PIONEER PRESS July 8, 2010

James Conlon stepped onto the podium in the pavilion of Ravinia Festival to conduct an all-Chopin program with Garrick Ohlsson June 28 and marked the start of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residency at the park.

This is the maestro's sixth season as Ravinia music director and, judging from the crowds coming to the park on a suddenly chilly Monday evening, he remains popular with classical music audiences on the North Shore.

Conlon turned 60 this year, but the decade syndrome doesn't seem to affect him. He's been adding new challenges to his musical career ever since he returned to the United States after 20 years conducting in Europe.

His European assignments were impressive. He was principal conductor of the Paris National Opera and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and served as general music director in Cologne with responsibility for the city's orchestra and opera.

Conlon was raised in New York City and sang soprano as a boy in a chorus in Queens. He entered the Juilliard School and soon was conducting the orchestra there. Opera credentials date back to the earliest days of his career. In 1976 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut; he has conducted more than 250 performances there since then. He also has been on the podium at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, La Scala in Milan and the opera in Florence.

After about two decades of living abroad, Conlon decided to return home.

"An announcement was sent to the newspapers," he recalled. "It was printed on Sept. 11, 2001 -- the newspaper that nobody read."

Since then he has found ample outlet for his skill at and love of opera. He became music director of the Los Angeles Opera in the 2006-2007 season and recently conducted the orchestra in its first "Ring" cycle, a group of four operatic dramas by Wagner based on the "Ring of the Nibelungen."

Each spring he conducts the Cincinnati May Festival, which he has being doing since 1979. At the opening of the 2010 season he was inducted into American Classical Music Hall of Fame.

At Ravinia this summer Conlon will conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in two performances each of two Mozart operas, "Cosi Fan Tutte" and "The Marriage of Figaro" Aug. 5-8.

Conlon is also devoted to reviving the music of composers whose music was suppressed by the Holocaust. At the Ravinia Festival that project, called "Breaking the Silence," has featured Kurt Weill, Erwin Schulhoff, Alexander Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker. For those efforts he received the Crystal Globe Award from the Anti-Defamation League in 2007.

At the Los Angeles Opera his Holocaust project was titled "Recovered Voices" and included the U.S. premiere and new production of Schreker's "The Stigmatized," Walter Braunfels' "The Birds" and a double bill of Zemlinsky's "The Dwarf" and Viktor Ullmann's "The Broken Jug."

On July 27 Conlon will continue that initiative and lead a program of works by persecuted composers. He will be joined by the Chicago Chamber Musicians and members of T. Daniel Productions for a pantomime farce titled "The Ox on the Roof" by Darius Milhaud, who as a Jew was unable to find work in Europe as the Third Reich progressed across the continent, as well as piano music by Schulhoff, who died in a concentration camp, and songs by Wilhelm Grosz of Austria, who fled to England from his native country in the 1930s because of the Nazi regime.

In all, Conlon will conduct more than a dozen concerts at Ravinia this summer, concluding his summer residency with the two Mozart operas in early August -- a fitting conclusion to his 60th birthday celebration at the festival.

CHICAGO CLASSICAL REVIEW June 25, 2010

Summer festivals aren’t exactly vacation time for the performers who provide the music for audiences relaxing under the stars.

But when James Conlon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra launch their 2010 Ravinia season Monday night, they might feel a distinct sense of slowing down. Both have just finished herculean projects. The CSO’s Beethoven Festival June 2 to 20 was a much-heralded sendoff for beloved principal conductor Bernard Haitink that included all nine Beethoven symphonies. And since late May Conlon, music director of the Los Angeles Opera as well as Ravinia, has conducted three cycles of Wagner’s complete Ring of the Nibelung in Los Angeles. The city has never presented a fully integrated, four-opera Ring cycle before, and the buzz around the $31 million production had been fierce.

Like a smoker choosing to ease off rather than quit cold turkey, Conlon is bringing a bit of Los Angeles’ Wagner to Ravinia. On June 30 he leads the CSO in Ring excerpts including the Immolation Scene from Gotterdammerung and the final scene of Siegfried. Conlon’s Siegfried in Los Angeles, tenor John Treleaven, will share the stage with soprano Christine Brewer.

“This is my detoxification,’’ Conlon said with a laugh during a phone interview between Ring cycles earlier this month. “The world stops [when you’re doing a Ring]. I’m very happy I’m coming to Ravinia because I get so excited working with the Chicago Symphony. It’s probably the best place for me to be to get over it. I thought one more Ring program with the Chicago Symphony should help me cope. If it weren’t something as exciting as Ravinia, I would probably be in bad shape afterwards.”

Achim Freyer’s production of the Ring, with its futuristic design, was controversial, and ticket sales were not as high as Los Angeles Opera officials had hoped. But more than 100 Ring-related events were held throughout the city, and audiences gave the performances standing ovations.

“It’s a high point. It doesn’t come around often, if at all,’’ said Conlon who has conducted Ring cycles in Germany. “It’s an enormous satisfaction to have built a Ring from the bottom up over several years. And it’s also given me enormous satisfaction to see a city really come together like that. The support and the interest in the city have been unbelievable.”

Conlon arrived at the Los Angeles Opera in 2006 with the goal of doing a complete Ring. When he became Ravinia’s music director in 2005, he also had a set of goals. One was to present all of Mahler’s symphonies over a number of seasons. On July 13 he leads the CSO in the Adagio movement from Mahler’s unfinished Symphony No. 10.

“The Mahler cycle was of fundamental importance to me because of the equation: Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Gustav Mahler,” said Conlon. “They are the quintessential orchestra to be performing it. Knowing that 2011 [the 100th anniversary of Mahler’s death] would be inundated everywhere with Mahler, we decided to do it differently—to get an early start and the perspective that went from the beginning to the end in correct order. That’s what we succeeded in doing.

“Mahler has been a part of my life since, I think, 1973 when I conducted my first Mahler symphony,” he continued. “This is the third time I’ve done a complete cycle with the same orchestra. It’s just about as fabulous as doing the Ring.”

Conlon, who celebrated his 60th birthday in March, estimates that he has led between 330 and 350 performances of Mahler symphonies. Asked how his approach has changed over the years, he said, “It’s very difficult to answer that question because you evolve. It happens so gradually and organically. Hopefully, you do evolve. You either get better or worse; if you’re standing still, you’re getting worse.”

At Ravinia, in addition to performing Mahler symphonies, Conlon has also focused on a project titled Breaking the Silence. The aim is to present music by gifted but lesser-known composers such as Alexander Zemlinsky and Viktor Ullmann whose careers were cut short or seriously impacted by the Holocaust. This summer the project is represented by just a single performance, July 27 in Martin Theatre. Working with T. Daniel Productions, an innovative Chicago-based mime company, Conlon will lead a chamber ensemble in Darius Milhaud’s Le boeuf sur le toit (The Ox on the Roof). An antic dance and music piece from 1920, it was completed 20 years before Milhaud, who was Jewish, left his native France in the wake of the Nazis.

“We’ve had five seasons of a very strong presence,” said Conlon about Breaking the Silence. “It doesn’t have to be every year, but it does have to stay in everybody’s consciousness. This initiative will go on forever. At the end of my lifetime I won’t see the end of it. This has to be built gradually, over a generation.”

The CSO and a Beethoven cycle also will be part of Conlon’s Ravinia season this summer. The Chicago-based, Mexican-born pianist Jorge Federico Osorio will be the soloist in all five Beethoven piano concertos July 15 and 16 with the orchestra. Conlon wraps up his 2010 Ravinia season with a set of Mozart operas in the Martin Theatre with major soloists and a chamber-sized CSO. Cosi fan tutte with a cast including Frederica von Stade in her final opera performances in Chicago will be given Aug. 5 and 7. The Marriage of Figaro with Ildebrando D’Arcangelo and Nathan Gunn is scheduled Aug. 6 and 8.

“I’m delighted that the response was so positive,” said Conlon, referring to the pair of Mozart operas (Don Giovanni and The Abduction from the Seraglio) he conducted in the Martin Theatre in 2008, “and that everybody was willing to commit themselves to it again. There is no question that the Martin Theatre is ideal for the intimacy of those operas. It was very clear from the reaction both onstage and offstage that we should continue.”

The CSO’s 21 Ravinia performances this summer are scattered among weekdays and weekends between June 28 and Aug. 15. Some devoted Ravinia fans remember the 1970s when gala CSO concerts launched each season or the 1990s when the CSO was the regular weekend-long attraction. For some of them, this season’s calendar is unsettling.

Welz Kauffman, Ravinia’s president and CEO, defends the schedule. The CSO regularly performed during the week for many of its seven-plus decades at Ravinia, he said. Stiff competition for an ever-dwindling number of big box-office draws is another consideration. Since some summer festivals such as Tanglewood cluster their orchestral concerts on the weekends, Kauffman considers Ravinia’s flexible CSO schedule a plus.

“When we had Bernard Haitink here a couple of years ago,’’ said Kauffman, “we could only get him on a Wednesday. (The CSO’s principal conductor made his belated Ravinia debut in 2008 with a memorable Mahler Sixth Symphony.) If Riccardo Muti ever decides to come back to Ravinia, which we would love and open our arms for, it could be 11 o’clock on a Sunday night and we’ll take it.”

Ravinia is celebrating Conlon’s 60th birthday this season, and he has seen massive changes on the music scene. Classical music has become a niche art, but Conlon actively fights the notion that it is only for a select few. Early in his career he hated the notion of conductors speaking to audiences. But now he gives a pre-opera talk every time he conducts in Los Angeles. Whenever he speaks from Ravinia’s podium, his comments are typically witty and graceful.

Conlon sees value in the video screens that Ravinia is using at every CSO concert. The idea is to give pavilion audiences a closer look at the performers and forge a closer connection between audience and orchestra. Some concertgoers loathe them, but Kauffman said the overall response has been positive.

“It was a big mistake,” said Conlon, “to have allowed classical music to fall out of public education, and we’re paying the price for it now. Anything that reverses this trend is a necessity.

“I can certainly understand the viewpoint of people who may not like those screens. But I think at this point in history, it’s outweighed by the necessity of winning people and keeping them, young people especially. People very much like seeing the orchestra.”

LOS ANGELES TIMES May 23, 2010

James Conlon is in a hurry. At a Grand Avenue crosswalk on a recent morning, he is repeatedly pushing the button to cross the street. Tap, tap, tap, tap. His efforts don't make the lights change any faster. He has to wait like everyone else.

Conlon, who is the music director of the Los Angeles Opera, doesn't like to stay still. Not even for a minute. He's on his way to Starbucks for his morning cappuccino fix. It's surprising that Conlon needs stimulants at all. The conductor is his own internal combustion engine, giving off sparks that can either dazzle or burn, depending on how close you want to get.

Since he arrived at L.A. Opera in 2006, Conlon has worked to put his personal stamp on the young company. His twin artistic obsessions — the music of Richard Wagner and composers suppressed by the Nazis — have become centerpieces of recent seasons. He also has become a familiar and accessible face to the city's classical music fans, becoming a regular at cultural speaking events whenever he's not otherwise occupied in the orchestra pit.

The current season is arguably the biggest of Conlon's career. He will be leading performances of Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung," a massive endeavor that requires 15 hours of conducting for each cycle. (The company is producing three full cycles starting May 29.)

Conlon also turned 60 this year. "I certainly don't feel 60," he says. "I don't know where the time went."

Time is a scarce and slippery commodity in the Conlon zone. Spending time in Conlon's shoes —following him around on one of his typically busy days — is a high-impact athletic event not meant for the weak, the thin-skinned or the easily flustered.

Crammed schedule

When Conlon enters a room, it's perfectly clear who's in charge. He's physically compact, but he projects a brusque sense of authority. His small team of assistants is constantly swarming around him in a frenzied but ordered nimbus of activity. It's all a variant on what Conlon knows best — conducting.

It's a little past 11 in the morning. (In the classical world, days tend to start and end late.) Conlon is sitting in his plain, functional office at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion discussing his schedule with his assistant, Bill Gorin. There are no performances today but that doesn't mean Conlon has the day off. Quite the contrary: His schedule is packed with meetings, a music class and an evening speaking engagement.

"Working with James is like competing in a triathlon — it's all about focus, flexibility, patience and above all endurance," says Gorin.

First up: An online video that Conlon wants to post on the opera's website isn't working correctly. Conlon is on the phone with the company's head of marketing, who can't get it to work either. Throughout the conversation, Conlon multitasks his way through a list of other chores: Lunch is ordered; BlackBerry messages are sent; a massage appointment for tomorrow is confirmed.

Conlon's office is cluttered with books and scores. (He keeps his scores in a carry-on piece of luggage.) Three hefty volumes that represent the entirety of Wagner's "Götterdämmerung" rest on top of an upright piano. On his shelf sit two Grammy Award trophies.

He likes to eat healthy — he often snacks on Balance Carb Well Bars and organic fruit — but he doesn't go the gym. "'Götterdämmerung' is my workout," he says.

The Internet video glitch persists but it will have to wait until later. Conlon has a master class to teach and he's already running late. In the hallway, he pushes the button for the elevator. When it fails to immediately appear, he takes the stairs instead, leaving the rest of his team to catch up with him.

Master class

Conlon sits in a rehearsal room with seven aspiring singers who are part of the company's Domingo-Thornton Young Artists Program. They each perform an aria which he then critiques in front of the entire class. He is blunt but never cruel. His criticisms are often delivered with a smile.

"I circled all the rests you didn't do and then my hand got tired," he tells one student.

"Vocally perfect, note perfect, but with no meaning at all," he says to another.

"The intonation is simply not good enough for this," he chastises yet another.

"More volume is not better, it's just more," he says to the entire class. "Sing within the conditions of your voice. Every forte has to be a dignified forte."

At one point, he tells the class an anecdote about meeting the 100-year-old soprano Magda Olivero in Italy. The conductor explains that even at her advanced age, the singer still had formidable abdominal muscles.

"You don't lose you voice as you get older. You lose these," says Conlon, pointing to his own abdominals.

The singers behave deferentially to Conlon and some of them are visibly nervous, especially when the conductor approaches them to demonstrate a certain technique. "Don't be terrified that I'm here and looking at your larynx," he says.

After the class, Conlon returns to his office, where he looks over scores for his upcoming appearance at the Cincinnati May Festival, where he has served as music director for more than 30 years. He also holds the top musical post at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago and continues to serve as guest conductor around the world.

He converses in Italian with Ignazio Terrasi, his assistant who is in charge of maintaining and annotating his musical scores. (Conlon's day requires him to shift between Italian, German and French. He can also make his way in Dutch, Russian and Spanish.)

His facility with European languages is a result of the few decades that he spent in Europe leading the Paris National Opera and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, as well as serving as music director for the city of Cologne, Germany.

"I love languages. They're like music," he says. Later, when reading a document aloud to an assistant, he has trouble saying the word "archetype." He adds, "The downside of speaking multiple languages is that you forget how to pronounce certain words."

'I love L.A.'

It's 3 p.m. and Conlon is, as usual, trying to do a number of things at the same time. He's eating his lunch, which consists of a gourmet mozzarella sandwich from Mendocino Farms; he's checking his e-mail; and he's meeting with Christopher Koelsch, the company's head of artistic planning, who is trying to finalize rehearsal times for a production of "Lohengrin" next season.

Later, Conlon drops in briefly on a rehearsal for "Das Rheingold," which is being held in a room featuring a replica of the steeply raked stage set. Conlon greets bass Eric Halfvarson and mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung. He also confers with director Achim Freyer, who warns the conductor not to get too close because he is under the weather.

The atmosphere is friendly and laid-back. (It's still a few weeks before two of the production's lead singers publicly criticize the staging as being artistically flawed and dangerous for performers.)

Conlon returns to his office — taking the stairs once again — where he has to deal with a sensitive issue about an orchestra member. "You have orchestra personnel issues regularly," says Conlon, who oversees an orchestra of about 60 musicians and this afternoon is discussing trading one to the L.A. Philharmonic on a temporary basis.

The afternoon is drawing to a close and Conlon's staff briefs him on the evening's speaking engagement at the Museum of Tolerance. Despite previously made plans, Conlon decides that he will drive himself to the event. The conductor prefers not to be driven — "I hate that" — and he currently gets around town in an Audi that was given to the company by a donor.

Just before he leaves, Conlon has 30 minutes of downtime, during which he answers questions (somewhat reluctantly at first) about his family and putting down roots in L.A. He initially stayed in a rented apartment but recently moved into a house with a two-year lease. The native New Yorker still maintains the same apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side where he has lived since 1977.

"I love L.A., which is surprising to me," he says. "I feel very, very good here. And I haven't loved every place I've lived." (Conlon's contract with the company lasts through the end of the 2010-11 season.)

The conductor has been married to opera singer and teacher Jennifer Ringo for nearly 25 years and they have two children — Luisa, 21, who is studying documentary filmmaking at New York University, and Emma, 13, who attends the Lycée Français de New York.

Emma moved briefly to L.A. but decided to return to New York, according to her parents. "It's difficult to move a teenager," says Ringo in a separate interview. The family now maintains a bicoastal existence, with the children making trips to L.A. during breaks in the academic calendar.

Wagner heckler

Conlon likes to talk. And talk and talk. (Anyone who has attended his pre-performance lectures at L.A. Opera already knows this.)

At the Museum of Tolerance, he's giving an evening lecture on Richard Wagner that is long and erudite. The central theme is Wagner's anti-Semitism and how it should be separated intellectually from his music. Conlon makes tony references to Theodor Adorno, Denis de Rougemont and Isaiah Berlin. His notes have been put together with the help of his assistants, but he appears to be talking extemporaneously in a kind of off-the-cuff, intellectual filibuster.

Near the end of his talk, a voice cries out from the back of the auditorium: "How can you compare Chopin to Wagner? I can hardly contain myself with these generalizations!"

The heckler berates Conlon for several minutes. The conductor initially appears flustered but he quickly regains his composure.

The voice of dissent belongs to Peter Gimpel, an L.A.-based Jewish American writer who has actively protested the Ring Festival L.A. — a countywide celebration of the arts tied to the "Ring" cycle — for its focus on Wagner.

Conlon never raises his voice and does his best to speak over the continued interruptions. Eventually, security guards are called in.

After the heckler is escorted out, Conlon finishes and mingles with the audience. "Are you kidding? That was nothing," he says smiling, when asked how he handled the disruption. "Water off a duck's back."

Conlo n's staff hangs around with him. They look tired. Tomorrow is a rare day off for them, but today hasn't finished yet.

The conductor continues chatting with audience members even though most people have already left the auditorium. It's well after 10 p.m. and Conlon shows no signs of slowing down.

First published in THE CINCINNATI POST May 20, 2004

Jerold Fink remembers a conversation on the steps of city hall in 1976. As president of the May Festival board, Fink was there with music director James Levine as part of a presentation to the festival in connection with the U.S. bicentennial.

"He told me that he was leaving his post with the May Festival because his obligations at the Met had increased so much. "It floored me. I didn’t know what we were going to do, because we thought James Levine - Cincinnatian, tremendous talent - would be our long term music director (he served 1974-78)."

As it turned out, Levine led them to their man, May Festival music director James Conlon. Conlon celebrates his 25th anniversary with the May Festival this year, beginning with Handel’s "Messiah" at 8 p.m. Friday at Music Hall. He leads an all-Wagner program Saturday. Mozart’s Requiem and Mahler’s Eighth Symphony are May 28 and 29. All are at Music Hall. May Festival Chorus director Robert Porco conducts Sunday’s non-subscription concert at the Cathedral Basilica in Covington.

On Levine’s recommendation, Fink, Steven Monder (executive director, now president of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra) and May Festival board member Samuel Pogue flew to Miami to hear the then unknown (and very young) Conlon. "We fell in love with him, all three of us," said Fink. "There was absolutely no question in any of our minds. All of us just sensed the ability that was going to blossom in him." "He was so excited," said former board president Joseph Stern, who interviewed him in Cincinnati. "His parents came. They had never been outside of New York so my wife Mary baked them chocolate chip cookies. She’s done that every year for 25 years."

Conlon himself had visited Cincinnati before. "It was my first trip away from home. I was a high school student and came with friends who had designed the costumes for a production at the Cincinnati Zoo." He had heard about the May Festival from a family friend who came every year and brought him programs. "Talk about destiny," he said.

Conlon made his debut with the May Festival in Dvorak’s Stabat Mater in 1978. He was 28. He became music director the next season. It has been a long term love affair. "I would never have imagined it at the time," said Conlon, who made his New York Philharmonic debut at 24. "But I loved it so much. It’s become a part of my musical life and a part of my personal life."

Conlon had a vision for the May Festival early on, said Nancy Donovan, board president from 1994-96 and now chair of the Fine Arts Fund. "He knew we had an identity and that we as a city lacked self confidence in the specialness of the May Festival. He really pushed on the board in the early years to think beyond our boundaries and broaden our reach. We’ve made good strides in that regard. Witness the press in New York and the European newspapers."

He has changed the way Cincinnati feels about the May Festival, Donovan said. "He has convinced us that it is unique and to be protected at all costs" Conlon’s career has grown along with the festival. At 54, he is the much admired principal conductor of the Paris Opera (he leaves in July after 9 years) and music director designate of Chicago’s Ravinia Festival. His guest conducting card is full and he’s on everyone’s list to head one of the major U.S. orchestras (Pittsburgh and Chicago are open). "There’s always rumors," he said. "I never believe any of them until they happen."

Musicians who have worked with him marvel at his energy. "James will be there from 9 in the morning until after 11 at night," said bass-baritone John Cheek, a May Festival regular who returns this season. "It’s all directed towards getting the best performance he can."

Conlon’s energy and commitment played itself out dramatically during the 1997 season, said Walker. "Robert Shaw was supposed to come and conduct Brahms’ Requiem opening night, but his wife was ill and he didn’t want to leave her. We had to scramble around and get someone to conduct. James was conducting at La Scala the night before, but they are six hours ahead. We got him here via London on the Concorde, then from New York on a Quantum Chemical jet arranged through one of the board members.

"Out he came onstage, same old James. Steve Monder said to him, you’ve been so many places in the last 24 hours, don’t forget whose national anthem you’re going to play. All he needed to do was wear a trench coat, throw it on the floor and have a big red ‘S’ (Superman) on him."

Conlon’s devotion to the May Festival is an inspiration for the all-volunteer chorus, said Monder. "To have a person of James’ stature return every year because he really cares about them perpetuates their loyalty to the May Festival." "He strives for perfection, but it’s not harsh," said Lauren Hess, a 7-year chorister from Newport. "He helps us strive for perfection as well." The way Conlon deals with people is "just fantastic," said tenor John Aler, who has sung at 17 of Conlon’s May Festivals (and again this year). "He has a phenomenal rehearsal technique. He keeps everything very light and happy, yet it’s all work and very serious."

Conlon’s capacity for acquiring languages is legendary. Russian repertoire is "one of James’ specialties," said Cheek, who has sung some of it with him. "He speaks Russian, which is pretty scary." Cheek calls him "a singer’s conductor." "He really knows voices, how to work with singers and get the best performances out of them."

Conlon was unable to single out favorite moments during his 25 years with the May Festival. "It’s almost like saying, tell me about your favorite moments with your children when they were growing up. You would never be able to say, so I look at it as a long friendship – with great colleagues on the stage, the May Festival Chorus, Bob Porco, the orchestra.

"I’ve been with this orchestra two weeks a year through three music directorships (into four now with Paavo Järvi). I’ve experienced the renovation of the hall. Steve Monder has been my colleague since the beginning. These become very, very important friendships and that’s the way I feel." Conlon’s contract with the May Festival renews automatically every year. He has told the board "as long as you want me, I shall be with you." "James Levine did us a great favor when he mentioned James Conlon," said Walker. (first published in The Cincinnati Post May 20, 2004)

Since this story was written, James Conlon has won two Grammys, both this year, for his recording with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus of Kurt Weill’s “Rise and Fall of the House of Mahagonny” (Best Classical Album, Best Opera Recording of 2008). He brings one of the principal soloists on that recording, Broadway diva Patti LuPone, to the 2009 May Festival for an opening night performance of Kurt Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins.” It will be her May Festival debut. The concert, which is 8 p.m. May 22, also includes Mozart’s Requiem.

The second night of the festival, 8 p.m. May 23, will be devoted to a single work, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Luisa Miller” in a concert performance starring soprano Annalisa Raspagliosi and tenor Stefano Secco.

The annual concert in Covington’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption is 8 p.m. May 24 and comprises a capella works of the 16th and 20th centuries, including Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G Minor. May Festival Chorus director Robert Porco and Youth Chorus director James Bagwell will conduct.

The second weekend of the festival opens at 8 p.m. May 29 with “Hallelujah” choruses (plural) by Handel, Bach’s Magnificat, Mendelssohn’s “The First Walpurgis Night” and selections from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in E-flat Major (“Symphony of a Thousand”) will close the 2009 festival with a shout at 8 p.m. May 30. Each Music Hall concert is preceded by a vocal recital, free to that evening’s ticketholders, featuring one of the festival guest artists, accompanied by pianist Michael Chertock.

Tickets are $17-$95. Call (513) 381-3300 or order online at www.mayfestival.com

LOS ANGELES TIMES April 4, 2010

Smoldering passion. Graphic sex. Orgies. Franz Schreker's "The Stigmatized" contains enough adult content that it might have garnered the dreaded NC-17 if the Motion Picture Assn. of America rated opera productions in addition to films.

First performed in 1918, Schreker's opera pushed a lot of boundaries in its day, but it wasn't just the salacious material that got its creator into trouble with cultural censors. The Austrian composer, who was of partial Jewish descent, was one of the many artists whose careers were cut short by the Nazi regime.

Born to a Jewish father and Catholic mother, Schreker was among the most respected European composers during his time and saw his work performed in Berlin, Prague, Paris and other major capitals. He also held prominent academic posts in various music institutions. But his career took a nose dive with the rise of the Nazi party and the passage of laws that made it difficult for anyone with a Jewish parent or grandparent to hold public office.

After being dismissed from two prominent positions and falling into financial trouble, Schreker died in 1934 at age 55 following a stroke.

"The Stigmatized" ("Die Gezeichneten") is widely considered one of the composer's best works, but it has been infrequently performed since his death. A new production opening Saturday at Los Angeles Opera qualifies as a first in more ways than one: It marks the first time that "The Stigmatized" -- or any opera by Schreker -- has received a full production in the Western hemisphere.

With a production of Schreker's "A Distant Sound" to open at Bard College in upstate New York this summer, as well as new stagings of his operas in Europe, this forgotten composer appears to be having a posthumous moment in the sun.

People familiar with the composer tend to use film analogies to describe his operatic style and liken his music to movie soundtracks from Hollywood's golden age.

Conductor James Conlon, who serves as music director of L.A. Opera, described "The Stigmatized" as "Technicolor, post-Romantic music of major dimensions -- outsized."

The conductor first encountered Schreker's work when he recorded several orchestral pieces by the composer for EMI. "That was my first contact. It spoke to me in a very strong way," said Conlon.

"The Stigmatized" -- whose German title can also be translated as "The Marked Ones" or "The Branded" -- is the latest production in L.A. Opera's Recovered Voices, a series started by Conlon that seeks to revive operatic works by composers who suffered at the hands of the Third Reich.

Schreker's opera is set in 16th century Genoa, Italy, and focuses on Alviano Salvago, a deformed and hunchbacked nobleman who is involved in a love triangle with Carlotta, a painter, and Vitelozzo Tamare, a powerful count.

At the center of the story is a beautiful island created by Salvago called Elysium. The hunchback, who considers himself too ugly to enter his own creation, is enraged to learn that his friends have been using parts of the island for orgies involving kidnapped young women. Advertisement

L.A. Opera's staging will contain explicit sexual situations and is intended for mature audiences only. Director Ian Judge said the production will evoke the "rank smell of bad sex" for the orgy scenes. "It was the time of Freud and there's a sense of psychosexual excitement in the air," he said. (Judge directed the company's torrid production of Wagner's "Tannhäuser" in 2007.)

Because "The Stigmatized" will run at the same time as L.A. Opera's production of Wagner's "Götterdämmerung," the director said he has limited resources at his disposal and must use the latter's raked stage.

To work around the constraints, Wendall Harrington, a video artist with a number of Broadway credits to her name, will create projections on a scrim that will serve as substitutes for traditional sets. She said that the projections will reference well-known works of art, including naughty masterpieces such as Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights."

Tenor Robert Brubaker will play the hero opposite soprano Anja Kampe as Carlotta. Brubaker performed the same role in a 2005 production of "The Stigmatized" at the Salzburg Festival in which Salvago was interpreted to be a closeted transvestite. The L.A. production will portray the protagonist as more traditionally hunchbacked.

Almost like a film

Christopher Hailey, who has written a biography on the composer and who heads the German-American Franz Schreker Foundation, said the Austrian maestro's use of rapidly juxtaposed snippets of dialogue was a precursor to cinematic techniques such as cross-cutting and montages.

"The opera anticipates film in many ways," said Hailey.

Schreker's renewed popularity is due at least in part to economic reasons. In the last 10 years, his works have increasingly entered the public domain in Europe and the U.S., making them less expensive to produce than before, according to the Franz Schreker Foundation.

But his resurgence also has to do with fickle musical preferences. While Schreker's music was dismissed by authorities both cultural and political during his lifetime, current cultural wisdom holds him in high regard.

"Our tastes have changed -- we now like figurative painting, we like narrative novels. We're back in business for non-abstract, neo-narrative taste," said Leon Botstein, a conductor and president of Bard College

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CHICAGO SUN TIMES July 7, 2009

With less than 15 minutes before the curtain at Los Angeles Opera, patrons cram the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion's mezzanine-level lobby. Leaning forward from their perches on chairs and stairs, they're fully engaged in the pre-performance lecture for Wagner's "Die Walkure," which, though rapturous, runs nearly five hours. By this point, most operagoers would be scurrying for the exits, searching for their seats downstairs or stashing some snacks for the long night ahead, but not this crowd.

The man at the lectern, who has them hanging on his every word, doesn't happen to be Placido Domingo, supertenor and LAO general director. Or Gustavo Dudamel, the incoming music director of the next-door Los Angeles Philharmonic, who provokes the classical music equivalent of Jonas Brothers-style mania wherever he goes.

This maestro is James Conlon, who exudes Domingo-Dudamel style charisma and whose witticisms and wisdom about Wagner's "Walkure" help transport the opera's remote gods and mythic warriors into the realm of universal experience. "He has such energy and enthusiasm, it's infectious," Domingo has said of Conlon, whom he recruited as music director.

During an interview the next day at his office, the maestro set forth his mission. "In a society that's far too concerned with celebrity and not with substance, my purpose is to keep absolutely focused on the music," said the New York-born Conlon, who remains youthful at 59. "The reason for the pre-performance talks is that it's important to have that kind of contact with the public. The crowds have grown enormously. We now have half the audience here for each talk -- more than 1,600 people. Ultimately, these talks are about the endless emotional, intellectual and spiritual treasure of what classical music is, and it's infinite."

Though he has been at L.A. Opera since 2006, Conlon also has held the same post at the Cincinnati May Festival, where he celebrates his 30th anniversary this year, and at the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He begins his fifth season tonight when the CSO launches its annual residency. At Ravinia, Conlon has promoted the kind of ambitious programming often difficult to pull off during a summer festival: a cycle of Mahler symphonies, semi-staged operas and an initiative devoted to classical music suppressed during the Nazi era, "Breaking the Silence."

The "Breaking the Silence" series is closest to him, personally and professionally. In past seasons, Conlon has explored the works of Viktor Ullmann, Alexander Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker. This summer, Kurt Weill is the focus of "Breaking the Silence." Though known for his Broadway musicals, Weill composed dozens of symphonic and vocal works before he fled from Germany and settled in the States. At Ravinia, Conlon will conduct Weill's "The Seven Deadly Sins" (1933) featuring Broadway diva Patti LuPone on Aug. 8. Conlon's interest in what the Nazis labeled "Entartete Musik" ("degenerate music") developed "organically from the early '90s," he said, while serving as music director of Germany's Cologne Symphony. "It started by hearing some Zemlinsky, performing it and recording it. Then I started reading about him and other composers. We don't know about them not because they lack artistic merit; we don't know about them because they were arbitrarily suppressed."

Though his Mahler cycle is not officially part of "Breaking the Silence," it complements the series. Mahler's music, also banned by the Nazis, "is central to practically all modern conductors and to our times," he said. "The identity between the CSO and Mahler is so complete, so celebrated, that [a Mahler cycle] was practically the first thing I wanted to do when I accepted the Ravinia job."

This season, Conlon and the CSO will perform Mahler's Ninth and "Das Lied von Der Erde." "I will be sorry to see it go," he said. "We're aiming for completion in 2011, the centennial of Mahler's death."

Earlier this year, Conlon and L.A. Opera's version of Brecht/Weill's "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" won Grammys for best opera recording and classical album. "We're very proud to be honored for a work that comes out of our 'Recovered Voices' series," he said. LAO's complement to "Breaking the Silence," the series surveys operas marginalized by the Third Reich. The cast featured Broadway and opera stars Audra McDonald, Anthony Dean Griffey and Patti LuPone. "Patti and I went to school together at Juilliard. Though we've known each other since 1970-72, we've never worked together before 'Mahagonny.' We had such a great time that I suggested that we keep going and do 'The Seven Deadly Sins,' and here we are."

A week later, Conlon and the CSO will perform a concert version of Verdi's "Rigoletto," with Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the title role. "I'm great friends and colleagues with Dmitri, and I told him, 'Come on, you've got to come to Ravinia.' He said, sure, what about 'Rigoletto'? I said, that's great, we haven't done it in ages. We had done lots of Italian operas, we have a certain amount of Wagner."

When he took the L.A. job, Conlon made Wagner part of the deal. As part of turning LAO into what he calls "a hub of Wagnerian activity," Conlon and Domingo decided to stage the company's first-ever "Ring" cycle. Last season, LAO presented "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walkure," with "Siegfried" and "Gotterdammerung" set for 2009-10. The complete "Ring" follows in June 2010. "There's nothing like conducting the 'Ring,' " he said. "It doesn't come up that much in a lifetime. I'm savoring every minute." Though some might regard the championing of Wagner and the Entartete Musik composers as a contradiction, Conlon believes otherwise. "There is no issue, and in the case of Wagner, you have to separate the man from the music," he said. "Besides, many of the composers suppressed and persecuted by the Nazis appreciated him for what he meant to classical music."

But appreciation has not been universal for LAO's "Ring" cycle, designed by German artist-director Achim Freyer. Criticisms of the avant-garde production, with its bicycle-riding Valkyries and Conehead-like gods, do not faze Conlon. "Any production of Wagner is likely to provoke opposite reactions, either love it or hate it," he said. "That's just the nature of the beast. My job is just to defend the musical values, to ensure 100 percent devotion to the music and musical values, to help the orchestra give 100 percent and that everybody's singing to their best. That's what it's is all about." He takes a similar philosophy to his collaboration with the CSO. "The CSO is the crown jewel of Ravinia," he said. "It's one of the world's greatest, and my job is to help maintain that tradition."

Some might question Ravinia's commitment to its crown jewel, since the CSO often performs midweek, with weekend dates given over to pop music programs. "What [Ravinia president] Welz [Kauffman] and the board are trying to do is to find the best possible way to reach the greatest number of people," Conlon said. "To that end, they're experimenting with scheduling the CSO on different days of the week. If you ask me what the Ravinia Festival is all about, it's all about the CSO. We live in a world where we have to do other things to exist. That's just a reality. "But I absolutely adore the CSO. My relationship with it is even longer than it is with Cincinnati. There's no greater place I can imagine being."

CHICAGO TRIBUNE July 5, 2009

It's nearly midnight in Spoleto, but James Conlon is still going strong. He has been busy rehearsing Woody Allen's zany production of Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi" practically non-stop at the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds in this medieval town in central Italy, which is perched on an Umbrian hill clad in pine and olive trees.

Despite the conductor's intensive schedule, the voice at the other end of the phone sounds remarkably energetic and affable.

After gulping down a plate of pasta -- the only food he has had time for all day -- Conlon turns to subjects closer to home, including his happy 32-year relationship with the Ravinia Festival.

Tuesday night the New York-born maestro begins his fifth season as music director of North America's oldest music festival with a concert that launches the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's six-week summer residency in north suburban Highland Park.

Although Conlon's name is invariably mentioned whenever a podium falls vacant at one of the major American orchestras, the conductor -- who turned 59 in March -- shows no interest in throwing his hat in anybody's ring. His dedication to the institutions that employ him as music director -- Ravinia, the Los Angeles Opera (three seasons and counting) and the Cincinnati May Festival (which he still directs after 30 years) -- is so complete and his projects so consuming that he doesn't need to look for outside work.

"Right now I'm getting tremendous pleasure and satisfaction from the things I'm doing," Conlon says. "Everything has sort of developed naturally in my life."

His ascent to the front rank of American conductors seems to have rededicated him to his overriding mission of turning more people on to classical music at a time when every arts institution, large and small, is struggling to survive.

Conlon's crusade to make music a more central part of people's lives takes him regularly into the public schools as a prestigious frontman for Ravinia's extensive music education program, which is geared particularly to kindergarten and elementary-grade students in the Greater Chicago area.

"You get kids to listen to music early and they will listen for life," he says. "Artists have to fight so that the arts do not fall out of everyone's education."

On a smaller scale, he also makes it a point to sit down over lunch with Chicago Symphony musicians, sounding them out as to what they like and don't like about playing at Ravinia. A vigorous talker, Conlon also is a good listener.

"James is really focused on making sure the players are having the musical experience they should be having, that it is the very best it can be," says Welz Kauffman, the festival's president and CEO.

Conlon projects a serious, inquiring attitude in his conducting that sets him apart from his ego-driven colleagues. In rehearsal he is clear and controlled, quick to diagnose problems he then will correct with a minimum of fuss. Such efficiency is crucial at Ravinia, where two or three different symphonic programs must be prepared in as much time as is allotted to a single program during the CSO's downtown season.

I ask Conlon if the satisfactions he found at Ravinia beginning with his festival debut in 1977 are the same satisfactions he finds today.

"Let's put it this way," he replies. "The pleasure, the joy, the thrill I experience working at Ravinia are three things -- the Chicago Symphony, the Chicago Symphony and the Chicago Symphony. That's the essence of my job. I do other things at the festival, including master classes at the Steans Institute for Young Artists. But the most satisfying part of my time there is collaborating with the orchestra."

Conlon clearly is happier doing a few projects at the highest level during his annual residencies than spreading himself all over the Ravinia schedule like his predecessors Christoph Eschenbach and James Levine.

Nothing he directs here engages his talents more than his "Breaking the Silence" project -- reviving music suppressed during the Third Reich. (He has instituted a similar series, "Recovered Voices," at the Los Angeles Opera.) His focus at Ravinia this summer will be on Kurt Weill, the German composer whose wry collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, "Mahagonny Songspiel" and "The Seven Deadly Sins," he will introduce to local audiences alongside Weill's better-known Broadway works.

"American audiences are far more familiar with the pieces Weill wrote after he immigrated to America than those from the pre-Nazi years in Berlin," Conlon observes. "I think the latter works will be a revelation to Ravinia audiences."

Conlon's intense Ravinia work ethic is matched by the 16-hour days he often puts in at the opera in Los Angeles, where he recently installed his family -- soprano Jennifer Ringo and their two daughters, Luisa and Emma. Placido Domingo, the opera company's general director, calls Conlon "a brilliant musician -- we're lucky to have him."

Could such praise tempt Conlon to forsake the heat and cicadas of Ravinia for greener musical pastures? Eventually, no doubt, but don't bet on it happening any time soon.

His present contract with the festival runs through 2011, and there's every likelihood it will be extended. In any case, he and Kauffman won't be talking contracts for at least a year, says the Ravinia CEO.

Meanwhile, says Conlon, "I have nothing to report beyond the pleasure I get from being here. I hope the collaboration can continue."

By DAVID MERMELSTEIN

IN a city that often shows scant regard for history, the Los Angeles Opera is undertaking an extraordinary project of reclamation. Under the banner “Recovered Voices,” James Conlon, in his second season as the company’s music director, is reviving operas suppressed by the Nazis.

Next Sunday Mr. Conlon, 57, is to conduct the project’s first fully staged production, a double bill of “Der Zwerg” (“The Dwarf”) by Alexander Zemlinsky and “Der Zerbrochene Krug” (“The Broken Jug”), which Viktor Ullmann composed not long before being interned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. (He died two years later in Auschwitz.)

Though such works have been unearthed in Europe at least since the 1970s, they have yet to take root in America, where Mr. Conlon has for years extolled their virtues. But “Recovered Voices” has already raised nearly $5 million to stage some of these operas.

“You could do any number of 50 works,” Mr. Conlon said recently of the available repertory. “But I wanted to start with Zemlinsky because it was through him that I became familiar with this whole subject, which then became a mission. Besides, I consider ‘Zwerg’ one of the greatest operas of the 20th century.”

“Der Zerbrochene Krug,” here in its American premiere, is new to Mr. Conlon. But he has a long history with another Ullmann opera, “Der Kaiser von Atlantis” (“The Emperor of Atlantis”), a work for small forces that he has conducted more than half a dozen times, often in synagogues.

Works by Walter Braunfels, Ernst Krenek, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and others damaged or destroyed by Hitler’s rise and the Holocaust also figure regularly in Mr. Conlon’s programs, whether operatic, orchestral or choral. He is the music director of the Ravinia Festival near Chicago and the Cincinnati May Festival, and he has recently branched out into dance. At the Juilliard School in December he conducted a program of works newly choreographed to music by Zemlinsky, Franz Schreker and Erwin Schulhoff.

Inevitably questions of motive surround discussions of such music and its creators, who are susceptible to everything from pity to opportunism. Mr. Conlon is sensitive to such queries.

“I am not interested in tokenism or novelty,” he said. “I am not a specialty conductor, nor do I want this to be viewed as specialty repertory. This is an integral part of German music. These are not people from outer space. They have the same roots and came out of the same environment as everyone else in their time.”

Though not all music lovers may be ready to embrace a host of unfamiliar composers as heirs to Weber and Wagner and siblings to Strauss, Mr. Conlon is not alone in his view.

Michael Haas, the music curator at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, suggests a similar interpretation of 20th-century music history. Like Mr. Conlon, he speaks less as an academic than as someone with practical experience, having produced the acclaimed Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) series for the Decca label in the 1990s, which anticipated Mr. Conlon’s work.

“Most of this music was banned because of Jewish authorship,” Mr. Haas said. “But if you look at the people who aspired to follow Wagner, you see a lot of successful Jewish composers who were building on what came before, while the non-Jewish composers, like Webern, Berg and Krenek, were far more adventurous. By banning Jewish composers, Hitler shot himself in the foot.”

Mr. Haas argues that early-to-mid-20th-century Jewish composers, many as secular as their non-Jewish counterparts, thrived in a musical landscape where tonality and Romantic impulses reigned. He also suggests that their scores represent musical bridges.

“Between Mahler and Schoenberg what is there?” Mr. Haas asked. “Well, there’s Schreker. He’s the missing link. He could not have been more central, and with his disappearance, so went an important chapter in music history.”

Yet even if advocates like Mr. Conlon reclaim that chapter, there is no guarantee that people will want to hear the music. So moving audiences and critics beyond their presuppositions becomes important.

“A lot of people think that this music is all about the Holocaust,” Mr. Conlon said, “but only 2 percent of it was written in concentration camps. This is about the restoration of two generations of composers that were wiped off the map, a tremendous variety of composers.”

To direct “Der Zwerg” and “Der Zerbrochene Krug,” Mr. Conlon has enlisted Darko Tresnjak, a Shakespeare specialist and former student of Andrei Serban who was recently appointed co-artistic director of the Old Globe theaters in San Diego. His background in the classics should prove an asset, for “Der Zwerg” is based on Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Birthday of the Infanta,” and “Der Zerbrochene Krug” on Heinrich von Kleist’s one-act comedy of that name.

“Der Zwerg” tells of an ugly but soulful dwarf, unaware of his physical appearance, who is a given to the Spanish infanta as a birthday present. Mocked by nearly all but the princess, he promptly falls in love with her, only to be rejected. When he eventually sees his reflection, he dies brokenhearted, realizing why he will never be loved.

The plot of “Der Zerbrochene Krug” has all the makings of a Preston Sturges movie, centering on a trial in which the judge himself is the guilty party. Though it ends in broad humor, the material’s serious subtext of perverted justice doubtless appealed to its victimized composer.

Mr. Conlon first approached Mr. Tresnjak about two and a half years ago, before “Recovered Voices” existed. The plan then was for a trilogy of rarely heard one-act operas by Mussorgsky, Krenek and Benjamin Fleischmann, considered by the Los Angeles Opera but now scheduled for the Juilliard School in November.

At the time Mr. Tresnjak knew no music by any of the suppressed composers dear to Mr. Conlon. But he has become a zealous convert, and the two now share a vision.

“I love it when people like James come along,” Mr. Tresnjak said. “It renews the way I look at my craft and takes me in another direction. I’m very comfortable that all of this would not be happening without James’s passion. That’s the driving force.”

Because these operas are unknown to most audiences, Mr. Conlon and Mr. Tresnjak agreed to present them straightforwardly. “There’s no point in deconstructing something the public doesn’t know,” Mr. Tresnjak said. “That doesn’t mean no interpretation. But the focus should be on clear storytelling and characterizations. That is of utmost importance.”

“Las Meninas,” Velázquez’s seminal 1656 painting depicting life at the court of King Philip IV of Spain, inspired the designs for “Der Zwerg.” For “Der Zerbrochene Krug,” which opens the program, the setting is a Dutch village square rather than the provincial courtroom called for in Kleist’s play, but the action remains in the early 19th century.

Mr. Tresnjak initially presented Mr. Conlon with three options for the Zemlinsky opera. “I said, ‘Here’s the Velázquez version, the 1920s version and the contemporary Los Angeles version,’ ” Mr. Tresnjak recalled. “I made the case for all three. Ultimately James felt most strongly about the Velázquez version, as did I, because that’s what I heard in the music. From those opening chords I saw that painting.”

But artistic vision alone does not get operas produced. Money is necessary, and lots of it. Marilyn Ziering, a philanthropist and a member of the Los Angeles Opera board with an interest in Jewish causes, made the initial gift to “Recovered Voices” in late 2006, donating $3.25 million and raising $750,000 from family and friends. Then, a year ago, the company produced a well-received preview program as prelude to the imminent double bill.

Mr. Conlon promises one production per season, with “Die Vögel” (“The Birds”) by Braunfels scheduled for next year and “Die Gezeichneten” (“The Stigmatized”) by Schreker planned for 2010.

Will the financing keep pace? For now, the company says, the “Recovered Voices” fund is at $4.85 million and growing.

“I would love to see the music of these composers played in every great opera house,” Mrs. Ziering said. “I want people to see the beauty of what was lost, and how much more beauty there could have been if we lived in a kinder world.”

Mr. Conlon, a son of left-leaning Roman Catholics, takes a more confrontational approach when it comes to giving these composers a fair hearing.

“All my life questions of social justice and injustice have been very alive in my consciousness,” he said. “This is what I think fires me up more than anything else, the anger that in the 60 or 70 years since these events occurred, the perpetrators succeeded in wiping out any trace of the art of these people. You cannot undo the injustice of the lost lives or the cruelty. But in the case of the composers you can do the one thing that would have meant the most to them, which is to perform their music.”

Conductor James Conlon calls it a weekend job, but his campaign to present music that was suppressed by the Nazi regime is much more important than a moonlighting gig. Tonight, he takes his cause to the stage at the Juilliard School, where he has embarked on a two-year residency exploring, as he puts it, what happens "when the classical arts clash with sociopolitical environment." And if they ever did clash, the years of Nazi power offer the most brutal example of what happens. Some of the most talented composers, such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Kurt Weill, were forced to emigrate. Others were sent to concentration camps and killed, among them Hans Krasa and Viktor Ullmann. Walter Braunfels remained in Germany but spend the war as a recluse. All are becoming better-known, thanks in part to Mr. Conlon's efforts.

Mr. Conlon's goal, as he describes it, is "to get the music out there and reintegrate it into the tradition from which it came. I want to make these composers' names known and make their stories known, which can provide a point of entry."

Thursday's program "Recovered Voices," which repeats through December 16, includes music by Franz Schreker, Erwin Schulhoff, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Schreker, whose operas have been revived in Europe with much success but have yet to be staged in America, died in 1934, the year after the Nazis came to power. His once flourishing career was already in decline — he had been forced to vacate his post as director of the Berlin Hochschule. Schulhoff, who was not only Jewish but an avid Communist, was arrested in 1942 and sent to the Wülzburg camp, where he died of tuberculosis in 1942. Zemlinsky, the brother-in-law of Arnold Schoenberg, was rejected in love by the future Alma Mahler, probably because of his physical ugliness, a theme he developed in his opera "Der Zwerg."

Mr. Conlon urges prospective listeners not to fall back on the old saw that if music has been neglected, there is an artistic reason. "Some people equated Zemlinsky with Wagner. They may have exaggerated but he is an important composer," Mr. Conlon said. "Schulhoff wrote classical music incorporating jazz before Gershwin and music for pure percussion before Varèse. Yes, they struggled, but history has shown that composers struggle."

These composers also lost out, Mr. Conlon notes, because of a progress-oriented way of looking at history. Most of them flourished when Schoenberg and his circle embraced atonality and developed the 12-tone system of composition. Such music was also proscribed by the Nazis, but it eventually became accepted throughout the West as the logical next step beyond complex chromatic music. "Music became dominated by that orthodoxy," Mr. Conlon said.

The upcoming program at Juilliard will consist not only of music, but dance as well. "Using pieces from the period as the basis for new dance will force people to hear music that they would not otherwise hear. "

Schulhoff's "Ogelala" actually was conceived as a ballet; the Juilliard performances will be its America premiere. The two other works were originally purely orchestral compositions. Zemlinsky's last major work, "Sinfonietta," will be presented in the manner of Stravinsky's symphonies that were performed as ballets. Schreker's Prelude to a Drama: "Die Gezeichneten" is an expanded version of the prelude to the opera. "It is very opulent and well suited for choreography," Mr. Conlon said.

Mr. Conlon — who has refocused his career in America after a long stint in Europe that included the music directorship of the Paris Opera — will continue his crusade at the Los Angeles Opera, where he is music director. This season includes a double bill of Ullmann's "Der zerbrochene Krug" and Zemlinsky's "Der Zwerg"; Braunfels's "Die Vögel" follows the next season, and in the 2009-2010 season "Die Gezeichneten" will mark the first American staging of a Schreker opera.

During his residency at Juilliard, Mr. Conlon plans to take up other issues in a various forums, including public lectures. "We'll look at censorship, such as that experienced by Verdi, as well as more subtle factors, like the box office, which determines what's heard and what isn't," he said.

And his session on American education, with its move away from "frills," like music, in the 1980s, is sure to be contentious. "Society at large has really dropped the ball here, and the problem cannot be solved by arts institutions themselves."

In addition to the dance program, Mr. Conlon will conduct chamber works this spring, a trio of one-act operas in fall 2008, and an orchestral concert in 2009.

Mr. Conlon's work on composers suppressed by the Nazis brings unexpected rewards. "A woman once called to say that Zemlinsky and Ullmann used to have lunch at her home in Prague and wondered if I would like to talk about it. I sent a car for her at once. She was the daughter of the director of the Prague Conservatory and remembered both," he said.

As she recalled, Zemlinsky's appearance frightened the children. "About the only performer now who remembers Zemlinsky is Risë Stevens. She went to Prague in the mid-'30s and sang 'Carmen' with him conducting in 1938, before her father ordered her home because a war was about to start," Mr. Conlon said. "She remembers Zemlinsky as being disappointed and depressed, maybe because he was not doing one of his own operas." The political situation no doubt had something to do with it, too.

Ambitious Project Includes December Dance Creations, With Choreography Set to 'Recovered Voices' Composers

As James Conlon makes his way through the Juilliard hallways, every few steps someone greets him warmly, saying, “Hello, Maestro.” Nearly 40 years after he first navigated these hallways as a freshman, the internationally acclaimed conductor has returned to initiate an ambitious, wide-ranging two-year residency that reflects the impassioned commitment that has marked his exemplary career. Beginning with this month’s dance performances, Conlon will conduct programs involving all three divisions, while also devoting time to coaching, leading master classes, and participating in symposia.

In the course of these varied activities, Conlon will focus on aspects of classical music, and concerns about its place in contemporary society, that have been of paramount concern to him and are reflected in many of his recent projects. A major focus of the residency will be the music of composers whose careers were cut short, and reputations severely diminished, by the Nazi regime and its classification of their work as “degenerate art.” Conlon has been enthusiastically championing their scores for the past 15 years, often programming them when he guest-conducts and, in his role as music director of Los Angeles Opera and the Ravinia Festival, designing ongoing projects to bring their music to new audiences. At Juilliard, Conlon’s residency will also examine the classical artist’s relationship to, and role within, contemporary society.

Shortly after a week of conducting the New York Philharmonic, which followed his performances of Fidelio and Jenufa in Los Angeles, Conlon, 57, settled into a Juilliard conference room and spoke with fervor about what he intends to explore over the next two years. “The big subject is, what happens when classical art clashes with the society in which it finds itself? I’m going to use the events of the 1930s and ‘40s in Europe—specifically Germany, but we will have programs where we can compare it with Paris, which was outside the influence of the Third Reich, for a long time. We’re going to look at that period and see what happens when something gets lost. Can it be refound, resuscitated, 50 or 70 years after that fact? Then the questions that flow from that are: you can’t second-guess history, but what might have happened if—and what were the currents that were alive that might have altered the history of classical music had they not been uprooted? Why have we arrived at certain conclusions about the 20th century, about who was important and who had the most influence—whereas it might have been quite different. We’re going to look at all of those questions. I don’t know if we’ll have answers.”

An additional topic to be explored is classical music’s relationship to our own society, says Conlon—the factors that are influencing its production and appreciation, and the vibrancy of the classical tradition. “How is society affecting that? Are we affecting society? Are we just a very small cocoon that is trying to survive? What happens when there are factors in society that actively clash with the nourishing of this tradition?”

Conlon recalls that when Joseph W. Polisi, Juilliard’s president, approached him about the residency, he said, “I want to have you come here and take an idea and run with it. Tell me what you might want to do.” Conlon’s response: “I want to work with every department, because I don’t want it to be narrow. I want it to be broad—it’s about the arts, all of us. It’s also a reminder (and I know Joseph is very strong on this) that students are not here just to learn how to play their instruments, or dance, or act. They’re also here to realize that artists have a role in society. Society needs them—even if society doesn’t know it needs them. That consciousness needs to be raised, at the time of being a student.”

Conlon’s undergraduate years (1968 to 1972) overlapped with the height of antiwar protesting at many universities and increased political activism throughout the country. “During my years as a Juilliard student, I would say the one thing lacking was that approach to seeing whatever we were studying as very important in itself, but also important in a greater context. I was a student here at a time of ferment; in some ways, there was a greater context imposed on us. There were a lot of us who were active and thoughtful on that subject—not enough, as far as I was concerned. Now, it is a conservatory, and I completely agree that you’ve got to devote those years to mastering your instrument. But I think Joseph [Polisi] has done a great job of changing a lot about the School from what I remember from when I entered, and I want to participate in that.”

Conlon—who during his senior year stepped in when a major conductor became unavailable to conduct a 1972 Juilliard La Bohème production, and who even before graduating had conducted Boris Godunov at Italy’s famed Spoleto Festival—has had a career divided more or less equally between Europe and America. From 1983 to 2004, he was based in Europe, serving as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Cologne Opera, and the Paris Opera. Since 2004, the native New Yorker has been based here, though still traveling all over for his multifaceted engagements.

His passionate interest in the composers silenced by the Nazi regime has led to many performances and recordings for which he has conducted major scores that had languished unheard for decades, in the process awakening audiences to their high caliber and significant connections to other music of their time. At the Los Angeles Opera, he has initiated the Recovered Voices project, scheduling a production each season—this year, it will be a double bill of works by Alexander Zemlinsky and Viktor Ullmann. His recent New York Philharmonic program featured the orchestra’s first performances of Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy, a powerful one-act opera based on an Oscar Wilde play.

It was Zemlinsky (1871-1942) who launched Conlon’s abiding (and now influential) interest in this group of composers. During his Cologne tenure, he heard one of the composer’s scores on the radio and became entranced. He had been familiar with the name of this major musical figure whose students included Schoenberg (who became his brother-in-law), Berg, Webern, and Korngold—but not his music. “One day you discover that there’s a real person, real music, behind the name. That real music is beautiful, interesting, and thrilling,” he says. Soon he was recording one Zemlinsky composition after another for EMI, and learning about additional important composers whose output had been banned—and denied its place in musical history—because of the Nazis’ intolerance. “I love this music, it stimulates me, and I have also found that I will go back to it over and over, which means I’m able to perform it in a committed way.

"Most of it is there on paper (some has been lost, but a great deal is there), but isn’t performed," continues Conlon. "Classical music really enters civilization when it is heard and experienced by people, and people react to it—discuss it, then hear it again, new interpretation—that’s how classical music regenerates. That was completely impossible for those banned composers. We’re not just talking about music written between 1933 and 1945. It was retroactive. Most of them were Jewish; every Jewish composer was banned—including Mendelssohn. Because the music wasn’t heard, it has remained under the radar—certainly in this country—for 60 years. In Germany, there was a real attempt to take consciousness of this during the 1970s.”

The three choreographers creating new works for December Dance Creations are setting them to scores selected from the "Recovered Voices" group. Conlon suggested possible compositions to Lawrence Rhodes, artistic director of the Dance Division, who then presented options to the choreographers and matched them up with scores. “When people see choreography and hear the music—they take in that music in a very special way. I think it’s a very powerful way to get these composers to be able to speak to our audiences,” Conlon observes. “I want to find every possible avenue through which this music will be heard and live.”

Adam Hougland, a Juilliard alumnus, has choreographed to Franz Schreker’s Prelude to a Drama: Die Gezeichneten, an expansion of what began as an overture to the 1918 opera, whose title translates as “The Stigmatized.” “It’s almost a symphonic poem, with very evocative and original orchestration,” says Conlon, who in 2010 will conduct the opera’s first-ever U.S. production in Los Angeles. “It’s not meant to be played before the opera, which is an extremely intricate psychodrama set in Renaissance Italy, but to stand by itself.” Schreker (1878-1934) was one of the most highly regarded operatic composers of his time, as well as director of Berlin’s Music Academy.

Hougland did not refer to the opera’s libretto, but instead listened extensively to the score. “I find it very atmospheric and moody—almost dreamlike,” he says. “It reminded me of watching birds in flight, in the clouds—that was my first image. I found it intriguing to think about the idea of uncovering voices. The piece itself has that feel. It starts out very formal, the dancers moving as one giant, faceless mass. As the piece goes on, I deviate from that and let individuals emerge. It’s not often you have a chance to create for such a large group of dancers, and I wanted to play with ways of moving the whole group like one giant organism.”

Nicolo Fonte is choreographing to Zemlinsky’s 1934 Sinfonietta, the composer’s last major orchestral work, and his only piece to be performed in this country—by the New York Philharmonic, Dmitri Mitropoulos conducting—during the brief time he lived in New York, following his escape from the Nazis. “I immediately loved the Sinfonietta, for its danceability factor," says Fonte. “It was angular in places, then very lush and lyrical in others. That’s what I connected to immediately. The Adagio is gorgeous—really mysterious and lush. The first movement, Presto, is thrilling music. It gives me images of people flying in the air. The dance, on some level, deals with the idea of bursting free, of a kind of ultimate freedom. I hear that in the score—this desire to free oneself from constrictions.”

Ogelala, the 1925 Erwin Schulhoff score that Juilliard alumnus Robert Battle is choreographing, is the one composition that was originally written for dance, making it a natural choice for this program. The Czech composer, born in 1894, died of tuberculosis in the Wülzburg concentration camp in 1942. “I consider Schulhoff one of the most interesting avant-garde composers of that period. notes Conlon, who conducted the score’s U.S. premiere last year in Aspen. He wrote Dadaist music, and was one of the first composers to integrate jazz—before Gershwin, before Milhaud. This work, to me, is an extraordinary piece of vital, rhythmic music.”

Battle did some research into the original ballet’s scenario, which dealt with a pre-Colombian Mexican warrior, but says, “I really didn’t connect much to the story; I connected more to the music. I thought it was rhythmically and dramatically the kind of orchestral music I like. You find so many influences and colors in the score. After I said yes, fear was the overwhelming reaction—this music is so difficult. It’s over 30 minutes, and that’s a condensed version. The rhythmic elements are quite genius. It must be changing meters and time signatures all the time. I feel like I have this silent partner in this choreography that is Erwin Schulhoff. I certainly feel his presence in the score.”

Conlon’s multifaceted residency includes three chamber concerts in April, “Generate and Degenerate Music,” presenting in chronological order works created between 1916 and 1931, offering an opportunity to contrast those by Paris-based composers and those whom the Nazis silenced. A forum in conjunction with the concerts will examine these musicians’ contrasting lives and fates. And next November, Conlon will conduct a trilogy of one-act operas by Mussorgsky, Ernst Krenek, and Veniamin Fleischmann.

As he outlines his hopes and expectations for his residency, Conlon not only conveys the fascinating possibilities of re-evaluating a neglected group of composers, but also touches on issues of censorship, the possibilities and dangers offered by new technology, and concerns about present-day educational priorities. Clearly, this former student’s return will enliven Juilliard’s next two years with a great many stimulating musical events and discussions.

Susan Reiter is a freelance journalist who covers dance for New York Press, Danceviewtimes.com, and other publications.

By Kevin Shihoten

Conductor James Conlon will begin a two-year residency at the Juilliard School this fall, collaborating with students in each of the school's three divisions — dance, drama and music.

Examining societal influences on art, Conlon will focus on the repertoire of composers affected by Nazism and World War II and on the contemporary role of the artist, working through coaching sessions, lectures, master classes and performances.

The first of the concerts included in Conlon's Juilliard residency, given this December, will offer premieres of recently commissioned choreography set to Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, Erwin Schulhoff's Ogelala and Alexander Zemlinsky's Sinfonietta.

Three chamber performances in April 2008 will feature works classified under the Nazi regime's 1937 policy as degenerate art, or entartete Kunst, and as "generative art." Conlon will conduct ensembles in works ranging from Schreker's 1916 Kammersymphonie to Poulenc's Concerto choréographique (1931); the series will also include works by Georges Antheil, Hanns Eisler, Pavel Haas, Paul Hindemith, Hans Krása, Bohuslav Martinu, Darius Milhaud, Schulhoff, Igor Stravinsky and Edgar Varèse. A related forum titled "Generative and Degenerate Music" is also planned.

In November of 2008 Conlon will conduct three rarely-performed one-act operas: Modest Mussorgsky's comic opera Zhenit'ba ("The Marriage"), Ernst Krenek's Schwergewicht, oder die Ehre der Nation ("Heavyweight, or the Pride of the Nation") and Veniamin Fleischmann's Skripka Rotshil'da ("Rothschild's Violin").

For the past several years Conlon has made the revival of music suppressed by the Nazi government one of the main focuses of his career.

During the spring of 2009, Conlon will lead the Juillliard Orchestra in a concert marking the finale of his residency, featuring the world premiere of a work by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.