For many reasons, my appointment to the Lyric Opera of Chicago as principal cello was one of the best things that ever happened to me. The opera had a fifteen-week season, with some things going over occasionally. The American Ballet Theater, where I was also principal cello, usually had ten to twelve weeks. Since June and I were both contracted players in these orchestras, we were able to make enough money to stay solvent and have half the year absolutely free to practice and play concerts.
A tremendous musical advantage was that we were working with conductors of real stature.
Nino Sanzogno conducted the La Scala premieres of Lulu, Lady MacBeth of Mtinsk, and Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, plus many others.
Sanzogno was admired for his precision and firm discipline marked by outward charm and elegance. I did five operas with Sanzogno, three of them in my first year: Falstaff, Masked Ball, Norma, Tosca, and Manon Lescaut. To this day, I’ve never witnessed a conductor who had as much control over his forces that Sazogno illustrated in the final fugue in Falstaff.
Antonino Votto had been assistant to Toscanini at the first performance of Turandot and did it with us with Birgit Nilsson in the title role. Votto conducted by memory, and was famous for conducting everything by memory. When I played a wrong (but plausible) note in one of the rehearsals, he looked down at me very beneficently and said, “That’s another opinion.” Incidentally, he was the teacher of both Ricardo Muti and Claudio Abbado.
In the same season, Christoph von Dohnányi conducted Der Rosenkavalier. His all-star cast included Christa Ludwig as the Marschallin, Yvonne Minton as Octavian, and Patricia Brooks as Sophie. Since Rosenkavalier is a very difficult opera, we started our pre-season rehearsals early. Unfortunately, neither Dohnányi nor his assistant showed up, and our concertmaster, Pinchas Steinberg, conducted the entire first rehearsal with absolutely no problem, which convinced him, and maybe the rest of us, that he really should be a conductor. Pinky could speak four or five languages fluently, which was a big help with some of the Italian conductors who couldn’t speak English. At any rate, Pinky did become a conductor, and a successful one at that. He made many recordings and conducted many important orchestras, both in Europe and the U.S. Fortunately, he was very quickly relieved of the drudgery of the initial rehearsals when Dohnányi’s assistant appeared the next day.
One of the best things about being at the Lyric Opera were those long and divided string and wind rehearsals. I personally found that the rehearsals enabled me to learn all the music, not just the cello part, in an emphatical way that gave me a real confidence in the performances. This methodology was particularly useful in the big Wagnerian operas. Having a chance to absorb the music, usually under tempo, created a tremendous solidity in our ability to execute our parts. In the case of the Wagnerian operas, our conductor, Ferdinand Leitner, was a real artist, a great artist, and almost single-handedly turned us into a first-rate Wagnerian ensemble. Over the years, he remained, for most of us, our favorite conductor.
It was a privilege for me to do some of the great Verdi cello solos with world-famous singers. My first Rigoletto was with Piero Cappuccilli in the title role, for which he was justly famous. My accompaniment to this great aria was a succession of sextuplets dancing around the melody. Cappuccilli gave me extra time to work it out with him, which I appreciated very, very much.
Another great solo, which was in the Masked Ball, was practically a duet between the soprano and cello obligato. I had the great honor of playing it with Martina Arroyo, who also favored me with several rehearsals in our mutual desire to absolutely get it right.
For me, the most meaningful Verdi solo I played was with Nicolai Ghiaurov singing the role of Philip II of Spain in Don Carlo. The solo occurs in the Third Act in the aria Ella giammai m’amò. This aria opens the Third Act as an unaccompanied cello solo before it continues on with the cello interspersed with this most beautiful and heart-felt aria. When we did it with Daniel Gotti in 1996, the critic from the Chicago Tribune said, “This was the most beautiful and atmospheric part of Gotti’s interpretation” without ever mentioning the fact that it was an unaccompanied cello solo and somebody was playing the cello.
Over the years, three conductors that started with me in 1969 all did their last performances in 1987. They were John Pritchard who conducted many performances of the three Da Ponte operas (Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Cosi fan Tutte). He was justly famous for his interpretations and loved playing the harpsichord during the recitativos. As an aside, the one time he decided to do something other than Mozart, he conducted Strauss’s Arabella. When he conducted Mozart, he was as precise as any conductor could be; When he conducted Strauss, he was as vague as any conductor could be. But in both cases, the ensemble was always exemplary.
Another great conductor was Jean Fournet. He single-handedly revived the French repertoire at the Lyric. He conducted Massenet operas such as Manon, Werther, Don Quichotte, Gounod operas such as Faust, Romeo and Juliet, and, of course, Pelléas and Mélisande. Like all French conductors, he hated slides, and I did a big one in a solo in Werther. He looked down at me, clicking his tongue, which got me to immediately do an over shift, which he approved. In Don Quichotte, there’s a cello solo about the size of the Meditation from Thais. Each rehearsal, I would start from as Gaelic an interpretation as possible, but put one thing in extra that I wanted, and ask, “Maestro, if I did this, would it still be in good taste?” After a few of these, I had it the way I wanted it, and he was okay with it. BUT, at the end of the run, he embraced me and kissed me on both cheeks, and when he conducted at the Met, he referred to me as, “He is my friend.”
This “Interlude” comes at the end of Act IV, and directly precedes Don Quixote’s death. It is a last wordless statement by this poor idealist. I had the opportunity to do two long runs of Don Quichotte at the Lyric Opera with Nicolai Ghiaurov in the title role. We performed under the great French conductor Jean Fournet, to whom I would like to dedicate this edition of the “Interlude.”
The third conductor that did their last performances in 1987 was Ferdinand Leitner, who came back after a long absence to do Tannhäuser. Leitner also conducted The Ring Cycle with Birgit Nilsson singing the role of Brunnhilde. In the opening of Die Valkyiere, which begins with a thunderstorm, the cellos have a pattern of quarter notes proceeded by a vorschlag. Leitner seemed awfully pleased by the way I was playing that, and I asked him, “Why are you so happy when even God doesn’t know what notes I’m playing?” He said, “What do I care? It sounds like thunder.” Later in the season, he conducted both Die Meistersinger and Tristan und Isolde. At the beginning of Tristan, the cellos play a very long crescendo on the note F, and I asked the maestro, “Would you like me to try and do it one bow or two bows?” He said, “Do it on one up bow. There are ten of you; something has to come out.”
When Ferdinand Leitner came to the Lyric Opera to conduct Don Giovanni we became friends almost instantly. Like my teacher Leonard Shure, Leitner had been a piano student of Artur Schnabel, and like Shure he found the only way to be a real artist was to ask the music at all times what it demands, and find a way to satisfy those demands technically. He was born in Berlin in 1912, and studied composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik with Franz Schreker and conducting with Brahms’ student Julius Prüwer. He became Fritz Busch’s assistant at Glyndebourne in 1935, and began his conducting career in Berlin in 1943 at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz. In 1947 he became the director of the Stuttgart Opera, and helped make that city one of Europe’s leading centers for opera. He left his position there in 1969 to become director of the Zürich Opera, and came to conduct us often.
Some conductors think of themselves as performers, but Leitner considered his primary responsibility to be a teacher. Over the years, and through persistent effort, he single-handedly turned the Lyric Opera Orchestra into a great-sounding Wagnerian ensemble. I feel fortunate to have played almost all of the Wagner operas with him, as well as several operas by Strauss and Mozart.
In spite of Leitner’s annoying habit of staring at anyone who made a mistake (we used to call these stares “bolts of Leitners”), he was one of the most loved conductors in the history of our company. We always gave him our best. While many conductors could instantaneously fix up anything that went wrong, nothing ever went wrong in a Leitner performance. He had a quiet demeanor and never seemed to have to fan the flames to get things going.
During the many intermissions I would spend with him, we would ponder whether Schubert might have evolved any further had he lived longer, since the level of greatness in his music composed in the last two years of his life made him practically the equal of Beethoven. I would play the cello solos from Strauss’ Don Quixote for him, and he would sit at the piano and play the rest of the score from memory, telling me what Strauss said about this, that, or the other thing. My favorite quote from Strauss by way of Leitner was, “Music from Mozart on is a large diminuendo, and I am the dot at the end of it.” Another thing that Leitner did for me, something unique in my forty-four-year experience with the Lyric Opera, was to get me an important European manager for a European tour I was planning. The tour never came to be, but I am still pleased to have been the third cellist on a roster with Rostropovich and Fournier.
Bruno Bartoletti was the Lyric Opera’s music director and principal conductor. He was born in Florence in 1926, and studied flute and piano at the Florence Conservatory. He made his conducting debut with a performance of Rigoletto at the Teatro Comunale in Florence, and over the years introduced many important contemporary works to the Italian stage, like Ginastera’s Don Rodrigo, Kreneck’s Jonny Spielt Auf, and Shostakovich’s The Nose. He first came to the Lyric Opera in 1956, and became the principal conductor in 1964.
His conducting technique was nonexistent, but his ability to make an orchestra sound great was undeniable. I spent more than 38 years with him at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and this never changed. I found it fascinating that he was able to conduct amazing performances of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth without any kind of technique. His rehearsal method was to constantly drill the motivic material, asking for the highest degree of rhythmic precision and emotional commitment, and he would often start at an extremely slow tempo and work the material up to speed. This kind of rehearsing was possible in the late 1960s and early 1970s, because the Lyric Opera contract gave him excessive amounts of rehearsal time every week. Nothing of the sort could ever be done in the 21st century.
In his favor, he had a great sense of style and tremendous passion and energy. It was always a pleasure to play solos with Bruno because he always gave me a tremendous amount of room to make a phrase or to highlight a note. Two examples of my work with him are the solos in La Gioconda andTosca:
Marek Janowski made his debut at the Lyric Opera with Lohengrin during the 1980 season. Once, at a reading rehearsal, Janowski took a good half hour to dress down the English Horn player in front of the whole orchestra. I took that time to compose the response that I would make if he were to subject me to that sort of treatment: “Maestro, this is the best I can do, but it’s not the worst I can do.” I was able to use that statement four years later, when Janowski returned to conduct Frau ohne Schatten. He walked away from me after I said it, but he complimented me during the dress rehearsal. I told him that I hoped that my solo went as well on opening night, to which he responded, “Why wouldn’t it?” I told him that I could get nervous, and he asked me why I would get nervous. I suppose that since conductors don’t have to worry about playing in tune or playing difficult passages, they wouldn’t have any reason to get nervous.
There’s a cello solo in Ariadne auf Naxos that involves a large shift to a very high note on the A string, which I played will all due panache. Maestro Janowski asked me if I could play it without portamento, to which I responded, “Maestro, have you ever heard anyone play this solo without portamento and get the high G?” He told me that in Germany there are one or two who can do it. Then I ceremoniously played the solo without any kind of a slide, banging out the high G from six inches above the fingerboard, and said, “Now there are three cellists who can do it.”
Eventually, I came to appreciate where Maestro Janowski was coming from. It had to do with clean lines and absolute rhythmic precision, and I came to understand why he didn’t want a slide in Ariadne auf Naxos. The singer (Zerbinetta) made her entrance on that high G, and it would have been difficult to pin it together if it were preceded by a slide.
In a similar vein, I did Frau ohne Schatten with him and worked very hard personally with him on the execution of a very big cello solo. He definitely gave me all the room I needed to make a statement that made sense, but within parameters of clean lines and precise rhythm.
Joan Sutherland came to the Lyric to sing the title role of Lucia in 1975. Her rendition of the famous “Mad Scene,” was astonishing and compelling. I simply couldn’t imagine how anybody could perform at that level, night after night. Since I had worked with Sutherland and her husband Richard Bonynge for several years I didn’t consider it inappropriate to ask Bonynge if he would arrange for me to ask his wife a few questions in private. They invited me to come to their apartment at the Executive House on Wacker Drive before a performance of Elektra.
I decided to broach the subject of performing at such a high-level night after night by complaining about my lazy cello section and how I had to do all the work. Joan Sutherland told me that when she started out at Covent Garden, she was probably a fifth-string Desdemona. Still, she was ready to walk out on the stage and deliver the role every night. She complained about how tired she was, and wondered whether she had five more years left in her (as it happened, she came back ten years later).
When I asked her how she did what she did, she told me that she first tried to sing everything perfectly in time and perfectly in tune, so that any liberty she might take was made from strength and not from weakness. She also told me that she spent most of her time relentlessly practicing the things that were really hard, and that she got a lot of help from Bonynge because of the way that he set things up. Bonynge was the only conductor I ever worked with who asked me to play as loud as I possibly could in a bel canto opera. When I mentioned that it was a first for me, he said, “What harm do you think you can do to the voices singing up there?” (and one of them was Pavarotti).
I found him to be a very fine musician, particularly in the bel canto style, and deserved all of his success. I have a lovely, autographed picture in my studio of Joan Sutherland thanking me for my most moving playing.
Three conductors who were young at the time but made big careers were Riccardo Chailly, Jesús López Cobos, and Aldo Ceccato.
Riccardo Chailly, at the age of 20, made his American debut with us on Madame Butterfly. Even at 20, he had tremendous power and commitment, and I was certainly impressed. During his time at the Lyric, he conducted Rigoletto, Cavalleria rusticana/I Pagliacci, and La Boheme. He has since come to become one of the world’s most famous and accomplished conductors, and I am proud to have recognized his great talent so early in his career.
Jesús López Cobos made his Lyric and possibly American debut with Carmen. Over the next few seasons, he conducted Masked Ball with José Carreras and Pavarotti’s first Tosca. He came back much later to conduct Rigoletto and Lucia. Among other things, he was a great scholar, and he brought his scholastic achievements and good taste to everything he conducted.
When we did Carmen, Cobos wrote out the four voices of a cello quartet based on the Toreador’s theme because that was the way it was done at its premiere. I always enjoyed working with him and found him to be an exceptional and sincere artist. Jesús went on to have a great career and made many recordings with the Cincinnati Symphony, where he was Music Director.
Aldo Ceccato was the son-in-law of Victor de Sabata. Ceccato came to the Lyric to conduct I Puritane (a very beautiful bel canto opera by Bellini). One thing I remember about him was that he insisted pizzicato notes were not second-class notes. So, we all learned the art of Ceccato pizzicato. Pinky Steinberg convinced Ceccato that he was the nephew of William Steinberg of Pittsburgh Symphony fame, obviously looking for some advantage. Somehow or other, Pinky managed to become a successful conductor himself, and Aldo Ceccato became the Music Director of the Detroit Symphony.
Some American conductors that were outstanding talents and very good conductors were Dennis Russell Davies, John Nelson, Leonard Slatkin, James Conlon, Julius Rudel, and Michael Tilson Thomas.
Dennis Russell Davies started out with us with Lulu and Rake’s Progress. In these two operas, he convinced me immediately that he was a master conductor and made many very difficult rhythmic passages perspicuous. Additionally, he conducted premieres of three operas by William Bolcom. I always enjoyed playing first performances with him, and at one of these, he asked me if I would teach his nephew. The next year, his nephew Nathan Ostebur enrolled in Valparaiso University and, while he couldn’t play the cello particularly well, he was very musical and vitalized his companions in chamber music groups. Unfortunately, Nathan died in an accident, and Dennis came to his funeral at Valparaiso where I played the Faure Elegy and The Swan. Dennis was the Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and enjoyed the fact that I was the winner of the first String Competition.
John Nelson came to the Lyric doing various Handel operas. He also specialized in French operas such as Faust and Romeo and Juliet of Gounod. John was a wonderful musician but never satisfied to leave things the way that they were. He was always very busy changing things, and one day he caught me in the hall before a performance of somebody else’s opera to tell me that a certain cello entrance in Idomeneo by Mozart needed to go faster and harangued me about it backstage. All I could say was, “John, right now I have to worry about someone else’s opera which is going to start in fifteen minutes. If you want it to go faster, conduct it faster.”
When it came to the Handel operas, we did one called Alcina. He wanted me to play in the early music style, basically meaning no sound and questionable pitch. I objected, saying that these two arias were with Renee Fleming and Natalie Dessay, two paragons of vocal art, at the top of the list of 20th century sopranos. Basically, I said, “John, I’m playing what they’re playing two bars later; if they vibrate, I vibrate, but I have no desire to be upstaged anymore than necessary.” In the end, John agreed that I did well with my cadenzas but assured me that it would have sounded good the way that he suggested.
James Conlon came to the Lyric with four operas, three of them by Verdi: La Forza del Destino, Falstaff, and Don Carlo. He came later to do Pelléas et Mélisande. In all cases, I found him to be a fine conductor who knew his stuff, but two things stand out in my memory. There was a solo in La Forza del Destino that, in the first rehearsal, I played in a totally sub-standard way. I complained, “That was the worst I ever played,” to which Conlon said, “If that’s your worst, I’m impressed.” When it came to Don Carlo, I was extremely annoyed with my assistant, and so I dropped my sound in some of the tuttis. Conlon caught on immediately and said, “I know what you’re doing and why. On another level, I need you in this aria; please play.” Conlon’s confidential secretary was Julia Markham, who was June’s best friend. At Julia’s request, Conlon wrote a letter of recommendation for June that helped her get the job of distinguished visiting professor at the College of Wooster.
Leonard Slatkin was the most successful of the American conductors. He was a world-famous conductor who needs no introduction by me. He came to the Lyric four times, starting with The Magic Flute, then Salome, Elektra, and The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano. Two things stand out in my memory. In one chromatic passage in Elektra, I played a wrong note. He stopped and said, “Oops, we’ve got to do that one again.” His brother, who is a friend of mine, explained to me that one of his great virtues was having an iron ear that would never miss anything. They did a version of the Korngold Concerto for BBC, and Fred (Leonard’s brother) said that Leonard missed nothing.
During the run of The Ghosts of Versailles, Leonard’s mother, Eleanor Aller, died. When he showed up for the performance, I said, “I’m surprised to see you here.” Leonard said, “I can hear my mother right now saying, “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO CONDUCT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE NOT GOING TO CONDUCT?!””
Julius Rudel conducted Massenet’s Manon which he recorded with Beverly Sills. He also conducted Tosca, Die Fledermaus, and Susannah. I was very pleased that he took my suggestion to conduct the cello quartet in Tosca in two rather than six, and his Fledermaus was second to none in its lightness and charm.
Michael Tilson Thomas came in 1986 and 1987 to conduct Boheme and Tosca. Although he became a very good conductor and did great things with the San Francisco Symphony, Puccini was not in his vocabulary since he took a literal interpretation to the score. Even he said, “I need an Italian to Yiddish dictionary.” I’m afraid it was the opinion of most of my colleagues that the Yiddish part worked better for him than the Italian.
A conductor that came only once but made a big impression on me was Gustav Kuhn, who conducted Fidelio. There was an aria in the first act with three French horns accompanying the soprano. Kuhn’s remark about our horn section was, “They just don’t know how hard it is; that’s why they can play it.” When they did it, I asked my friends at the Met how good it actually was. Joe Andrew, having heard the radio broadcast, said, “It was as good as it gets.”
Two conductors that impressed me with their style and fluency were Michel Plasson, who came to conduct Saint-Saens’s Samson and Delilah, and Georges Prêtre, who conducted Faust with an all-star cast with Mirella Freni, Alfredo Kraus, and Nicolai Ghiaurov. This particular performance was televised to great acclaim. On a personal level, Prêtre was accessible and fun to be with all the time.
Two conductors that impressed me as being genuine geniuses were Daniel Gatti and Christian Thielemann. Daniel Gatti came with Madame Butterfly and then did Masked Ball, Simon Boccanegra, and Don Carlo. There was no doubt in my mind from the very start that Gatti was a genius who was able to create magical sounds and great fluency in the orchestra. In previous writings, I spoke about how he influenced my interpretations of the big cello solos in Masked Ball and Don Carlo (please refer to the beginning of this article).
Christian Thielemann exerted so much force over the orchestra that it was almost as though his will was made manifest simply because of the strength of its intention. I’m pleased to say that Thielemann recognized me and, when my father died, he called me and asked when I would come back to help him. When Thielemann conducted the Chicago Symphony, many people said the Chicago Symphony never, ever sounded like what he brought out of them.
Two conductors who gave unforgettable performances were Jeri Kaut doing Der Rosenkavelier and Marcus Stenz doing Katya Kabanova. Both of them exerted such an influence over the orchestra that we all vibrated at the same rate of speed. It was a real privilege to have been in their company musically.
Without any shred of doubt, the pinnacle of my experience at the Lyric Opera was Zubin Mehta’s Ring Cycle. It was outstanding in several ways. First was his inception of the opera based on letting the leitmotifs tell the story and characterizing them with tremendous vitality. Second, he was such a good conductor that it was impossible not to be with him. The Ring consists of four operas, three of which are between five and six hours long. Mehta’s advice was to think of it as one big opera and let yourself be guided by the leitmotifs, which remain consistent throughout all four. Three stories that remain embedded in my memory:
1. There is a very difficult passage in Das Rheingold. I asked him, “How did other cellists deal with it?” He said, “If you don’t know, who does?” I explained that it went too fast to play, and he said, “No problem; I can slow it down and pick it up after.”
2. He was rehearsing the first and second violin sections that were slightly out of sync. He explained, “This is like a horse race, where somebody wins by a nose.” When he did it again, our principal violist, Rami Solomonow, said, “I think the nose is getting longer.”
3. On the opening night of Die Valkyrie, there was a significant cello solo which I played exceedingly well. At the end of the act, Mehta came off the podium and took my hand warmly and said, “That was a beautiful solo.” For me that was the greatest compliment I got because Zubin Mehta played with every other principal cellist in the world.
When I graduated from Juilliard, I had no idea of what truly great musicians could do. The Lyric Opera of Chicago was my music school. It offered no diplomas or degrees, but gave me a lifetime of inspiration and accomplishment.