The new artistic director of Wexford Festival Opera, David Agler, tells Michael Dervan about his aims for for the festival and how he narrowly avoided becoming a choirmaster.
David Agler never expected to become known as an opera conductor. He was born in the American Midwest, he had a jazz-loving dad who made sure everyone in the family could play and sing, and he studied music at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey.
"I meant to be a choirmaster," he says, "an Anglican choirmaster, and train choir-boys, and teach in a seminary. That's what I thought I was heading for. I had joined the faculty of the choir college at a time when the Westminster Choir had begun to go to the Spoleto Festival in Italy. I went along as assistant conductor and pianist. Jerry Robbins was there making a ballet, Baryshnikov's first appearances, I believe, in Europe, when he had defected. They needed a pianist, and I had never played ballet. I went upstairs, and you know, they said, eight bars of four. I hit it."
A year later he was back, and when the festival's founder, composer Gian Carlo Menotti, "got into a squabble with the conductor of his new opera, a kind of anti-war, Vietnam opera called Tamu-Tamu", Agler found himself learning the piece in three days and conducting it.
"Luck does have something to do with people's careers," he says. "I was asked for reasons I will never figure to come and conduct Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers for the San Francisco Opera."
He became resident conductor there, later moving to Australian Opera as principal conductor, and then to Vancouver Opera in Canada as music director.
He was still with Vancouver Opera when he first conducted at Wexford - Fibich's Sarka - in 1996. "I don't know why one becomes attracted to a place," he says. "Sometimes you just go to a place and you say, I feel comfortable here, or I like it here. I said to one of my colleagues at the time, Luigi Ferrari [Agler's predecessor at Wexford], he's a very lucky man, this is a great job."
Part of the attraction is that "you're in a situation where you don't have to produce Carmen and Bohème over and over for purposes of balancing budgets and box office, etcetera. I've always liked the experience of finding new people to present; in other words, not to have to go and find an established, well-known singer with a little bit of box-office appeal. People come to Wexford wondering whether they'll hear anybody interesting. I liked it because it was so multicultural. Although it was in an Irish setting and I would argue it is identifiably Irish, it's still a very international place."
It is also a challenging place, its tiny stage making even more demands on designers and directors than its cramped pit does on conductors.
"Let's be frank - there's very little you can actually do on the stage of the Theatre Royal," says Agler. "Directors and designers pull their hair out trying to make it work there. I like to see a variety of design approaches, which I do think you will see this year. All the shows will look very, very different. I know some theatres have a kind of philosophy, a style. I will not be working for a Wexford style. I will freely admit that some of the stuff you might see in Wexford, to a European's eye, might look old-fashioned, because I'm not trying to make any points in that regard.
"I'm not trying to shock. I really do believe that going to the theatre is not about offending the public or shocking the public. It is about entertaining the public, it's about challenging the public, it's about asking the public to think. But also it's about giving the public lovely singing, things that will renew them and refresh them as well as challenge them. I'm not going to be an enfant terrible in any way."
That said, he has given this year's production of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah to a European director "because I wanted a European to interpret this very American subject. The story will be very clearly told, but will have a very definite political point of view".
"I would suggest our Susannah production, if it were produced in America, might give offence in the way that I've just been saying I wouldn't do. I've been fascinated to see these two young men, John Fulljames and designer Conor Murphy, come to an understanding of this subject and this story in a way only an outsider can do about another country."
For Donizetti's Maria di Rohan the costumes will look "very much the modern way of looking at costumes of that period. You could call it a conservative approach to this opera. But if you know Charlie Edwards's designs, they are striking, they are interesting to look at".
Fauré's Pénélope, directed by Renaud Doucet, with designs by André Barbe, "will not be told in togas. It will be a very modern, psychological approach to this piece, taking the point of view, basically, that Ulysses's absence from Penelope is really a cooling of their love, their relationship. And his return is the remaking of a marriage. This is not a literal telling of the story".
Changes to the festival format for 2005 are slight. The Opera Scenes (condensed, minimal, piano-accompanied productions of more mainstream works) have become shortWORKS, a selection from three operas (Rossini's L'occasione fa il ladro, Bizet's Le Docteur Miracle and Menotti's The Medium) which fit the 90-minute slot without cutting. There are three pre-performance talks. But otherwise Agler seems to have chosen to leave well enough alone. He'll have his work cut out soon enough, dealing with the new, expanded theatre when it's built and, before that, programming the period when the theatre will be a building site.
Changes he has in mind for the future include more instrumental music, other kinds of music theatre (shortWORKS doesn't necessarily promise opera), and "we'll certainly be doing more music with singers and small ensembles". He's also decided not to place as extreme an emphasis on obscurity and rarity as did Luigi Ferrari. This year's repertoire is all readily available - through the internet if not in your local record shop -in a choice of recordings.
"I'm trying to give the public three very worthy pieces, which I believe have been neglected - which is part of the Wexford challenge - and that are worthy pieces of music and worthy pieces dramatically," he says. "I'm not running a seminar on operatic history."
The use of a largely Czech chorus, and an orchestra from Poland, the Cracow Philharmonic, in the pit has been the cause of criticism directed at Wexford, as has the festival's neglect of Irish singers. Agler is quick to explain that the hiring of a foreign orchestra was not Ferrari's decision.
"It was a financial decision on the part of the board, and announced to Luigi Ferrari, who then had to scuttle about and find an orchestra at short notice," he says. "And he did what he knew how to do. My personal desire, I've said it over and over again, is to have an Irish orchestra in the pit. And we're working very hard toward that goal.
"I would rather have - I said this to Niall Doyle [ RTÉ's director of music] recently - I would rather have his orchestra in the Wexford pit. I think that is the best solution for our festival. But it is also not defensible for an opera house to spend an inordinate percentage of its artistic budget on orchestral costs. We really, all other things being equal, should have Irish musicians playing in our pit. But there is only so much money in the pool."
The festival has invited tenders from organisations within Ireland for the provision of a festival orchestra for 2006. This, says Agler, is an independently motivated course of action. But the coincidence of a struggle over terms and conditions attached to the festival's 2005 Arts Council grant and the festival galvanising itself into action over the tenders seems really too close to be accidental. After all, there were four years for the festival to seek such tenders in the wake of its rift with RTÉ over the use of the National Symphony Orchestraback in 2001.
Agler has legitimate concerns about quality and consistency in any freelance orchestra that might be created. Given the drop in orchestral standards experienced with the arrival of the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus in 2001, the festival needs to tread a careful line if it's to avoid seeming to accept lower standards from the Belarussians than it might be prepared to tolerate from a group of freelance Irish players.
Agler, of course, has the advantage of being new to the festival. He must deal with the consequences of past decisions, but everyone knows it was not he who made them. And, of course, as a conductor, he brings a level of expertise to the heart of the festival that it's never had in this particular area before. Then, of course, there's the issue of Irish singers.
"I've tried very hard this year, and we do have a considerable number of Irish singers appearing at all levels," he says. "But let's be clear. There are three Irish singers I engaged, and they called me up because something better came along. Irish artists are like artists all over the world, they will do the project that interests them the most. They have mortgages to pay. They're inclined to take the good financial offer."
Agler is clearly more than a little surprised at the nature of the Arts Council's concern over Wexford's neglect of Irish performers. It wouldn't happen in Canada, he says.
"It's not in their charter, it's not in their mentality," he explains, adding later that "what gets the Canadian Arts Council's hackles up is a commitment to Canadian music". He repeats with force what he says he's made clear to the Arts Council: "It's going to take a little time. You just have to cut me a little slack here. If I f**k it up, then you should tear the strips off me."
The friction over the issue of Irish performers has obviously left the tall, soft-spoken Midwesterner concerned that the bigger picture will be lost. His parting thought is to remind me that the "Wexford Festival is a beloved thing for opera lovers all over the world. It has made an important contribution to operatic history. Ireland is small. You know how it can be. All nations and communities can dwell so much on ourselves that we forget this. Wexford Festival is one of Ireland's great gifts to the cultural life of the world".
• Wexford Festival Opera runs from Oct 20 to Nov 6 (booking and information: 053-22144). David Agler conducts this year's production of Susannah. He also conducts the Orchestra of St Cecilia, at St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, on Mon, June 20, and two performances of Handel's Messiah, with the Belfast Philharmonic Choir and the Ulster Orchestra, at the Waterfront Hall, Belfast, on Fri, Dec 16 and Sat, Dec 17
