Conversations with the World's Leading Orchestra and Opera Librarians by Lo Patrick;

Author:Lo, Patrick; [Lo, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

For individual arias, there were 3-by-5 cards, which listed the following:

Composer

Opera

Aria

Available keys

Did we own it or was it rental? Rental from whom?

Timing

Any additional information to make the aria performable in concert such as endings, cuts, introductions, etcetera

Date purchased or photocopied

All the full scores were cataloged by composer. Each 3-by-5 card gave the opera, editor, publisher, copyright date, and date purchased.

All this information is still collected today, it’s just on computer.

Were there any emergency situations in the past where you had to rely on your skills or experiences to resolve them in order to keep the show running?

LC: One of my least favorite emergencies was sick singers. For many years (hundreds of years), orchestra musicians learned transposing, but when I started working, this was a disappearing art. Until I was able to hand copy or borrow some of the traditional transpositions, I found myself doing some last-minute transpositions. I once worked from 4:00 in the afternoon until the end of act 2 of Trovatore transposing “Di quella pira” because Luciano Pavarotti had gotten sick earlier that day. “Di quella pira” is in the act 3, and I made it just in time.

The SFO is also well known for its wonderful gala evenings. When it came to preparing music for a major gala evening—did it create extra and yet unpredictable challenges for you as an orchestra librarian?

LC: Gala concerts do present a particular set of problems. Putting together an interesting concert while working with one or a number of singers and a conductor is a challenge for the administration who, then, have to communicate to the library the wishes of all concerned. It’s enough information for a separate article, which I think Robert Sutherland (chief librarian at the Metropolitan Opera) may have written. Let me know if you need more information on this subject.

Could you tell me more about your experience with the gala evenings at the SFO? How early in advance do you need to start preparing for a gala evening? For an orchestra librarian, what kind and amount of work would it involve? What is the worst kind of nightmare to have when preparing for a gala evening? I would assume there would be countless last-minute-change requests, for example, singer changes, conductor changes, key changes. Is my assumption correct?

LC: I think I speak for many librarians when I say that a gala concert of many arias and overtures can be one of the nightmares of librarians. When a company is performing an opera or an evening of symphonic music, the repertoire is set months, if not years, in advance. Opera is a very complex art form, and most companies must budget, hiring singers, a conductor, sets, and so on, well ahead of time. A concert of fifteen or so overtures and arias seems to be planned much later, putting no small amount pressure on the library. If a singer is coming to perform a full opera, they may be in town as early as six weeks in advance; for a concert it could be less than a week, sometimes only a few days.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.