Director, conductor and singers are equally important !
Ioan Holender in conversation with Opernwelt
His "warning from Bayreuth" was noticed by many readers last month. At the time of his departure from the Vienna State Opera in 2010, Ioan Holender described the contours of his conservatism and how it was partly also due to the complexity of a company like the State Opera. As you will see, his attitude is perfectly rational, as you might expect from a true conservative. (J.H.)
Mr. Holender, you once said that opera director is not a profession, but a situation one gets into. Is an opera director someone who doesn't know what profession he has missed?
In a certain sense, yes. Because you can't learn this profession anywhere. Who becomes an opera director? There are the singers at the end of a career, because they know their way around the theater business. But they learned how to sing - and not how to run such a business. Then there are famous conductors, which was valid here in Vienna for a long time, think of Mahler, Böhm, Karajan, Maazel.
But they, too, learned first and foremost to conduct, not to run a house. Composers were also brought in, and - what is almost the worst - directors, who then stage a lot in their own house. Even worse is the recent custom, not only in America but more and more in Europe also, of appointing people as opera directors because they have good economic connections and can lure additional money. Before you joined the management of the State Opera and the Volksoper, you were an influential singer's agent. In some newspaper articles you were called the "gray eminence" of the State Opera.
By representing important artists and procuring good young singers, I naturally had power in the opera. That probably also meant that some people were skeptical when I took up the directorship, as general secretary, by the way. Never before has so much negative stuff been written about a designated director of the State Opera as about us, especially because of me.
Yet your tenure became the longest of any State Opera director. How do you do that - especially in Vienna, where everyone considers themselves to be the director of the State Opera?
I don't find this mutual endurance - the audience endured me, I endured everything around me - so difficult when you know what opera means and that the quality of a performance is the most important thing. The best marketing is of no use if what is offered here is not good. Because then people will not come.
There were deficits in the quality of the opera performances. The State Opera Orchestra in particular was often criticized for this.
It is the best opera orchestra in the world - really the best, not merely one of the best - by this ambiguity as the Vienna Philharmonic. The number of members of the State Opera Orchestra is 143, which is much higher than necessary, because it allows the Philharmonic to live on its own. It is a kind of cross-subsidization of the state for a private orchestra. Although the absences are contractually secured, they often go beyond this arrangement. After all, the Philharmonic - the orchestra of the republic - makes ten times as many guest appearances today as it used to. That has brought many problems. But the house is what it is because this orchestra plays here. Good conductors who come to us come because of the orchestra's reputation, and you get good singers because of the good conductors. Last season's schedule listed 49 different titles. There couldn't have been too many rehearsals. There were usually two rehearsals, sometimes three; one or two orchestra rehearsals.
Is it enough?
Is it enough for what?
To maintain the quality you were talking about.
Yes. If you played the "Liebestrank" in the previous season and take it up again in the following season, you assume that you don't need your own orchestra rehearsal. The "Ring," which Welser-Möst conducted again in the spring, also got by without an orchestra rehearsal. I'm not saying that's the ideal situation, but contractually we couldn't do more rehearsals. That has its advantages, too: The increased concentration of the musicians makes up for a lot, brings a lot of tension. But that only works with an orchestra as experienced as this one. It becomes problematic when the majority of the dedicated orchestra members are on tour as musicians of the Philharmonic for a longer period of time, and the house is mainly occupied by substitutes.
You always considered the term "Regietheater" to be a pleonasm. But you kept hiring directors from this category. What was the reason that almost all of them seemed strangely reserved in Vienna?
Directors have become so important because you always play the same works and many people would like to see them anew - especially the critics. But what is fundamentally wrong is that directors have become the most important figures in the opera business, more important than conductors and singers. I never said that directing is not important - but it is by no means more important than the other components. I see an opera production like the Catholic Trinity: director, conductor, singers are of equal importance. And I am against directors brutalizing singers into singing positions in which they then perform worse - just because the directorial concept wants it that way. In these cases I have always intervened in favor of the singers, with all directors, however prominent they were.
But you didn't just interfere to protect singers.
I stood behind and next to, sometimes in front of, the directors, occasionally having to take a beating for them. I bore responsibility for everything that happened here, so I also took the right to interfere. If you want to show that the well-being of the cattle is more important to the farmer than his wife, I think you can do that in a different way than through a sodomitic act with a pig, as Hans Neuenfels did with Meyerbeer's "Le Prophète". That was mere provocation, and I intervened. As artistic director of this house, I have to be able to take responsibility for something like that.
You were accused of preventing a new opera aesthetic.
I can't prevent something that doesn't even exist yet! I have never prevented new ways of seeing. On the contrary - I have always been of the opinion that optics should of course look for different ways today than it did 50 years ago. But we have what we have in terms of technical means, and not what many directors and set designers would like. For example, I would have liked to have Steven Spielberg as director for "Lohengrin," and he would have agreed. But then I stood with him in the stalls of the State Opera, and he said, "Here I want to do it," here in the middle of the auditorium, like at the opera ball, with the audience all around. He was not interested in the proscenium stage. Perhaps someone else would have gone soft there and closed the opera for days so that Spielberg could realize his "Lohengrin" concept here. I didn't do it, because it's more important to me that we play every night. Elsewhere, closing days seem to have become a sign of quality: the more closing days, the more important the director. But my contract said that we had to play every night.
Is the Viennese audience reactionary? Vera Nemirova's "Macbeth" production would hardly have become a scandal in London and Berlin. In Italy it probably would.
Italy is something quite different; there, people have little interest in the scenic illumination of a piece. The scenery is supposed to provide the visual framework, nothing more. In Vienna there is an aggressive, increasingly extreme minority of fighters for the "preservation" of how it always was. They are very loud and they brought down the premiere of "Macbeth" by almost terror-like behavior.
Why did you keep productions in the repertoire that could no longer be taken off the schedule due to age, such as "Butterfly" (1957), "Tosca" (1958), "La Bohème" (1963)?
When Eberhard Waechter and I started here, we presented the government with a concept in which we wrote that we wanted to expand the repertoire of this house and bring pieces that had not yet been brought here, such as the Grand Opéra from "La Juive" to "Le Prophète", then unknown Donizettis and so on - instead of staging the well-known repertoire over and over again, because it would not be possible to do both. I continued to play the old productions in order to give the non-conservative part of the Viennese audience the opportunity to see modern productions of works that needed a new scenic interpretation. "Tosca," "Butterfly," the "Barber" don't really need that, in my opinion. And when you spoke before about my influence on directors: Yes, I have always demanded sets that are feasible in a repertory theater, not ones that block the operation of that repertory theater. And the repertory theater here was not invented by the conservative Holender, but is a requirement of the contract of the director of the State Opera. If this is no longer desired, the contracts would have to be changed accordingly by the politicians. But without such a repertory theater there would be no permanent ensemble and no development of young singers.
Building a good ensemble was an important part of your concept from the very beginning. Are you satisfied with what you have achieved?
Today we have an ensemble here that is the envy of the whole world. We launched two generations of excellent singers: Natalie Dessay, Bryn Terfel, Barbara Frittoli, Adrienne Pieczonka, Soile Isokoski, Krassimira Stoyanova, Vesselina Kasarova, Angelika Kirchschlager, Johan Botha, Falk Struckmann, Monte Pederson, Michael Schade, and all their names. And more recently Elina Garanca, Genia Kühmeier, Nadia Krasteva, Ain Anger, Boaz Daniel, Adrian Eröd, Saimir Pirgu. And Diana Damrau also sang her first important role at a major house here - in the world premiere of Cerha's "Der Riese vom Steinfeld". A lot has also happened in the very recent past; Elisabeth Kulman, for example, who came from the Volksoper and whom we took into the ensemble, will make a world career. Or little Jane Archibald, who was in the ensemble here, today one of the very first coloratura sopranos. Tenor Gergely Nemeti will also make his way, as will Roxana Constantinescu and Anita Hartig.
Twenty years ago, you said that the more important the house was to a singer's curriculum, the more moderate the pay should be. Were you able to stick to that?
Yes, I have stuck to it. The maximum salary at comparable German houses is 16,000 euros; at the Vienna State Opera I stayed at 13,200 euros. And because I made contracts early, for example with Elina Garanca, these singers remained cheaper because their price was lower a few years ago than it is today. In addition, the cancellations of guest singers were largely compensated for from within the ensemble. In general, we tried to fill certain positions from the house ensemble. If you don't have that, it gets very expensive very quickly.
You also sacrificed prominent directors to the ensemble idea when they only wanted to work with guests.
Yes, for example Christof Loy. I held him in high esteem and invited him to direct "Arabella," but he wanted to cast Count Waldner, Adelaide and other roles with guests. I told him, "I have excellent people in the ensemble here, you can pick anyone you want; if you don't want that, we can't talk any further." Before my time, even Fiorillo in the "Barber" was a guest singer here.
Which, as a singer's agent, you probably weren't unhappy about....
So I know what I'm talking about. But as director, I didn't do opera for singing stars here - only once, when I set "Norma" for Edita Gruberova in concert. Otherwise, this was not a star house, because I always found the works more important than the performers.
In your new book you write: "A singer usually needs about ten years until he or she is firmly integrated, the further career lasts another ten years, mostly with falling quality; after that one commits the name rather than the performance." How many such names have you signed?
Some against my own conviction, but to the delight of part of the public also over "their time".
You complained that the relationship with politics is worse today than ever before. Where does this coldness come from? From a general disinterest in opera?
From disinterest in everything that doesn't contribute to their own popularity and consolidation of power. After all, with an occupancy rate of over 97 percent, one can hardly speak of a general lack of interest. Opera is flourishing as never before. Its magic is unchanged. The fact that people give something to other people, that these people go home richer, happier, is irreplaceable. Admittedly, the repertoire remains more or less an act of incest with the same works over and over again - which is why the scenic treatment has become so important.
Contemporary opera - is it also flourishing?
It is unfortunately the case that hardly any new operas are created. And the newly created ones are hardly ever performed again. Audiences are only interested when the performances take on the character of events. The premiere of Aribert Reimann's "Medea" in February of this year, for example, was miserably sold; the second performance badly, the last then excellent. By then, word had gotten around that the whole thing was an extraordinary event. But in itself, contemporary works are doing just as badly as they were when I came here.
What do you think of the activities to bring operas to cinemas worldwide?
It's spectacular, it generates interest, but it can't be the goal of opera. The technical possibilities of reproduction are manifold, but also dubious. Opera was born, lives and survives through and with people, through the audience in the hall, which experiences a story told live by artists and is spellbound or moved by it. No one can create this mood technically. Opera on television, opera on the Internet, DVDs are temporary tools. I have introduced here that the performances are transmitted to Karajan Square in front of the opera house - but not for the opera connoisseurs, but for those who pass by, stop, look and perhaps consider coming to the house one day to experience it all directly and live.
You have always tried to position the State Opera historically, whether through exhibitions or critical words at commemorative events. What was the reason for this drive? Your family background or your life shaped by different political systems?
I don't want to call it driven. I was anxious, as the head of this house, to use the media opportunity to take a stand on many problems affecting this country. At the various commemorative events, I tried to position the house as far as its past was concerned, and to say things that not everyone was happy to hear. But I have not said anything new, only what everyone knows anyway. For example, that the same person who was last director of the Vienna State Opera during the "Thousand-Year Reich" (Karl Böhm) was hoisted to that position again after the war. That was typical of the situation here in the ten years after the end of the war. I called this the "seamless transition". After all, Austrians love their past - on condition that they are allowed to repress it. Especially the one between 1938 and 1945.
You also tried to send political signals through guest appearances, for example in Israel.
Of course, that was a particular concern of mine - but not under the heading of "reparations," because I don't believe in that. I also don't believe in playing certain works that you don't really like just because they weren't played under the National Socialists. Even Marcel Prawy said, "Not everything Hitler banned was good." Some composers are rightly no longer played; to bring them under the heading of "reparation" would seem to me to be as idiotic as not playing Wagner in Israel. The latter is a very exclusionary attitude towards young people who live there. But the guest performances we gave in Belgrade, Zagreb, Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest and Sibiu were also important to me. I felt that we owed something to the people there. The Iron Curtain could just as well have fallen here, a few kilometers further west, and then Austria would also have been part of the Eastern Bloc.
What do you consider to be the most important productions of your era?
Willy Decker's interpretation of "Die tote Stadt," Robert Carsen's production of "Die Frau ohne Schatten" and "Jérusalem," also Christine Mielitz's "Peter Grimes. With Peter Konwitschny's "Don Carlos" interpretation, the approval grew after an initial fuss, which made me very happy. Marco Arturo Marelli did most of the productions here during my time, most recently the world premiere of Reimann's "Medea," which was a great success. I don't want to forget the other world premieres, from Alfred Schnittke's "Gesualdo" to Adriana Hölszky's "Die Wände," which we produced together with Klaus Bachler and the Wiener Festwochen, to Friedrich Cerha's "Der Riese vom Steinfeld." Also very important to me were the performances of Enescu's "Oedipe" or Halévy's "La Juive" - an opera which our production brought back to the attention of the world. During my directorship, we restaged all of Wagner's works except "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg," starting with "Rienzi," and the entire "Ring" cycle was even restaged twice.
Friends and foes alike concede that you have managed the house in an economically excellent way, with an occupancy rate of between 97 and 98 percent - unique in the current opera landscape.
Above all, I have never lived beyond my means, and if the circumstances had been worse, I would not have afforded anything above that. But I also didn't allow people to take away what I had saved by doing so. And I wasn't willing to spend money on things I didn't find useful.
For example?
Excessive and expensive placement of advertisements, giving free tickets at premieres to so-called influential people, paying cab bills to artists or staff, expensive hotels. I also refused to pay assistants and dramaturges directors wanted to bring in, when there was dedicated staff in the house.
What will the future look like? Budgetary austerity measures are necessary, but unfortunately culture has the smallest lobby.
In Austria, culture has a high status, because the country has little else to offer internationally. Culture will therefore not be the first to suffer. But everything that we have afforded and that does not correspond to our circumstances, we will simply no longer be able to afford. Everything that we have lived beyond our means will be cut back. You can't live a life of perpetual debt. In many respects, this also applies to cultural institutions, and not without good reason. But I think it would be immoral for us cultural workers to pretend that we don't care about the crisis and demand even more money now. At the moment, festivities are being organized all the time, on every church square and market square and everywhere where water flows. And everyone wants public money. But on the other hand, music schools are being closed, music teachers are being laid off. That simply doesn't work.
Yeah, Director is on the bottom of the totem pole IMHO. Director has ruined more operas then I can count with going so far away from the composers intent. It's singers, orchestra, conductor, costume folks, stage management, then Director in terms of priority. Without singers, it isn't opera.