Joan Matabosch’s head holds a lot of information, which he is irrepressibly eager to share: we’ll be talking about everything from the history of Spanish opera to Teatro Real’s current productions to how the tastes of audiences and the behaviour of star singers have changed. But first, I can’t avoid the pandemic. My guess is that Matabosch’s boundless enthusiasm and grasp of detail has a lot to do with the fact that the Madrid opera house, of which he has been Artistic Director since 2013, has come closer than any other in Europe to maintaining its normal programme over the last year: houses have been firmly shuttered in many countries whose Covid-19 situation has not been detectably worse than Spain’s. As the rest of the world looks on in envy, how, I ask, has this been possible?
“It has a lot to do with theatres trying to organise themselves, but also about the support that you get through public administrations, in order to try to find a way to be open.” During the first lockdown in March 2020, restrictions on rehearsals forced the cancellation of some productions, including much-anticipated new productions of Albert Riemann’s Lear and Francesco Corselli’s Spanish 18th century opera Achille in Sciro. By May, however, work was well under way on the requirements for re-opening, with the help of a committee of six epidemiologists from various hospitals in Madrid. A whole suite of health and safety protocols was devised: for the theatre, for the orchestra, for the chorus, for the building, for visitors to public performances, for technicians, for administrators. With those protocols in place, “what we did was to try to find solutions for each production trying to see whether there could be a way to adapt ourselves without real artistic compromises. For example, in July for La traviata, we were not doing the production that was planned, but we offered our concert semi-staged production, not really a production but it was already something that was a way to keep the theatre open, following every measure that we were asked to”. (Matabosch is underselling himself here: our review was full of praise for the intelligent way in which the staging concept reflected the times).
He is often asked to share his security protocols with other theatres, but points out that some of the solutions are very specific to Teatro Real’s building. For example, the theatre has three configurations for the orchestra pit: “small” (most bel canto and earlier repertoire), “medium” and “large” (for Strauss or Wagner). For La traviata or Un ballo in maschera, it was a simple case of switching from the “small” to the “large” configuration, immediately enabling compliance with the orchestral distancing rules. Siegfried has been more of a challenge, requiring harps to be exiled to the boxes at the side of the orchestra (“not my dream way of doing Siegfried”, Matabosch complains, albeit one familiar to Covent Garden audiences). Ventilation is another big concern: Teatro Real’s orchestral rehearsal room is on level 4, with a good connection to the outside, so it was possible to adapt. An investment of around €1 million was required: expensive, but feasible. In contrast, “if a theatre has a rehearsal room for orchestra at the minus 4 level, of course it’s impossible.”
The key point, he explains, is that the authorities (the Minister of Culture, the Community of Madrid) did not issue a simple instruction to close. Rather, they laid out a series of conditions required to permit opening: if you find a way for each production to follow this protocol, open the theatre. If there is no way, close the theatre. “Each production has different problems, and these problems are often very strange compared to normal circumstances.” Many smaller Spanish theatres, who have been unable to find ways to follow the instructions, have stayed closed. Matabosch refuses to be drawn as to why governments in other countries have imposed simple bans rather than emulating the more nuanced, evidence-based approach of the Spanish authorities, but he’s clear that the Spanish approach works: “the Spanish government have not allowed theatres to do whatever they want. But they have told theatres ‘that’s what needs to be done in order to be safe.’ They have trusted the theatres to organise themselves to follow instructions – that are very, very difficult, really – to keep open. So it’s not easy to be open, but it’s not impossible.”
Teatro Real’s present production is Justin Way’s new take on Norma. Matabosch explains the staging’s underlying concept, which is to place the opera’s plot (Gauls struggling under the yoke of Roman occupation) in the historical context of its premiere in Milan in 1831 (Italians struggling under the yoke of Austrian occupation), delineating the opera as a bridge from bel canto to Verdi’s Nabucco ten years later (the concept, I’m afraid, escaped most of the critics, including ours). Following soon will be Deborah Warner’s new production of Britten’s Peter Grimes and then George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence, thus contrasting classic bel canto of the sort that wouldn’t have frightened one’s grandmother with decidedly modern material intended to shock. Matabosch is certain that the Madrid audience will be delighted by both: “I don’t understand why you can’t have the most wonderful time attending a marvellous performance of Norma and a marvellous performance of Lessons in Love and Violence. I don’t think you have to have an attack of monogamy on those things. We are probably going to find out, in a few centuries, that Lessons in Love and Violence is as much repertoire as Norma is nowadays, and probably in that moment, something else will be very shocking for somebody. But that’s life: the taste of the public is an evolution”.
So how has the taste of the opera public evolved in Spain? It’s come a long way, he says, from his childhood in the 1960s; the first opera he saw, when very young, was Umberto Giordano’s verismo piece Fedora, featuring an aging Giuseppe di Stefano (“it was very much at the end of his career and I remember everyone saying that he was not very good”). In his first Norma, with Montserrat Caballé in the title role, the bit part of Flavio was sung by none other than a young José Carreras. He reels off a list of the great singers of those days, noting that “I’m talking about basically opera and singers because in that moment, there was really nothing else in Spain. The tradition was devotion for singers. In the 60s and 70s, every theatre in Spain probably did not have a good orchestra. Productions didn’t exist. At the Liceu In Barcelona, productions were a catastrophe. The orchestra was something to laugh at. Every repertory was sung in Italian, even the Russian. But the singers: they were amazing. Amazing at a level that few other theatres in the world had.” Matabosch is a native of Barcelona and before coming to Teatro Real, he spent 17 years as Artistic Director of the Liceu, so he’s now had a quarter of a century in which to influence and watch at first hand the changes in taste of Spanish operagoers. In his early days at the Liceu, this meant bringing in productions by directors like Peter Konwitschny and Calixto Bieito, whose Don Giovanni caused “an incredible scandal”. He was unrepentant, taking the attitude that: “If you didn’t get it the first time, we are going to do it again, in order to make it clear to you, because that’s a masterwork of a production, of dramaturgy. And we did it again: the second time was a big success, really a big success. And the funny thing is that many of the people who hated some of the proposals, 10 years later, were asking desperately for what they hated. Because there was an evolution of the taste, not only of the public in general, it was from the same individual people who were booing who ended by loving it and asking for it to be on stage all the time.”
He believes that the same kind of shift has been happening during his time in Madrid, although with less certainty, since these are long term projects that “can’t be done in three or four years”. “I think the theatre has to make an effort to try to open the mind of the public. That doesn’t mean insulting the public: the theatre must be in front, marking an artistic line, but you need to be followed, it’s not that you are doing it alone against the universe. There will be cases of people who will never follow, but in general, you need to feel that you are leading something that people are following.” What he is doing is in no way new: back in the mid 19th century, he relates, when the prevailing repertoire was Donizetti, Bellini and Mercadante, there was a culture minister who declared in print that those should be the only three composers performed at Teatro Real and that “if somebody wants to attend a performance of those unacceptable modern composers, such as Verdi, tell them to go to Napoli.” Mercifully, nobody paid any attention to “that complete idiot”.
Matabosch grew up during the high points of a great generation of Hispanic singers: de los Angeles, Caballé, Domingo and Carreras, to name just four. He is also a trained singer himself, although he plays down the importance of that in his job (“it’s great for me that I can read a score, but I have lots of colleagues who can’t do that and they are very good”). So I ask about casting of singers: the star system versus the fact that today’s opera world is blessed with countless extremely good singers who haven’t hit the heights of fame. “You need to do a balance. We try to have in Teatro Real a very high level of singers, but that doesn’t mean that we are obsessed with, let’s say, the myths, the most promoted names of marketing at the moment, even if they are normally also there from time to time. You have to offer quality.” This means that the singers have to be completely involved in a production, in rehearsing and preparing seriously, something that might not have happened with the divas or divos of a generation or two ago, but which he now considers is the normal mentality of even the biggest stars today. As to the balance between quality and stardom, he thinks it’s possible to get both. “I’m not obsessed with legendary names, but I love them also. I know that in my job, I should not be a mythical-maniac – but privately, if we go for a coffee one day, you will realise that I am a little bit like that.”
So what are his plans for Teatro Real? Matabosch stresses that it’s not all about him and that he has a staff of fabulous people around him. Having said which, their commitment is a common one: “to really open this theatre to new repertoires, new composers”. Examples this year will be two world premieres and the continuation of a cycle of operas by Britten (who was “never really done” in Teatro Real). “When you're running a theatre, I think it's very important to know the theatre you're running and where you want to go. And then the process on the way has to be intelligent in order to get what you want. But maybe not in a direct straight line.”
