April 2006 2006 Spring Season Clayton Brothers, SptInf TIme Fmh, (detail) 2006 BAM 2006 $prI1II Seaon Is sponsoted by: Bloomberg ENCOREThe Performing Arts Magazine 2006 Spring Season Brooklyn Academy of Music Alan H. Fi shman William I. Campbell Chairman of the Board Vice Chairman of the Board Karen Brooks Hopkin s Joseph V. Melillo President Executive Prod ucer presents St. Matthew Passion Johann Sebastian Bach Approximate BAM Harvey Theater running time: Apr 8, 11, 12 , 14 & 15, 2006 at 7 :30pm; Apr 9 at 3pm two hours and 50 minutes, Conducted by Paul Goodwin including one Directed by Jonathan Miller intermission Lighting designed by R. Michael Blanco English singing translation based on the version by Robert Shaw Originally produced by Ron Gonsalves Performers Evangelist Rufus Muller Jesus Curtis Streetman Mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabo Soprano Suzie LeBlanc Countertenor Daniel Taylor Tenor Nils Brown Baritone Stephen Varcoe Line producer R. Michael Blanco Stage manager Leticia D. Baratta Lighting director Joshua Starbuck "Evangelist" text adapted by Rufus Muller Casting consultant Evans Mirageas Choral casting consu ltant Michele Eaton BAM 2006 Spring Season is sponsored by Bloomberg. Support for BAM Opera is provided by the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation, Inc., Max & Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, and the Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust. Opera endowment funding has been provided by The Andrew W Mellon Foundation Fund for Opera & Music Theater and The Peter Jay Sharp Fund for Opera and Theater. 33 St. Matthew Passion Chorus I Chorus II Soprano Soprano Eil een Clark Kristina Boerger (First Maid) Margery Daley Michele Eaton Jacqueline Horner (Pilate's Wife) Silvie Jensen (Second Maid) Alto Alto Hai-Ting Chinn Jay Carter (First Witness) BJ Fredricks Corey-James Crawford Robert Isaacs Katie Geissinger Tenor Tenor Oliver Brewer Brian Dougherty Matthew Deming Matthew Hensrud Steven Fox Michael Lockley (Second Witness) Bass Bass Dominic Inferrera (Pilate) Mark Rehnstrom (High Priest II) Gregory Purnhagen (High Priest I) Jonathan Scott (J udas) Ala n Rasmussen Joshua South (Peter) Orchestra I Orchestra II Violin I Violin I Robert Mealy Jorg-Michael Schwarz Heidi Powell Claire Jolivet Dongmyung Ahn Theresa Salomon Violin II Violin II Cynthia Roberts Karen Marmer Judson Griffin Peter Kupfer Viola Viola David Miller Andrea Andros Violincello Violincello/viola da gamba Phoebe Carrai Lisa Terry Viol one Contrabass Jay Elfenbein Anne Trout Organ Organ Dongsok Shin Edward Brewer Flute/recorder Flute Sandra Miller Anne Briggs Wendy Rolfe Charles Brink Oboe/oboe d'amore/oboe da caccia Oboe/oboe d'amore Stephen Hammer Virginia Brewer Kathleen Staten Julie Brye The musicians employed in this production are members of and represented by the ~ Assoc iate Musicians of Greater New York, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. Q&A with Jonathan Miller Interview with Jonathan Miller, director of St. Matthew Pass ion Questions by Joseph V. Melillo, BAM 's executive produ ce r Joseph V. Melillo: What originally inspired you to consider Bach's St. Matthew Passion as a staged production? Jonathan Miller: I had known the St. Matthew Passion for many years, and I had been to many traditional performances of it. It's impossi ble to resist in any form, as a concert or oratorio-that, after all, is how it was intended to be done. But I became increasingly aware that it had a dramatic story to it, a narrative, and unlike many oratorios that are seq uences of prayer, these are events that are narratively recorded in the gospel. It seemed that there was something stultifying about seeing a row of singers dressed in their evening dresses and tuxedos standing in front of lecterns, with an orchestra behind them, with no relationship between the orchestral instruments and the singers, and practically no representation of the dramatic events that are described within the gospel. About twelve yea rs ago, someone asked if I'd I ever thought of staging it. I said that it occurred to me, but I hadn't begun to see clearly how it might be done. knew what ought not to be done if it were to be staged- that it ought not to be pictorially real, it shouldn't have scenery, it shou ldn't have biblical costumes, it shouldn't look like a C.B. DeMille The Greatest Story Ever Told . I managed to persuade the man who asked me whether he could set up a wo rkshop and he managed to secure the services of a sma ll orchestra, soloists, and a small choir. We sat around in a room in a school in Westminster, London, and my wife and I sat like a pair of priveleged German ari stroc rats, enjoying this performance. And they simply sang it through. They all sat round in a circle, and they sang, and as they went along, I kept saying 'why don't you stop here, why don't you get up and talk to the person who seems to be the person you're addressing?' And then I'd hear someone sing an aria , with an obligato instrument, and I'd say to the violinst or flautist, 'why don't you come and sit beside the person who's singing, and have a musical dialogue?' And at the end of the day's workshop, they said to me, 'Well, have you got any ideas of how to do it?' and I said, 'I think we've just done it!' and I realized that a minimally dramatized version was all that was needed. We began rehearsing, and halfway through the rehearsals members of the orchestra said 'what are we going to wear?' and I said, 'You' re wearing it,' and they said 'What do you mean? I'm in jeansl' and I said 'fine, you're in jeans.' It's a dramatic story that doesn't require you to look like the people that you're playing. The people you're playing will become apparent by what you're singing. The rapt attention which the members of the choir, and the orchestra who perhaps are not playing at this moment, will give to the performance, will focus the attention of the audience. That was how it started, and that's how I've done it ever since. 35 St. Matthew Passion Melillo: How did you discover your specific directorial approach to the staging? Miller: It simply happened as it so often happens to me when I'm directing a play or opera. I don't come into the room with very clear ideas about what I'm going to do, but no sooner has someone begun to sing or say something, it always occurs to me, 'Wouldn't it be nice that when you're singing that, or saying that, you were in fact sitting next to the person who you seem to be addressing? It wasn't that I had a directorial approach to start with, it's only by hindsight that I can see as one emerged as a result of working in rehearsal. Rehearsal, for me, is really a way of finding out what to do. I think for a lot of directors, rehearsal is a way of bringing into existence what they had already conceived in their mind's eye before they even got to work with the cast. It's the work with the cast which for me develops the drama. Melillo: Why did you want Paul Goodwin to be your musical partner? Miller: It wasn't that I started with any particular idea of who the musical partner would be. The producer who first put it on had suggested Paul Goodwin as the conductor. We immediately established an absolutely perfect partnership, which doesn't always-and to some extent rather rarely-prevails between director and conductor. It was so intimately related-what I was doing was related to what he was doing-and what he was doing was somehow part of the drama, and that he wasn't, as it were, simply wagging his stick ... that in some strange way he was part of the drama as well. Ever since then, I've always done it with him. Melillo: What do you consider your greatest challenge to be in working with the singers for the staging? Miller: I think the only challenge is just simply personal reality. You have to persuade the singer to try and be what they are actually expressing. It's to some extent a question of eliminating the mannerisms of singers, particularly the mannerisms of being the singer of an oratorio. People who are accustomed to standing behind a lectern, encased in a tuxedo, often have a standard way of doing it. You have to tell them very early on. I met with no resistance from any of the people I've worked with, and many of the people who are going to be in this particular version are people I've worked wth several times before, and they know what I do and they feel themselves to be partners in its creation. They're not people upon whom I've imposed an idea; they're co-producers of it. Melillo: What is your opinion of working within the architectural environment of the BAM Harvey Theater? Miller: The BAM Harvey Theater is the ideal setting and circumstance for anyone who works like me, and as indeed it was for Peter Brook when he first encountered it. Peter and I have been long dedicated to the idea of the unfurnished space in which you don't have to put up lots of elaborate scenery, in which what happens dramatically takes place between the participants, not in a setting that needs to be illustrated.