Any conductor that helms a company of Lyric Opera’s stature is going to be a globe-trotter — there’s no two ways about it. It’s practically de rigueur for orchestra or opera chiefs to spend only a couple months per year in their employer’s home city. Take that oft-repeated, probably apocryphal story about Herbert von Karajan. When a New York taxi driver once asked the exacting late maestro where he was headed, Karajan waved him off: “No matter — I’m in demand everywhere.”
In comparison, Lyric Opera music director Enrique Mazzola’s embrace of his adopted city is a breath of fresh air. Since being named conductor designate in 2019, the Spanish-born Italian conductor has made Chicago his primary residence, spending about half the year here. When he’s “home,” Mazzola documents his rambles around the city on Instagram, a scarlet-spectacled spin on “Where’s Waldo.”
Mazzola’s wide-eyed excitement at all things Chicago would seem to be the hallmark of a much greener conductor. But Mazzola, 54, has more than been around the block. During our conversation over breakfast (coffee and croissants at a Gold Coast eatery, not far from his digs in the Hancock), he realized that this spring marks 30 years since his professional debut. Since then, Mazzola has cinched apex appointments at the Orchestre National d’ le de France, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Bregenz Festival — and, of course, Lyric, where he leads this season’s “Ernani,” “Don Carlos,” “Le Comte Ory” and Kevin Puts’ 2019 concert drama “The Brightness of Light,” based on letters between artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz.
Here’s that conversation, excerpted and edited below:
My father was a coach at La Scala and my mother was a dancer. You may say, “OK, of course you would have become a musician.” But I had also a brother and a sister who studied music as I did, and who are not musicians. So, I’m the only one in the family.
I started with violin and piano, but I was a little bit lazy in the beginning. When I was 14, I started studying composition (at Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan). Learning the reasons a composer wrote in a particular style was so fascinating for me. It was like I was a maritime explorer, leaving the coast and drawing a new map.
The other thing was that I joined the children’s chorus at La Scala, singing many titles with (Claudio) Abbado, Carlos Kleiber, Georges Prêtre, Seiji Ozawa … Watching Abbado on the backstage monitors — they were black and white back then — I imprinted on it, like a small duck. I literally recall the moment when I thought, “I will do what this man is doing.” It’s only maybe since when I arrived in Chicago that I realized my passion for opera comes from that period, when I was maybe eight, nine, 10 years old. Even now, leading rehearsals with some of the greatest musicians in the world, when I go onstage to give a note to a singer, I smell the stage dust — the sweat, the old costumes — and I think, “OK, this is where I belong.”
I try to be very modern in my use of social media and in living my life, but really, I had what I call an old-style career. Today, young conductors are sometimes projected into major orchestras and opera houses after one year, at their own risk. If it goes well, we have a new star. But if it goes badly, we burn them. I’m skeptical of this new model. Conducting is social work; a conductor is a master of collaboration, of empathy, of group psychology. You need time to learn these things.
I was horrible when I started conducting. I thought we were still in Karajan times, so I started being a mini dictator. Then, when my manager told me I was being too harsh, I became the opposite — I gave up on everything. For example, if the intonation in the woodwinds was not good, I didn’t stop (rehearsal). So then, my manager said, “OK, but now the orchestra is complaining that you are not engaged enough.”
To find the right balance, I learned I had to be myself. Because as a person, I have always been like this — sunny, friendly. Even so, I needed five years of adjustment in order to do that on the podium, and to learn to share the power and the responsibility. In “Ernani,” the singers and I share the tempo together.
We couldn’t have imagined a better cast. Everyone was very prepared. What makes them a unique cast is that they are highly aware of what it means to be a Verdian voice. We have four Verdian principals (tenor Russell Thomas, soprano Tamara Wilson, baritone Quinn Kelsey, and bass-baritone Christian van Horn) with perfect Italian pronunciation and knowledge of the Verdi phrase development, the Verdi accent, the Verdi power and weight … I had very few things to add in the rehearsals.
Actually, rehearsal went very fast, because the opera is fast — not in (pacing), but in tempi. I believe “Ernani” is one of Verdi’s fastest operas. The score even has a few “velocissimos” — a technical word you would usually say for a car, not for a tempo! A Ferrari is veloce; an F1 is velocissimo.
Many people have asked me about conducting Verdi’s “Don Carlos” for the first time in the original French version (which is five acts long and rarely staged in comparison to later revisions, translated into Italian). But I don’t have a big problem with it at all. At the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where I’m a principal guest conductor, I conducted a cycle of Meyerbeer grand opera in French, (as well as) “Les vêpres siciliennes,” which is Verdi’s first French grand opera. So, I feel very comfortable with the old grand opera style — the epic, historical plots, the huge choral scenes, the conflict between the religious and the secular … Actually, I’m so near to the grand opera tradition that I could not have imagined starting with the Italian version of “Carlos”!
I’ve been involved in programming at Lyric since I was appointed the music director designate, before COVID, so I agreed to do “Don Carlos” and worked on this season a lot with (general director Anthony) Freud. I very much like that programming here is collegial — we’re brainstorming together. But every title depends on many factors: How many years ago was the opera last done? How many tickets is the opera projected to sell? What will marketing be like? It’s actually a very complex process to build a season, which is the result of huge teamwork.
Now, after many, many years of exploring Italian early romanticism, I would like to start exploring German early romanticism. I’ll conduct (Robert Schumann’s) “Rhenish” Symphony with Detroit Symphony in December, then, in 2024, I will do my first “Freischütz” (by Carl Maria von Weber) at the Bregenz Festival. We will see what happens at Lyric, but I can say that “Freischütz” won’t be alone.
Mazzola conducts “Ernani” through Oct. 1, tickets $40-$330, followed by “The Brightness of Light” on Oct. 8 at 7:30 p.m., tickets $35-180, at Lyric Opera of Chicago, 20 N. Upper Wacker Drive; www.lyricopera.org
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.
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