Photo by Jump Otak
West Bay Opera's dynamo General Director, José Luis Moscovich, is from Argentina, so his interest in the 19th century Spanish playwright Antonio García Gutiérrez is understandable. What is somewhat of a puzzle is that most opera fans (present company included) don't realize that García Gutiérrez' El Trovador became Verdi's Il trovatore.
When Moscovich conducts performances of the opera in Palo Alto's Lucie Stern Theatre, Oct. 17-26, he will bring to the production some deep research besides musical preparation:
I am immersed in 1400s Spain and find it fascinating beyond my old notions of it. The last time I looked at this stuff (and there's always been plenty of interest about it on my part from the Jewish angle and the Inquisition, as well as from the linguistic aspects — the Moors were in Spain 700 years!) there was no website to look things up. Now it's a veritable rabbit hole of historical geography, ethnology and art history/musicology.
The indepth preparation is made possible by Moscovich's retirement last year from his position as executive director of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, so now he is "able to just burn time on it by the gallon." The day job may be gone, but besides WBO, Moscovich's main work remains music. He has two commercially released CDs, including an opera — Carlos Franzetti's Corpus Evita, which received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.
Il trovatore, after a free preview with piano at Avenidas, in Palo Alto on Oct. 9, will have four weekend performances. Tenor James Callon sings the title role; Cynthia Clayton, the Desdemona in WBO's recent Otello, returns to sing Leonora. Baritone Krassen Karagiozov is Count di Luna, and mezzo-soprano Patrice Houston makes her WBO debut as Azucena; she had a hit in this role with S.F. Lyric Opera, and acclaimed in Festival Opera's Our Town.
Jean François Revon is staging the production in original late-medieval period setting; singer Igor Vieira makes his stage directing debut, costumes are by by Lisa Lowe.
More from Moscovich on Verdi and passion:
My compulsion is to discover what the great opera composers put into their scores. With a score as rich as Trovatore, it's like diving into a sunken treasure. I live for the adrenaline rush of discovering a word perfectly set for dramatic effect. And the adrenaline comes when I realize the inevitability of that correspondence between the word, the music and the intended action onstage, and I feel, even if just for a fleeting second, as one with the composer. As if Verdi was talking to me directly.