On April 28 and 30, the Jacksonville Symphony will present one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s most beloved and famous operas, “The Magic Flute”. The two performances will be the culmination of several years of planning and preparation, and the Symphony’s largest production of the season. This is the story of what goes into staging an opera in Jacoby Symphony Hall. Before our last opera production, “La bohème”, I met with Tony Nickle, Vice President of Artistic Administration at the Symphony. We plan all the classical concerts together. We’d been delighted with the success of our first opera production in Jacksonville, Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, and we were keen to build on that momentum. I wanted to perform more Mozart; he is, after all, the greatest of

Continue readingGetting ready for “The Magic Flute”

The Jacksonville Symphony may not have any performances until opening night on September 30th, but the summer months are usually a welter of activity for musicians. I especially enjoy attending music festivals to hear other orchestras, gaining inspiration from my colleagues. I have just returned from the Bravo! Vail music festival in Colorado, where I heard the Philadelphia Orchestra play three magnificent concerts (including a Tchaikovsky Pathétique accompanied by a thunderstorm) amid the Rockies.  Next week I travel to Bayreuth, Germany, to the music festival that Richard Wagner founded in 1876 solely for the performances of his own operas. In perhaps the most extraordinary example of egotism in musical history, Wagner chose the quiet town as the perfect environment in which to build an opera theatre to

Continue readingTraveling to Bayreuth