“I am glad that there are fewer planes in my schedule”

MusicAeterna orchestra and choir will present a new program in the Academic Chapel of St. Petersburg (January 31) and the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory (February 2), which includes the sacred music of Mozart and Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach. For the first time, maestro Dmitry Sinkovsky, an adherent of historically informed performance, devoid of dogmatism in his ideas about how early music should sound, will stand at the podium of this orchestra for the first time. About his work at the Zurich Opera on the premiere of Cavalli’s opera and plans for the Nizhny Novgorod Opera House, where he has recently been the chief conductor, Dmitry Sinkovsky told Vladimir Dudin.

— How did the idea of ​​the program with musicAeterna come about?

– Teodor Currentzis invited me a few months ago, for which I am very grateful to him. The program includes the famous motet “Exsultate jubilate” by Mozart, which I conducted in the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic (and then Yulia Lezhneva sang), “Coronation Mass” by Mozart, in which I myself once sang, and the rare “Magnificat” by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach . I love this light church music very much. Moreover, musicAeterna has a wonderful choir, one of the most outstanding among those that I know, and it is certainly interesting for me to work with him, besides, my first education as a conductor was choral: I studied in Zagreb with an excellent teacher and colleague Tomislav Facini . I work now mainly in Nizhny, but it’s always nice to return to Moscow and St. Petersburg, the city that I adore. In the St. Petersburg Chapel, we performed with our Nizhny Novgorod orchestra La Voce Strumentale in June 2022 – there was an opera gala concert, which was very well received by the public.

— But since then you have also managed to work at the Zurich Opera?

— Yes, Francesco Cavalli’s opera Heliogabal was staged there with an excellent international cast of musicians with countertenor Yuri Minenko in the title role. We have been preparing this production for two months. An amazing soprano in the part of Flavia, Anna El-Hashem from St. Petersburg, who now lives in Germany, was a discovery for me. There were great English singers Mark Milhofer (Lenya), Joel Williams (Zotik), Beth Taylor (Julian). This opera has been performed only a few times since its creation in 1667, before me it was the conductors Rene Jacobs and Leonardo Garcia Alarcon – the latter had an extravagant interpretation, where he added a lot of music himself, making his own edition. And in Zurich, we also got a different edition. During the creative process, I completed the score using the music of Uccellini, Marini, Bieber, and added the pieces myself. Plus the instrumentation was their own. There are only four or five voices in Cavalli’s score, and it is a set of string instruments – two groups of violins, two groups of violas and a continuo. I had a massive, very serious team: a string orchestra and a luxurious continuo – a harpsichordist and an organist, a cello, a cello, plus three theorbos, a harp, two recorders, two violas and a gamba, two zincs, a trombone, a dulcian and two percussionists.

– The enumeration itself is listened to today as a fairy tale from some unearthly life.

– Yes Yes. I also had to sing myself – when the director Calixto Bieito found out that I was singing, he decided not to miss this opportunity. And in this case, I picked up the famous aria of Artemisia “Dammi morte o liberta” from the opera “Artemisia” by the same Cavalli, written a couple of years earlier than “Heliogabalus”.

– Did Cavalli’s score involve such active editing?

— The fact is that in its preserved form, this opera, like many others in the 17th century, consists of two-thirds of recitatives in the image and likeness of Monteverdi, but still there is a small number of ritornellos. There is a character who sings exclusively recitatives – Zotik, a servant of Heliogabal. I supplemented the score with music from the time of Cavalli himself. I cannot fail to note the work of lute player Luka Pianka, who was my assistant and helped me a lot in many matters. Even though I speak Italian quite well, the music of the 17th century is full of double meanings and meanings, when the text says one thing and implies another. But as soon as you immerse yourself in all this, this knowledge opens up new horizons for you, you start playing differently.

– Bieito is famous for his reputation as an extreme brawler. How did you work with him?

– We became friends with him, it turned out to be an excellent tandem. He is a great opera director who was incredibly attentive to my wishes. We coordinated all the mise-en-scenes and arranged them together so as not to lose contact with the soloists in any case – and the scenery was two-level, where the soloist could be deep and far away. Calixto is a great fellow, an excellent partner, it was very comfortable to work with him. When I learned a year and a half ago that I was to stage Heliogabalus with him, I watched fragments of his productions of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio from the Komichet Opera, Carmen from the Paris Opera, other performances and thought that it would be that something extravagant, because the figure of the protagonist – a strange Roman emperor – opens up space for everything, for any director’s fantasy. But Bieito, to my surprise, turned out to be quite reserved. I admired how he squeezed out the emotional potential of each artist by 200%. He constantly demanded maximum expression from the soloists and work on the verge of their strength. I could not find a single fragment in the play where he would let someone relax, and the soloists gave amazing results.

– I hope you, as the chief conductor of the Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater, invited Calixto Bieito to cooperate in Russia?

– Yes, we agreed with Calixto, previously discussed several names, he said that he would definitely come to Nizhny. Driving, of course, became difficult, but possible. We plan to cooperate. I hope that we will also have joint productions with other European directors.

– But you will show in Moscow the Nizhny Novgorod project “Terezin. Quartet” — I remember how at the premiere one very well-known Nizhny Novgorod manager in the field of culture said that “this is a breakthrough”, meaning, among other things, that there has never been such a modern dance on the stage of the Nizhny Novgorod Opera.

— Alexey Trifonov, artistic director of the Nizhny Novgorod Opera, came up with this excellent project. There were two line-ups of the string quartet from our orchestra La Voce Strumentale in Terezina, we studied the musical quality and the new choreographic language in great detail. The work in the theater is now intensive, God forbid that everything we build grows and gives the most beautiful fruits.

— How do you plan to combine personal European projects and work in Nizhny Novgorod?

– In the short term, I am inextricably linked with the work in Nizhny Novgorod. We have many plans, on March 1 at the Nizhny Novgorod Opera there will be a premiere of Bizet’s Carmen staged by Elizaveta Moroz, in June – the premiere of Weinberg’s opera “Love d’Artagnan” staged by Igor Ushakov, and all this would be impossible to realize without the support and attention to our team from the leadership of the Nizhny Novgorod region. I canceled almost all of my chamber concerts, because today they will be to the detriment of my work in the theater. There is still time before the premiere of Boris Godunov at the Avignon festival, where I was invited a season later. But recently we were able to make a performance of our orchestra with Yulia Lezhneva at the Berlin Philharmonic. The concert went off with a bang, we were well received.

I’m even glad that there are fewer planes in my schedule, in which so much time has been spent over the past two decades. On the other hand, all this gave a tremendous experience, including in the opera. Just about twenty years ago, I was just starting to work with Alan Curtis in Handel’s operas. It was the foundation, and everything I’ve been doing in recent years in the vocal and instrumental fields has led to focusing my energy here in Russia and trying to apply all my knowledge.