Rspiration
Hysical chore — for VSO’S Bramwell Tovey
cenes in six months. ys, some took three ty strenuous period, congruous. There I politely over dinst committed mass minor corrections, changes to the opera ebut. “There are no emplated rewriting ward the end, but I satisfactory alternaot one note of new rmance.”
or work in operaTovey emphatically r I conducted Porgy glewood, with the nd tuxedos and the os, and found that I enery and costumes es there will be some
So I started in earnest and finished on January 1st; 13 scenes in six months. Some took two days, some took three weeks. It was a pretty strenuous period, and sometimes incongruous. There I would be chatting politely over dinner, when I had just committed mass murder!
BRAMWELL TOVEY
VSO MUSIC DIRECTOR
scene indications, and there are projections with atmospheric lighting, but the singers will be in evening dress rather than period costumes. I just have to hope that my music will convey the drama without the staging.
“I must mention what a great cast I had in Calgary and how wonderful it is that they are all coming back for this performance. The UBC chorus is doing a superb job, they’ve worked amazingly hard. And we are recording the performances for release on CD by Naxos Canada.”
So here is an exciting, original seasonender that should appeal to both Vancouver’s opera and symphony audiences — not to mention a virtuoso display of maestro Tovey as conductor/ composer.
In an earlier interview, Tovey neatly summed up his dual role and his dual responsibilities: “When you conduct your own opera, you can, at least in theory, get everything just how you want it. So there’s no one else to blame. If it doesn’t work, the composer can’t blame the conductor, the conductor can’t blame the composer — there’s just me.”