At 29, Nicola Raab, who is directing Smetana's The Kiss for Opera Ireland, is already a veteran of Czech music. But convincing people to trust her wasn't easy, she tells Arminta Wallace
'She looks stylish enough to be French" is the succinct description over the phone. And sure enough, the young woman who walks into the foyer of the Gresham Hotel is petite, dark and immaculately dressed; only a slight but unmistakable intonation in her equally immaculate English gives the game away. Nicola Raab, director of Opera Theatre Company's forthcoming production of Smetana's The Kiss, is, in fact, German, her black eyes and soft-spoken manner a startling reminder of the dangers of cultural stereotyping.
She is also startlingly young. Ten years ago, she had just graduated from Munich University with a degree in musicology, psychology and theatre studies. Since then, she has worked as an assistant to - naming but a few - directors of the calibre of Robert Carsen, Willy Decker, David Alden, Tim Albery and David Pountney. Rigoletto and Lucia di Lammermoor at New Israeli Opera, declares her CV, plus Jenufa and William Tell at the Vienna State Opera. Verdi in Zurich, Mozart in Strasbourg and Martinu in Prague - and that's only the half of it. How, at 29, has she managed to amass such a wealth of production experience?
"I started early," she says, simply. "My grandmother started to bring me to the opera when I was 13 or 14. While I was still at school I worked backstage, doing all the jobs nobody else wanted to do, and since 1991 I've been working continuously in the theatre, one way or another.
"This way, you learn everything. You work your way up from third assistant, running around with a drill in your hand, to first assistant and then to associate director, which is quite different. You learn how directors deal with problems and how they achieve the effects they want. But the big thing I've learned is that every opera asks for its own approach and its own style. Lots of directors have a 'style' which they impose on whatever opera they're doing - but I'd like to let every opera speak for itself."
Associate director is the title Raab now takes when working with David Pountney - not an assistant, but an equal. She insists her career has been, thus far, marked by luck and serendipity. But listening to her talk about her struggle to establish herself in a notoriously incestuous business, it becomes clear that determination has also had a lot to do with it.
"It takes quite a long time to get to the point of doing your own shows - and it's very, very hard," she says. "You have to send round your stuff - and most people don't reply, especially in Germany. You send off the most beautiful folders, and you don't even get a note to acknowledge their existence. So you go round, you try to meet people, you try to convince them. You have to find somebody who trusts you."
Working with Pountney has, inevitably, meant working on a Czech repertoire, for which he has acquired a reputation as a specialist. Their production of Martinu's The Greek Passion was well-received at Bregenz and Covent Garden, and their production of the same composer's Soldier and Dancer was nominated for several awards in Prague. "My production," Raab says of the latter, firmly. "I rehearsed it. I worked it out with the designer. David came to the opening night."
Not that the experience of doing a fairly obscure piece in Czech is any great help when it comes to doing a Smetana comic opera in English. But it did give her some insight into the so-called "Czech-ness" of Czech opera.
"It's a very musical nation; even the language is musical," she says. "But it's very difficult to define. It's like trying to pin down what makes Janácek's operas so special."
The Martinu piece is, she says, something of a cabaret, complete with monologues, arias, even a can-can. And The Kiss? Is it, as the plot summary suggests, a jolly village wedding sort of thing, all lullabies and polkas?
"It is, but amazingly beautiful ones," comes the prompt reply. "It's amazingly beautiful music. And in the middle is this vast duet scene with the two lovers, which goes through every possible emotional stage from love to anger, fury and despair back to love and, almost, to physical violence. That's wonderful material to work with - and Smetana has written a score which is much less superficial than The Bartered Bride. The characters are much better moulded, and he works a lot with motifs; there's a love motif and, of course, the baby motif."
The baby son of one of the lovers, a widower called Lukas, is on stage throughout - which is where the lullabies come in. There's a comic element too, but Raab says she'll be aiming for giggles rather than belly laughs. And she insists there is, in addition to the middle-aged lovers and their friends and relations, another crucial character in The Kiss.
"In this opera, the forest stands for something very particular. It works, in the true romantic sense, as it does in Hansel and Gretel and Der Freischutz. It's the unknown. If you are in a house, it's familiar, confined, you know where you are. But if you're outside, at night, the dark is very frightening. Or, at least, it was when this opera was written."
RAAB'S next project will see her tackle the jagged slopes of Puccini's Turandot, when she will once again act as associate director to Pountney in a production in Salzburg. Big opera, big venue: is this the big time, and does it coincide with her ambitions in opera? If somebody said to her, OK, here's the money, the venue, you have a free hand . . .? She makes a face that's half smile, half grimace.
"In opera," she says, "the money and space and luxury come with a different way of working. Then you're in the repertoire system, which can be quite confined and problematic."
So you can't do cutting-edge theatre in big venues? "Oh, yes, I think you can - I mean, we had big stars in the Jenufa we just did in Vienna, but we had Agnès Baltsa, and she's a wonderful actress, so it was a big, big theatrical event. So it is possible."
She pauses, chin on hand, the black eyes gazing way beyond the new stud wall at the side of the hotel foyer which is, as we speak, receiving a coat of brilliant white. "I'm just not quite sure what opera is going to do in the future," she says.
Well now. To answer that, you'd need one heck of a powerful crystal ball.
Opera Theatre Company's production of Smetana's The Kiss is directed by Nicola Raab, conducted by David Adams and designed by Joanna Parker. The cast includes Virginia Kerr as Vendulka, Eugene Ginty as Lukas, Deryck Hamon as Paloucky and Frances McCafferty as Martinka. The tour opens at the Ardhowen Theatre, Enniskillen on Thursday and goes on to Dublin (Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Friday, April 27th and Saturday, 28th); Galway (Town Hall Theatre, Thursday, May 2nd); Mullingar (Arts Centre, May 4th); Belfast (NTL Studio, Waterfront, May 7th); Coleraine (Riverside Theatre, May 9th); Letterkenny (An Grianán, May 11th); Wexford (Theatre Royal, May 14th); Waterford (Theatre Royal, May 16th), and Limerick (Bell-table Arts Centre, May 18th).