“The director and I are a bit like climbers” – Newspaper Kommersant No. 190 (7391) of 10/13/2022

The young maestro Valentin Uryupin was forced to resign as chief conductor of the Moscow Novaya Opera at the end of last season “due to very weighty personal reasons” before he even served a year. The news looked all the more unfortunate after the 37-year-old musician performed a grandiose premiere of Korngold’s opera The Dead City there, encouraging the theater with far-reaching plans. About what kind of relationship he had with the Moscow theater, and about international projects Valentin Uryupin told Vladimir Dudin.

Where in the world are you right now?

– In the mountains of Armenia, in Tsaghkadzor – a favorite place for many years. I know the surrounding trails here almost like a local, from here I go or even walk to other cities of Armenia, sometimes I go down to Yerevan or, conversely, go even higher into the mountains. Walking to Yerevan is far, but it is quite possible to walk halfway. Roots connect me with Armenia, dad was born here.

Where is your career today?

– Ahead of a very busy season, which is about to begin. Interesting journeys are ahead, and most importantly, creative challenges. Our profession does not guarantee certainty at all now, but there are plans for about two, in some cases three years in advance …

“I thought you were going to say that making plans now is a lost cause.

– On the one hand, yes, but you still need to plan, despite the fact that, as we have been taught over the past two and a half years, the planning horizon remains small.

Are any of these intentions connected with Russia? Or is everything exclusively in the western direction?

– Speaking globally, my plans cannot but be connected with Russia. There are both Moscow and St. Petersburg plans. Another question is whether they will be realized at the planned time or later. It doesn’t always depend on us. Those or other cancellations or transfers of concerts and performances almost always occur at the initiative of far from me and not the organizers. However, I have no doubt that I will not have to say goodbye to the Russian public for a long time – this is the most important part of my life. I think many artists will say the same, regardless of what or who caused their temporary silence in Russia.

— What orchestras and theaters do you plan to work with?

– A lot of everything. Only this season, probably 10-12 countries. If we talk about something large-scale, then first of all it is Tchaikovsky’s The Enchantress staged by Vasily Barkhatov at the Frankfurt Opera, for which I am currently preparing. Very good creative forces are involved, seven performances, I look forward to this work. I would also like to mention the first serious appeal to Bruckner. I have been friends with this composer for many years at a distance, if the concept of friendship is applicable here. There were many opportunities to include his music in programs, but have not yet decided. But one of the oldest orchestras in the Netherlands, the Gelderland Region Orchestra, now also called PHION, invited me to an eight-concert tour with Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony. It was also supposed to be his so-called Zero, but these plans were canceled. With the Orchestra of Radio Saarbrücken and Kaiserslautern we are continuing a very interesting five-year project: a series of recordings of all Schnittke’s compositions for violin and orchestra. Our soloists are the brilliant violinists Friedemann Eichhorn and Vadim Gluzman. With Vadim, when I was still directing the Rostov Orchestra, we played on tour in Linz at Gubaidulina’s Offertorium Brucknerhaus, and recently we repeated this work together with the Danish Radio Orchestra. The Saarbrücken Orchestra has the best qualities of a radio orchestra, which is subject to a lot, many styles. We developed a warm relationship, we played music together from Haydn to Jörg Widmann. Also ahead of him are trips to Seville, Turin, for the first time – to Canada, very soon to the Czech Republic, to Ostrava – to the orchestra led by Vasily Sinaisky. Then Lausanne, Yerevan, Nuremberg, Bucharest, Seoul. And so on.

– Yes, impressive. Are you an agency?

— Yes, Karsten Witt is a well-known Berlin agency. And Milan’s Studio Longardi in several countries.

– And with you, as a Russian conductor, continued cooperation without problems?

– I did not feel any discrimination against me, there was not a single cancellation.

Music will save us, you mean?

– By itself, it is unlikely, but I think that as she has always contributed to this, she will continue to do so.

– And what about the “New Opera”? Have you put your relationship on a temporary pause?

– We remain friends, and not only with Anton Alexandrovich Getman, but with the whole team. During the year of our joint work, we have done a lot of good things, given impetus to far-reaching trends. For example, the repertoire – at the next Epiphany Festival, planned by us, will be Adams, and Lokshin, and Zimmerman, and Schnittke’s Faust Cantata, but also all Rachmaninov’s operas in concert performance and a whole line of Brahms and Bruckner.

– How would you now, after your season at the Novaya Opera, mark the position of this theater on the opera map of Moscow and the country?

– All last season I tried to measure everything that happens in the theater by the yardstick of its founder. He talked a lot with those who walked beside him. I think that Yevgeny Kolobov would be pleased with what is happening – both the appearance of a reversal stage, and the new music that is being performed and will be performed, and how the orchestra is flourishing thanks to both chamber music and symphony programs. But the main thing is that the Novaya Opera should continue to acquaint Moscow and Russia with operatic masterpieces that, for one reason or another, have not become popular. So that she would all the time, as it were, slightly question the opera firmament that exists today: why is La Traviata, and not Stiffelio, Salome, and not The Dead City, Massenet’s Manon, and not Cinderella – and so on. These are not hypothetical arguments – I mentioned the names that are on the poster of the “New Opera” or sounded in a concert performance. Which does not preclude turning to the Golden Dozen operas in the presence of a win-win conductor-director tandem and the best possible line-up of soloists… I see the future of the Novaya Opera in this vein, and it seems that this will be the case with the current team.

– “New Opera” showed us your collaboration with director Vasily Barkhatov in “The Dead City”. Last summer, you and him staged Giordano’s Siberia in Bregenz, now there will be The Enchantress. Is it really a strategic partnership?

— The fact that we are staging three operas in a row this year in different theaters is pure coincidence, but a good one. For me, the person of the director is very important, I need close cooperation with the director. I think that good representatives of this profession are rather lucky with me. One of the greats told me – “in the opera you have to conduct what is staged.” This requires a lot of reservations, but one thing is clear to me: the conductor’s thought must be closely intertwined with the director’s and complement it – or deliberately, by mutual agreement, antagonize it. The director and I are a bit like climbers: we insure each other and build bridges over certain dramatic rough edges that exist in any opera score. Except, perhaps, a small list of absolute masterpieces, which include, for example, “Carmen”, “Aida”, “The Queen of Spades”, Mozart’s operas on the libretto by da Ponte and a number of others.

– Have you already discussed the concept of the “Enchantress” with Vasily?

– At one time we discussed both the “Dead City” and “Siberia”, but there is almost no “Enchantress” yet. But something tells me that there is no longer any need for lengthy discussions – we understand each other well.