Looking beyond:
Conductor with local ties hopes for shift in musical appreciation after pandemic concert pause.
“It’s a frightening time but a lot of positivity is coming up.” That rather optimistic take on the state of the music world comes from conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya who was supposed to be making her Glimmerglass debut this week with a new production of “Don Giovanni.”
COVID-19, of course, has forced cancellations of virtually all performing arts and also cast a gloom, at least one would think, over those making their livelihood from things like opera or symphonic music. But Yankovskaya sees new possibilities arising from the economic instability brought about by the pandemic, especially when combined with society’s increasing demand for racial equality in all aspects of American life.
“This is a rare opportunity to stop and restart from scratch. We’re being forced to rethink everything and figure out what works and what doesn’t work,” she says. “It’s an incredible moment and I hope that magic will take hold and when we come back the hardship of the situation won’t push us back to old models.”
Yankovskaya, 34, was born in St. Petersburg Russia and at age nine immigrated with her family to the Capital Region where she studied piano with Vladimir Pleshakov and Elena Winter. She’s a graduate of Vassar College and Boston University and important mentors to her were Lorin Maazel and Marin Alsop.
Since March, Yankovskaya has been largely homebound in Chicago where she serves as music director of the Chicago Opera Theater and lives in a loft apartment with her husband and their daughter, a toddler named Artemis. “I can’t perform and when I can’t perform in order to finding meaning in work and meaning in general, I have to rely on other skill sets. One of those is administration,” says Yankovskaya.
Based on her new notoriety on the podium and a spurt of initiatives during the pandemic, networking ability and dogged determination are other assets in her pocket. Local audiences have already encountered Yankovskaya’s work at Opera Saratoga where she conducted
“Zemire et Azor” in 2017 and the world premiere of “Ellen West” last summer. Coming up on her calendar (though subject to cancellation) are runs of “Don Giovanni” at the Seattle Opera and “The Marriage of Figaro” at Dallas Opera.
Hardly a month after the nationwide shutdown began in March, Yankovskaya conducted an online master class in Russian diction for singers, which drew hundreds of viewers. After that she launched “Inner Workings,” a series of 11 Zoom forums for industry professionals. Each installment focused on an aspect of a modern opera company, from singers and orchestra players to administrators and stagehands.
“The series was exceptionally popular and reached many continents and countries,” says Yankovskaya. “It was an opportunity to think big picture. There’s never enough time for conversation between conductors and other people in a company. But we have to all be on the same wavelength to make great art happen. We’re going to continue with a second season with funders and board members on development and dig deeper into those questions.”
Yankovskaya says she knows lots of opera administrators who have sketched out 10 different contingency plans on how to guide their company through whatever might lie ahead in
2021. She’s hopeful that lean times lead to new strategies about diversity in programming and audiences.
“No matter how forwarding looking and liberally minded, an administration is going to look for efficiencies and be risk
averse,” she says. “The presence of Black Lives Matter has put pressure for real diversity. Now there may be more willingness to take the risks on young and unknown audiences and there’s time to explore more repertoire.”
New and fresh repertoire is another calling card of Yankovskaya. Cutting her teeth as a young conductor in Boston, she was omnivorous in her musical tastes and freelance ambitions. For seven years she was music director of a youthful contemporary music ensemble, but she also participated in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, starting as a singer and becoming an assistant to director John Oliver, preparing the choir for big mainstream works like the Verdi Requiem. In her two completed seasons at Chicago Opera Theater, new works have been the rule. Last year at the Washington National Opera, she led the world premiere of “Taking Up Serpents” by Kamala Sankaram.
Looking for material that might speak to our times, Yankovskaya doesn’t drop any names from the raft of composers she knows. Instead, she points to two largely forgotten black composers from the past: Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-georges, who was a French contemporary of Mozart, and
Harry Lawrence Freeman, an American who wrote and produced 21 operas during the early 20th century.
“Joseph de Chavalet de St. George is not well known and I’ve proposed his work for symphonies when I’m a guest conductor. It would be good with Mozart,” she says. “But if an artistic administrator doesn’t know the name, they’ll dismiss it. Now he’s starting to be more in the general conversation.”
As for Freeman, he was prolific and industrious, running the Freeman Music School in Harlem and co-founding with his wife the Aframerican Opera Foundation and the Negro Grand Opera Company. A substantial archive of his scores and papers is held at Columbia University. According to Yankovskaya, there’s growing interest in Freeman’s operas but issues of copyright are causing delays.
“I hope that the current moment will help us realize the importance of these figures. Sometimes when we don’t know of something we assume it’s not there. These artists are coming into our awareness and the general zeitgeist,” says Yankovskaya. “Remember, nobody knew about Bach until Mendelssohn rediscovered him.”
While pushing for classical music to shake off small mindedness and historic restraints, Yankovskaya also has some sympathy for the busy and stressed decision makers, the men and woman who sit behind desks, mind the finances and worry about ticket sales.
“Administrators normally do a day job and also attend the evening performances,” she says. “Now they’re working from home, so they cut out the commute time, and their evenings are free. Maybe they finally have time to dream about what the future might hold.”
This is a rare opportunity to stop and restart from scratch. We’re being forced to rethink everything and figure out what works and what doesn’t work.”
— Lidiya Yankovskaya