“Because I’m in the trenches, trying to put a show together, it’s business as usual.” Sir Antonio Pappano is in his final weeks as Music Director of The Royal Opera. He’s rehearsing Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, his last Covent Garden show before he crosses the capital to take up the baton at the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s been a whirlwind few months, much of which I’ve witnessed at first hand: a Salzburg Easter Festival residency with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra; three outstanding LSO programmes before a European tour; and an ROH gala to celebrate his 22 years at the helm, where a glittering cast and glowing video tributes were crowned by King Charles crashing the curtain-call.
“I hadn’t seen any of the filmed stuff before the gala,” Pappano admits, “and it was quite late on that the king decided he was going to attend, so it suddenly hit me. I think when it’s gonna really hit me is at the end of August, when I’m always here in this building, preparing for the opening show of the season. And I’m not gonna be here. That’ll be tough.”
“This place has been my sanctuary. I almost live here. It’s the loss, in a way, of family – all the technicians, stage staff, music staff, plus the orchestra, of course.”
Chénier won’t quite be the end, though, as Pappano takes the company on a tour to Japan later this month, performing Rigoletto and Turandot in Tokyo and Yokohama. “Japan is just amazing,” he enthuses. “The audience there is very interesting, because they reserve their effusiveness for the end. They’re quite polite, you know, they sit there but then at the end they go bananas! It will be very, very hot and humid though. Physically, it’s tough.”
Saying goodbye is never easy. Pappano did it last summer, when he stepped down from the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, a post he held for 18 years, although he is now Musical Director Emeritus. Their Salzburg residency included Ponchielli’s La Gioconda – a co-production with the ROH, where it’s due in 2027 – which provided a rare opportunity for his Italian band to play in the opera pit.
“They’ve got the taste for being in the limelight!” laughs Pappano, “and I don’t say that in a frivolous manner. I say it because when you’re in Salzburg and you’re on that platform, you’ve got to deliver something, right? The important thing was that they delivered something that was not only palatable, but it had a very strong identity – completely different from the Berliner or Wiener Philharmoniker, completely. But that’s the point.”
High profile opera recordings with Pappano helped return the Santa Cecilia to their roots (in the 1950s they regularly recorded operas for Decca) and the orchestra has progressed in leaps and bounds to become arguably Italy’s finest. “It took a lot of hard work,” Pappano admits, “because although the ingredients were there, technical and musical, I had to mould it into something that was coherent and disciplined, and yet – and I know this sounds contradictory – with all the abandon of what you would expect from an Italian orchestra. You can’t just throw spaghetti at the wall, that’s not the answer. It’s a high refinement, along with theatricality and panache and temperament and colour.”
In the past two decades, he’s seen changes at Covent Garden too. “When I first came here, I didn’t have any specific plan to change this or change that. I just did my job. But most importantly,” he confides, “I gave a lot of time. I was here for a minimum of six to seven months, which is a lot for a music director, so that made sure that there was somebody who was taking responsibility not only for my shows, but for the company’s general wellbeing.
“Certain relationships were born of that period – with directors Richard Jones and David McVicar, my continued work with Keith Warner and Christof Loy – which created certain pillars or buttresses to hold the place up, artistic points of reference, if you like. It was the old adage: show up, be seen, go to other people’s shows. That, alongside the choice of pieces that had not been in the repertoire for a long time – Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Lulu – and new pieces like The Minotaur, Anna Nicole, The Gambler, King Roger, they kept the orchestra on its toes. Later, supporting the Italian repertoire also showed the orchestra and chorus that these pieces can be worked on when the guy at the top invests in revivals. I can be the main cheerleader for this repertoire.”
Cheerleading for opera has seen Pappano as a familiar face on our screens, fronting documentaries about the art form. How does he feel about the current climate, where opera in the UK is under attack on multiple fronts, where it has to justify its very existence?
“I’m devastated by it. Shocked. On the most banal level, look at how many jobs this place creates. Look how much infrastructure there is around. Look at the beauty of this building that people come into and see, like any other theatre in the West End, the sense of community that is created, where people share an experience that goes back to Greek theatre.” He warms to his theme. “There’s a reason why theatres are built in this horseshoe shape. It’s an embracing of what is going on on the stage.
“Opera is the most complete art form there is, combining singing with theatre, with lighting, with dance, with chorus. It’s an achievement every time a performance happens. And the Brits are really good at it! This house is famous for it and has been throughout its entire history. Just think of the people who have sung here, the people who have conducted and directed here. And to treat that as if it's some kind of fringe thing? No! Opera is a part of the cultural identity of this country as much as pop music is! But these people at the Arts Council saying that we’re playing too much of the standard repertoire?”
“Or that it has no relevance,” I interject.
“Which is absolute rubbish!” he fumes. “Get me in front of these people and I can tell them the relevance that these stories have, point by point, page by page. These pieces talk about an ardour, a passion and perseverance against terrifying obstacles, which is a life lesson as far as I'm concerned. It’s a cheap shot and it’s not helping companies like ENO and Welsh National Opera that are in trouble. You should be proud of them! You should help them!
“There’s a kind of knee-jerk reaction that makes us the easiest target. They imagine everybody comes here with tiaras, bejewelled, and it's rubbish. We’re hardworking people in this place, producing something that is at once entertaining and fulfilling and beautiful.”
Opera certainly ignites passions. Styles of productions have changed vastly in recent decades, a starker style not always embraced by traditionalists. Are directors too dominant now?
“For me, the abstraction of space is just to put a greater accent on the human relationships that are on stage. The style of production that people of a certain generation crave, something like Andrea Chénier which is opulent, is very costly. My focus is on relationships, the Personenregie. Are they communicating? When a singer is singing, are they thinking? Can you see them really translating those words into song? That's my thing.
“To answer your question, if the stage director is working hand in hand with the conductor, then everything will have a point of view. If there's a divide, if there's an iron curtain between those two people, and each one just gets on with their job, then you'll usually feel that the stage director has the upper hand. Things get into trouble when a stage director is not particularly musical, is not very interested in the text – not only the text itself, but the subtext.
“And if they decide that they want to tell their own story? When everything works, it can be mind-blowingly fantastic, but there's so much of it that doesn't work and it's just alienating, grungy to the point where you can't look at it. I don't really believe in that. I've always tried to work with directors who I feel are musical and who, aesthetically, have their own points of view, but who can communicate emotionally with the audience to tell the story that is being told.
“Ultimately, we’re in showbiz. That show business ethos is something that I think about a lot because the fact is, people pay the money for a ticket. Sometimes they pay quite high prices and we’ve got to deliver something that not only keeps them awake, but maybe informs them and certainly gives them an experience that’s worth paying for. So here, we’re aesthetically quite eclectic. I would describe myself as being eclectic, so we can have a traditional production of Andrea Chénier which, if done well, is great.”
Bowing out with Chénier – alongside his trusted collaborator, Jonas Kaufmann – seems an ideal farewell. “After two new productions of German works this season, Das Rheingold and Elektra, it had to be an Italian opera. And I’m very happy going on the tour with Rigoletto and Turandot to continue the Italian repertoire with my orchestra because I think they feel very much at home in it with me. There's a level of trust that is just absolutely beautiful.”
With Pappano a free agent in the opera world from September, is guest conducting at other houses on the cards? It seems not. After last September’s Rheingold, he’ll continue conducting the remaining instalments of Barrie Kosky’s new Ring cycle that will unveil one episode per season. “That won’t leave me a helluva lot of time. I hope to conduct La Gioconda here though – it’s a real barnburner!”
“I'm asked to go everywhere. At the moment, I'm being very passive and, to be honest, I don't quite know what to do. The LSO job will be full on, so to dedicate six, eight weeks somewhere else? God, it would have to be something that I really, really want to do.
Is there a particular opera he’s never conducted that would be on his wishlist?
“I’d love to do Khovanshchina one day, but I don’t speak Russian, so the amount of work that I have to do when I conduct a Russian opera is backbreaking. But…” A long pause follows. “But I need to spend time with my wife! It’s been so full on, this season in particular. Even though I left Santa Cecilia, there was that big chunk in Salzburg. And although I was Designate this season at the LSO, I still did seven programmes and four recordings and two amazing tours. How much can I possibly do? I need to breathe!”
Once Pappano’s taken a breather, he’ll take up the LSO post and, with it, a raft of new repertoire – at the season press launch, he described it as a chance “to reinvent myself” – which will include symphonies by Vaughan Williams. “I was really shaken by my experiences of the Fourth and Sixth Symphonies before the pandemic, and recently the Fifth, so I’m very keen to explore more. The thing is, most conductors veer towards Shostakovich. How many conductors are recording the cycle? It’s the sexy thing to do, I understand that. Each piece has its own style. But I think – and I truly believe this – that Vaughan Williams’ symphonies have more variety.
“The way the composer reinvents himself with each piece is what draws me in, that makes me very curious. Think of that sandwich of Nos. 4, 5 and 6, with the Fifth as the benediction and these two monsters either side of it. From a dramaturgical point of view, Vaughan Williams was not very forthcoming about the emotional weight of these things because he was English, but my God, they’re hammers! I want us to produce emotionally laden performances of British music, which is known for its nobility, but with composers like Elgar, once you get underneath all that tweed…”
Let’s hope for more British repertoire delivered with Pappano’s trademark Italianate passion once the new season gets under way.
