Conductor  Christof  Perick

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie




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Christof Perick is the former Chief Conductor of the Beethoven Orchester Bonn. He was Music Director of Germany’s Nuremberg Philharmonic and Opera from 2006 through 2011 and Music Director of the Charlotte Symphony from 2001 through 2010. He completed his post as Principal Guest Conductor of the Dresden Semper Opera at the close of the 2007/2008 season. Other former positions include Music Director posts with the Niedersaechsisches Staatsorchester and Staatsoper in Hannover, Germany from 1993-96; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra from 1992-95; the Badische Staatskapelle Karlsruhe, Germany from 1977-1986; and the State Orchestra and Opera Saarbrucken, Germany from 1974-77. 

In recent seasons, Mr. Perick’s engagements have included productions with the Dresden Semper Oper and the Hamburg Staatsoper, and engagements in North America with the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Washington’s National Symphony and the Symphonies of Boston, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Houston, Dallas, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Detroit, Seattle, Milwaukee, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Montreal and Toronto; summer Festivals that include the Mostly Mozart Festival at New York’s Lincoln Center and the Grant Park Music Festival of Chicago. He conducted the first ever US tour of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Germany’s leading national Youth Orchestra.

At New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Christof Perick has conducted productions that include Fidelio, Tannhauser, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Hansel und Gretel and Die Meistersinger. He also has led productions including Der fliegende Hollaender and Parsifal with the Lyric Opera of Chicago; and he conducted the San Francisco Opera in a production of Der fliegende Hollaender. Mr. Perick also conducted the Los Angeles Music Center productions of Cosi fan tutte and Ariadne auf Naxos and the San Diego Opera’s productions of Fidelio, Magic Flute and recently Der Rosenkavalier.

Abroad, recent new productions at Dresden include Puccini’s Il triticale, Weber’s Freischütz, Strauss’ Die schweigsame Frau, Salome, Capriccio, Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, and Fidelio; a ring cycle at Hannover, and concerts with the Orchestre National de France and the Orchestre National de Lyon.

Future and recent-past engagements include returns to the Cincinnati Symphony, the San Diego Symphony and the Charlotte Symphony, plus conducting productions at the Cincinnati Opera (Rosenkavalier and Der Fliegende Hollaender), Britten’s War Requiem at the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam, the Chamber Orchestra of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, and the Chautauqua Symphony.  Christof Perick became a regular guest on the podium of Staatsoper Hamburg as well as Volksoper Wien.

==  Biography from Kaylor Management Inc.  


In April of 1986, Christof Perick returned to Chicago to conduct the Orchestra of Illinois, which was made up of members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra.  Despite a busy schedule, he graciously took time to chat with me about his views on musical topics, and his career.  The conversation is presented on this webpage just as it happened, which means that side issues or different thoughts often came up, and then a previous idea was re-visited and expanded.  As usual, names which are links refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.

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Bruce Duffie:   You are Music Director at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin?

Christof Perick:   In West Berlin, yes.

BD:   So, you are mostly an opera conductor?

Perick:   Not mostly.

BD:   How do you divide your time between opera and concert?

Perick:   It’s a trial to exactly do it 50-50.  There are big differences, as you know, like two pair of shoes.  It’s nice to concentrate just on the music with concerts.

BD:   Do you ever do opera in concert form?

Perick:   Just in the case where you have operas which are no longer played on the stage.  For example, I did Die Feen by Wagner because you don’t see this work on the stage.  But I don’t like Tristan, and Rheingold, and Magic Flute on the concert podium.

BD:   Why?  I would think those would work quite well.  [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Gwyneth Jones, James King, Hartmut Welker, and Kurt Moll.]

Perick:   No, because those things need the stage, the lights, the costumes, and the action.  I don’t think they’re made for concert.

BD:   You don’t think Wagner or Mozart would approve?

Perick:   Of course they would, and sometimes I would like it also, but I don’t think it’s right.  In cases of operas which you can’t see on stage, I think it’s necessary.  I did Oberon because nobody plays that opera on the stage, or Ariodante, or Die Feen.

BD:   Are these basically financial considerations which cause the companies not to be willing to mount the production and give it the stage settings?

Perick:   No, I just think they don’t work on the stage.  Librettos are sometimes silly and don’t work on stage.  Have a look at Guntram by Richard Strauss.  Nobody plays it on the scene.

BD:   [Gently pressing the point]  And yet it was designed for the stage.

Perick:   Yes, but stage directors won’t do it.  There are reasons...

BD:   [With a wink]  Are they good reasons?

Perick:   [Laughs]  I don’t know.  I’m not a stage director, but Oberon is very hard to do.  It will not work.  The libretto is stupid, but the music is marvelous.  So this is the reason for me to do things like that in concert versions.

BD:   If someone came to you and said they wanted to stage Oberon or Die Feen, would you accept the contract?

Perick:   Yes, of course, but nobody does.

BD:   I’ll have to nudge the producers a little bit.  [Much laughter]  Let’s talk a bit about the standard Wagner operas.  Aside from being longer, how are Wagner operas different from any other operas that you work with?

Perick:   That’s a difficult question.  Especially from the middle of the Wagner oeuvre, the orchestra becomes more and more for itself.  For conductors, of course, the Wagner music is most interesting because it’s more or less symphonic music at the end.  Look at the Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal.  Wagner is the boss, and he’s the greatest.  That’s what I think.  We could speak hours over Wagner’s importance for the opera.

BD:   Was he absolutely imperative for the development of opera?

Perick:   Yes, especially for the operas of the 20th century after Wagner.  There would be no Strauss, no Schoenberg, no Zimmermann, no Alban Berg, nothing without his works.

BD:   No Debussy?

Perick:   Maybe, but they all came some way around the mountain.

BD:   Have you done all the Wagner operas?

Perick:   Yes, but not Liebesverbot.

BD:   Have you done the fragment of Die Hochzeit?

Perick:   Yes..  We did it for Wagner’s 100th death day in ’83.  It was a concert with the Paris version of Act one of Tannhäuser, and the fragment of Hochzeit.  It’s just a fragment, and the exposition of an opera.  That’s all.  It’s something in between Mendelssohn and Weber and Schumann.  It’s not very typical for Wagner, whereas in Die Feen you can find wonderful places of later Wagner... Tannhäuser places, Lohengrin places...  There’s a lot of typical Wagner.
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BD:   Before we leave Die Hochzeit, how much exists, about 20 minutes?

Perick:   Less, between 15 and 16 minutes.  It’s the beginning of the first act.

BD:   Then he just abandoned it?

Perick:   Yes.

BD:   Do you wish he’d completed it?

Perick:   I don’t think so.  There’s enough Wagner, isn’t there?

BD:   There are some people who would trade all of the polemical writings for another stage work.  Would you?

Perick:   No.

BD:   Do you go back and you read all of the prose writings?

Perick:   Yes.

BD:   Are they really significant?

Perick:   Not all, but some are very, very interesting.  Not all of his political ideas, but lots of his ideas of the development of the theater and music.
BD:   Tell me about Die Feen.

Perick:   It’s a curious libretto, which is the reason that no one plays it.  The story is terrible.  It’s something in between Zauberflöte and Frau ohne Schatten.  Not the music, though.  It’s a fairy tale.

BD:   Are there two pairs of characters?

Perick:   Three pairs, but, as I said, it is really, really significant Wagner music.  The overture is played sometimes in concert.  The music leads directly to the overture of Flying Dutchman.

BD:   Is it a strong work?

Perick:   Yes, I think so.  They did it in concert version in Vienna and in Munich, and I did it in Karlsruhe.

BD:   Is it something that should be done in the big opera houses?

Perick:   No, just for special performances.  It’s necessary to know it, but you can’t have it in the repertoire and do it often.

BD:   Is this one of the good things about recordings, that they can preserve something you wouldn’t hear every day?

Perick:   Yes, for sure.
*     *     *     *     *
 
BD:   Let me ask about your recordings.

Perick:   There’s an Elektra from Orchestre National de France in Paris with Ute Vinzing, Leonie Rysanek, and Marueen Forrester.  It’s a very good recording [shown below-left], taken from a live performance concert version.

BD:   Is it better to record from a performance rather than in the studio?

Perick:   I would prefer to have two or three performances to make a mixture of all.  But in any case, you get very often more lively things in a performance or in a concert than in the studio.

BD:   The Elektra was one performance?
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Perick:   It was one performance. There are several small mistakes and things which happen in the performance, and they were left in.  But the whole thing is so cohesive.  It was a really good performance.  They don’t plan to issue it.  It was a live performance, concert version, and it was broadcast live.  But it worked so well that they made a record after.

BD:   So they had to go and renegotiate the contracts?

Perick:   Afterwards, yes.

BD:   Did anybody object?

Perick:   No.  It was one of those evenings where everybody felt it worked really well.  I have lots of radio performances, but no opera recordings.  I’m a live musician.  [Note that the Notre Dame CD was recorded a couple years later.]

BD:   You don’t like to make records?

Perick:   Yes I do, but I’m so busy with live performances.

BD:   Are you glad that there are broadcasts so that some things exist in sound on tape to document your career?

Perick:   Yes, I do.  It’s very good.

BD:   Do you feel that the public, especially the American public, has become too enamored of recordings?

Perick:   I can’t say.  I don’t know.  Maybe, but I don’t know for sure.

BD:   When you’re conducting live, do you ever feel that you’re competing with existing recordings?

Perick:   Yes, we always do.  Maybe that’s an answer for the last question, because everybody has the records at home and knows how it can be.  This is a problem for live opera all over the world.

BD:   Are records too perfect?

Perick:   Sometimes, yes.  It’s very simple.  Normally, you have no mistakes and everything is at the best on the record.  You can’t compare a live performance with a record.  You can sometimes improve it with the atmosphere.  Some passages have tempo and wonderful things, but you can’t compare with the real quality of details.  It’s impossible.

BD:   This is technical perfection?

Perick:   Technical perfection.  That’s it.  That’s the word.

BD:   Do you strive for this same technical perfection in the live theater?

Perick:   We try, always, but you can’t have performances of difficult things, such as Elektra, or Salome, or Rosenkavalier, things like that, without small mistakes in the live performances.  It’s impossible.

BD:   Are records too perfect?

Perick:   No.  They have to be perfect because they have the chance to do it twice or three times, and to correct it, and to have the balance.  Besides, the singers have the scores, and they have no stage problems.  There are no distance problems.  The choruses are in front of the conductor, and everything is much more easy.  Records have to be perfect.

BD:   Does it become a fraud because they are so perfect?

Perick:   It shouldn’t.  At the end, for me and for a lot of people, it’s a different feeling being in the theater and watching and hearing a live performance.  It’s another thing sitting at home and having a perfect record.  There’s a difference.

BD:   Are some of your performances televised?

Perick:   Yes.  We did a funny thing in Karlsruhe where I was music director for 8 years.  We had a televised Mona Lisa by Max von Schillings.  It was one of my favorite things.  We also did things like Francesca da Rimini [Zandonai] and Die tote Stadt (Korngold).

BD:   I’m always lobbying to get more things into the repertoire.

Perick:   That’s necessary, and I like to do it.  Also more modern music.
  
BD:   Are you a champion of modern music?
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Perick:   I won’t say I am a champion, but I’m interested in it.  Sometimes I like to do it.  I did the new Matthus opera at the Musikverein Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (Cornet Christoph Rilke's song of love and death), and I will do the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Oedipus in West Berlin in 1987.  Once a year it’s very nice to have a new score, a fresh score which nobody did before.  Besides all the wonderful Mozart and Wagner, it’s nice.  [The DVD of the Rihm opera is shown at right.  Note that Perick’s original name (Prick) is listed here and on a couple of other recordings which are shown below.  Also, see my interview with Lenus Carlson.]

BD:   Are there new operas coming along which should take their place beside the Mozart and Wagner?

Perick:   We can’t say.  Ask me again in a hundred years.  [Both laugh]
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   Continuing with Wagner, the other unknown work is Liebesverbot.

Perick:   They did it in Munich and it was a success.  I haven’t seen it, and I don’t know it.

BD:   I assume you have a tape, so you’ve listened to it?

Perick:   Yes.  It’s nice music.  Ponnelle did the staging, and they say it worked very well on stage.

BD:   Let me ask you about staging.  From what I read in the press, the German houses especially seem to make more experiments and have more far-out presentations.  Is this a good idea?

Perick:   Yes, I think so.  It’s necessary to have new ideas for the stagings.  Also, the interpretation of the music is changing more or less.  Speaking about Wagner, today we have more light and lighter Wagner productions.  There is not such a heavy style of interpretation as was done 30, 40, 50 years ago.  This is a change, so why not have a change of style of staging?  However, it must conform with the music.  There are lots of stagings which I can’t get with because they’re against the music.  Sometimes they try to make you forget the music, and that’s not good.  If it conforms with the music, and if it’s true to the opera, and not another story, I would say yes.

BD:   Then let me ask the ‘Capriccio’ question.  Which is more important, the words or the music?

Perick:   When you ask a conductor, the answer is clear.  [Both laugh]

BD:   How closely do you work with the stage director?

Perick:   It depends.  I have wonderful experiences with Ponnelle because he’s one of the great stage directors.  He is very musical, and works with the music.  Sometimes it’s very close contact, and sometimes it’s not.  Some stage directors work for themselves and don’t even know the music.

BD:   Do those performances succeed in spite of them, or do they fall apart?

Perick:   Sometimes, sometimes not.  I will not mention any names...

BD:   But in your position as Music Director, do you get to decide who will sing, and who will produce?

Perick:   Yes, and it takes guts to do it.  [Laughs]

BD:   If you find someone you don’t like to work with, can we assume you don’t ask them back?

Perick:   Yes.

BD:   Coming back to Wagner opera, do you prefer The Flying Dutchman in one piece or three?

Perick:   I always like it more in one act, as we did here in Chicago [with Nimsgern, Clarice Carson, Sotin/Moll, Schunk].  The Ponnelle staging is that way, and most performances today are in one act.

BD:   Two and a half hours is not too long for the audience to sit?

Perick:   It is, but it’s not more than Rheingold.  It was Wagner’s idea to do it that way, and I think it’s right.  That way it’s a most thrilling story.  To speak technically, it’s hard for singers, and also for the orchestra sometimes.  It’s very, very hard to do it without a break, but in the end it’s better.  For the whole thing, I think it’s better.

BD:   Is it ever difficult to get the orchestra to respond to what you are trying to give them?

Perick:   No.  I’m lucky.  Sometimes if you travel a lot as a conductor, you’re with an orchestra where the response is not as direct as others.  But I have had very good experiences in the last years.
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   You do mostly then German works?

Perick:   Yes.  You get specialized as a conductor, and I’m specialized for the German repertoire.  It’s all the Mozarts, Fidelio, Freischütz, all the Wagners, and all the Strauss.  This is a wonderful repertoire, and a huge one.

BD:   If they came to you and asked for Bohème or Traviata...

Perick:   I would love it, but it depends where and under which circumstances.  Whether they like it or not, conductors and singers today are separated into different mafias.  We have the German mafia, and the Italian mafia, and in the last years, the Baroque mafia.  If you look over the schedules and lists of the great opera houses, you will always find the same artists for the German repertoire, and another group for the Italian repertoire.

BD:   Do you ever wish you could do a Handel opera, or something Baroque?

Perick:   No, not really.  I love it and I admire it, but I won’t do it at the moment.  There are a lot of specialists with chamber orchestras and old instruments.

BD:   Which side of the fence do you come down on as to using old or new instruments?

Perick:   For me, as a musician, it’s interesting to hear the old instruments.  But sometimes, after three or four hours of a Handel opera, I like to go back to the sound of the orchestra of today.  It depends.

BD:   In your position as Music Director, are you responsible for choice of repertoire.

Perick:   Yes.

BD:   Then are you sure to put in a few Baroque operas?

Perick:   Oh, yes.

BD:   Do you ask the specialists to come in?

Perick:   Yes.

BD:   Are you then responsible if they cancel or fall ill?  Do you have to lead the performance in that case?

Perick:   I would be able to, in some cases, but not in all.

BD:   Coming back to the Dutchman, which version do you prefer?

Perick:   There’s the early one, which is a little bit rougher in instrumentation, but we can’t forget the second version.  That’s why Wagner corrected it in some ways.  He re-instrumented the end, and the overture in some places.  He changed some passages of the score.

BD:   Should we ever go back to original versions, or is the composer right in changing things?
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Perick:   It’s the same problem with Mahler symphonies and Bruckner symphonies, where it’s a very difficult question to decide.  Mahler himself re-instrumented his symphonies sometimes two or three times, and I think he was right.  It was his symphony, and he corrected it.  In this case, Mahler was also a conductor, and I always try to pick up the last version.  We should do it with Wagner’s Dutchman also, but the question is much more interesting with Tannhäuser because it’s much more complicated with the Paris version.  You can’t just do the Paris version without the whole opera falling apart.  The Paris version was composed 20 years later, and this is really a problem.  I always prefer the Dresden version, the first one, because it’s one opera.  If you play the Paris version, the first act sounds like Parsifal.  Then you come to the second and third act, and it’s music of many years previous.  Really, it’s a prank in itself.  So for the question of Tannhäuser, I always prefer the Dresden version, the original, the first one.

BD:   If some house offered you a Dutchman in three acts, or the Paris version of Tannhäuser, would you decline the invitation?

Perick:   No.  This summer, two months from now, I’m actually doing Tannhäuser at the festival in Orange.

BD:   That will be in the open-air?

Perick:   Yes, in the open-air theater.  It’s wonderful there, and of course, since it’s in France they do the Paris version.  It’s interesting to do it once, but especially for an opera house, I like more the Dresden version.

BD:   Have you conducted opera outside before?

Perick:   Yes.  There’s a wonderful, small open-air opera in the northern part of West Germany, in Eutin.  This is the city where Carl Maria von Weber was born, and they always play Freischütz in open air, which is a great pleasure if you have a nice evening with warm weather and good conditions.

BD:   [With a gentle nudge]  Do you ever get rained out?

Perick:   [Laughs]  Sometimes, yes.  It’s problematic.  Sometimes they go on with plastic over the orchestra.  It’s funny...  But in Orange the acoustics are magnificent, with the stone walls of the Roman amphitheater.  It’s marvelous.

BD:   As the conductor, how do you adjust to the acoustics of the various theaters?

Perick:   We have to.  We have to live with it, and it’s difficult.

BD:   Are you in the best place to hear the balance?

Perick:   No, no.  The conductor’s place is mostly the worst, so you depend very much on your assistants, and from people who are sitting in the audience.  They tell you if the orchestra is too loud.

BD:   How careful are you of the problems of singers?

Perick:   We are always worried about this.  There are some operas where the balance is very, very hard.  For example, Elektra. Salome, Götterdämmerung...

BD:   Your core repertoire!

Perick:   Yes, yes, yes.  Especially some, but others not at all.  You can have Lohengrin or Meistersinger without problems, but Wagner was a genius.  He himself founded the idea with the Bayreuth pit.  It’s a wonderful idea.  We often think about that with operas like Elektra.  You know, the Elektra orchestra is even larger than the Ring orchestra.  It’s more instruments.  I sometimes think that Elektra belongs under the covered pit of Bayreuth.  Elektra is a good example for balance problems.  If you do what Richard Strauss has written in his score, there are lots of places where you can’t hear the singers, even the biggest voices.

BD:   Here for Frau ohne Schatten [1984, with Marton, Johns, Zschau, Nimsgern, Dunn; Janowski, Corsaro], they had a screen over the pit.  It was gauze, like a scrim, mostly for sight, but it did help the sound a bit.

Perick:   It’s very interesting what you say.  It would be nice to have it for Parsifal [which Perick would conduct at Lyric six months later, with Vickers, Troyanos, Sotin, Nimsgern, Becht, Salminen/Kennedy; Pizzi].  I might ask for it, especially for Parsifal because that is the only opera of Wagner where he brought in his experiences of the pit at Bayreuth.  After he heard the Ring in 1876, he composed Parsifal for that pit.  The Ring was composed without knowing how the acoustic would be.

BD:   Was he hoping to have that special sound?

Perick:   I don’t know, but it was a wonderful idea, and it worked.  The score of Parsifal [1882] is different from the Ring instrumentation, and this is because of the experience he himself heard.  Parsifal was written after the first Bayreuth festival [1876], and in those years he remembered the experience of this pit.

BD:   When you look at a score, how is it different?

Perick:   The mixtures of sounds, and the combinations of sounds are different from the Ring.

BD:   Are they better, or worse, or just different?

Perick:   No, it’s for Bayreuth, and that’s why he and Cosima wanted Parsifal not to be done outside Bayreuth.

BD:   Do you feel that you are committing a sacrilege by bringing Parsifal outside of Bayreuth?
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Perick:   No, no, no.

BD:   [With mock horror]  So Wagner was wrong in that demand???

Perick:   I don’t think so.  His idea of Bayreuth was unique, and it has all changed.  It is it is impossible that all the people who want to hear Parsifal have to go to Bayreuth.  That was his idea.

BD:   Do you feel that now, with the darkened auditorium and the lower pits, we are coming closer to what he wanted?

Perick:   No, no, no.  It was his idea to make the orchestra invisible, and have their lights not be seen.
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   Do we have voices that are suitable to sing these huge roles now?

Perick:   Not at all.  You know about the problems we have.  There are very few singers who can handle these parts.  The problem is especially acute with the tenors.  I don’t know... don’t ask me why.  40 years ago there were lots of Siegfrieds and Tristans.  Now, it’s just two, three, or four, and at the same time, people want more and more and more Wagner all over the world.  Wagner is ‘in’ more than ever.

BD:   I assume this is a good thing?  [Vis-à-vis the program shown at right, see my interviews with Zubin Mehta.]

Perick:   I don’t know whether it’s good or not.  It speaks itself for the quality of these operas.  For example, in ’87, we will do three Ring cycles in Tokyo.  I myself did Lohengrin and Frau ohne Schatten a few weeks ago in Barcelona in Spain.  It’s all over the world, more and more Wagner and fewer tenors.

BD:   So you have to make do with heavier lyric tenors?

Perick:   That’s what we have done for many years.  [Musing]  I have conducted Tannhäuser so often...

BD:   Too often?

Perick:   No, not too much, but it is very problem problematic because of the very difficult a cappella choruses, lots of stage music, and the ballet question in the beginning.

BD:   I trust you have managed to solve the problems one way or another each time.

Perick:   Yes.

BD:   Are all opera performances just a series of solving problems?

Perick:   We try.

BD:   Are there any operas that don’t present any problems?

Perick:   No.  Speaking about technical problems for the orchestra, Magic Flute is very, very easy, with lots of wonderful music and with slow music.  You can do it with a well-trained school orchestra.  It’s not the technical problems, but discovering what Mozart meant.  He presents great musical problems of interpretation and staging.  I wouldn’t like to stage Magic Flute.  You always say Tristan brings big problems, or Lulu, or Soldaten by Zimmermann.  Those are problematic, but Magic Flute is also very, very problematic to bring on stage.

BD:   At what point in Wagner’s chronology do the operas become ‘music dramas’?

Perick:   I think they are from the beginning.  Dutchman and also Tannhäuser, and partly Lohengrin all have the Italian type of arias, duettos, choruses, ensembles.  But they’re ‘music dramas’ also.

BD:   What are the problems of Lohengrin?

Perick:   [Matter-of-factly]  Tenors.  [Both laugh]

BD:   If you found a tenor today who was, say, 32, and had just the right voice for Tristan, Siegfried, and Lohengrin, how bad would the dangers be of exploiting this poor man?

Perick:   If there would be one 32 years old with a voice, I would say first of all to sing only Tamino, Ottavio, Max, and Florestan for six years.  Then start with Eric, and then maybe Parsifal and Stoltzing.  After 10 or 12 years of slowly, slowly developing, then maybe the first Siegfried, and then Götterdämmerung, and Tristan last.

BD:   [Genuinely surprised]  Really???  Siegfried before Tristan?

Perick:   Yes.  I did it with one of our young tenors, Manfred Jung.  He was with me for years, and we started with a Götterdämmerung Siegfried before the young Siegfried, and before Tristan.
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See my interviews with Donald Kaasch, Sylvia McNair, Dawn Upshaw, and Jan-Hendrik Rootering


BD:   Did it work?

Perick:   Yes.

BD:   What happened to him?

Perick:   There were other problems with too much singing in a short time, and in this case, there was no development.  He was one of the young tenors with a junglisch voice, and we missed 6 to 8 years with Max, and Florestan, and Tamino before.  We missed it.  This was one of the cases where he started immediately with Siegfried.

BD:   Whose mistake was that?  His manager, the intendants?

Perick:   No, it was not his mistake, and it’s not the mistake of the managers.  It’s just the fact that people want to hear the sopranos and there are no tenors.  If there’s somebody who is just able to do it, they throw him in.  Young singers can’t say no to the Metropolitan and Bayreuth.  It’s impossible to say no.  They don’t want to have to wait 8 years while singing José, and Tamino, and things like this before moving on to the huge roles.  One of the very last Heldentenors was Hans Beirer.  He’s 75 years old now, and he’s singing roles like Herodes and things like that.

BD:   That is almost a character role.

Perick:   Yes, but when he was in his 60s he was in great condition because of what he did 20 years prior.  He sang operettas, Tamino, Ottavio, José, and then started with the Wagner.  That’s the problem.  In those days, it was necessary that some of the young singers had to do other roles because there were lots of Heldentenors.  Now we have none.  So, to your question, if there is somebody who is 32 years old and he’s able to do it, they throw him in, and after a few years...

BD:   ...they burn out?
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Perick:   Yes!

BD:   If a tenor is doing Tamino and José and Max, at what point should they do Otello, and Manrico, and Radamès?

Perick:   Also, later.  Domingo has done Lohengrin very well, but this is the only example I can think of.  But he’s so clever.  He won’t do Tristan or Siegfried.
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BD:   Leaving out the problems of casting the roles, tell me your feeling about Tristan.

Perick:   Tristan is always a miracle.  Sometimes I think Meistersinger is the greatest opera because it’s so human.  I love it, but the development from Lohengrin to Tristan is incredible.  If you hear the last act of Lohengrin and then the beginning of Tristan, it seems like there is 100 years of music history in between.

BD:   But he also spent that time writing the book for the Ring.

Perick:   Yes, and it’s a miracle.  Besides the Ring, Tristan is one of the greatest things to conduct.  Tristan is three huge symphonies with voices.

BD:   Three symphonies, or one symphony of three movements?

Perick:   You can say it is three movements.

BD:   Is it too long?

Perick:   Possibly, even if you always have the traditional cut in the second act.

BD:   Do you like to make that cut, or is it forced on you?

Perick:   It’s not a question of whether I like it or not.  It’s necessary for the tenor.

BD:   If we had a tenor who could handle it, you would not make the cut?

Perick:   No, of course not.  You have to think of whether he can then get through the third act.

BD:   [Knowing that this had actually happened]  Get a new tenor!

Perick:   Three tenors, as in the famous story!  [See the photo and news item below-left]

BD:   When you’re conducting one of these very long operas, do you often get new first-chair brass players for the third act?

Perick:   Yes.  Usually in Germany they change after the second act of Tristan, and after the second act of Meistersinger.  Most of the winds and brass players also change after the first act of Götterdämmerung.

BD:   Do they rehearse it that way?

Perick:   Sometimes yes.  It depends on the number of players the orchestra has, if you have enough.  In some orchestras they have to do is all, but it’s very hard.

BD:   I would think it would be a luxury to have these extra players.
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Perick:   Yes, it is a luxury.

BD:   When you have the same members of the orchestra for the whole night, do you take any extra care to keep the brass down a notch just to save their lips?

Perick:   Yes.  Even at the Met when I conducted Meistersinger last year, it was the same horns all night, which is unusual to me.

BD:   How do you see the end of the Ring?  Is the final few minutes one of the great metaphysical experiences of mankind, or is it just music that is going on?

Perick:   It’s very touching, and is the end of the longest opera which exists if you see the four performances as one piece.  It’s for everybody, for the audience and even for the musicians it’s a very touching end of this huge journey through four operas.  I’m so lucky to have conducted 25 complete Rings in the last 10 years, and lots of performances of the single operas.

BD:   Do the single operas frustrate you because you don’t have the rest to go with it?

Perick:   It’s hard to say.  Mostly, it’s one or two Rings per season.  It’s good to have two extra performances of Siegfried to train the orchestra and to train yourself.  I like it just for practical reasons.  It’s good because the breaks are very long, and it’s always a new question of rehearsals.  If you have a new production, you can’t play the Ring six times in a year.  Mostly, it’s one Ring, and then the next year you have the next one, and rehearse it from the beginning.  So, it’s good sometimes to have single performances for everybody to remember and to fine-tune.

BD:   If you bring back the Ring the next year, is it basically the same cast, and the same orchestra?

Perick:   Yes, we try.  Before going to Berlin, I conducted the Ring over eight years in Karlsruhe when I was Music Director, and we had mostly the same cast with Ute Vinzing and Manfred Jung, and especially the orchestra.  It was interesting to see the development over those years.  It’s became better and better.

BD:   Is that true of other operas, or just the Wagner operas that get better?

Perick:   It’s also true with other operas, but I have a special feeling with this difficult thing.  Another good example is Frau ohne Schatten.  When I conducted it first in ’78 in Karlsruhe, we scheduled it as a rare exemplar of an opera just for a few performances, and then we would forget it.  Meanwhile, it’s in its 8th season, and the audience is crazy with it.  It’s always sold out.

BD:   So it surprised you that the audience came?

Perick:   Yes, and it’s wonderful.  This is a good example for developing the quality.  From year to year it’s less difficult, even though it’s one of the most difficult operas I know.  It’s a question of training if you do something more and more.

BD:   Is Frau a logical continuation from Wagner?

Perick:   Yes.  You can say it’s one line from the Dutchman to Parsifal.  It’s sometimes the same ideas.

BD:   To where?  To Frau, then to Daphne?

Perick:   Of course.  Richard Strauss continues, especially with Guntram and then Salome and Elektra.  Then comes the break with Rosenkavalier.  There had to be a break, and then he goes the other way to Ariadne with the chamber orchestra.  Then it’s back to the Frau ohne Schatten.  So one could say Frau ohne Schatten is the last of the line.  
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   What’s the best way to present the Ring?

Perick:   There are no singers who can sing three performances without breaks.  You can’t ask a baritone to do Rheingold, Walküre, and Siegfried in 3 days.  And he’s not the only one who has to sing three performances in a cycle.  If you have a repertoire opera house like in Germany, I prefer three Sundays and maybe starting with the Rheingold on Friday.  It was a fine way to do it in recent years because everybody’s working until 6 o’clock, and you have to start the operas at 5.
perick

See my interviews with Jesús López-Cobos, Simon Estes, and George Shirley


BD:   How much do you expect of an audience that comes to an opera?

Perick:   It’s incredible.  Most of them know what they have to expect during those 6 hours.  They know, and they want to do it.

BD:   Here in Chicago, people are coming with their lunch which they would eat at the interval.

Perick:   Right.  Why not?  Think of the one-hour intermissions in Bayreuth.  Here in America, we have to have short intermissions.  Even at the Met, they have to be about 25 minutes.  This is a problem of overtime and money.  The Meistersinger performances I did last year at the Met had the two intermissions scheduled exactly to the minute, because you come to a total of 6 hours and not more because of overtime.

BD:   Do you conduct faster because of that, or are you faster or slower than average?
perick
Perick:   I can’t say.  There’s another reason at the moment, and we come back to the singers.  There are no tenors who can fill Wagner’s tempos as he wanted them, so I’m sure the third act of Tristan today is between 10 and 15 minutes faster because of the tenor problem.  It should be 15 minutes longer to be right.  All professionals know it.  Sometimes we go with one accelerando over 1 hour for the last act of Tristan just to bring the tenor through to the end.  Everybody who knows about it will agree.  This question of tempo sometimes depends very much on the singers, and you have to help them, of course.  You can’t say, “This was Wagner’s idea, and was Wagner’s tempo, and we have to do it.”  The poor guy would be out.  It’s impossible.

BD:   This influences your interpretation as far as tempo.  Is there anything else extraneous that influences your interpretation of the work?

Perick:   No, it’s just experience over years, and it’s a big development.  I wouldn’t like to hear my first Walküre which I did 10 or 12 years ago.

BD:   Because you have grown?  [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Charles Dutoit, and Peter Schreier.  As in the DVD shown above, the conductor’s birth-name is listed on this LP.]

Perick:   Yes.  Speaking about myself as a conductor, I have never stopped studying and learning those scores.  From the beginning, I knew and I realized my changes in the interpretation more and more and more.  One of the biggest problems is Parsifal, which, as everybody knows, needs slow tempos and a lot of andantes and adagios.  The biggest problem is to have the whole thing flowing over five and a half hours.  This is a huge problem.  If you start conducting Parsifal, you’re always too slow, and then you have to get to a point where you combine both speed and flow.  When they hear it, the audience must get the impression that it’s slow and it’s quiet, and really flows.  This takes experience over years and years, and lots of performances.

BD:   This is how you really learn to be a conductor?

Perick:   Yes, especially with this repertoire.  [Pauses a moment to reflect]  There is a difference if you conduct a masterpiece like L’elisir d’amore [Donizetti] or something like that.  There is a difference, especially from the point of view of a conductor.

BD:   Is conducting fun?

Perick:   Yes, it is.  It’s very hard work, not physically, but mentally and psychologically.  I’m speaking about the rehearsals.

BD:   Is all your work done at the rehearsal, or do you leave a little bit for the performance?

Perick:   No, no, no, there’s a lot left.  It would be frustrating if everything is done.  You must train and you must rehearse to be as good as possible, but there are lots of details left for the evening.

BD:   The energy obviously is up for the first performance.  What about the fifth performance, or the eighth performance?

Perick:   For European conductors, this is a difference from the American system.  In the U.S., we have six or eight Meistersingers or Parsifals in a row.  If we conduct Parsifal in Germany, it’s just on Easter Sunday, and then the next year on Holy Friday.  It’s totally different there.  If you have Meistersinger in the repertoire, you play it one or two times, and then it’s over for half a year.  Then it comes back.

BD:   Does that keep it fresh?

Perick:   Yes, but it needs new rehearsals.  This is the difference with a so-called repertoire system.  Sometimes you play an opera, which hasn’t been done for 7 months, and it’s a good system.  Here in the States, and also in other countries where you have the stagione system, to do seven Parsifals in a row is wonderful because it develops.  On the other hand, I like it if you have two Parsifals, and then two Figaros and one Magic Flute in between.  Then you have another Parsifal.  The problem is if you have eight performances of one opera, it can become mechanical.  If you do eight performances in a row, it’s the same thing as three days before.  This is what I like with the German repertoire system.  It keeps you alive if you play, and sing, and conduct an opera which hasn’t been done for a year.  I’m looking forward to doing Parsifal at Lyric in a few months.  I understand it’s the very first one?

BD:   Yes.  You see, Lyric Opera dates back to 1954, but we’ve had resident opera in Chicago since 1910.  They’ve just been different companies with different names, with a few dark seasons between.  [Parsifal was first given in January of 1914, with 15 full orchestral rehearsals!]  We were supposed to have Parsifal a few years ago, and then it got dropped for financial reasons.  How much do the financial considerations affect your choice of repertoire in your home theater?

Perick:   Thankfully, not too much because, as you know, the government is paying most of the money for German opera houses.  So we have to do modern things to get the money... not for Barber of Seville or Trovatore, but for works by Zimmermann and Alban Berg.  This makes us able to do things like that, and that keeps the major German opera houses alive and interesting.

BD:   Where is opera going today?

Perick:   Problems.  Union problems.  Stage problems.  Singer problems.  In any case, opera is not getting easier.  It’s not easier than it was.  Conductors divide their time 50% between concert and opera.  Sometimes it’s good to leave opera for 2 weeks of concerts, without stage directors, without unions, choruses, stage crews... just music.  Pure music.

BD:   Pure joy?

Perick:   I hope so.  Mostly it is.

BD:   Thank you for spending the time with me today.  I appreciate it very, very much.

Perick:   Thank you.  This was interesting.  [Pauses a moment]  It’s a pleasure to be here.  The orchestra asked me to do those concerts.  They waited two years because there was no time to do it.  We should have done it in the last year, but there were no dates.  Now it worked out just for one week.  I have to leave immediately.  It’s not good, but it just worked out.

 BD:   Will you be back at Lyric after the Parsifal?

Perick:   I hope so.  We spoke about it, and there might be something.  Next year it’s the Met again.  I would like to come, but as you know, everyone has already planned everything over the next two or three years, and there are just one or two German operas.  Here they have at least three German conductors, Janowski, Leitner, and myself.



perick





© 1986 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on April 23, 1986.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1996.  This transcription was made at the end of 2024, and posted on this website at the beginning of 2025.

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 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.