of The Abduction from the Seraglio was the first one
that had been done around here in something like thirty years.
So, we have always been very adventurous and very innovative in repertory.
That’s something we’re dedicated to.
BD: So, what is this new
work for this season?
Alan Stone: I don’t want
to scare our audience, because it’s nothing really that avant-garde.
It isn’t all that new, but it’s new for Chicago. It is
the marvelous comedy of Benjamin Britten Albert Herring.
There was a recent production of it on the television from the St.
Louis Opera, and I attended that production just to decide whether
or not I really wanted to do the work. I had never seen it, and
when I saw it and heard it, I really fell in love with it. It is
a wonderful work, one that is right up our ally. It’s brilliant.
BD: It has a lot of intimate
dramatic possibilities?
Alan Stone: It has wonderful,
intimate dramatic situations, and is also a real ensemble
opera. There are thirteen characters, and of those thirteen,
I would say that at least ten are very large leading roles.
BD: So there are lots
of opportunities for the young singers.
Alan Stone: Lots of opportunities,
and it comes across as a whole company effort, rather than an
opera which is a vehicle that you can build around one singer.
It is going to be directed by Frank Galati, who directed
our production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. He
also did The Mother of Us All, and Summer and Smoke.
He is a very theater-orientated person. The story of Albert
Herring is so brilliant and so amusing, I know he’s going
to make something just wonderful out of it. I should also like
to mention that the director of our Così Fan Tutte
is Peter Amster, who was our choreographer for The Merry Wives of
Windsor, and co-director of The Mother of Us All.
Peter has a great background in musical comedy, and also has worked
a great deal as a dancer. You’ll see the dancer’s touch in Così
Fan Tutte which the music can use.
BD: It needs elegance.
Alan Stone: Yes, it does
need a lot of that lightness and buoyancy.
BD: As long as we’re giving
credits here, who is the conductor for all of these operas?
Alan Stone: Well, our
conductor has been from the very beginning, a man who helped
me so much initially in the forming of the company, Robert Frisbie
[who also participates in my interview with Lee Hoiby]. He
will conduct all the productions, and he’s now also conducting his
own American Chamber Symphony. He’s really beginning a very
busy career, and that is not an easy thing to do. It’s hard being
a singer, but it may be harder being a conductor. A singer can
walk around with his pipes, but a conductor can’t carry his orchestra
around in his briefcase.
BD: Much as he’d
like to!
Alan Stone: [Laughs]
Much as he’d like to, right.
BD: What is the third work
for this new season?
Alan Stone: The third
is a work that seems to be a great favorite of audiences. I
understand that there are more requests for this opera than
any other opera, and that is Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers.
BD: Oh, with the wonderful
duet.
Alan Stone: Yes,
it has the wonderful duet that everyone remembers between the
tenor and the baritone. But there is also some wonderful
music between the tenor and the soprano, and wonderful music for
the tenor by himself, as well as wonderful music for the soprano,
and some marvelous music for the baritone, and brilliant choral music.
It’s a very, very big choral opera, and we will have the largest chorus
that we’ve ever had, as well as squeezing in the largest orchestra
that we’ve ever had into the pit at the Athenaeum. The largest
drawback we have at the Athenaeum is the size of the orchestra pit
[shown in photo at right]. We can only get about thirty
players in there. Most of the nineteenth century operas call for
more, so we have to eliminate them because they are impossible
to do with just thirty players. You need a bigger orchestra
for them.
BD: I won’t wait for a
Wagner performance with your company.
Alan Stone: No, don’t
wait for us to do Wagner, and I’m afraid you’re going
have to wait for a long time for Puccini, or for any of the romantics
of the nineteenth century.
BD: But these are done
elsewhere, and on recordings, and in productions on television.
It’s a great joy to have your company doing operas that we don’t
see all the time.
Alan Stone: I’m very happy
to hear you say that, because you’ve really summed it up nicely.
That’s exactly my philosophy. People ask me why I
don’t like Traviata. I love Traviata, and
that’s why I don’t want to do it. I would not want to subject
an audience to the musical and artistic compromises that we would
have to do to put it on, or to do Il Trovatore, or Turandot,
or so many other favorites.
BD: You do things in a different
way because it’s a much more intimate setting.
Alan Stone: Plus the fact
that we do things in English. We are always stressing
the theatrical aspects, and this year we have got a balance.
We’re doing an eighteenth century work, a nineteenth century work,
and a twentieth century work.
BD: Interesting repertoire
that is not always done.
Alan Stone: Yes.
BD: But they are all
charming works. These are not new works you’re experimenting
with. These are all works that have proved themselves.
Alan Stone: Exactly!
They’re not unknown works that we don’t know what to expect.
There is some precedence. We know that Albert Herring
has brought the curtain down to a tumultuous applause many, many
times. The Pearl Fishers has been recorded, and
Così Fan Tutte has been a staple since 1790 when it
was written. I like the combination of an early work, be
it a Mozart or Rossini or Donizetti, coupled with a contemporary
work. Strangely enough, the demands on the orchestra are very
similar between the eighteenth or early nineteenth century works,
and then the twentieth century works. It was in the mid-nineteenth
century that the orchestras grew. Perhaps a modern composer,
because of his knowledge of wanting to get his work performed, realized
it was practical to build an opera that could feasibly be produced by
a smaller company.
BD: Do you think there
will come a time when the Chicago Opera Theater will be commissioning
a world premiere?
Alan Stone: That
possibility is quite strong. There are many composers
who are anxious to have works commissioned, and they generally
can be mounted by smaller companies. A company like Lyric
Opera, the Metropolitan, and San Francisco will not take a chance,
except for the work of a fairly monumental nature, such as Paradise
Lost [by Penderecki].
But the time will come, provided that we can get support and
proper funding, that we will commission a work. As our
audience grows, we will become more and more courageous, and
be able to take a chance on a work, because we know that people
will buy a subscription, and will be more adventurous.
BD: People will know
that you’re going to give it the same treatment that you give
the other operas they enjoy?
Alan Stone: Yes, and they
will trust us, and know that we will give them something that
is worthy, even though they may not know what it is, or what it
will be.
* * *
* *
BD: As you head into
your fifth anniversary season, did you think that you would be
at this point five years ago?
Alan Stone: No, I
never did. I started this company primarily as a showcase,
as an experimental workshop. It was a hobby for me, and it
was a place for singers to get a chance to sing and learn something.
When we did Così Fan Tutte the first time,
I don’t even think I was considering looking any further than that
first season. It was an outlet. It was a culmination of
a study process. It was a practical thing you do when you have
an opera workshop in school. You put on a performance because
you’ve worked all year, and you have to show to the public that you’ve
done something with your time.
BD: Is this the first
time you’ve repeated a work?
Alan Stone: This is the
first time we’ve repeated a work, and as we know from many opera
companies, there’s a great percentage of the same operas which
are done year after year after year. Only a few new productions
come in. As time goes on, there are a few staples in our warehouse
that we should bring out again, like The Mother of Us All
[1976 & 1984], Summer and Smoke [1977 & 1980], and
The Merry Wives of Windsor [1978 & 1990]. These are
things that really have our own very personal stamp, and if we don’t
do them, people won’t hear them.
BD: Are there any plans now
for anymore television?
Alan Stone: For the time-being,
we’re in a holding pattern with television. We recently
did The Merry Wives of Windsor on WTTW, Channel 11.
It was highly successful, as was our previous production of a condensed
version of The Mother of Us All. We have received
money from the National Opera Institute to do a production of
Così Fan Tutte on television, but for the present
time we’re holding off on accepting the grant, because we’ve learned
that there are two European productions of Così that
will be released on television within the year. We don’t want
to be compared with Salzburg or Glyndebourne, because we have our
own style, and do our thing our way. We’re a regional company,
and we’re not looking to be competitive with the larger companies.
BD: By giving the public
a different opera, these television tapes perhaps might even
go to Salzburg and other places. Everyone benefits by having
more repertoire.
Alan Stone: It’s very
possible. We hope so anyway. We are on very good
terms with WTTW. We’ve worked with them now on two
occasions, and when the right moment arrives, we’ll be back there
in front of those cameras filming something fine. [Taking
a moment to reminisce] I remember when I was a very young
person, the first time I saw an opera production on television was
the Don Carlo that Rudolf Bing did when he first came to the
Met in 1950. The cast had Robert Merrill, Jussi
Björling, Cesare Siepi, Fedora Barbieri, and Delia Regal.
It was black & white on a teeny-weeny screen, and that
was such an exciting event.
BD: And that was the only
thing you had all year.
Alan Stone: It was the
only thing all year, and now there’s often something exciting
operatically on PBS, or somewhere on the tube. [Remember,
this interview was held in 1979, when opera on the TV (and now the
computer!) was much rarer than it is in 2023.] I think the
television has done enormous things for opera.
BD: A speculative question...
Now, with the advent of opera on TV, do you think
that is going to bring more people to the opera house?
Alan Stone: That is an interesting
question. I don’t know. If it were me personally,
it would intrigue me to go, but I know that lots of people have
found the media a substitute for the live form, as in sports.
My brother is a big sports fan. He loves baseball, but he
never goes to a game anymore. He’s watches it on TV. I
don’t know how that would work for opera. I would hate to think
that the people who have never seen an opera would base their judgment
of it, even if it’s a good judgment, completely on the tube, because
I don’t think you can appreciate opera on the tube unless you’ve
seen it first.
BD: [Gently protesting]
But the audio recordings have been a great boon to the
live opera.
Alan Stone: Oh, yes!
BD: With the bigger repertoire,
the public can know the works and understand them.
Alan Stone: The record
industry has done a great deal.
BD: This is what I was
getting at. Will opera-on-TV feed that, or will it send
people off in a different direction?
Alan Stone: Hopefully
it will help, but I’ve heard the opinion of people I’ve talked
to at WTTW and also WNET, Channel 13 in New York, that most of this
opera stuff on television is going to come to a crashing halt very quickly!
[Let us all breathe a huge sigh of relief that this prognostication
was completely off the mark!]
BD: Why?
Alan Stone: Because they
can’t afford it anymore. It will have to go onto some
sort of Cable TV, and people will have to pay for it. They
can’t give it away so much anymore because it’s just become too expensive.
* * *
* *
BD: Now that your company
is five years old, how does it fit into the picture of opera
in America?
Alan Stone: We seem
to be fitting into a very comfortable and very warm and happy
niche. We recently became members of the large organization
called Opera America, which is a conglomerate of most of the professional
opera companies in United States. We are not such a little opera
company after all. We are definitely a middle opera company.
There are many who have budgets of $40,000 or $50,000 a year, and we
have a budget of almost of a quarter of a million dollars a year.
BD: Are you getting national
recognition?
Alan Stone: We are getting
recognition. We have been reviewed in Opera News,
the Christian Science Monitor, Opera magazine
of London, and Opéra magazine of Paris. Opera
is the largest and fastest growing classical music art form in
the United States. There are over a thousand opera companies
in the United States of some form, and something like 600 companies
that you could call professional, in the sense that they have professional
artists, and people pay money for their seats.
BD: The Chicago Opera
Theater is one of this group of 600?
Alan Stone: We are one
of those, yes. We haven’t been ranked yet because we just
joined the organization, but we are definitely there, and people
know what we’re doing. We’re on their lists. We exchange
artists, and designers, and ideas for sharing productions, and so
forth.
BD: What about touring?
All of these sixteen performances of the three operas that
we talked about are taking place at the Athenaeum Theater. Will
you also be doing performances at high schools and elsewhere around
town?
Alan Stone: Yes, and this
creates a terrific problem and dilemma for us that we really
must wrestle with. We recently did a production of Don
Pasquale at the Beverly Arts Center, and next month we’ll
be doing two performances of The Barber of Seville with
the Lake Forest Symphony, plus a performance of Don Pasquale
for the Skokie Fine Arts Commission at Niles Township High School.
In addition, we have all kinds of concerts that we give for various
organizations, including Triton College, the Northwest Indiana Symphony
Opera Ball, and the Nathan Goldblatt Cancer Society. We’re
constantly being called on.
BD: In other words, you’re
constantly in demand?
Alan Stone: We’re working
all the time. My artists are singing, and we are keeping
them working, so a little bit of income is going into our treasury
to keep us alive. The problem is that so many of these things
come about at nearly the same time, and we have such a limited number
of singers. For example, our bass Carl Glaum, who sang with
Lyric Opera this season, is our resident bass, and has appeared with
us as Don Pasquale, and Basilio in The Barber of Seville. He
will be working during the month of March, and I don’t think his poor
wife will get to see him for three weeks between rehearsals and performances.
There are only so many nights in the week, and good basses, like good
tenors and good contraltos are very, very hard to come by. So
those people are really much in demand. There is a lot of talent
around, but in many voice categories the amount of talent is definitely
limited. We would do our public a big injustice to put someone
on who isn’t ready to do the role, rather than someone who is, even
though they may have been used before. The public agrees, because
they still love to see their favorites in the opera. We get calls
from people asking if Maria Lagios or Robert Orth in the production,
and if we say no, they don’t appear in that opera because there is no
part for them, they’re very disappointed. They have formed their
own fan clubs.
[We then reiterated the dates and times, as well
as ticket prices and availabilities for these performances.]
==========================================================
We now move ahead to December of the same
year, 1979, and pick up the conversation
where we are talking about the problems of commissioning
a new opera.
BD: Let’s look at it
the other way. If you had the money problems solved, and
you didn’t have to worry about cash, and all you had to do was
worry about the actual opera that was going to be turned out, what
would you ask for? What would you look for? What kind
of guidelines would you want?
Alan Stone: I would
look for someone with a good eye to the practicality of producing
it. This is not necessarily just the money, but what kind
of demands there are as far as orchestra size. If it were
written for a Richard Strauss kind of orchestra, I couldn’t do
it because I don’t know where to present it. If that was the
case, I wouldn’t accept the commissioning
money.
BD: [Starting the actual
interview for broadcast, though, as you will see, we soon slip
back into our general discussion] Your company now is six
years old?
Alan Stone: Yes.
BD: What have you learned
in those six years?
Alan Stone: I’ve learned
a lot. For one thing, ultimately the things that are important
in any opera company are not always the excellence of the performance,
but how well organized you are, and the good strong fiscal backing
you have. I’ve learned that what’s good for the singers
— which was what prompted me
initially to start this company
— isn’t ultimately of really great interest to
the public. If it doesn’t fit or fill a community need,
or if people of the community don’t need it, the fact that singers
need it, means it’s not important.
BD: What compromises
have you had to make?
Alan Stone: I don’t think
we’ve had to really make any compromises, except in the choice
of repertory, and those have been dictated by the number of musicians,
and so forth. When I first began my whole experience as a
singer and as a coach, I didn’t realize that you can’t perform La
Bohème with fifteen or twenty musicians, whereas you can perform
The Marriage of Figaro with twenty-four, and have a very beautiful,
effective and very authentic orchestra. But you can’t do that
with many other works, so we’ve had to make those compromises.
There are lots of operas in the middle repertory I would like very
much to do, such as unusual works of Smetana, or Janáček, and
perhaps some early Puccini as well. [In 1987, the COT would
produce The Two Widows of Smetana.] I might like to take
a crack at La Bohème some time. We might be able
to do it with our small sized theater, but the pit is much too small,
which makes it impossible for the whole latter nineteenth century repertory,
and much of the French opera. [Wistfully] I’d love to do
some Ravel operas.
BD: The double bill of
the two Ravel operas would be nice.
Alan Stone: Right. L’heure
espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges.
I would just kill to do that, but there’s no way that it can
done with an orchestra of sixteen players! Even Massenet and
some of those things require a much bigger orchestra.
BD: So primarily you’re
looking for pieces that will suit the orchestra?
Alan Stone: It’s
one of our most important factors, and the fact that we don’t
have access to large dramatic voices among the younger singers.
It is the same with Lyric Opera, or the Metropolitan.
When I think of singers today that are singing big roles, no one would
have believed that Renata Scotto would
ever attempt to sing La Gioconda, or Mirella Freni would sing
Aïda. To me, with my orientation, that kind of
thing is inconceivable. Even having Roberta Knie
do Isolde, you have the choice of either hearing it with those
people, or you don’t hear it at all!
BD: We’re heading into
1980, and a new decade. Not just your theater, but where
is opera going?
Alan Stone: It’s growing.
There’s no question of that. It’s going ahead.
I have my own theory that eventually the crunch is going to
be with the big theaters. Unless we find some kind of governmental
subsidy, much more than we have, which is very unlikely, the larger
companies are going to have to start thinking in terms of cutting
down on some of their scope and ideas. They’re going to have
to find more inexpensive and modest ways of presenting operas, just
as they have found more modest choices of artists, because their bigger
and better artists are not available. Eventually the bigger companies
are going to see that the money to put on these big productions is not
available, and they’re going to find ways of putting on shows using
unit sets, and more projections, and trying to follow the trend of some
of the smaller, more regional companies. That’s where it’s going
to go, but I don’t feel that opera is in serious danger, because the trend
is very, very fast, and up all over... almost too much in some cases.
BD: Do you resent the
record companies, and their use of a few big stars over and
over again, and the feeling by the public that if these big stars
are not in their casts, it’s not as good a performance?
Alan Stone: I understand
that, and it’s a very interesting question. I resent it
from a certain point of view. Rather than resent the record
companies in choosing the same artists over and over, I’m a
little bit disappointed by their artistic standards and values.
There are many fine artists that I don’t feel really should
be documented in certain repertory. Even though they may want
to perform it, or may have performed it, I don’t feel that the public
is wise enough and sophisticated enough to know who is the best,
or who are the best. There isn’t just one, but several may be
among the best. As a result, generally the public will go with
whoever is the most popular at a particular time. What name
have they heard mostly? It may turn out that the recording
by this artist is a very inferior one. Often it’s because that role
is not really associated with that artist, and that artist would never
have a great success with it because of the size of their voice, or
temperament, and so forth. You are right, though, when you say
many times people get a pre-conception of what a certain part is supposed
to sound like. Comparisons are odious, and after hearing Sherrill Milnes or Robert
Merrill knock out Figaro in The Barber of Seville, if
someone were to hear our Figaro they might make some kind of rather
negative comparison.
BD: So, it’s two-edged sword.
Recordings have made opera more popular, yet they have perhaps
pushed it a little bit too far in a wrong direction?
Alan Stone: They have
made it popular and certainly accessible to so many people, and
with the discount record stores, which have become the rule rather
than the exception, more and more people are buying records in
a very unselective way. Records are what got me into opera.
I learned opera and became involved by listening to records as
a young child. It was Enrico Caruso, and Beniamino Gigli, and
Amelita Galli-Curci, and Kirsten Flagstad that got me interested.
BD: Unless you’re in
a place where you can go to the opera every night, that’s really
the only way you can get a constant and continual exposure.
Alan Stone: As a young
child, I didn’t have the means of going to hear them. Caruso
had been dead quite a few years by the time I heard his recordings.
[Both laugh] But in those days, I remember how one
would talk about their Caruso collection, and bring out their dozen
78 rpm recordings of Caruso as a great treasure.
BD: We’re talking about one
artist recording too many roles. Is the converse true?
Do you feel there have been some major losses, some things
that should have been documented that have not been?
Alan Stone: Oh, absolutely!
We’ve missed some very good possibilities. There
was never a studio recording of Bidú Sayão
doing Manon. She was the Manon of our period, and sang
it well in to the 1950s, when recordings were really at their
peak. I remember a great, great Wagnerian mezzo-soprano,
Kerstin Thorborg, who was a great favorite, and who has been almost
forgotten. She was the number one mezzo at
the Metropolitan during the entire Flagstad/Melchior period. Her
performances of Kundry and Brangäne only survive via broadcast
recordings [some of which have been licensed and issued].
The Brangäne is on an unofficial recording that the Met
gives you when you give them a contribution. She
was the first Amneris I ever saw. What a shame that we never
got a studio recording of Un Ballo in Maschera with Zinka Milanov
when she was in her prime, though her recording of Il Trovatore
is wonderful. Kirsten Flagstad was poorly recorded. We
missed a lot of chances, and when they did start to record her,
it was already a little bit late.
BD: When the record companies
start recording a young tenor, or a young baritone, or a young
soprano doing everything, do we then have the right to complain
about that, when we have just lamented that we did not catch Zinka
Milanov or Kirsten Flagstad early? We seem to be on both sides
of the fence.
Alan Stone: Yes,
it’s a mistake to do both things, either too soon or too late.
BD: Then here’s the question...
How do you know exactly when a singer is in his or her prime?
Alan Stone: [Thinks a moment]
Well, you don’t ask them. [Both have a huge laugh]
It’s very difficult to answer that question, because many singers
go through crises during their careers. Had one heard
Leontyne Price singing at the time when she was doing those famous
performances of La Fanciulla del West at the Met, one would
have said that was the end of Miss Price’s career... and indeed
it was for a period of two years. The same thing happened
with Zinka Milanov in the late ’40s, when
she quietly went back to Yugoslavia, and came back three years later
in superb form.
BD: How much of that
would be simply resting the voice?
Alan Stone: A good part
of it is vocal rest, and a re-evaluation of the voice.
It’s interesting to listen to recordings of singers and how they
have changed. It’s very difficult for a singer to go through
a period of vocal transition, because they are fearful that once they
take themselves out of the market, there will be someone else to come
along, and they’ll be forgotten. I think about a friend of mine,
Grace Bumbry. When
she finally decided to really make the transition in her mind
from mezzo-soprano to soprano, and not call herself a mezzo-soprano
even though she might still sing a Carmen or an Amneris from time
to time, she had to literally not accept engagements for at least a
year. During that time, she restudied her voice, and re-evaluated,
and reworked on a new technique of singing. This took enormous
courage! Imagine the courage it takes of an artist who is
working and making money, and who is not in any kind of serious problem.
It’s not like a tenor who decides he’s going to become a baritone because
he’s losing his high notes. This is quite different because someone
is going to tell him to stop. I admire Bumbry, and I admire other
artists who have done the same thing, and have stopped at a point in
their career.
BD: Can it back-fire?
Alan Stone: Yes, there have
been many cases of singers who have stopped, and then wanted
to pick up the career but never quite picked it up where they
had been. Others have been fortunate in doing so.
For example, Carlo
Bergonzi. For a long time there was very little heard
from him. He’s not a young man, at least not a young man for
a tenor. He’s in his middle-fifties now, and he’s been singing
for probably thirty-five of those fifty-five years. Now he’s
quite active at the Met, and even though he is somewhat limited, he’s
still an artist that has to be dealt with. He still sings with
great style, and with beautiful phrasing.
BD: Where’s the Met’s
first obligation to an artist like Bergonzi, or to the young artist
who is getting started, and beginning a career, and needing
the experience and exposure?
Alan Stone: Of course, they
have to divide their loyalty. Obviously, they can’t depend
on the veteran artists forever, because they are in some precarious
situations. How long will the high notes ring out as well
as they did before? And when does the moment come when the
high notes don’t ring out at all, or don’t even sound? When the
moment comes that they can’t make a noise at all on the note, then
they have to re-consider their repertory, or reconsider their vocal
range, or just retire and teach in a conservatory!
BD: Are there too many
singers today?
Alan Stone: It’s interesting
that you ask that, and the answer is yes. I’ve just come
back from Opera America auditions. It was a convention of many
of the opera associations of the United States, including the
Metropolitan, San Francisco, the Lyric, Miami, New York City Opera,
and the Chicago Opera Theater. There were about seventy-five
companies from the whole country, and we heard the final auditions.
They were supposed to be the best young singers that had been recommended
by Opera America companies from all over the country, and they were
there to sing for all the directors and managers of the opera companies,
with the idea of getting some work. My own feeling was that the
general standard was very low. It seems to me that with the enormous
increase of opera companies, the demand for singers has increased tremendously.
BD: Is the cream of the
crop being spread too thin?
Alan Stone: The problem is
not that the cream of the crop is being spread too thin, but
the very bottom of the skimmed-milk is really getting used more
than it ever was before. The small companies can’t afford
to have the cream of the crop, the superstars. So very often
young singers fill those big roles.
BD: I don’t necessarily
mean the superstars, but what about the young singers who are
good?
Alan Stone: Yes, they
are super in demand, absolutely. They are the ones whose
performances in a small company gained them some distinction, and
sometimes in a large company they are a source of embarrassment.
For example, I’ve heard some very fine young talents with the San
Francisco Spring Opera, and other companies of that size.
I was terribly impressed with them, and I would be very happy to have
them sing with me. But after having heard them in productions
at the Metropolitan and at Lyric Opera, I’ve been disappointed.
They were outclassed. They were not ready yet for the
big, big time. They were ready for the middle time.
Some of these singers are getting work on the mere fact that they
can hit the notes. For example, we heard a low bass sing Sarastro’s
aria from The Magic Flute.
BD: He had the low
F?
Alan Stone: He had the
low F, but that’s all he had. He sang in tune, but he had
no understanding of the nobility, the dignity, the depth and the
breadth of this character. He was just singing it like a nice
song, and yet because he had the low F, many directors were interested
in him because he could hit that note. It would mean that they
could do a production of The Magic Flute because they would have
someone that can ‘get through’ the part. That’s all they were worried
about. To me, that’s not enough of a standard. I don’t want
a Sarastro to get through the part. I want him to just thrill
his audience with the role. So this man is going to get work,
but he’s too young to get work. What he needs is about two years
of more study, not just experience. By this I mean vocal study,
language, style, immersion. That man should be going to Germany
and living there, and listening, and hearing, because when you’re in
this business, professional experience is extraordinary. There’s
nothing quite like it, but there’s a special kind of experience,
study experience, and they’re different.
BD: Have you, as an impresario,
ever asked a singer to do anything that you really felt, if you
were his or her vocal coach, you would have said no?
Alan Stone: In all conscience
I would say I have not. I have tried almost pathologically
to avoid hurting the young voices. I was a singer myself,
and got myself into terrible trouble vocally. In fact, for
a period of time, I lost my voice because I was being pushed into a
repertory that I didn’t belong. I was a lyric tenor, and I sang
Mozart and Donizetti, and I was pushed into heavier Italian repertory,
and Wagner because I was tall. The agents needed those kinds
of singers. I remembered all this very much, and I started the
Chicago Opera Theater. Initially it began because I was an
opera coach, and I was not going to suddenly betray my standards and
my goals!
BD: I just wondered if
you ever found that you had to.
Alan Stone: Sometimes I have
been more persuasive than perhaps I would like to be, but I
never felt that I would offer someone a role that would do them
any physical harm to their voices. Usually it’s just the
opposite. I have to convince the singers that this particular
role is not right for their voice. Singers are very, very special.
They’re not very objective about their own voices and their own
singing. This accounts for some of the strange things we hear these
days, with artists we love all of a sudden appearing in the most unlikely
roles on television, and in the opera companies. We ask why they
did it, and it’s because they’re
impressionable. They also feel they need new challenges
all the time. They get tired of doing the same Mimì
over and over.
BD: What about the singers
of the last century, who would have a huge repertoire?
Alan Stone: Many factors
were different in those days. For one, the size of theater.
Obviously, a soprano singing Tristan and Isolde in a theater
that seats 1,500 people as opposed to a theater seating 4,000
makes enormous demands on the voice, including fighting over a
much larger orchestra. Also, the pitch was considerably lower,
so the singers weren’t straining at the absolute uppermost reaches
of their voices. Despite the fact that we hear stories of
Adelina Patti and all these people who went on forever, most of those
people in the so-called ‘golden age’, had very short careers.
If you look back, when they started talking about Giuditta Pasta, who
created Norma, they talked about her being already in vocal decline
when she sang that role.
BD: But we have no way
of really knowing this.
Alan Stone: Yes, no way
of knowing it except from documentation. I remember reading
about it in Pleasants’ book [shown at left]. He brings out
how the voice was somewhat in tatters, and the pitch was not so good
anymore. But she was not an old woman. The career of Maria
Callas approximates more the kind of career that existed in the ‘golden
age’. They did everything, and they did incredibly well, but
not for very long. We don’t know exactly how many
of them retired very young, as Callas did. It’s hard to believe
that by the time she was thirty, her best days were practically
over as a singer. This is against all the rules of physiology
because there’s no question that if a singer is careful and judicious
in their repertory, and if they are technically strong, and keep themselves
healthy, it is not unusual for a singer to sing well into their fifties,
and even as old as sixty. There have been some that go even longer
than that. The deeper voices, the contraltos and basses last longer.
Look at Jerome Hines now.
He’s marvelous.
BD: But they’re not forcing
the upper reaches of the throat.
Alan Stone: They’re forcing
their own upper reaches. A high F for a bass is just as
shattering an experience for a bass as a high B-Flat is for a
tenor, but there is less tension in it. The emphasis is more
on the lower part of the voice.
BD: A bass doesn’t have
to sing high Fs all the time, whereas the tenor has to have
a lot of B-flats.
Alan Stone: That’s correct,
but there have been some examples... The great tenor Beniamino
Gigli sang like a young man up to four or five years before his death.
There are recordings that are amazing, not just a recital, but full
performances, and he had sung everything. He had done a huge
gamut of roles, from the lightest lyric leggiero-tenor, all the
way up through to Andrea Chénier, and Radamès, and Manrico,
and Pagliacci.
* * *
* *
BD: Are you happy with opera?
Alan Stone: Am I happy
with opera in general, or with my opera company?
BD: Let’s ask it both
ways, as a patron and as an impresario.
Alan Stone: As a patron, I
must admit not being as happy and not getting the immense pleasure
from opera that I did when I was a young student. I don’t know
if it’s just getting older and a bit cynical about opera, and sour
grapes, and bored with it, and blasé, but it’s a rare occasion
now when I go to the opera and am really transported into this world
that I lived in as a young singer and young student in Milan and
Chicago and New York. From the other point of view I understand
the reasons for it, but sacrifices have been made in the standards.
I don’t hear the great conductors conducting opera anymore. When
I was living in New York, I would hear Manon with Pierre
Monteux conducting, and Victoria de los Angeles and Cesare Valletti
singing. In Milan I heard Tosca with Maria Callas, and
Tito Gobbi, and Giuseppe
Di Stefano in his prime, and Tullio Serafin conducting. So,
as a patron I am often disappointed.
BD: But now you’re in
a unique position, because you are sometimes a patron, and
sometimes an impresario. Is there anything that you are doing,
or are there lots of things that you are doing as an impresario,
simply to make patrons more satisfied?
Alan Stone: It’s interesting,
and I’ve often wondered about this. I love my performances!
I just think that the Chicago Opera Theater performances are wonderful.
BD: But you’ve molded
them to your taste.
Alan Stone: That very well may
be part of it, and also because I go to those performances not
expecting the kind of perfection and the superior state of the art
that I do expect from the Metropolitan Opera and the Lyric Opera productions.
I go to my productions looking for entertainment and music theater.
I know already that I’m not going to hear Luciano Pavarotti.
I’m not going to hear Birgit Nilsson, and
Joan Sutherland.
So, my whole expectation is considerably different.
BD: What would happen
if you went to the Lyric Opera, or the Met, with those kinds
of expectations?
Alan Stone: When I have gone
like that, then generally I’m not disappointed. It depends
a lot on the repertory. For example, when I went to the
Lyric to see The Love for Three Oranges, I knew from the
nature of the work that I was not going to get a display of individual
vocal skill. I knew it was being done in English. I knew
the singers were mostly younger American singers. I went to see
a spectacle, rather than one of my old favorite operas. Then I
wasn’t disappointed. You’re right, I came with a different set
of values. But when I go to hear Andrea Chénier
or La Bohème at the Lyric, I have too many memories
in my ears of people I have heard over the years, and there aren’t
too many people singing these parts today that are going to make
you erase those memories. They tell you that’s a sign of getting
old when you start feeling this way.
BD: It seems that every
age is that way. People who have been going to opera for
twenty, thirty, forty years, begin to only remember the performances
of twenty, thirty, forty years ago, whereas the young goers are
remembering performances only from last year, or the year before.
So they’re perhaps more satisfied with what they’re hearing.
Alan Stone: That may very well
be. Although because of the enormous immersion in opera
that so many people have, it is hard to gain a sense of what is
the best. In the early days before there were so many recordings
of so many things, one knew about Kirsten Flagstad. She sang
almost all of the Wagner roles, and made a few recordings.
BD: Then were people disappointed
later when they heard Astrid Varnay or Helen Traubel?
Alan Stone: Perhaps if
they had heard them at the time, if their careers had been contemporary,
they might have been somewhat disappointed. Astrid Varnay’s
career perhaps did suffer, and Helen Traubel’s career suffered,
although she had a huge career. But now there are so many more
singers appearing on recordings, and so many people have recorded
the same work. There are too many recordings for my money
of the same opera. I don’t know why we need all those, except
to sell more records. What’s even more confusing is when
someone has recorded the same role twice. It’s interesting from
a documentary point of view, for a musicologist or a vocal pedagogue
to compare one recording to the next one he made five years later, but
I don’t think the audiences get into that aspect of it at all.
BD: How many different
opera audiences are there, or are there are as many audiences
as there are people who go?
Alan Stone: I don’t think
I could define how many audiences there are. [Pauses
a moment] It’s the first time you’ve ever talked to me about
these things! It’s interesting that you mentioned me as
a singer turned impresario, because that was brought out at the
Opera America meeting. Here we had all these people from
all over, but of all the artistic directors, or managers, the
orientation for most of them was not in the singing. There
were only three that came from a singing career.
BD: The rest were
from the business world?
Alan Stone: No, most
of them came either from the stage, as stage directors, or they
were conductors. In the little companies, many of the
artistic directors conduct the orchestras. The only people
who came from the singing world were Beverly Sills, and David Lloyd, and
myself.
[At this point we promoted La Périchole
with details of performance dates and times.]
=========================================================
Now we move along to
February of 1983.
BD: It’s my pleasure
to be speaking once again with Alan Stone, the founder and
artistic director of the Chicago Opera Theater, which is embarking
on its ninth season. There will be three operas in this particular
season — Martha
by Flotow, The Consul by Menotti, who will
be in town to direct his work, and also The Barber of Seville
by Rossini. Why Martha?
Alan Stone: Why not Martha?
It was for so many years one of the standards in the repertory,
and one of the most popular of all the grand operas. I remember
seeing the Mario Lanza movie, The Great Caruso, with music
of Martha. Then in the last thirty or forty years it’s
gone very much into obscurity, and has been neglected. I really
think it’s due to the fact that it’s devilishly difficult to do.
It’s much harder than it seems. It calls for a cast of virtuoso
voices, wonderfully attractive people, and a big chorus. Perhaps
twenty or thirty years ago we were too cynical to enjoy some of the sentimentality
and romanticism, but the wheel is turning now, and people are ready
to enjoy shows like that just like movies such as Tootsie and
things of that kind. We need some of that fresh air in this ugly
atmosphere that we’re living in, and that’s why I picked Martha
to do.
BD: Is this one of
several that you have in mind, little plums, little gems that
you’re sprinkle season after season?
Alan Stone: Yes, it’s
something I have been trying to do, and quite successfully over
the years, ever since we started doing three operas. We’ve
done, for example, The Daughter of the Regiment, which is
hardly ever done. It was only done once by Lyric Opera in almost
thirty years of its history. We’ve also done La Périchole,
and La Rondine, The Italian Girl in Algiers, and The
Abduction from the Seraglio. These are not frequently performed
operas, and yet they are the works that everybody knows, but nobody’s
seen lately. The Pearl Fishers is another one that we’ve
done which is very much forgotten on the stage. It has a beautiful
score, and one that the public knows a lot from recordings of excerpts.
My problem is to keep digging these things up and not digging myself
under the ground while I’m doing it! [Both laugh]
BD: This seems to be
the pattern of your season. You do one favorite, one middle
romantic novelty, and then one contemporary theater piece, and
it provides a balanced season.
Alan Stone: That’s a formula
I devised back in 1979 when we went into three productions, and
so far we’ve been able to continue it. I hope we will be able
to follow this device, because it offers something for everybody. It’s
good training for the audiences, and good training also for the artists
to get a chance to work in different genres of opera.
BD: Tell us a little bit about
Martha.
Alan Stone: It might be
called the counterpart to Così Fan Tutte. In
this opera we have two men and two women. The women in this
case are aristocratic, or represent the aristocracy, as they do
in Così, except that in this story, they get into
costumes and go into a new environment. They pick up these
two farmer boys, thinking they’re going to have a little fun.
But the plot gets a little rough, because the boys are quite serious
about this romance. It turns out that one of the boys isn’t
really a farmer, but an aristocrat in disguise. After all
the complications and ramifications of the plot, of course it all
turns out happily ever after at the end, accompanied by glorious music.
The famous ‘M’appari’ is the tenor aria that everyone knows.
BD: How does that translate?
Alan Stone: In this particular
translation, I believe it says ‘Like in a dream, I think of
you at night’. I may not have all the words right, but it’s
a very easy translation to sing, and quite close to the original ‘Ach!
So Fromm’. ‘M’appari’
was a translation because the opera was originally written in German.
So here we have a German composer writing about England in
the beginning of the eighteenth century, and being most famous in its
Italian translation. There’s as little song called ‘Qui Sola
Vergine Rosa’ which we know better in English as ‘The Last Rose of
Summer’. Many people don’t know it was used in Martha.
[It’s an Irish poem from 1805 by Thomas Moore, and the tune goes back
to 1792. So the music for this number was arranged by Flotow.]
There’s also beautiful ensemble music, quartets
and quintets.
BD: You say it’s very
difficult, but is it fun to work with?
Alan Stone: Oh, it’s marvelous
fun. It’s difficult technically, and yet it mustn’t sound
difficult. The pyrotechnics are all concealed in the lightness
and romanticism of the work. Particularly on the part of the
tenor and the soprano, it calls for very, very difficult singing.
There’s very high tessitura for the
tenor, and a very extended range for the soprano, with numerous
high Ds and E-Flats. The contralto is the sort of voice of
Verdi called ‘mezzo soprano’. She
should be able to sing Azucena or Amneris with the personality
of a Rosina. Dramatically it’s a soubrette role, but it cannot
be sung by a light soubrette lyric mezzo soprano. Instead,
it needs a really full mezzo-contralto. The baritone or bass
is another wide-ranged role, a big, almost like a Heldenbariton,
from a low F to a high F, with sustained notes, too. All
of these parts are very, very difficult.
BD: Was it very difficult
to cast this opera?
Alan Stone: It was difficult,
except that fortunately over the years I have built up a wonderful
stable of great vocal artists. They are young, but still wonderfully
talented. Generally, I always have an idea of someone in mind
for at least some of the major parts. One of the reasons I decided
to do Martha was because I had worked with Karen Huffstodt,
who had done La Rondine with us, and also the previous Così
Fan Tutte. I knew her voice, having worked with her and coached
with her. I felt she was the right soprano. She had the
extension on the top that you could work with. Also, the tenor,
Richard Leech*, had sung in our production of La Rondine with
Karen, and they were very beautiful together. They sing so well
together that I knew if I could cast the tenor and the soprano, I could
go ahead. The mezzo soprano, Jane Bunnell**, is the only one who
is completely new to the company. I cast her from New York.
She has just the most beautiful and wonderful rich deep contralto voice,
and yet there’s no resemblance to a contralto who sings ‘O Rest in the
Lord’, or ‘O Thou that tellest good Tidings to Zion’. She’s a perky
girl with a big huge perky voice, and it’s wonderful. The bass,
Paul Geiger**, has done Figaro with us before, and The Italian Girl
in Algiers. The character he plays, Plunkett, is a farmer in the
story, and Paul lives in Iowa and is kind of a farmer boy himself. He’s
6 feet 5 inches! I had the cast pretty well in mind.
The big question was the mezzo, and when I found her, we were all set.
BD: Are there some
little roles in the opera?
Alan Stone: There are two, and
they’re not little. There’s one quite a big juicy supporting
role in the role of Sir Tristram Mickleford, who is the suitor and
cousin to Martha, or Lady Harriett. It’s a basso-buffo part,
which is being done by William Walker, who has just come back from
a year with the Zurich Opera. He sang with us in The Good Soldier
Schweik, and has done Don Basilio in our tour of The Barber of
Seville. The other small but very important part is the Sheriff.
He only sings in one scene, but that’s the role in which Paul Plishka made his
debut at the Met back in the ’60s. That
is being sung by Kurt Link**, who has sung with the Chicago Symphony
and Georg Solti,
and is now beginning his operatic career. He has a wonderful voice, and
although it’s a small part, I heard him in rehearsal today, and
it was a big noise! [Both laugh]
BD: Who’s the conductor?
Alan Stone: Conducting
will be our regular conductor, Steven Larsen,
who last year did such a wonderful job with our Regina,
and the year before he led an incredible production, one of the things
I’m probably proudest we ever did, The Good Soldier Schweik.
[Twenty years later (2001), the COT would again present this
opera, conducted by Alexander
Platt. It was also (audio) recorded at that time as a two-CD set.]
Steve has been doing a lot of contemporary music, and I decided
to give him a break this season and let him try a different kind of
music. That’s why he’s not conducting The Consul, but
he is conducting Martha.
BD: I had expected
him to do The Consul.
Alan Stone: Yes, everyone
did, and he did too, but his experience has been primarily in
symphonic and orchestral conducting, as opposed to opera.
There’s not that much opportunity for young people to conduct opera.
He had a real feel for orchestra, and Martha [1847] is
very Germanic, in its own way. The influence of Weber is very
strong, and you can hear early Wagner all over the place. Not Tristan
or the Ring, but there are choruses that sound right out of The
Flying Dutchman [1841]. The Farmers’ Chorus has that
wonderful rousing beat and rhythm and vigor that we hear in Wagner’s
very early opera Rienzi [1840]. So, that’s why I was
sure, and I’m even more sure having heard the rehearsals, that Steve
will bring all of that sound out of the orchestra, and the chorus,
and singers as well. [The production would open a few days
after this broadcast.]
BD: Everything always seems
to work in your productions. Even as you go into the last
couple of rehearsals, and you’re worried about this and that, you
always seem to bring it off well. Tell us about the other operas
you will be presenting later in this season.
Alan Stone: You mentioned The
Consul [winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Music], and the
biggest coup we have this year is that I was able to persuade Menotti
to come and direct his own opera, which has never received a professional
production in Chicago. It is a great honor and thrill and treat
for us to have the great man here. I worked with him many
years ago very briefly in Tamu-Tamu [1973]. I was
the casting consultant, which meant I set up all the auditions,
and did the preliminary auditions for the singers for that opera. You
will recall that I did have my training in Italy, and I lived there
for three years, so I speak the language quite fluently. Although
Menotti was born in Italy, he prefers to speak in English, and
for his operas he writes his own librettos, and he writes them in English.
He doesn’t translate. The only opera he wrote in Italian was
Amelia al ballo [Amelia Goes to the Ball].
BD: That was a very early
work [1936].
Alan Stone: Yes, an early,
early work. But even though he prefers to speak English,
he speaks Italian fluently, and he does have a slight accent.
He was in his early twenties when he came over from Italy, but it’s
wonderful to be able to speak to him in Italian because we
have all these little secrets going on. We can say these terrible
things about everybody, and nobody knows what we’re saying... at
least we hope they don’t! [Both laugh]
BD: Is the casting for The Consul
complete now?
Alan Stone: Absolutely,
and it’s a wonderful cast. This is our richest year of casting.
When you see the names of the people, you might wonder what
happened to all the Chicago singers, and I must say that I did get
the majority of the leading singers for The Consul from the
New York area. That was partially due to the fact that Menotti
wanted to be in on all the auditions himself with me, and at least
be able to agree together on who we would choose. I had four
series of auditions in New York with him before we finally fixed
on our artists. So, most of the leading people in the big roles
are from New York. The smaller roles, the supporting roles,
are important, and most of those are from Chicago. Then, the Barber
of Seville has a good mix. As Figaro, we have our veteran
star, Robert Orth, who is singing all over this country. He
was so wonderful as John Buchanan in Summer & Smoke on television
this last year. His Rosina is Cynthia Munzer*, who is formerly
of the Met and sings all over the country and all over the world. She
did The Italian Girl in Algiers. The tenor is Abraham Morales,
a wonderful leggiero tenor, of which there are so few, because most
tenors get tired of singing Rossini. They want to sing bigger
things, and then when they want to go back to the good old bel canto
leggiero stuff, they can’t do it anymore.
There are very few of them that have learned the lesson of Alfredo Kraus, and who is
still singing amazingly and beautifully well. The basses are Kenneth
Cox, who was our Osmin, and Carl Glaum, who did Pasquale with us.
Glaum did Basilio in our first Barber, and he’s now a staple
at the San Francisco Opera, where he’s done some wonderful roles.
They love him there, and now he’s coming back to sing Bartolo. He
always wanted to do Bartolo, and physically he’s small and bit husky,
which is really physically much more for my taste as Bartolo. For
Basilio I prefer to have a slender taller man. Carl is able to
handle that terribly difficult tessitura of Bartolo. It’s a very
difficult role, maybe the most difficult role in the whole opera. People
don’t always realize that because he is covered up with a load of jokes,
and is asked to do funny things with the voice. I should also mention
our conductors too and directors. Our director for Martha
is Dominic Missimi,
a local director, teacher and professor at Northwestern, and one of the
most incredible young operatic directors. He is not only a director,
he’s a musician, and he can breathe life into most scores that are very
difficult. He did La Rondine for us, and The Italian Girl
in Algiers, and Seraglio. That’s already something because
there’s very little action, but Dominic can extract much from it.
In The Consul, our conductor will be Joseph De Ruggieriis,
who conducted our Seraglio last year. He is the conductor
of the San Diego Opera and also San Francisco Opera. He worked
with Menotti in Spoletto, Italy, years ago as his assistant, and
he asked me not to do a classic this year. He wanted to do a contemporary
opera, so it worked out. Larsen, who had done the contemporary
one, wanted to do the classic, and so we made a nice switch.
Nicholas Muni will direct Barber. He is from New York,
and is a director who’s trained in music. He’s been very helpful
to me in working out recitatives. The conductor is a wonderfully
bright young man whose operatic career has been going wild in this
country, Mark Flint*·**. He is from the Michigan Opera,
and has also conducted the St. Louis Opera and the San Francisco Opera
Spring Opera. He’s probably the busiest young American opera conductor,
and so we have quite a team.
[At this point we listed dates and times for the radio
audience. We then continued chatting privately about other
operatic subjects, including the use and mis-use of recordings.]
Alan Stone: Young singers always
like to get a recording to help them.
BD: To crib from! [Both
laugh]
Alan Stone: Yes, sure. I
just wonder what people did before those days. To me,
the recordings and tapes are so important, not to copy but just to
get a feeling of the work. I hear singers say they’ve enjoyed
them because this is their passion, too. But I hear
some conductors say they never listen to recordings, or they never
listen to their own recordings. They can give you a point of
view, but they want to do it fresh. Steve said that to me one
time, and I told him he should have listened to it because his tempo
was completely wrong dramatically. It was just off a hundred
per cent. This was not in Martha, but rather was some years
ago. He had learned a little bit since. About four years
ago I was in Italy, and I went to visit my old friend (conductor)
Giuseppe Patanè. I stayed at his home, in his villa.
He lives in Milan and has a villa up in the mountains with a
beautiful swimming pool, and a garden. He loves animals, and he’s
got all kinds of monkeys. Even though he had invited me, I practically
never saw him because he was going to be doing a production of The
Flying Dutchman in Vienna. He was studying, studying, studying.
This was his vacation, but he said that he’s got to prepare. One
day he called to me and said he was sorry he was spending so little time
with me. I was there for four days, but we only saw each other at
meal times, once in a while. He said, “They
want to kill me in Vienna because I’m Italian. They don’t think
anybody can play Wagner but the Germans. But I will not let
them kill me! I am preparing for this so much.”
In his studio he has wonderful sound equipment, and he asked me to
listen to something. “Is there too much
portamento? No? What do you think?”
I asked who it was, and he said it was Gwyneth Jones.
Then we listened to Kirsten Flagstad. He also played Furtwängler
and said, “He has it all. He gets
everything, and he hears everything.” Today
it’s like wine-tasting. One knows what he likes because he’s
tasted all of it. He takes a little bit of this idea, a little
bit of that idea, and puts it all together and comes out with his own
interpretation which is influenced by these other thoughts.
BD: [Gently protesting] But
Furtwängler didn’t listen to all of these others.
He got it out of the score himself.
Alan Stone: This is true.
That’s what I’m saying. Now these guys don’t have
to do that. Today they have the opportunity to absorb the
great thoughts of so many. In some ways, it’s much easier
for them.
BD: Is it a blessing
or is it a curse?
Alan Stone: It can be a blessing,
depending on who is doing it. I think that every soprano
today should sit down for about two years and be forced to hear the
best recordings of Rosa Ponselle and Zinka Milanov, and the other
best singers. I am horrified when I mention these names to
these young kids and they don’t know who they are. There are
recordings of them, but I would never ask them to try to copy.
They could never copy! They don’t have the vocal equipment to do
it even if they wanted to. But they need to learn something about
an approach, or know when something is wonderful, and then try to
do something wonderful themselves.
BD: If one of your artists came to you
and asked which recording of Martha he or she should listen
to, they could almost learn it by rote.
Alan Stone: No, can’t
happen because, for one, we do it in another language. That
already changes things. I don’t believe they should listen
and learn by rote because we’re more sophisticated nowadays musically.
There are fewer approximations of musical performances.
BD: Are they becoming
too tentative?
Alan Stone: Tentative?
No, no, no! On the contrary, we’re very much more demanding
musically. They don’t give themselves the rein that they could
because the times have changed. Conductors don’t give them
those privileges anymore. But worse than that, they don’t
even know the potential of what’s in their innate abilities. In
a phrase, they need to know how much stretch then can give without really
distorting or hurting it. I learned more about ‘declamazione’,
recitative and declamation, from hearing Callas in Milan. I
would never sing her repertory, but I could transfer it to my own.
Nowadays, I’m not very happy with what’s going on. I’ve heard
things from the Met that if I had heard that stuff when I was sixteen,
I’d probably be doing something different than I’m doing now. These
days, when I hear the Met on the radio, I turn it off. I can’t
even listen to it. Some of it is like the old touring San Carlo
Opera. The singers are doing roles that they shouldn’t do.
BD: Earlier you said you had to restrain
singers from trying to do too much.
Alan Stone: They don’t
know that they’re not instrumentalists. We see these guys
in our orchestras. They work, and they do the most horrendously
difficult things. They come running from one gig, and they’ve
got their food with them, and then they sit down and do a four-hour
rehearsal with us, and then they’re going to another rehearsal.
They’re terribly tired, and we think they’re very commercial.
But they have to raise their families, and their kids have to eat,
and they have to pay the rent, and all that. But the singers
equate themselves to that, and they don’t realize that this ain’t no fingers
on a fiddle! [Both laugh]
BD: If you break a string, you
go into the case and get a new one.
Alan Stone: Right!
Exactly! You put another string on, or you borrow
someone else’s fiddle when it’s necessary.
BD: Even if you’re tired,
you can still scrape along.
Alan Stone: You scrape
along, but you don’t do yourself any permanent damage to the
muscles in your fingers. But these singers have to take care
of their voices.
==========================================================
We now move forward to April of 1991. Like
the text of Wagner’s Ring, each
recounting of the history of the company presents new details
and viewpoints,
as well as continuing the narrative through a very difficult
time.
BD: After eighteen
seasons of producing opera, are you now where you thought you’d
be?
Alan Stone: I’m nowhere that I thought
I was going to be eighteen years ago, because, very frankly, I
never intended nor had any dream of forming an opera company.
Our original name when we incorporated in 1973, was the Chicago Opera
Studio. The whole company started out as just a group of my
own coaching students that were working with me, wonderful people
like Phil Creech, David Kuebler, Isola Jones, Bill Diana, and Linda Mabbs,
some of whom now have big careers going for them. I started
coaching in about 1971, and had a huge studio of people who were
wonderful singers, and nowhere to sing. In those days at
the Lyric Opera, Carol Fox [one of the Founders, and General Director]
did not want to hire American singers, even for the small parts. So
I decided a performance would be good business for me as a coach.
I’d get more students that way, and also it would give them an opportunity
with something to work for, not just coaching. So, we got together,
and decided to do Così Fan Tutte, because the Chicago
Opera Studio Incorporated spelled out COSI. I thought it was a message
from on high. We were going to do it with two pianos, but Bob Frisbie
approached me at that time, and asked if we could get an orchestra together.
So we did, and no one got paid, no one. It was all love’s labor.
We had two casts with some wonderful people in it.
BD: After all of this,
when did you get the idea of forming a regular company?
Alan Stone: We really didn’t think of the
idea of a company. It only came well over a year later,
when Dr. Morris Krieger, who was then the President of the Board
of Directors of Michael Reese Hospital, took on the job of President
of our Board. He really organized the Board. People who
had raised money for the company before that were really just my
friends. So it wasn’t until about 1976 that we were really going
to make a company. That was when we did our first production of
The Mother of Us All. We got such a response from that.
It was done at Jones Commercial High School, and Virgil Thomson
came out from New York, and sat in on rehearsals. We had so many
fantastic people in it including Carol Gutknecht,
Robert Orth, and Maria Lagios...
BD: Then for several years
you just went along producing operas, and doing things very,
very well. Now all of a sudden, things have started to get
very shaky.
Alan Stone: It isn’t really all of
a sudden. Opera has never paid for itself. It never
has and it never will. For many years we managed to
operate in the black. We started with one opera, and then
we went to two, and then in 1979 we went to three. But in 1988,
the managing director suggested we go to four operas, and that was the
first year we had a deficit. We had another deficit in Fiscal 1989.
The problem, of course, was very simple. Despite the fact
that we’ve always paid very modest fees to our artists, to our
staff, and to me too, the theater with 920 seats could not bring enough
income to support the company. We did not have big corporative
support like the Lyric has, and we didn’t have big donors, people
who wrote checks for $50,000. No one ever wrote a check for
that amount for us in our history. Then the manager of the company
decided that one way we could come out of the hole would be to go into
some big ventures in the Loop [the downtown area of Chicago]. That’s
why we did Carousel last year, which was an enormous critical
success, but we lost money on it.
BD: Even though it sold out?
Alan Stone: It sold out,
but we lost money because of the union problems of the Schubert
Theater. You couldn’t bend over without paying somebody. We
were green, and our manager did not know how to negotiate a new union
contract. So, although we sold out, and did two extra performances
[for a total of nine], we didn’t actually lose money, but we broke
even. Since we had budgeted $150,000 profit, and we only broke
even, that meant we had a $150,000 loss, because that’s how we budgeted.
BD: It’s
a loss of expected income?
Alan Stone: Exactly, but
we spend money on the presumption of we’re going make, so that
is what is projected into the budget. An earlier mistake
was doing Peter and the Wolf, with Where the Wild Things
Are [by Oliver Knussen].
That was at the Auditorium in 1988, and it was a great, great success.
BD: It was a wonderful
production!
Alan Stone: It’s a fabulous
show, and it was a wonderful production, but we didn’t make
any money because we didn’t have sufficient corporate sponsorship.
We should have never taken on a venture at the Auditorium, but
unfortunately our fiscal administration was not strong enough to
realize that. Again, that was going to make us all this money,
but we didn’t think about all the expenses including huge royalties
to (the librettist and designer) Maurice Sendak, and fees to the director
(Frank Corsaro). The
worst thing that happened was this last time we did it (in 1990)
at the Chicago Theater. Again I married Wild Things with
Peter and the Wolf, and two of the Narrators were local TV news
anchors Linda Yu and Lester Holt. It was wonderful, but because
of the economy, and the fact that there were so many things going on in
the Loop — we were bucking
against The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol
— we did not have the audience, so
we ended up losing $75,000, plus all of the accumulated deficit.
However, we didn’t know that because the manager, the man who
got us into this situation, had already left. He had big hopes,
but they were not realistic.
BD: He hid it all from
the board?
Alan Stone: He just
didn’t plan well. He certainly didn’t make a big thing
out of it, and he tried to resolve the problems the best way
he knew how, which was not the best way to do it. He didn’t pay
the IRS, and we got into some very serious trouble. By the time
we got the final reckoning of what happened, we had a deficit of $400,000,
including $100,000 to the IRS. Plus he had some very creative budgeting.
He thought that we would break even at the Athenaeum, but the truth
of the matter — which
somehow he did not grasp — is
that if we sell every seat of every performance at the Athenaeum,
we end up with approximately $200,000 and $250,000 deficit.
He was even trying to get us into the idea of renovation of the Athenaeum.
That, of course, was pie in the sky. That would have
killed us, because we were talking about raising $9 million to renovate
a place which we couldn’t live in anyway. So, we came to the
point before the opening of Idomeneo for the Board to decide whether
or not we could open, or if we should declare Chapter 11 and revamp
some other time. There was a strong movement to close the company.
A lot of people on the board, many of the more cautious businessmen,
who think you run an opera company like you run a nuts-and-bolts business,
were thinking that we should just call it quits, and avoid more risks
and more liabilities. But fortunately, there was a strong
movement that said no, that we really have to see what we can do.
In forty-eight hours we raised $310,000, which is unbelievable. It
was a miracle. Even The New York Times had a little quip
about ‘the miracle in Chicago’,
because raising $310,000 for a middle-sized arts organization in this
economy at this time was really good. So, we got through Idomeneo.
Henry Holt was
the conductor, and we even did appeals from the stage. Money started
coming in from all places, from people we never even knew, because they
never thought of us as being in trouble financially. We had had
such a good record, and we didn’t advertise the deficit. We finally
got to do Madame Butterfly, but we don’t have enough to do our next
production, which is Postcard from Morocco. Contemporary operas,
like Postcard, are the thing that we’re famous for. If
we can’t do this opera, if we can’t raise enough money to put that on,
there’s something wrong.
BD: Where are you right now?
Alan Stone: We’ve paid off IRS, so
the government is off our back. We paid, and now we hope
that they will be kind, and understanding, and generous with
us regarding the penalties and the interest. We
still are in the process of negotiating as far as penalties and interest
are concerned, but we’ve paid off what we owed them.
After that, we’re short close to $150,000 for the
production of Postcard.
BD: Now Butterfly is running to
rave reviews?
Alan Stone: Rave reviews,
so you can’t get any more tickets at this point.
BD: Are you going to put
on a couple of more performances?
Alan Stone: No, we can’t
because we’ll lose money. Every time we pull up the curtain at
that theater, we spend more for the orchestra, the chorus, the
singers, and the crew than we could possibly take in. So it
doesn’t do us any good to do more performances. It makes people
happy, but it makes our situation worse. So if we’re going to
survive, the only clear answer is that we have to get out of that
theater. There’s no alternative... either that, or raise our ticket
prices fifty or sixty per cent, which we can’t do because then we
wouldn’t be the same kind of company.
BD: Assuming that you raise the money that
you need for Postcard, and you wind up the end of year
with perhaps no surplus, but no deficit. Where does the
Chicago Opera Theater go?
Alan Stone: That would
be impossible. It’s unrealistic, unless you know a couple of
angels who would write us checks for $50,000, or five angels to donate
$25,000. We need $105,000 for the production Postcard,
but we also have to keep paying salaries to our staff, and paying
the rent, which has nothing to do with the Postcard budget.
The Board ultimately dreams of a situation when we could
end up at the end of the fiscal year with no deficit. Surplus???
There’s never been a surplus. There can’t be a surplus!
If we have a surplus, we’re not a non-profit corporation by definition.
If we have a surplus, it has to go into an endowment, which
we don’t have.
BD: If you pull through all of
this, and if the company survives, and makes good, and goes on to
the next season...
Alan Stone: [Loudly interrupting]
We’ll have to!!!
BD: ...will you then go
back to the tried-and-true method of doing three operas a year
— an old one, a new one, and
a chestnut?
Alan Stone: All we can say is that we’re
taking one step at a time. We got as far as Butterfly.
It opened the night before last, as you said to rave reviews.
It’s a fabulous production. I’m very proud of it.
The critics compared it favorably with Lyric productions.
In some ways, it’s the most successful Butterfly I’ve ever
seen, because it’s such an intimate opera and it’s so beautifully
performed. I’m very proud of it. There’s no sense in
being overly modest about it. It’s absolutely one of our
best achievements in all the eighteen years that we’ve been running...
and we’ve done some pretty good things! But the next step is
Postcard. Then we’ll have to take a look and see what
happens. As the guiding force of the company, and the original
founder, obviously I’m absolutely convinced that there will be a 1992
season. Otherwise, why did we do this? Why did we work
so hard? We could have been better off to declare bankruptcy,
write off the debts and then jump. We did this to show our public
that we didn’t want to renege on them. We could have just not
done anything and kept all the subscription money, but we didn’t want
to do that. It wouldn’t be the first time in history...
What are they going to do, sue us? We were bankrupt so that was
it! But what we do next is very, very questionable. Four
operas? Absolutely not. No question about it. There
are some people who think we should do just one opera next season.
We’d have to do at least one opera. I personally feel one opera
is by no means a season, plus in order to get funding from the National
Endowment from the government, which we depend on every year, you
have to do at least two operas to qualify. So that means the
chances are pretty good that we’ll do two. My hope is that we
can do three, because two would be only fifty per cent of what we did
this year. That’s not cutting back, it’s cutting in half, and that’s
a big, big thing.
BD: Even if you only do two operas next
year, and then come back with three the following year, would
that put you back on track?
Alan Stone: I think so,
yes, and maybe that’s the goal. But being an eternal optimist,
I will strive to do three, or try to encourage my Board members
to aim towards three, because if we aim only for two, we may only
do one. I have to keep that forward feeling and energy up.
* * *
* *
BD: Let me ask you a hypothetical question.
If you had not gone out on a limb with the big theater, and just
stayed with the three operas every year, would you have been in
the problem that you’re in now?
Alan Stone: Probably not.
If we had stayed with three operas, as we were up to the fiscal
year of 1988, we were breaking even. We were not allowing
ourselves room for any growth, but we would have been stable. It
was going into the fourth opera that was the mistake, because our
fundraising ability is limited. With the ticket prices that
we charge, and for a 920-seat theater, this company can only raise the
difference to support three productions. So, that was the
fallacy right from the beginning. We have three weeks of
staging rehearsals, and one week of music rehearsals. Not all
the Lyric productions are like that. Obviously, the new ones
do get more time, but other things are put together very quickly,
as they are in every opera company in the world. In the
long-run, maybe we needed this crisis, because the time has come
for us to move away from the Athenaeum. It has placed some
terrible limitations on us. First of all, it is dreadfully
antiquated. We won’t talk about the condition of the washrooms,
but that’s the situation. The pit is pitifully small, and it
is not recessed, so we have a terrible problem of balance. The
backstage facilities are dismal, and the stage is very, very limited.
The flies are small, and there is no wing space.
BD: Is there some other place in Chicago
that you could use?
Alan Stone: I believe
that there are theaters in the Chicago area. Our mistake
was that we made the assumption that we had to be in Chicago,
meaning in the center of the city. That was something we inherited
from Jones Commercial High School. But the situation in
the Loop was quite different in 1974 than it is in 1991. Now
the Loop was thriving. No one would have dreamed of theaters
being on Halsted Street in those days. But now we see that
the theaters like Wisdom Bridge are popular, and people are going
to the suburbs for Drury Lane. Many of the biggest opera companies
are not anywhere near the cities. St. Louis Opera is not in St.
Louis. It’s in Webster Grove. Santa Fe Opera is not in
Santa Fe. It’s outside, and twenty-five miles away in the mountains.
There is no theater in the center of Chicago. We know that.
We’ve tried for years. We looked and looked. Chicago Opera
Theater patrons do not come on public transportation because there
is no public transportation. It’s always too far. They
all take cabs, or cars. Some people do take buses and walk, but
we may have to be in suburbs. We may have to be in Evanston,
or Skokie, or possibly there are some places, but we just have to
look at them.
BD: Rather than just
doing all your performances in one place, would it be possible to
do two or three in one location, and two or three in another location?
Alan Stone: No, that’s
terrible. That’s a mess. We tried that. One
year (1977), we tried doing performances in Mandel Hall [at the University
of Chicago], and then moved up to Evanston Township High School.
You can’t do that, because the lights all have to be refocussed.
Then there’s the pit situation. You have to do so many rehearsals
in order to keep the same standard up in each theater. The cost
would be prohibitive. It’s my dream, and the dream of many people
who are concerned, and the thing this city needs the most, more than any
kind of performing arts center, is a medium-sized theater. It’s
outrageous that there is none. We need a 1,300 to 1,500 seat theater
in Chicago. [The Harris Theater, just east of the loop at the
north end of Millennium Park, and near the Pritzker Pavilion (home of the
Grant Park Music Festival each summer), seats 1500, and was constructed
in 2002-03. It is now the home of several performing companies, including
the Chicago Opera Theater. To see three interior photos, click HERE.] I’ve
been reading about a proposed $300 million performance center.
It’s unconscionable that they could think of putting up a performance
center with a huge theater for the Lyric Opera, and another huge theater
for the Chicago Symphony, and forget about all of the middle-sized organizations,
like us, that really give this city a special situation. There are
no other cities that have this kind of richness in the companies like we
have. Chicago has a great theater and opera tradition. Tomorrow
night I’m going out to dinner with Ardis Krainik [General
Director of Lyric Opera], and I’m certainly going to mention that to
her. I’m very much a believer in having a performance art center,
provided there is a theater for us. Otherwise, I will do everything
in my power to create as much interference for it as possible. She’ll
know it, and Henry
Fogel [President of the Chicago Symphony] will have to know it too.
I need to have a little bit of input.
BD: If the Symphony vacates
Orchestra Hall, would there be any point in renovating that space
for the COT?
Alan Stone: No. Orchestra
Hall is much too large, and it’s not a theater.
BD: Even if they close
off the top balcony?
Alan Stone: It’s not a
theater. It’s an auditorium. It has no wing-space,
no fly space, and it has no backstage facilities. It’s not
possible to use it as a theater. A theater is a theater,
and an auditorium is an auditorium. Even The Auditorium is not
a theater.
BD: Even though it calls
itself The Auditorium Theater?
Alan Stone: It calls itself
that, but it is an auditorium. All you have to do is look at
the backstage facilities, and you’ll see that it is not a theater.
There are not enough dressing rooms. Many years ago, opera
was done there, but they used to have to leave the sets out in
the street overnight when they were changing them, like they did
at the old Met.
BD: There’s no movie house that happens
to have wing-space?
Alan Stone: No, there
aren’t. We’ve spent years looking.
The movie theaters are usually enormously large, and they were
not built for music. We played at the Chicago Theater [in
the Loop], and the acoustics are horrendous. They were
built for movie screens.
BD: There must be some small movie
theaters.
Alan Stone: No, there
aren’t. We’ve spent years looking! We had a search
committee for four or five years that even included Joan Harris,
who has access to everything. There is nothing! It is
a crying shame. Cities like Milwaukee and Des Moines have a
performing center, but Chicago, one of the great cities of the world,
does not.
BD: Is the Blackstone any good? When
I was there I thought the sight-lines were poor.
Alan Stone: It’s not
bad, but it’s a terrible theater for music because it’s so
dry. It was built as a prose theater specifically.
It’s all carpeted.
BD: I hope that the Chicago Opera Theater
does continue.
Alan Stone: Ever since
all this about the deficit came to light, we’ve been working in a crisis
situation, and it’s taken a terrible toll on everyone. I’m now
finding myself in the position of having to become a principal fundraiser
for the organization. I’m quite successful at it, because I believe
in what I’m asking for, so I get it. But it takes an enormous
amount of my time from other things that I’m really supposed to be doing,
such as thinking about repertory, and artistic decisions. Many
arts organizations have gotten themselves into trouble.
You need money to pay the rent. You need money to pay the phone.
You can’t operate an office without the phones. When you work
on a small cash flow, there is so little money. It turned out that
in February we didn’t even have enough money to make the payroll.
I didn’t get paid. None of us got paid. The employees and
the cast had to wait. We went to the chorus and told them, and
they were wonderful. In fact, some of them even gave us money!
BD: You’ve spent years
building up trust.
Alan Stone: Yes, thank
goodness! I have to be a wheeler and dealer, but I do
believe I have do have some personal integrity about things like
that, and I would never cheat my employees. Impresario, yes, but
a charlatan, no. [Both laugh]
* * *
* *
BD: Not just your company,
but in general, is the future of opera in America bleak, or bright,
or uncertain?
Alan Stone: [Thinks a moment] In general,
I think the future of opera in America is bright. There’s
a great love, and a renewed interest in opera, much more than
there was years and years ago, when, except for workshops and student
performances, the opera consisted of the Metropolitan, San Francisco
Opera, and Lyric Opera of Chicago. That was all there was.
Now there are big companies all over, and most of those companies
are doing well. Companies like the Lyric really get most of their
money from corporations.
BD: That gives them publicity?
Alan Stone: They get the
publicity. They can do more because of their very nature,
plus they get an enormous amount of people who give them support.
The Lyric doesn’t do one production that is not completely underwritten.
We’ve never had a production completely underwritten.
BD: Has Lyric ever given
money to the Chicago Opera Theater?
Alan Stone: No.
They’re not allowed to give money. One non-profit corporation
cannot give money to another because they don’t have any money
ostensibly to give. However, they came out with a bigger surplus
than our whole $500,000 deficit.
BD: I assume that a surplus
is just immediately applied the next year’s
budget?
Alan Stone: It’s put
into the various endowments and funds that they have. We’ve
gotten small and very important personal contributions from Ardis
Krainik, Danny Newman,
and Al Glasser [Director of Education at Lyric]. These are
very important to me because it’s a sign
of trust and faith in what we’re doing. In
our program you will notice a little section about colleagues, and
there are some wonderful names in there. On the other hand, many
of the smaller companies in the small cities are in trouble. There’s
no question about that. Columbus Opera went bankrupt, and when it
announced bankruptcy they got $55,000, and then they opened the
next day. Now they’re struggling. New Jersey Opera has been
in terrible trouble. Most of the smaller and medium-sized companies
are not in good shape, because expenses are enormous and money is tighter.
People are not giving as much. They’re afraid, and they don’t have
as much to give. Government funding has been cut back even in Europe,
although there the companies depend on government subsidies. Even
though they get a lot of money, they don’t get as much as they need,
and it is a problem. But you just have to hope. I can’t worry
about Columbus. I just know that Chicago is very special. If
anything it is an opera city. Before it was a Symphony city, it
was an opera city. Opera has been in Chicago for so many years.
I have a book that Charles
Nelson Reilly gave me which traces opera in Chicago from the 1800s to
the present day. Mary Garden, Amelia Galli-Curci, Italo Campanini
and Luisa Tetrazzini made their careers in Chicago, not in New York.
They went to New York later, but for very few performances.
There was constant opera in Chicago. [For more about all
this, see my article Massenet, Mary Garden,
and the Chicago Opera 1910-1932.]
BD: These were resident companies, not just
tours!
Alan Stone: Yes, Chicago is a great
opera city, and I know that we have enough supporters. There’s
enough money here, and enough wealth, and enough financial backing
to support not only the Lyric Opera and the Chicago Opera Theater, but
other small companies which we gave birth to. There were none
of those when I started. Ours was the first one, and our success
encouraged the Light Opera Works, the Chicago Chamber Opera, the
Lincoln Opera, and the Opera Factory. I mean, there’s
a long list of companies now. Even Opera Midwest, which had
to close due to a financial scandal [as reported in the newspaper, shown
below-right]. These other companies are small, but they
still pay their artists, and they do excellent work. In
a way I’m very glad, because we have grown to the point where our audiences
now expect the very best from us, and we have to use the very best
of the younger American talent. We had some singers that sang
with us in the very first days, such as Robert Orth, who was a star
then, and is a bigger star now. But some of those other people
were acceptable for us in our first performances for our first couple
of years, when we charged $3 a ticket. Now we can’t ask people
to pay $38 dollars a ticket to hear those same people, but that kind of
talent is now being used by these smaller companies.
BD: Do you have better
talent coming into your company all the time?
Alan Stone: All the time! One
of the things that was very helpful back in the early 1970s, was
an incredible group of singers here in Chicago. Karen Huffstodt
lived in Chicago, as did Cheryl Woods, and Kenneth
Cox. These were all people from this particular area. They
went to Wheaton College, Northwestern University, or the American
Conservatory. Now there’s a new crop of local people.
BD: Good! That’s what I was worried
about. A few years ago you started getting a lot more
singers from elsewhere.
Alan Stone: Right.
BD: Now you’re back
to getting more singers from Chicago?
Alan Stone: We’re still getting a lot of
people from elsewhere, but there are a lot of local people. For
example, the Lyric Opera Center is a great source of singers
for us. Nobody really cares very much about where someone is
born. That really isn’t important. We like to use our people
if we can. Not only does it help their careers, but it makes
good business sense. We don’t have to put them up in hotels,
or pay their transportation from New York or California. Plus,
they tend to remember us, and when they get to be big people, they
still sing with us. Frank Galati is also that way, returning even though
his is quite well-known now. The Postcard from Morocco has
three singers that were former members of the Lyric Center. Plus,
there has been a strange but persistent move of artists to Chicago.
BD: From where?
Alan Stone: From the east,
especially from New York City. Many people are fed up with
the expense and the lifestyle of New York. They find that
they can live much more comfortably and much more pleasantly in
Chicago for less money. So, we have a whole crop of people
coming back to Chicago including Bruce Hall and Sunny Joy Langton who
are living and teaching here. We also have conductors and directors.
We have people coming here, finding that Chicago is really what
New York was twenty years ago. They like the city, and want a city
atmosphere, but just don’t want to put up with New York. For
years I’ve been going every year to New York for four days of auditions,
and I don’t know if it’s going to be necessary now for me to go every
year. There are singers I have in this area, and ones I know that
are ready because I heard them last year. I really don’t particularly
enjoy going to New York myself. It’s a rat race. I go to the
auditions, and I come back to the hotel and have dinner. In the
morning we’re up at 7 o’clock to get to the audition by 9 o’clock to
start again, and we do this for four days, and it’s an extraordinary
expense. We pay $200 a night, and it’s a cheapy little hotel.
That’s New York. Those are the wildest prices, plus food, and
transportation. I could save the company some money, and I could
also save a little bit of fatigue by not going.
[At this point we took care of a few technical details, and
I asked him to do a Station Break]
Alan Stone: Hello this is Alan Stone, Artistic
Director and Founder of the Chicago Opera Theater, and you’re listening
to Classical 97, WNIB in Chicago.
BD: Thank you. I
get all my guests to do that, and you’ve not done
one for me before.
Alan Stone: That’s my
radio announcer voice! You know, I started out in radio. When
I was a kid in grammar school, I started working at WBEZ doing
dramatic parts in the those programs. They were on LaSalle Street
before they moved to where they are now, and I did that all through
school. Then I got a job working on CBS. I worked
on ‘soaps’ as a kid, and I did Ma Perkins, and Life Can Be
Beautiful. Generally I did parts of little children
because [speaks like a child] I had these real high voices...
“Gee, Mister, can I go with you to California?”
or, “Golly, I can shoot a gun!”
BD: You were the bratty
little boy?
Alan Stone: I was the
wild little kid, and then I did accents. I was André
on Ma Perkins, the little French boy who came over from
the War. I did that, and with that money I paid my way
through the University of Chicago.
BD: Your degree is in
music?
Alan Stone: Actually,
my degree was in English. I took electives in music, but my
actual degree was Bachelor of Arts. I really didn’t get into
music until after college, because most of the training of music
in singing was on a professional level. They study, but I don’t
think a degree would have helped Mr. Pavarotti, or Mr. Björling,
or Mr. Gigli, or Miss Sutherland.
BD: But now a singer without a degree
is practically unheard of.
Alan Stone: No, we never
care about degrees. I don’t know any who have
them.
BD: Don’t they go to a conservatory?
Alan Stone: They do, but
they don’t all give degrees in music. The Conservatorio
di Verdi didn’t give degrees. They just gave certificates
of performance, but that’s not the same thing as a degree. A degree
is worthless to me. I don’t care about that. Even
on a conservatory level, do you think that the people at Bloomington,
Indiana have been asked if they have a degree? What about Margaret Harshaw, or
Nicola Rossi-Lemeni,
or Martha
Lipton? Many of those people go into teaching when they stop
performing, but having a degree in music does not make you necessarily
become a performer. I’ve never been in any kind of audition
where a degree has been required.
BD: Don’t you see it on
the resumés?
Alan Stone: No. What
they put on the resumé is where they sang, what roles they
sang, when did they do it, what the press says. They will
say their teachers, and occasionally someone will say they have a master’s
degree, but it’s not important at all. It’s not like
being a lawyer. You can’t create art in a curriculum.
BD: Then where is art
coming from?
Alan Stone: It comes from
talent!
BD: Maybe I’m thinking more
of the instrumentalists. They all seem to have degrees.
Alan Stone: That I don’t feel equipped to
talk about, but singing is a completely different thing. A singer
has to learn the physical emission of the voice, and the languages.
BD: [Noting the time] Thank you so very
much for founding and continuing the Chicago Opera Theater all these
years.
Alan Stone: Thank you. I’ll
just continue to do my best.
© 1979, 1983, 1991 Bruce Duffie
These conversations was recorded in Chicago on February 13, 1979,
December 20, 1979, February 3, 1983, and April 5, 1991. Portions
were broadcast on WNIB in 1979, 1980, 1983, and 1991. A portion
ws transcribed and published in Opera Scene in February, 1983
This transcription was made in 2023,
and posted on this website at that time.
My thanks to British soprano
Una Barry
for her help in preparing this website presentation.
To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed
and posted on this website, click here. To
read my thoughts on editing these interviews
for print, as well as a few other interesting observations,
click here.
* * * *
*
Award -
winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was
with WNIB,
Classical 97
in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment
as a classical station in February
of 2001. His interviews have also appeared
in various magazines and journals since 1980,
and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as
well as on Contemporary
Classical Internet Radio.
You are invited to visit his
website for more
information about his work, including
selected transcripts of other interviews,
plus a full list of
his guests. He would also like to call your
attention to the photos and information about
his grandfather,
who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a
century ago.
You may also send him E-Mail
with comments, questions
and suggestions.