‘I just do what I do,’ conductor says
Decades ago, when the goateed English maestro Sir Thomas Beecham was asked what he thought of woman conductors, he recalled what the 18th-century writer-lexicographer Samuel Johnson said of dogs walking on their hind legs.
The surprise, Beecham is reported to have remarked, is not that it is done well, but that it is done at all.
The remark falls to amuse KeriLynn Wilson, who declares herself out of patience with questions about what it feels like to be a woman in a field still dominated by men.
“I have no idea why people ask what it means to be a woman conductor,” she said in a recent telephone interview.
“I just do what I do.”
And with any luck, barring new government COVID-19 restrictions, she will be doing it beginning Feb. 4 in the pit of the Four Seasons Centre, when the Canadian Opera Company opens its fall-winter mainstage season with a revival of Brian Macdonald’s popular production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.”
Maestra Wilson is no stranger to pits, if you will excuse the expression, having led performances in opera houses across Europe, from the Norwegian Opera in Oslo to the Czech National Opera in Prague, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Opera di Roma in Rome.
Nor is her career confined to subterranean regions. Above ground she has also conducted such ensembles as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Russian National Orchestra, the Orchestre national d’Île de France and Canada’s own Montreal and Toronto symphony orchestras.
Yes, she happens to be a Canadian, born south of the border but raised in Winnipeg where, as a flute player, she performed in a youth orchestra conducted by her father.
It was as a flute major that she entered New York’s prestigious Juilliard School, working with the celebrated Julius Baker, principal flute of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra until, as she bluntly puts it, “I got tired of the flute.” So she decided to expand her horizons, spending four more years at Lincoln Center studying conducting “and never played the flute again.”
“I hated opera as a kid and we didn’t have much exposure to it at Juilliard. I was a symphonic snob, Bruckner and Mahler. Then I saw Wagner’s ‘Ring’ at the Met.
“Every career is a bit mysterious,” she observed. “An Italian impresario heard me when I was associate conductor in Dallas (right out of Juilliard) and invited me to conduct ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ in Verona. I didn’t know anything about opera, but I caught on quickly.”
Indeed she did. While her calendar is not without North American orchestral engagements, from the San Francisco to the Seattle symphonies, it is on the other side of the Atlantic that her career has flourished, particularly in the world of suicidal sopranos and murdered tenors.
It was in 2008 that Wilson received one of her prized operatic invitations, to conduct at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, where she made such a favourable impression that she now regularly leads two or three operas a season at the legendary house.
What is so special about working at the Bolshoi? The answer comes quickly. “The orchestra, with that wonderful, warm, rich sound.”
But other major houses soon followed, from London’s Royal Opera, Covent Garden to the Paris Opera. Next season she is to make her debut in the most important opera house in Latin America, the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.
Future goals? “I still haven’t conducted at La Scala,” Wilson admitted, “and I haven’t yet conducted ‘The Ring.’ ” She might have added to this list of omissions, despite her obvious credentials, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where the music director is a fellow Canadian, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and the general manager is Peter Gelb, her husband.
The explanation? Another short answer: “Nepotism!” How long this dreaded word will continue to colour the Met’s conscience remains to be seen.
In the meantime, the little known young Canadian who surprised the recording world many years ago by suddenly appearing conducting the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Caracas, Venezuela, on a Dorian CD, has become one of the success stories of her profession. As Keri-Lynn Wilson so aptly observes, “Careers are a bit mysterious.”