Meet Johannes Debus

Conductor Johannes Debus made a great impact on COC audiences, as well as company artists and staff, when he conducted the fall 2008 production of War and Peace. So it was with great excitement that the COC announced on January 7, 2009, that he was to be the company’s new music director. Johannes will make his first appearance in his new role with the company when he conducts Ben Heppner in concert in the fall of 2009. Then, in the new year, he’ll conduct performances of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman.

Johannes kindly agreed to answer some questions for this study guide, and on the next page you can read his biography. Johannes Debus, the COC’s new music director. Photo: Michael Cooper

Question: Johannes, do you come from a musical family? Johannes: Later, at the age of 4, I started to play the recorder as maybe every child of my generation did. The Johannes: There is no genetic music imprint in my family. teacher was my kindergarten nanny, a very musical person. However my parents had a sense of the importance She was the one who gave my parents the good advice and essential quality music has, especially for a growing to send me to the local cathedral choir. So I got trained in child. They tried to give me and my three siblings all the singing, maybe the most elementary form of music making possibilities for exploring the field of music, not knowing and the cheapest one if you take into consideration that that one day my brother would become a jazz musician and your body is your instrument. I made music together with I a conductor! many other people and got in touch with a lot of gorgeous repertoire from Gregorian plainchant up to the 20th Q: Were you musical as a child? century.

Johannes: If we can give credit to anecdotes it all started Q: When did you realize you wanted to be a conductor? with me at the age of about two. Lying on the diaper- changing table I forced my mother (that’s what she told me) Johannes: When I heard for the first time the sound of a to sing a certain folk song again and again while changing symphony orchestra, I was completely overwhelmed by the my diaper. I couldn’t hear it often enough. richness and power of it, and I thought in a presumptuous moment that this is the “instrument” I’d want to play one Maybe I already had an intuition for the magical beauty day. Sooner or later I realized that the guy standing in front of music in general, or maybe I was smart enough to of this assembly of different instruments and people waving realize that some tunes made this annoying procedure in a his arms is called a “conductor,” his profession is called young child’s life somehow tolerable. Either way, it was a “conducting” and that, in an ideal situation, the musicians promising start. play the music as he forms it with his gestures. Fascinating, isn’t it?! Q: How did your career in music start? Q: Which was the first opera you attended? Can you tell us about that experience?

Canadian Opera Company ~ Education and Outreach ~ The Flying Dutchman Study Guide 2009/2010 ~ coc.ca ~ 416-306-2392 Johannes: As far as I remember the first opera I attended we call that her “Ballad” – in which she tells us the legend was Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. I must have of the Dutchman. It is, in fact, the centre of the piece. been about 10 years old. Unfortunately the production was We get all the information about the Dutchman and his a bit too demanding for a boy my age: jeeps on stage and fate. And we can hear in the music how much Senta, the a lot of people in olive green uniforms and machine guns. young girl, is involved and how much she feels sympathy Don’t ask me why. Bottom line: This was not the best thing with this stranger’s destiny. Her soul is churning like the to encourage me to go to the opera. At that time I preferred rolling waves of the sea, and is stormy like the biting wind symphonic and choral music. It took me quite a long time at the beginning of the Overture. It is very passionate before I realized the thrill and the sheer emotional power and dramatic. But all of a sudden the music changes of opera. Once I realized it, I fell in love with it, head over completely and a particularly lyrical, peaceful and beautiful heels. melody appears. If we have been very attentive, we might realize that we’ve heard that music already in the Overture Q: What are your first impressions of Canada? as well. Keep that melody in mind. It will appear more often until the end. It represents the main idea of the opera: Johannes: Is it enough to say that the day I arrived (for the Senta redeems the Dutchman with her own death! first time in my life) in Toronto last year, I felt somehow at home!? I can say without blushing: Canada is a wonderful Q: Thank you so much for talking with us today Johannes. country and a great place to be and I like the mentality of We’ll look for you on the conductor’s podium! the people. Only the winter could be a bit shorter, couldn’t it? BIOGRAPHY OF JOHANNES DEBUS

Q: What would you advise young people attending The Conductor Johannes Debus is the newly appointed Flying Dutchman, especially if it’s their first opera? music director* of the COC. He made his COC debut with War and Peace in 2008. After ten years at Oper Johannes: My first advice is: read the story! Get an idea of Frankfurt as répétiteur* and Kapellmeister*, he worked the plot and get an inkling of the spooky and adventurous as an independent freelancer. He obtained his musical atmosphere. It might be really exciting. And if you are keen education at Hamburg Conservatorium, before being on getting more information, read the reports on Richard engaged at Oper Frankfurt in 1998. There he acquired Wagner’s hazardous and adventurous flight from Riga to an extensive repertoire ranging from works by Mozart, London in a sailing boat and you get an idea of the source Rossini, Gounod, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, to Strauss’s of inspiration for the powerful music he wrote. It’s rather Die Frau ohne Schatten and Berg’s Lulu. As a guest entertaining and breathtaking! conductor Mr. Debus has appeared at important festivals such as the Biennale di Venezia, the Festival Q: What do you think are the most important things to d’Automne, the Lincoln Center Festival and has been listen for, or to know about, in The Flying Dutchman? engaged at numerous opera houses including the Vienna Volksoper, Cologne Opera, and the Deutsche Johannes: We should keep in mind that we meet Oper Berlin. In 2007 he made his debut at the English two contrasting worlds in The Flying Dutchman: the National Opera with Philip Glass’s Satyagraha. In mysterious, bizarre, fantastic, supernatural, unreal world 2008 Mr. Debus made his debut at the Bayerische of the Dutchman, a phantom; and Daland’s, Erik’s, Mary’s Staatsoper München with Strauss’s Elektra and at the and the people’s real, honest, authentic, normal, homely Opéra national de Lyon with Toshio Hosokawa’s Hanjo. world. So Wagner, as great a composer as he is, develops Upcoming engagements include his return as a guest two different kinds of music: Daland and his seamen (or to Oper Frankfurt for a new production of de Falla’s La Mary and her Maids) speak in a musical language which vida breve and Ravel’s L’heure espagnole. He has also is more down-to-earth, more conventional, more simple been invited to return to Bayerische Staatsoper in 2010 (which shouldn’t be at all understood as a judgement: for performances of Strauss’s Salome and Mozart’s Die it’s wonderful music as well!). The Dutchman’s music, Entführung aus dem Serail. For the COC’s 2009/10 however, is more audacious, complex, pioneering, weird season he will conduct A Diamond Celebration: Ben or bizarre. To understand what I mean, you have to listen Heppner in Concert and The Flying Dutchman. to the moment when, in Act III, Daland’s seamen face the Dutchman’s seamen. (By the way it’s one of the most *music director: a senior member of staff for a performing arts spooky and scary moments of the opera. You might get organization, who is in charge of the orchestra and is usually the goosebumps, just as Daland’s seamen probably get them senior conductor. too.) répétiteur: a member of the music staff at an opera company who coaches singers in their roles. They also play the piano for rehearsals, substituting for an entire orchestra, under a conductor’s direction. I haven’t spoken so far about Senta, Daland’s daughter, the kapellmeister: from the German meaning “Chapel Master,” this position heroic key-figure in that play. In Act II she sings an aria – is a close equivalent to a “music director,” for a secular and/or sacred musical organization.

Canadian Opera Company ~ Education and Outreach ~ The Flying Dutchman Study Guide 2009/2010 ~ coc.ca ~ 416-306-2392