David Alden and Charles Edwards Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Director David Alden
== and ==
Designer Charles Edwards

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

David Alden (born September 16, 1949 in New York City) is a prolific theater and film director known for his post-modernist settings of opera. He is the twin brother of Christopher Alden, also an opera director in the revisionist mold. The two brothers have covered much of the same repertoire in their long careers, but whereas Christopher's operatic settings place greater emphasis on his characters' emotional range, David's protagonists are more broadly caricatured and his productions far more politically charged. Another distinguishing feature between them is that David has been more active in Europe throughout his career, having enjoyed a particularly close creative partnership with Sir Peter Jonas for more than two decades, at both the English National Opera and the Bavarian State Opera.

david alden David and his identical twin Christopher were born into a show business family closely tied to Broadway. Their father was the playwright Jerome Alden, and their mother was the ballerina Barbara Gaye, who danced in the original productions of On the Town and Annie Get Your Gun with Ethel Merman. As eight-year-olds, they listened at home to recordings of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, and as teenagers in the mid-'60s, they frequently bought standing room tickets at the Metropolitan Opera. By age 13, both had decided they wanted to direct opera.

David studied at the University of Pennsylvania and like his brother, launched his directing career with Opera Omaha in the 1970s. In 1976, he visited Europe where he immersed himself in the cultural stream of contemporary opera directors the likes of Giorgio Strehler, Harry Kupfer, Hans Neuenfels and Ruth Berghaus. Theirs was a generation of direct heirs to the Expressionist movement and, in particular, to Bertolt Brecht. For Alden, the exposure was a revelation that unlocked intense passions he had long wanted to express in musical theater. His first European production in the late ‘70s was a Rigoletto for Scottish Opera that, he says, was assailed by the critics because "in England, it was still very early to speak directly to the audience with the style I was attempting and place passion and schizophrenia on the stage."

In 1980, Alden was tapped by the Metropolitan Opera to replace the late Herbert Graf in its restaging of Wozzeck as well as the revivals in 1985 and 1988.

In 1984, Peter Jonas — formerly artistic director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra — was named to succeed the Earl of Harewood as general director of English National Opera. Together with music director Mark Elder and stage director David Pountney, they became the ruling "Power House" triumvirate that reinvigorated the artistic direction of ENO with a series of modernist interpretations of classic operas as well as productions of newly commissioned operas. That year, David Alden staged a controversial ENO production of Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa that became emblematic of the new era. At the end of Act II when the hero Kochubey and his friend Iskra are dragged to the executioner's block, Alden shocked his audience with a gruesome chainsaw massacre that set the tone for the bloody mad scene in Act III, and forever enshrined his production in the minds of London opera goers as "the Chainsaw Mazeppa" that "became a sort of shorthand for the entire Jonas project — brutal, uncompromising, unmissable, the ultimate succès de scandale." Neither Mazeppa nor Simon Boccanegra, Ballo in Maschera, or any of the other power house productions have been preserved on videotape.

Over the next decade, Alden continued in his role as provocateur and key collaborator of the ENO Power House with Giuseppe Verdi's Simon Boccanegra and Un ballo in maschera, George Frideric Handel's Ariodante, Hector Berlioz' La Damnation de Faust, Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and more recently, a 2006 production of Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa that won an Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production.

In 1993, Peter Jonas became intendant of the Bavarian State Opera, and from then to his departure in 2006, he made David Alden productions a mainstay of his tenure. Those included a Handel series with Ariodante, Orlando, Rinaldo and Rodelinda; Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria; Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser and Der Ring des Nibelungen; Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto, Verdi's La forza del destino, Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Alban Berg's Lulu.

At the 2006 Munich Opera Festival, the Staatsoper made the extraordinary gesture of reviving eight of those productions to celebrate its association with Alden. In addition, he was awarded a special Bavarian Theater Prize for Individual Artistic Achievement in recognition of his artistic contributions to the Bavarian State Opera.

In Europe, Alden has also produced operas for Welsh National Opera, Vienna Volksoper and Komische Oper Berlin. He staged a new production of Thomas Adès' Powder Her Face for the Aldeburgh Festival and has mounted operas in Cologne, Frankfurt, Antwerp and Graz. In 1995 he directed in Tel Aviv the world première of Josef Tal's Joseph – a Kafkaesque story about modern society's norms and illusions.

In 2009 Alden directed Francesco Cavalli's Ercole Amante for the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam (De Nederlandse Opera) to much critical acclaim, and returned in 2012 with the same artistic team to stage Händel's Deidamia.

Alden's collaborations with American companies include operas for Lyric Opera of Chicago, Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera and the Spoleto Festival USA. He created the American premieres of Siegfried Matthus' Judith for Santa Fe Opera and Karol Szymanowski's King Roger for Long Beach Opera, a production so deconstructionist that the reviewer for The New York Times reported "the opera still awaits a true American premiere." In 1990, he mounted the world premiere of William Bolcom's cabaret opera Casino Paradise at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia, and in 1992, he co-directed — with his brother Christopher — the three Mozart/Da Ponte operas in a production for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra led by Daniel Barenboim.

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For film and television, Alden has directed Franz Schubert's Die Winterreise with Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake, Kurt Weill's Die sieben Todsünden and a documentary on the life of Verdi for BBC Television. Several of his stage productions have been filmed for wider video release.

== Throughout this webpage, names which are links refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

This webpage presents a transcript of conversations with stage director David Alden and set designer Charles Edwards. The two were in Chicago in January of 1994 for Wozzeck at Lyric Opera, with Franz Grundheber, Kathryn Harries, Graham Clark, Donald Kaasch, Norman Bailey, Mark Baker, and Birgitta Svendén. The conductor was Richard Buckley, and the wigs and makeup were designed by Stan Dufford.

We met a few days before the opening night. David had done Traviata in 1985 [the production by Pier Luigi Pizzi, with Catherine Malfitano, Francisco Araiza, Pablo Elvira, Robynne Redmon, and Gualtiero Negrini, conducted by Bruno Bartoletti], but this was the first time in Chicago for Charles. They would subsequently work together again in Chicago for The Makropolous Affair [1995-96, with Malfitano, Kim Begley, and Ragnar Ulfung, conducted by Bartoletti], and also separately in several other productions.

When we spoke, the director was up first, and later the designer came to the interview.

I began by asking about the three Mozart operas which had been presented two years previously by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . . . . .

Bruce Duffie: It was you and your brother, Christopher, for the three Mozart operas. How did you divide up the work?

David Alden: He did The Marriage of Figaro and I did Don Giovanni. We were supposed to have shared Così Fan Tutte, except since he had directed it more recently than I had, he did most of that one. I shoved a burden on his shoulders with that piece! [Laughs]

See my interviews with Sir Georg Solti, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Mimi Lerner, Lella Cuberli, and Sheri Greenawald

BD:   Does having a brother who is a director place any undue burden on you, or is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Alden:   No, it’s perfectly all right. We usually make sure that there’s at least a continent and an ocean between us when we’re working. [Both laugh] The world is reasonably large, and not for both of us.

BD:   How were they able to persuade you to work together here as a team?

Alden:   It was this incredible thing. We had to do these three very big complex pieces in about five weeks of rehearsal to get them all together. Usually you would have five weeks to do one of those operas, and we were supposed to do all of them simultaneously, with casts who were in more than one piece at the same time. This made it much more difficult to rehearse, so it needed at least two directors to pull it off. Since our styles are similar, we thought it would be an interesting idea, and it was fun.

BD:   Are you self-consciously similar, or just have they simply evolved in a similar direction?

Alden:   They’ve evolved. He comes to see a lot of my productions, and he’s very influenced by my work. [Both laugh] No, it’s not fair to put it that way! You know we come from a similar background, and our influences are similar, and somehow the work we do is similar on some levels, and it’s different on some levels actually.

BD:   When you are offered the task of directing an opera, how do you decide if you’re say you’ll do it, or no, you won’t bother with that one?

Alden:   On a whim. If one is interested in the piece, and if one happens to be free, or if one needs the money. There are various reasons. I like doing most operas from periods which interest me very much. If it’s by Ottorino Respighi or Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, I definitely think twice. But other than that, I’m quite interested in a lot of styles.

BD:   Do you try to get different styles of music over your directing year, or does it really not matter whether they’re all baroque or all contemporary, or all romantic?
david alden

Alden:   It matters. but it doesn’t matter. Every year breaks down differently. Sometimes it’s extremely varied and I get to do various pieces from various periods, and sometimes I get more stuck in a certain style. One can get into going both ways. It helps not to become obsessive and stay with a certain thing for a while. It’s also nice to have variety... so it just depends.

BD:   How long in advance do you make these agreements?

Alden:   Years ahead of time, usually. With a major opera company, you know two or three or four years ahead of time if you’re going to do a piece.

BD:   Is that good or bad?

Alden:   It’s good actually, because a lot of these operas are fairly complex. One has to do a lot of background work on them to really absorb the music. You can’t do it quickly, particularly with a piece like Wozzeck, where you’ve got to study the piece for a couple of years. Otherwise, you don’t begin to know it and understand it. It’s also nice to do things quickly, and sometimes one is asked to leap in and do something fast. That’s good too, because of the adrenaline and time-pressure, but essentially it’s good to take a lot of time.

BD:   You’ve done Wozzeck before. When you come to it this time, do you use a clean score and a clean libretto, or do you just remold what you had already thought?

Alden:   This is the eighth time I will have directed Wozzeck, and the fifth production, so I have a lot of strong ideas about the piece, and how it should look, and what it’s about. Each time I do it, I try to do it differently, and just doing it with different casts changes the rehearsal process quite a bit. Their personalities change a lot of it, and the different places have changed it for me in a way. When I do it in Israel, it’s different from when I do it in Los Angeles, or when I do it in New York, or when I do it in England, and how I do it in Chicago. It’s for a different audience in a different culture, so unconsciously one thinks about the piece for those people within that world. This brings out something in the piece that’s special.

BD:   Do you try to say different things, or do you just discover different things as you think about it and immerse yourself in that local culture?

Alden:   It’s more passive in a way. You don’t sit down and say, “We’re doing it in Israel, so it’s obviously going to be about that kind of military society, and what that does to people.” If you say that consciously, it’s somewhat forced and pushed. But if you just think about it and let the resonances of that place seep into your ideas, then it’s better.

BD:   Obviously a singer will sing Handel and Berg differently. Do you direct differently, or do you direct the piece itself no matter what style of music?

Alden:   They’re totally different, and in a way, I direct everything in a similar style. My Handel is a bit like it was written by Berg on some levels, because there are certain movement styles which I carry with me from composer to composer, and there are certain obsessions about humanity which I see dragged from Handel to Berg. I have a certain worldview which can apply to various styles of music, so my style is not so dissimilar from one period to another. On the other hand, Wozzeck is so different from an eighteenth-century opera that it’s going to come out as a very different piece.

BD:   Does it change gradually as you proceed through the spectrum, or is there a time when it just flips?

Alden:   I don’t know. I’ve never sat down and chronologically thought about Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart, Weber, Verdi, Wagner, Berg, Bartók, Puccini, Britten... It’s not so easy to talk about pieces like that because the styles of these works are very different, and the periods they were written in are very different. It pushes the way one does them in a certain way, but a director tries to find an inner life in these pieces, which is very much influenced by the period of the piece. However, he is rather free from that period, and it is more about overall ideas about people, and society, and human relationships, and desire, and hatred, and all of that which carries through the ages.

BD:   You’ve used the word ‘human’. When you’re working with the people on the stage, are they human beings or are they characters?

Alden:   They are very much human-beings, the way I think about people on the stage. I work with singers as personally as I can. That is to say, I try not to impose a whole lot upon them in the rehearsal process. I try to watch them and see what they bring to the rehearsals, and who they are, and what they can do. One imposes a lot because one has a lot of ideas when you come into a production. The design has already made a lot of choices, and one has a lot of ideas about what the piece means, but in rehearsal one tries to find the balance between having strong ideas, and somehow letting the singers bring a lot to the process, as well as letting them carry a lot of the weight of responsibility... up to a point anyway. [Laughs]

BD:   I often ask singers this, so let me ask the director. Do you want them to portray the characters, or do you want them to actually become those characters?

Alden:   I’m not so much into acting in a way. I prefer to think about the performers themselves, who are expressing themselves within the piece. I’m less into making character choices and defining that way. I’m much more into letting the singers express themselves emotionally through the music and through the staging. It’s more like a psychodrama-type thing, and it has a lot to do with them personally, although one doesn’t discuss it that way. I don’t usually talk to people about who they are personally, and about their own lives. I usually do it through the piece itself, because I’m not really that interested in getting into that kind of personal work with singers on that level. It’s very personal, but it’s rather impersonal at the same time. I do it through the medium of the piece itself.

BD:   Is this to say you don’t care which tenor or which baritone or which soprano you have plugged into each role?

Alden:   Oh, I care very much! I have a lot to do with the casting of roles whenever I can. It’s crucial, and totally affects what the production is going to be like. I often don’t do productions if there are people in it that I don’t think I can work with, or if I don’t think are right for the roles... although one can be surprised! I might not be sure a person is really right for the part, and then when you get into the rehearsals you can be really surprised, and feel you were totally wrong, and it turns out to be fantastic.
david alden

BD:   Can we assume you learn from each production?

Alden:   Oh yes! I learn a lot from the people I work with. You can do a lot of preparation and have your own ideas, but then you come into rehearsals, and people are there who’ve all done their own preparation. They have their ideas, and one learns so much from singers about characters, and ideas, and ways of moving that one would have never thought of. Also, one learns a lot from the conductor about musical ideas that you just hadn’t thought of.

BD:   The whole thing is a collaborative effort amongst everyone concerned?

Alden:   Absolutely! Hopefully, that’s what it’s all about. [Vis-à-vis the video shown at left, see my interviews with Jan-Hendrik Rootering, Nadine Secunde, and Zubin Mehta.]

BD:   [With a wink] Then who’s driving the bus?

Alden:   [Smiles] It depends on which part of the process you’re talking about. Ultimately, the conductor really carries the burden of the performances, because he’s the one who is down there in the pit and really leading it. The rehearsals are a combination. The director and the conductor are in charge, and it’s a give-and-take. It can be a power struggle, or a collaboration, or a bit of both. Then, depending on how powerful and creative the singers are, they can also lead the process to a certain extent.

* * * * *

BD:   As you’re working, do you want everything absolutely perfect on the dress rehearsal, or do you want everything absolutely perfect on the opening night, or do you want it to continue to grow for the seventh or eighth performance of a run?

Alden:   The the thing to be desired is that the show will grow during its performances. It’s not a question of what you want. You can do your work very carefully, and with inspiration, but it’s once it’s running it’s out of your hands. You just do it, and it grows, and it gets better, or it doesn’t, or it peaks too early. Various shows go through various cycles, but the ideal is, as you said, that it will keep growing. Usually, if you rehearse something properly with the right kind of people, it does get richer and better as the performances go on. It does grow, so very often it’s much better to see the show later in the run just because the whole thing will have grown and developed... although there is something to be said for the adrenaline of the opening night, which pushes the whole thing unnaturally, perhaps.

BD:   Unnaturally???

Alden:   Perhaps, but interestingly towards something hopefully exciting. But probably the maturity of the later performances is to be preferred.

BD:   As the director, is there anything you can do to make sure there’s no letdown just before the end of the run?

Alden:   As long as I can, I stick around for the run of a show. I see a lot of performances, and I talk to the cast during it, and I see them before the show, and try and say things to them that I thought of to pick it a little more towards something that I think would be interesting. I give them notes on the performances, and I can help it that way. You can keep the creative process going to a degree. The director sometimes has to dash away after the opening and start on another production, which is actually the case this time. I can only stay for the first performance, and then I’m off somewhere else to start another show.

BD:   In your schedule, do you try to make sure that you can stay around a least a week after the opening night?

Alden:   Yes, I like to.

BD:   Obviously you’re thinking about your next production, and the following production, and you’ve got things slated for the next couple of years. How soon do you immerse yourself in it? Do you immerse yourself into two or three things, and have them going simultaneously in your mind, or do you concentrate on just one and get that finished, and get the next one and get that finished?

Alden:   I go back and forth from one piece to another. When I’m working with the designer, I go to the city where the designer is living, and I really think about that piece for a while. I get that going, and then I go somewhere else, and I go back home and think on my own about another opera that I have to get into. Then I start to work with that designer, and then I go and direct something with the cast, so I’m into that. It’s scattered through the year between rehearsing a show and preparing and thinking about future shows. So you bounce around from piece to piece.

BD:   With singers you’re always careful to make sure they have plenty of rest for the vocal cords in between performances, and between productions. Do you make sure you get enough rest to recharge the batteries in between each one of these engagements?

Alden:   [Laughs] No! I’m sometimes on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown because I’m doing too much. I don’t give myself enough rest between shows, but usually when I look at my whole year, I think there are three in a row, then I can stop after that to take some time off to relax and get it back together. But you also need to leave yourself time to work on other future shows after that, and you can get backed up and paint yourself into a corner if you’re not careful.

BD:   Do you work just in opera, or do you also do straight plays?

Alden:   No, I only do things with music, usually opera.

BD:   Do you approach them from the libretto, or do you approach them from the musical score?

Alden:   Both, but I’m very much led by the music... although some of my critics say, “What he does is totally against the music. It’s a different style, and he’s changed the period.” But to be led by the music and be influenced by it doesn’t always mean that you’re a slave to the music, and that you’re illustrating the music. It can often mean that you are fighting with the music, and you’re putting something on stage which would appear to be in counterpoint to the score. I wouldn’t say I do that consciously. That’s part of my job, and I do it unconsciously, because I like productions where there’s a lot of tension in the event.

BD:   Tension where?
david alden

Alden:   Tension between what you’re seeing and what you’re hearing sometimes. There can be intellectual tension and schizophrenia between styles and periods. On the surface it would seem like you’re painting a modern painting while Mozart music is playing. I don’t like homogenized, easy-going, pleasant events. I like events that are more challenging, more left field, and more disturbing in a way.

BD:   Opera should be disturbing??? [Photo at right is Otello.]

Alden:   Maybe not all the time, but the way I do it, yes. That’s what I do and that’s what I think opera is. Opera is a very highly-charged event that people undergo. The reason there’s music playing is that it’s not just a play which people are talking normally, but it’s heightened. From the beginning the event itself is plugged in, and turned on, and super-charged. It’s a rather high-velocity experience for the audience, and I’m not satisfied unless there’s a real electricity and danger in the air during the opera performance.

BD:   Then what do you expect of the audience? Should they come with this kind of tension already, or do you want to supply the tension for them?

Alden:   No, I supply it for them. The singers and the conductor and production team present this thing in a very intense and energized way for the public, and whether the public can take it and quite grasp it, or whether it partially alienates them depends on the public. Some people do and can, and some people aren’t sure, and some people don’t like it. It depends on that person and the audience.

BD:   So, in a theater of 3,600 people you might want 3,600 reactions, rather than two or three general reactions?

Alden:   Yes.

BD:   So, you’re directing to each one of the seats?

Alden:   Yes, in a way. I really don’t think about the audience at all when I’m working and when I’m directing. I think about myself [laughs]. I think about what I think about it, and what I feel about it, and I try to entertain myself. I try to surprise myself, and I try to dig inside myself and force myself to do new things, and to keep searching for the right way to do the piece. I don’t really think about the audience at all. One has to satisfy oneself, and then maybe this will interest other people.

BD:   You’re not just putting yourself on the couch, are you?

Alden:   Yes, in a way. Doing an opera is a very personal experience, and one is expressing a lot of things about oneself through the music, and through the story line, and through the relationships on stage. But one is truly just putting one’s own emotional life at the service of this emotional experience. If the director and conductor and cast don’t give themselves emotionally to a piece, and if they don’t really lay themselves on the line to an almost dangerous degree, then they’re not serving the composer properly. There’s a fine line in self-expression between being and going too far, and just getting mucked up with your own personal things spewing out and doing the piece itself. Sometimes you can’t tell the difference, and sometimes you can.

BD:   So the line is not a very definite thing? It’s a nebulous thing that can move around a little bit?

Alden:   Yes... well, there is no line really.

BD:   Even so, do you know when you’ve crossed it?

Alden:   No, not at all! I don’t know what the hell I’m doing a lot of the time, and I don’t know how far I should go. I just do it, and I push myself to go quite far, and hopefully I don’t kick everything over in the process and destroy the delicate objet d’arte. But sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.

BD:   Can we assume that you don’t want to kick it over, but you might want to rearrange it considerably?

Alden:   Yes.

* * * * *

BD: Is it easier to work with world premieres, because there are no histories behind these works?
david alden

Alden:   I find it harder. It’s easier to work with composers who are dead than composers who are alive, because when they’re alive they’re right there watching your work. They question you, and you have to answer for all ideas and all your inspirations. It’s easier if you just do the piece. Of course, it’s wonderful to do new pieces, and it’s exciting to work with people who just wrote the piece, and to struggle with them, but I’m so used to doing works by Monteverdi and Mozart and Verdi where I don’t have to answer to those people. In a way, I do have to answer, but I don’t literally have to answer to them. It’s hard to work with people who just wrote the piece.

BD:   Should there not be an accountability from your end?

Alden:   To the living or the dead?

BD:   Both!

Alden:   Yes, but there is anyway. One feels a certain obligation to the composers, to really do their pieces in a very exciting and personal way. But one likes the freedom of expressing oneself at the same time.

BD:   Several times you’ve mentioned doing the composer’s work. Does the librettist enter into any of this?

Alden:   Of course! The libretto is incredibly important and interesting, and it’s fantastic material that you use in the evening, but the composer leads the whole thing. The stronger impulse in opera is usually the musical impulse, and often even the musical impulse goes against the words. Even in great pieces, there’s often a dialectical struggle between the words, which can be poetical and imagistic and abstract. But in a way, words are more concrete. Music is the thing which deals more with the unconscious, and which is much more rich. It’s like a strange deep ocean with unfathomable depths within it. Words are so much about the intellect, and music is so much more about something which you can’t really put your finger on. There is an ambiguity that you don’t want to explain. The excitement about opera is that it’s a combination of words, which are extremely clear, and music which is incredibly complex. Music creates rhythms and ideas, which throw the words into chaos.

BD:   Talking about words, do you emphasize the diction, and make sure that the words of each singer can come out in your direction?

Alden:   Yes, I do. I’m very aware of them getting the text across, even when it’s in a language which is foreign from the audience. I do talk about diction a lot, and give a lot of notes of my own to the singers about the text. The way I direct an opera and the way I direct a scene, I push them to really express themselves very strongly and clearly, and that has to do with getting the words out very powerfully.

BD:   Does the new gimmick of the supertitles have a positive impact on all of this, or do you find that it works against what you’re doing?

Alden:   In a way it works against it, because people are reading more than I wish they would. So, they’re less into the nuances of the performances. But on the whole, I’m in favor of the titles, and I think they’re very helpful to audiences. Maybe in an ideal world I would wish they would go away, but most people don’t speak the language of that opera performance, so it’s very helpful to them. I would never speak against the use of titles.

BD:   Is this to say you are not particularly in favor of opera in translation?

Alden:   No, I like opera in translation. I work very often at the English National Opera in London, which does everything in English.

BD:   It’s part of their charter!

Alden:   Yes. In a way, it’s horrible to do Un Ballo in Maschera in English, but it’s fantastic in another way because the audience really follows what’s going on, instead of maybe knowing in a generalized way what’s happening. In English, they really follow it moment by moment. Of course you lose the sound of the Italian, and it’s harder to sing the piece in English, and it means a million problems, but it’s very exciting theater.

BD:   Does that alter your directing style, or the details of the directing, to make sure that all these words are able to come out?

Alden:   It doesn’t really alter anything. When I’m doing a piece in Italian, I’m just as into getting that to be communicated as if it’s in English. It doesn’t really change anything.

BD:   For instance, you wouldn’t move a gesture because it might obliterate a few consonants, and make that gesture a moment or two later?

Alden:   Yes, of course! Getting a word out, or getting a phrase out, depending on the language, people change their style of delivery, and the acting changes making points in a scene change with the language and the text, yes.

BD:   Have some of your operas been televised? [Remember, this interview took place in January of 1994.]

Alden:   No, strangely enough. I’ve been working for decades all over the world, and some of my productions have been very successful and some of them have been controversial, but none of the big ones have ever been on TV.

BD:   Do you think opera works well on television?

Alden:   I like opera on television a lot, yes. I love being able to watch a production without the distraction of people around me, and having to get up and go to the theater. I like to have it and just watch it at home. It’s a different kind of experience. It’s maybe not as special and on such a big scale, but it gives you certain pleasures.

BD:   When you’re at home in your easy chair, and in comfortable clothes, and maybe have a drink beside you, you’re not going to be disturbed as you want the audience to be disturbed?

Alden:   No. I like being alone, or with just a few people watching something on TV. It can actually be just as moving or provocative or beautiful as when you’re experiencing it live. I like close-ups. I love to see what singers are doing from close-up, and unless you’re in the first rows of a theater, you don’t get all that detail. It’s wonderful to watch videos of Renata Scotto, or Jon Vickers, or Maria Callas, and really see what they were doing. It’s great.
david alden

BD:   Of course, these are the great singing actors!

Alden:   Yes.

BD:   Without mentioning any names, is it easier or more difficult to work with lesser singing actors than greater ones? [Photo at left is Un ballo in maschera.]

Alden:   It’s a different experience. I haven’t worked with that many singers who are really on the highest level of achievement. I’ve worked with a few, and it has been with varying degrees of success. Those people sometimes are harder to direct, and need less direction, or want to be directed less than other singers. It depends on the person. You can’t really generalize about it.

BD:   Here in the United States you have a limited amount of time for rehearsal. Do you usually get enough time?

Alden:   I don’t work in the United States very much at the moment. I work mostly in Europe.

BD:   I assume in Europe you get quite a bit more rehearsal time.

Alden:   Generally, yes, you do. I was brought up and trained in America, so I’m from the faster school on that. I learned how to do it faster, but then I started to work in Europe, and now I’ve gotten into a rather longer, slower rhythm... although I can still do it quickly if I have to.

BD:   Does faster mean less gets done, or just that everything gets done more efficiently?

Alden:   It’s hard to say. I like time-pressure. We’ve done this Wozzeck rather quickly, and I don’t think at the end of the day it’s going to be any less rich and finished that it would have been if there were a couple of more weeks of rehearsal. One can work quickly, especially with people who are experienced, and who know the opera already. You can leap over a lot of hurdles early on, and just do it quickly, and it might be just as good as if you had twice as long. But it’s good to have a longer time, because it does change the rhythm of the thing, and it becomes a different kind of show. I can do it in eight weeks or I can do it in three weeks. It’s very different, but it’s the same in a way.

BD:   Is it easier or harder or neither to direct someone who has done the role several times before?

Alden:   It’s easier in a way, because part of the singer’s job is to figure out how to sing a role, which is not the same thing as figuring out how to act a role. There are always technical things, and they have to sing it into their voices. So they’re more comfortable with a role after they’ve performed it, because they can’t figure out how to sing it and perform it without doing it in front of an audience a lot. When they finally work out their own problems, and come comfortable with the role, then they’re freer to just concentrate on the other things in a rehearsal if they’ve got the role under their belts already. Sometimes it’s bad when a singer’s done a role a lot because they can become a bit jaded, or stuck about the piece, or they can think they know how it is supposed to be. But I can’t say that I’ve worked with a lot of people who came in with horrible preconceptions that I couldn’t deal with, or discuss or change or something.

BD:   Have you got to erase their little memory chip of that previous production?

Alden:   No, I like people bringing in stuff they already know about a role, and showing it to me. I like people presenting me with ideas and possibilities. The way I work is improvisational in a way. I structure the rehearsals to a degree, but I let the singers do a lot of what they want to... for a while anyway, just because I want to see what they do. They can surprise me, and show me things that I hadn’t thought of. I can use a piece of Patrice Chéreau’s production from here, and a piece of Ruth Berhaus’s production from there sometimes, whether I know it or not.

* * * * *

BD: Are you at the place in your career that you want to be right now?

Alden: Oh, I don’t know! My career is rather interesting, and it’s a weird thing. It’s not one of those careers that I’ve planned very carefully. I just sort of go and do things, and the wind’s blown me so I go do something there. Yes, I’m sort of semi-satisfied with my career in a way, and very unsatisfied with it in another way. I have some good theaters to work in where I can express myself, and where I have a good relationship, but there are lots of theaters that I should be working in that I don’t for various reasons. I don’t really care about that. I’m not that into my career. Rather, I’m into the pieces that I do, and the people that I work with, and I’m certainly working enough so that I’m perfectly happy and solvent. Building my career in one way or another is not one of my bigger considerations.
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BD:   What advice do you have for youngsters who want to direct operas?

Alden:   [Thinks a moment] It’s hard to say. I would hope they go to Europe. Most of the directors that I have found to be really interesting and influential to me, I learned from in Europe. There were a couple of strong directors that I worked with in America when I was younger, but I didn’t really understand what opera could be like aesthetically until I started to hang out in Europe and see the work over there. There’s something about the way opera is plugged into the art world and the theater world in Europe, which is different than in America. It’s taken a little bit more seriously by people in the more avant-garde areas of the arts in Europe, and it’s a bit more alive in that way. In America, it’s still a bit tied to other kinds of social expectations. I have found it to be a bit more free and inspired in Europe.

BD:   Has that directly influenced how you do things in one city to another city?

Alden:   No, I don’t change my style when I do a show in America from when I do a show in Europe. I do exactly the same thing, but when I’m working in America, subliminally I’m thinking about America, and the society here, and the audience here, and the problems here. So the opera shifts in my mind to being about that. It’s different than doing it in London, or in Amsterdam, or in Munich, or in Tel Aviv just because you’re presenting it in a different culture for different people, and you think about the piece within those confines.

BD:   We’ve talked about the singers, and the stage business, and the music, and the one thing we’ve left out is the scenic design. How much does that influence you, and how much does that change and permeate your ideas of what you’re going to bring to each piece?

Alden:   My primary relationship in a production is with the designer, usually more than a conductor and more than a singer. The person that I work with first when I’m preparing a production is the designer. Sometimes you talk with the conductor ahead of time, and sometimes you talk to the singers ahead of time, but basically after I work on a piece on my own, the first person I start to talk to about the piece is the designer. That’s because one has to get the designs done usually a year or two in advance. So that becomes the person you really start to discuss the piece with, and share your ideas, and argue with, and discuss with, and get it all out on the table. You come to gel your ideas together with that person, so ideally the relationship between the director and the designer is completely fifty-fifty in terms of what the production ends up being like. You shouldn’t really be able to say whether it was the designer’s idea or the director’s idea, or who’s in charge, because it should be just really equal dialogue.

BD:   Do you have certain designers that you like to work with again, and again, and again?

Alden:   Oh, yes! Over the years I have had long-term relationships with several designers, which have gone on for quite a long time. Then, like any kind of relationship, it sometimes runs out of steam and you look for somebody else who can inspire you, and who can bring you new things. Sometimes you can stick with somebody for a long time, and the comfort and knowledge of each other is useful. But sometimes the comfort becomes too comfortable, and sort of deadly in a way. It depends.

BD:   Is there ever a case where you work with a designer for a long time, then take a vacation from him or her, and go back to that person again?

Alden:   Yes, sometimes.

BD:   Is that more difficult, or easier, or completely individual?

Alden:   It depends on the person, and the opera, and everything.

BD:   Is the decision to accept the production yours, or a collaborative idea between you and the designer?

Alden:   I’ve often had relationships with designers where we’ve decided together if we wanted to do a piece. Or the designer might say to me they don’t really want to do that piece, and that I should do it with another designer. And sometimes the designer wants to do the piece and I don’t, so the designer does the piece with another director.

BD:   Do you ever get involved in the actual design of the piece?

Alden:   Oh yes, totally! The way I like to work with designers is to go to their studio, and not just talk about the piece, and listen to the music, but to be there to make the model and the sketches with the designer. I’m very hands-on that way, almost obsessively. My productions from designer to designer have a certain look which carries along, regardless of who designed them. One can tell that it’s a David Alden Production even when there are different designers, because I have a certain obsessive use of space, and props, and lighting which I just do. Of course, different designers bring me different things and put their own stamp on me, and push me here and there, and try to lead me and change me. In a way they can’t, and in a way they can.

BD:   So, when we look over your body of work, there’ll be Alden-and-X productions, Alden-and-Y productions, and Alden-and-Z productions, and they’ll each have different characteristics?

Alden:   Yes, they can be very different, but they always have similarities that carry along inside them.

* * * * *

BD: We’re talking about the designer, so let’s get him over here! [Edwards comes to the microphone] How did you get hooked up with David Alden?

Charles Edwards was born October 9, 1965, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and graduated from the Central School of Art and Design in London. His work is regularly seen in Europe and the United States. He has designed productions for the directors David Alden, Jean-Claude Auvray, Robert Carsen, Caroline Gawn, Leah Hausman, Tim Hopkins, Inga Levant, David McVicar, Stephen Medcalf and Stein Winge. His work has also been televised in Britain.

Designs include Gounod’s Faust (also Monte Carlo, Lille and Trieste), Massenet’s Werther (Royal Opera House Covent Garden), Donizetti‘s Lucia di Lammermoor, Janáček’s Jenůfa and The Makropulos Affair (English National Opera), Puccini’s Tosca (Opera North), Strauss’s Elektra (Welsh National Opera), Verdi’s Il trovatore (Opera North and Opera Ireland Dublin), Fibich’s Šárka (Wexford Festival) and others.

Designs in the US include Jenůfa (Houston Grand Opera), Berg’s Wozzeck (Dallas Opera and Lyric Opera Chicago), Janáček’s Katya Kabanova and Verdi’s Macbeth (Houston Grand Opera and Lyric Opera Chicago), Verdi’s Il trovatore, and The Makropulos Affair (Lyric Opera Chicago). He also participated on the production of Weber’s Der Freischütz (Metz), Wagner’s Parsifal (Graz), Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (Genoa, Liceu Barcelona, Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, Théâtre des Champs Elysées Paris, New Israeli Opera and Long Beach Opera), Korngold’s Die tote Stadt (also Paris, Châtelet), Verdi’s Attila (Opéra National du Rhin Strasbourg, Liège and Tel Aviv), Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (Mannheim), Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov (Stuttgart), Verdi’s La forza del destino (Royal Danish Opera), Katya Kabanova and Werther (New Israeli Opera).

He made his début as a director with Mozart’s Così fan tutte (Mid-Wales Opera) in 2001. This was followed by an acclaimed Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex for Opera North, and by Elektra for the Royal Opera Covent Garden. He directed and designed Donizetti’s Maria di Rohan for the Wexford Festival and Puccini’s Turandot for De Reisopera in Enschede, and Verdi’s Rigoletto for Opera North.

Charles Edwards: A long time ago I went to see operas in Scotland, and in fact, I saw David Alden’s first production in Britain, which was for Scottish Opera [Rigoletto in the 1970s]. Then, as time elapsed, during which I trained as a theater designer at art school, which is something I’d always wanted to do and which had always been a vocation, at the end of my first year I worked as an assistant for a designer, David Fielding, who was working with David [Alden]. I then found myself gradually working with them on co-design productions, and later on productions with David on my own, which was the situation with Falstaff.

BD: You’ve come from an artistic point of view on all of this. Where does the music fit in into your psyche?
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Edwards:   It’s interesting. It’s very similar to David’s reaction to music. It’s very difficult to describe precisely how it affects the design in a direct way. It doesn’t affect color, or it isn’t a tangible thing, but it is something which is subliminal, and which affects the design very strongly. For me it’s more difficult to design something where I don’t have a strong connection with the music. It just doesn’t trigger the same kind of reaction.

BD:   Does this make designing premieres more difficult than something where you can listen to the recording?

Edwards:   I haven’t actually done a premiere. I’ll be doing a British premiere next year, which is being done almost as a semi-staged event, so my input visually will be very restricted. So, I’d be very interested in doing an opera premiere [laughs].

BD:   When you’re designing a piece, do you design it for the theater it’s going to be in, or do you design it just as a piece that could be moved from one theater to another?

Edwards:   Technically, it’s very much affected by the theater itself, and also by the nature of the auditorium. It’s quite extraordinary designing the last two shows I’ve done. The show before Wozzeck was for the Wexford Festival in Ireland, which is a stage about a twentieth of the size of the Lyric Opera in Chicago. [Laughs] I exaggerate, but only marginally. Inevitably the actual size of the sound in the space affects the whole idea of the way the piece is to an extent.

BD:   You’re conscious of the sound that will be made in front of your sets?

Edwards:   Yes, very much so, and also one is affected purely acoustically. It seems to be becoming more of an obsession with conductors recently that sets are acoustically very unfriendly when they have a lot of fabric in them, or which force the performance to happen very far upstage. The conductors know they’re not in a recording studio, and they get very upset sometimes as it affects the sound to a degree.

BD:   Are you helping with the direction of this Wozzeck, or are you just standing by and making sure everything that you’ve wanted is done accurately?

Edwards:   The relationship I have with David means that I can become quite involved in the direction. He’s very much interested in what I have to say about what’s going on on the stage, and I find that extremely useful because it reflects the degree to which he is interested in the design. When we’re designing it, one doesn’t end up becoming possessive about any aspect of one’s job. The more collaborative it is, the more interesting it is, and it’s been very good in that way on this production particularly.

BD:   When you begin thinking about work on a production, David said that it’s really a fifty-fifty collaboration. Do you feel that it’s fifty-fifty all the time?

Edwards:   It doesn’t always feel like that on a production where a director has done it as many times as David has done Wozzeck. I know that he knows about certain elements of the show much more than I do. For example, he knows instinctively how long a scene is, what one can do in a scene, whether one has time to change a costume in a scene, or whether even a large scene-change would be possible over a certain interlude. So that affects it a lot early on.

BD:   [Noting that most productions of this opera are played without interruption.] Would it make a huge difference if there was an intermission to deal with, or an end of a scene and a scene-change where you wouldn’t have to worry about getting it all done in ninety-five seconds?

Edwards:   It would. In Wozzeck, we want to keep even the small pauses between the acts as short as possible because the whole evening has to move right along. You can’t really hold up the action for very long, so we’ve kept those scene changes to a minimum in this case.

BD:   Whose decision was it to have no intermissions?

Edwards:   It was almost an unspoken decision by everybody involved, including the conductor right from the word go. The acts themselves simply don’t last long enough for you to break it up, and the concentration level required by everybody, including the audience, is so immense that if you stop it twice, then you lose it. It’s effectively like doing Elektra. You need that sweep, otherwise it loses focus.

BD:   Might the decision have been different if the work had one intermission right in the middle?

Edwards:   It might have been if the two halves of the piece had a time-lapse, but even so, the piece is so short that it wouldn’t work.

* * * * *

BD:   Coming back to your designs, I assume you get the specifics of each theater before you start making the designs. Is it your obligation to utilize everything the theater has to offer?

Edwards:   You usually do end up using quite a lot of what the theater has to offer because the visual scope of some of these productions can become quite rich, and can become quite demanding on the theater’s resources. It’s also immensely affected by how much money you have. If you’re not using a large budget, it’s unlikely you’ll be using the facilities. Sometimes that can mean if the theater has very good facilities, you actually exploit those in a way that can help the fact that you’re not using a lot of specially built scenery.

BD:   Is there ever a case where you’re asked to touch up other people’s scenery, or do you always start from scratch?

Edwards:   Very recently in England I tried on two designs, and I found I couldn’t do anything with them. It’s often the scenery’s idea because it’s nearly falling to pieces, or is in a style that’s just not very interesting to me. I usually try to persuade the company to do a new production, even if it’s very little money, because I don’t think you actually need a lot of money to do a good production. Or sometimes I just have to get out of it, which I have had to do once or twice.

BD:   Where does the money go? Just in timber and flats and paint?
edwards

Edwards:   Largely. Quite often it becomes necessary to spend much more money on the set than on the costumes, and it can become quite unbalanced in that respect. As a designer, I’m more interested in a broad visual sweep. Details have never really been something that I’m particularly obsessed with, and as a result, costumes tend to get less money or less intense concentration from me than the whole visual element. I see it as a person on quite a large canvass, rather than an immensely important person on a gray background. Details can eat up a lot of money, so I tend to push it in the other direction, into large surfaces and ideas.

BD:   You’ve got the sets to deal with. Do you also design the costumes?

Edwards:   Yes.

BD:   Always? [Vis-à-vis the video shown at left, see my interview with Alessandro Corbelli.]

Edwards:   Not always, no. Sometimes I’ve worked with another designer who does costumes, and I’ve sometimes worked in a situation where I’ve designed the sets and the costumes with another designer in complete collaboration. So we shared both jobs, which can be very confusing, and it can be very useful, depending on the collaborator.

BD:   Is it easier or harder when you’ve got a third person working on the production?

Edwards:   It very much depends on who that person is, and the degree to which they feel the piece as strongly or more strongly than I do. Usually, I have been lucky in the collaborations I’ve had, and in the feeling of intensity that a piece brings out in me. Sometimes it’s different, and they have a much more precise attitude towards areas of the design that I’m not that interested in. These can be areas of costume, or a detail in the props or scenery, and they complement my broader sweep by being a bit more detailed. That’s quite a good reaction sometimes.

BD:   How much do you get involved in the design of the lighting?

Edwards:   Enormously. I have worked as a lighting designer myself, quite separately from the sets and costumes. This means I have a reasonable technical knowledge of how to achieve a lot of the things that one needs to do. So, it’s usually quite fast when I’m working with another lighting designer. When we have a very good dialogue, as is the case here in Chicago with Duane Schuler, there’s no fear of treading on people’s toes. Occasionally, lighting designers take some technical unhappiness from my interference. For me it’s as bit of a threat, or to be honest, a bit of a row, but not very often.

BD:   Are there ever any surprises with designing the lights? Might you want something that’s completely unexpected, or a huge light where it seems to be a dim scene?

Edwards:   Usually not. Usually, the design has been conceived with a very strong idea of lighting all the way through. I use lights to try to create as realistic a sense of what we’re going to be doing on stage as possible. Generally, most of the design is geared very strongly to lighting. There’s a very strong feeling of how each scene will be lit, often at the same time the model is being built. That tends to mean I can have quite clear discussions with the lighting designer at a late stage. Then we just do it very fast and the lighting actually happens.

BD:   Do you do this in the technical week in the summer, or just when you come to the rehearsals in the fall?

Edwards:   I’ve never actually been in a situation where I’ve been able to plan the lighting that much in advance. We didn’t have a technical week for Wozzeck because of the scheduling of the production. But I was able to work out those ideas for myself, and then to discuss that with David and the lighting designer at a later stage.

BD:   How far in advance do you need to know that you’re going to do a certain production in order to get the ideas worked out in your head, and the collaboration, and the models done, and the specifics all drawn?

Edwards:   Again, that depends enormously on the piece and the director. Because I’m passionately interested in opera, it means that I know a certain amount of the core repertory. So if it’s a piece that I know, then I can work quite fast on my own. As soon as I start any kind of involvement of a production — literally as soon as the director mentions that they’d like me to do a production of a piece — cogs start to move in my head, and I activate something often quite strong before I’ve even met the director. Some directors take that more easily than others, but it varies from one to another. [Both laugh]

BD:   I assume that if you’re designing a piece, you’re doing it in collaboration with whoever is going to stage it.

Edwards:   Very much so, yes. It’s essential.

BD:   Does it bother you if perhaps three or four years down the line they get either a different director or someone just to work from a book?

Edwards:   Again, because of the kind of productions I’ve worked in, that’s not happened before. I’ve never worked on a show that’s actually being revived. In the intervening time, again depending on the kind of production it was, and the director, I would feel very strongly that one would want it to evolve. One wouldn’t want to leave it, and reproduce it from a stage management copy. They should try to develop it with a new cast and with the new circumstances, and quite often to use the extra time you have to relight it, and maybe to change the design. It should be ongoing. I don’t think it should just stop.

* * * * *

BD:   You’ve been designing operas. Have you been designing other stage works, such as straight plays or television?

Edwards:   I’ve designed only one straight play in my life, and I found it quite hard to do.

BD:   Harder than opera?

Edwards:   Yes, because the very medium of the music allows me to get to know the piece instinctively and very fast, whereas sitting down with a play and reading it is more difficult. I’d actually have to go and see the play. You can’t buy a recording of a play very often, although you can buy records of some of the Shakespeare. But you can’t learn it in the way you can learn an opera. I’m fascinated by listening to various different performances of a piece that I’m working on, because it can inform you extraordinarily about different aspects of the piece.

BD:   Being the designer and looking so much with the eye, you design the piece for a theater. Do you think that it would work well if it was televised, or would you want it specifically filmed for television rather than just using three or four cameras?
edwards

Edwards:   Nothing I’ve ever done [yet] has ever been filmed. I have worked on a production of various scenes from operas by Verdi which were done deliberately for television and filmed in a studio. This was very different, and brought a special kind of excitement. I’m always very aware that something designed for the theater needs a full stage view more often than one is usually allowed on television. The perspective of the set and the whole concept of a design can disappear when you film something closely to get full facial shots. Detail comes into that shot from elements of the stage you may not have had a chance of finish off as well as you might have wanted do, and that can be a bit unflattering sometimes. However, I get a certain amount of excitement from watching things that have been filmed for television from stage productions. There’s usually some element one thinks that you really wouldn’t have liked to be seen quite so close to you. There can be a little bit of makeup and wigs you would like to touch up. It’s incredibly difficult to get something that was conceived for stage to work as well on television just technically from some aspect like that.

BD:   Again, being so visually orientated, are you conscious of the supertitles that people are going to be reading?

Edwards:   I’m experiencing them for the first time here. I’ve not actually worked in a theater in Britain where we’ve had them before, so it’s still a comparatively new and developing thing over there, and is very controversial. I find them much less of a worry than I thought they were going to be. I was initially rather hostile, but I’m aware that they’re incredibly popular, and a rather important part of the whole scene here in terms of people understanding what’s going on. I’d rather that people understand what was going on, than have to illustrate it strongly in the design all the time, to give a story board to them. It’s interesting that the actual language of the titles here is somewhat more broadly colloquial than would be considered in Britain. So that can be quite amusing sometimes, but I don’t find it particularly distracting. It’s quite helpful really.

BD:   Do you ever see yourself doing the direction as well as the set designing? [Vis-à-vis the video shown at left, see my interview with Michel Plasson.]

Edwards:   There was a time a few years ago when I very much wanted to. It was probably out of frustration with some of the people I was working with at that time, and wanting to push the style of the direction of the production I was working on at that time into something more exciting and more musically oriented. For the last couple of years, I have been able to work with directors who I think do that more instinctively. There’s an awful lot of technical skill involved merely in getting something onto the stage from a director’s point of view, which I don’t have, and I don’t really feel I can acquire it fast enough to want to do it just yet.

BD:   Maybe a few years down the line?

Edwards:   Maybe! [Note that photos of three recent productions where Edwards has both designed and directed are shown at the bottom of this webpage.]

BD:   Is designing fun?

Edwards:   Yes, a lot. It’s great fun. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.

BD:   Have you got any advice for younger designers coming along?

Edwards:   To hold on in there. It’s a particularly depressing procedure when you stop training. You find yourself hanging around waiting for something to happen to you, waiting for an opportunity to arise. Usually at that point you’re bursting with some form of desire to express yourself, and it’s a very expensive way of expressing yourself. It’s not just buying a sketch book and painting. It’s somehow persuading somebody to spend quite a lot of money on realizing something rather fantastic that you dreamed up, and it’s not easy for those opportunities to arise. For young designers to have a chance to work with other designers who are more experienced is vital at an early stage. It’s really the only way to learn how to do it.

BD:   Should the audiences applaud the sets when the curtain goes up?

Edwards:   No, definitely not! There shouldn’t be any room for that kind of detachment. They should be straight on in there with the piece.

BD:   [With a wink] I trust you wouldn’t purposely make the sets so they won’t applaud.

Edwards:   [Smiles] Not deliberately, but it’s happened occasionally and I find it a bit embarrassing.

BD:   Is it perhaps a little harder for you as the designer, as opposed to the director, because your work is so much further removed from the actual date of performance and applause?

Edwards:   Not really because the production evolves all the time throughout the whole procedure. Quite often one ends up changing elements of the design very late.

BD:   Even after the sets have been built???

Edwards:   Yes, and that’s happened in every show I’ve done. I’ve cut things and added things, and this can be quite alarming for the technical departments of the theaters. But actually, it’s a part of the whole process, and increasingly technical departments understand that. It’s not an assault on their abilities. It’s just a way of trying to keep the whole thing creative all the way through. If you are able to deliver a package to a company which is so well sorted out, then what can happen in the rehearsal room except literally move people around the scenery as prescribed? It needs to have something organic going on all night as a production. So the whole thing has to evolve during rehearsal, and you change the design as necessary, and move things around. [Photo below shows a working rehearsal of Edwards’ production of Pagliacci.]

BD:   Can we assume you’ve been pleased with the designs as they have finally stood?

Edwards:   Yes, but usually one’s worried about certain things, and one’s not quite sure if every detail will work. Sometimes you then have to change things when you actually see them on stage and under lights, but not so much as one gets more experienced. One then can avoid those traps.

BD:   Do you try to come to each theater to see from out in the house what the stage looks like before you make the designs?

Edwards:   Yes, I always try to do that. I came to Chicago and saw quite a lot of things in the autumn of last year, to try to see what it was actually going to be like as a space. It is a very different kind of theater from the ones they have in England. It’s a little bit like working in three theaters tacked onto each other in terms the scale of British opera houses. It’s completely different, and that does affect what you do. The main difference for me is the depth of the auditorium, from the front of the stage to the back of the circles. It’s something like twice as deep as any British theater.

BD:   But the acoustics are very good.

Edwards:   The acoustics are excellent, yes.

BD:   Do you take into account the fact that some people are going to be sitting immediately behind the conductor, and others will be up on the sixth floor very far away?

Edwards:   Yes. To a degree it’s inevitable that you have to. It affects more than just the direction, and what I do with certain elements of the set. One has to try to balance the acoustics if one can. To a certain extent it’s not that much of a problem, because Wozzeck is quite considerately scored most of the time for the singers. They’re not usually fighting against an immense barrel of sound, although the orchestra is very loud. But with something like Elektra, which I worked on with David last year, it’s a completely different event. It wasn’t a conscious decision to design a set that would be useful acoustically, but we did have a very steep rake on it, which did throw the voices out into the auditorium very well.

BD:   Are you coming back to Chicago as a team or individually?

Edwards:   We’re not quite sure. There are plans, and I’d like to. It would be good.

BD:   Thank you both for chatting with me. I appreciate it very much.

Elektra (above), and Tristan und Isolde (below) designed and directed by Edwards

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This conversation was recorded in Chicago on January 14, 1994. Portions were broadcast on WNIB the following day, and again in 1998 and 1999. This transcription was made in 2026, 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.

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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 continued 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.