"I waited for Vienna out of great respect". Daniele Rustioni makes his debut at the Vienna State Opera with Bizet's "Les Pêcheurs de perles"
After stations at La Scala, the Royal Opera House, the Bavarian State Opera, the Opéra de Paris and the Metropolitan Opera, where he is currently Principal Guest Conductor, Daniele Rustioni is now making his debut at the Vienna State Opera with Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de perles. In this interview, he explains why he waited so long to do so, what makes this score so elusive and why its real challenge lies less in technical brilliance than in atmosphere, line, memory and the relationship between orchestra and voice.
You have conducted at many of the world's great opera houses. Why did you wait so long to make your debut at the Vienna State Opera?
Out of great respect, really. I say that quite openly. I often came to Vienna as an audience member, and perhaps that was part of the problem: in my mind, this house became a destination. A repertoire theater like this demands something very specific from a conductor. You have to know how to work with little rehearsal time and still achieve a very high level immediately. Earlier in my career, I didn't feel I was ready for that. Later, when I had gained this experience, I was also very busy with my years as music director in Lyon, which requires a lot of time if you want to do it properly, and with my work as principal guest conductor at the Bavarian State Opera. So in a way, it had to do with external circumstances, but also with the fact that Vienna has always been something very special for me: a house with an extraordinary history and, of course, this fabulous orchestra and choir. Even now, with all the experiences I've had elsewhere, it still feels like the ultimate challenge.
Why did Les Pêcheurs de perles seem to you to be the right work for this debut?
A lot of things came together. I have a long relationship with French opera, through Paris, Lyon and Aix-en-Provence, and the language and the libretto are very close to my heart. In addition, there was the extraordinary fact that Bizet's opera had never been performed at the Vienna State Opera before, which made the undertaking particularly appealing to me. In a way, it is unusual to debut in Vienna with a new production without having been tested in the repertoire beforehand. But perhaps that was precisely the reason why it appealed to me so much. In any case, I didn't want to come just to prove something. I wanted to come with a piece that demands a certain way of listening and a particular care in music-making.
You once described yourself as a "singer-conductor". What does that mean for you with a work like this?
It doesn't mean being a servant of the stage. It means that the relationship between orchestra and voice is very important to me. For me, the orchestra is not simply there to accompany more quietly while the singers take over the expression. The orchestra can play with the same intensity as the voice, but its sound has to be shaped in relation to the voices you have in front of you. This is the real challenge. Les Pêcheurs de perles is not a demonstrative score for the conductor in the sense of external virtuosity. The difficulty is not primarily of a technical nature. It is about atmosphere, phrasing, elasticity and finding the right color in relation to the stage and the singers. Sometimes the simplest music demands the greatest confidence and the greatest patience.
Can you hear this in Nadir's famous aria "Je crois entendre encore", for example?
Quite clearly. The decisive word there is andante, literally: going. People often hear music like this as something floating and therefore take it too slowly. But that can work against the line. When you begin a phrase, you must already feel where it is going, its whole long arc. In this aria, the melody has something circular about it, and if you take the bar lines too strictly, if every beat is marked too clearly, you start to cut the line into pieces. This goes against the style, against the singing and against the beauty of the phrase. Sometimes you have to almost caress the line and even avoid the one in the bar a little so that the movement of the music can unfold naturally.
The friendship duet between Zurga and Nadir is another famous moment in the opera. Do you already hear there that this friendship is no longer completely intact?
Yes, absolutely. I share this reading. Nadir has the main line, not only musically, but also acoustically, because the upper voice naturally attracts the ear. Zurga's line is initially more reactive. In the middle section of the duet, the music becomes more agitated and you can already sense that this passion could destroy their friendship. Their response is to renew their vow that Leïla must never come between them. In this sense, the promise they make there echoes until the very end of the opera. What interests me about Zurga is that he is not jealous in the conventional way. He is a man of power, a controlling figure. He wants to be admired by Nadir and later also by Leïla. He wants to remain at the center of the emotional cosmos of both of them. This makes him much more complex than a mere rival.
This opera seems to be haunted by what has gone before: the oath between the two men, the earlier encounter between Nadir and Leïla, childhood memories, all this returns. Can you hear memories in the score itself?
Yes, very strong. I would even say, perhaps provocatively, that this is one of the scores in the French repertoire that reminds me most strongly of Schubert, in the sense that it looks back on the past with melancholy and nostalgia. There is something like a mild blur in this music, like the soft focus of a cinematic flashback. While the protagonists sing, the audience is drawn into their inner world, into memory as a living force. This is one of the great strengths of the piece. At its core, the opera rests on three central characters, and yet it works because the music draws us so deeply into their thoughts. The atmospheric introductions to the arias achieve a great deal. They don't just prepare a number, but a mental state.
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